The Life Of A Song, Vol. 1: Fleetwood Mac - "I'm So Afraid"

[This is the first in a potential series of critical essays on one of the most interesting — for me, at least — topics in the sphere of pop music: the evolution of one particular composition over the years, either in the form of live or, more rarely, studio recreations and renovations of it by the same artist, or being covered, modified, and reinterpreted by a variety of artists over different consecutive ages of musical evolution. It’s just a little side project that probably won’t take too much time away from the main one, since there are really not a whole lot of songs I’d be interested in writing about this way (unless I grow old enough to really warm up to the «Great American Songbook» or something) — but as of now, I do have a few potentially interesting ideas that I hope to realize this year, and the first of these is arguably one of those songs that grows ever and ever more dear and important to me as the years go by. If anything, I’m pretty sure that nobody else has managed to write as much about this one as I have here, so there’s gotta be at least an insight or two somewhere in there.]

As is probably easy to tell, I have a weakness for emotionally charged guitar solos — doesn’t everyone, really? — to the point that I can even overlook lazy songwriting or cliché-ridden lyrics if, in the end, it’s all about the power of the mighty axe. But perhaps the greatest advantage of the guitar solo is that it is usually the most dynamic, experimental, "living and breathing" part of the song. Over years and decades of live performance, verses, bridges and choruses largely stay the same (unless you’re somebody like Bob Dylan who’s made a special art out of thoroughly reinventing his catalog over and over again), but the instrumental bits are specifically those moments where you have the potential to "update" the song with whatever textures, moods, and feels you think appropriate for the moment (unless you’re somebody like Lynyrd Skynyrd who have made a special art out of perfectly reproducing the exact same notes, regardless of the level of complexity, over and over again).

And when it comes to moody tunes with awesome guitar solos, no other song in the history of rock music has ever managed to grip my attention to the point of wanting to explore its entire lifeline than Lindsey Buckingham’s ‘I’m So Afraid’, from its first appearance as a studio track on the 1975 Fleetwood Mac album and all the way up to the band’s (and Lindsey’s solo) concert performances in the early 21st century. Compared to Fleetwood Mac’s big hits, ‘I’m So Afraid’ has always been more of a cult favorite — and not just because it was not released as a single, but also because it is one of the few Fleetwood Mac songs that offers not a drop of hope: bleak, morose, and desperate from start to finish, it claims to descend into much deeper depths of personal Hell than even something like ‘The Chain’, so it could never be a radio staple.

Yet it is also a song that has been steadily played at pretty much all Fleetwood Mac concerts since 1975, never ever dropped from the setlist — except for those time periods during which Buckingham stayed out of the band (e.g. on the Tango In The Night tour), presumably implying that nobody could ever hope to do the song justice apart from its own creator, a suspicion confirmed by the fact that absolutely no single pop/rock act of any notable stature has ever dared to cover the tune. Fairly few pieces in the history of the entire genre, to be honest, have been linked more tightly with just one man than ‘I’m So Afraid’, which makes it even more fascinating to track down the complex evolution of the song in live performance.

Although, apparently, no pre-Fleetwood Mac versions of the song have survived, it is usually said that Lindsey wrote the tune around 1971, while suffering from mononucleosis and having Stevie Nicks take care of him through much of the year; according to another account, he did not add the lyrics until his father’s death in 1974, but this I am not so inclined to believe because (a) the lyrics are entirely self-centered, with not the faintest hint of grieving for anybody other than oneself and (b) the lyrics show a certain clumsy crudeness that is more high school than college, if you get my drift: "Days when the rain and the sun are gone / Black as night, agony’s torn at my heart too long" is, frankly speaking, very cringey poetry — Lindsey’s no Dylan, for sure, but he got better with his words later on, and I’d rather believe that a 22-year old wrote this rather than a 25-year old. (Just in case, remember that the transition from 22 to 25 can sometimes be the transition from love, love me do, you know I love you to he’s a real Nowhere Man, sitting in his Nowhere Land).

Yet be it 1971, 1974, or 1975 when the song finally came out, every time I try to put it in context, much to my renewed surprise, I cannot truly understand its proper musical and spiritual roots. In fact, the more I think about it the more I realize that fear — primal, existential fear, the one that gives you a panic attack in the middle of the night with no apparent cause — is an emotion that was largely absent from popular music at the time. Skip a few years ahead to New Wave, and you get yourself Joy Division and The Cure and all sorts of goth-rock and what-not, but how many songs before that do you know that simply want to convey that terrified state of mind, driving you up the wall for no discernible reason? Having checked more than 120,000 titles in my personal digital library, I found absolutely no relevant compositions with words like "afraid" or "fear" in the title; most of them usually carry the encouraging message of don’t be afraid — amusingly, even Nico’s ‘Afraid’ from 1971’s Desertshore is a song of hope, and we’re talking of the prototypical «Goth girl» here!

You could think Jim Morrison, but Jim Morrison did not exude fear or vulnerability — his music embraced the darkness rather than dreaded it. You could think something like the Stones’ ‘Sister Morphine’, which comes close, but it was still a theater piece for Jagger who acted it out rather than lived it out. You could try and go deeper into the past, back to all those creepy old Southern bluesmen, but that would mostly be religious fear, drilled into them by tradition. Ironically, perhaps the closest person before Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac to bottling that vibe may have been... Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac, whose own mental condition drove him to record stuff like ‘The Green Manalishi’ that crawled pretty deep under your skin. (And it is hardly a coincidence that the song that secured the acceptance of the Buckingham-Nicks duo into Fleetwood Mac was ‘Frozen Love’ from their eponymous album, which shares a bit of a common vibe with ‘I’m So Afraid’ — even a few lines in the guitar solo are the same — and might have easily given Mick Fleetwood a «this guy is the new Peter» impression).

Anyway, returning to the song, which closed out the self-titled Fleetwood Mac album on a stunningly morbid note compared to the overall vivaciousness, even breeziness of the record — the original studio version is fantastic all by itself, of course. It largely leaves out the ladies in the band, but it is an almost equally strong showcase for both Lindsey and the rhythm section, with John McVie pumping out the most grim-reaperish bassline he could think of and Mick, in tandem, never letting go of the bass drum throughout. Together, they create a bulging paranoid pulse for the song against which Lindsey unleashes his feelings — and those, within the some­what padded studio setting, are dressed up in expressively melodic, almost romantic textures, from the near-falsetto overtones of the singing to the colorful effects on double-tracked lead guitars. The sheer open dread does not begin to pour out until the guitar solo, with its shrillness and distortion, comes out into the open... but then it only does so for just a few bars before fading out, leaving us yearning for more.

It’s pretty much a given among Mac fans that the song only properly came to life on stage, but over the years I have learned to appreciate the special charm of the studio version in much the same way as, for instance, I like the soft acoustic textures of studio Tommy just as much as the rip-roaring stage version. The smoothed-out studio production gives the song, one might say, a slightly more nuanced, «aristocratic», Byronesque vibe, and while in live performance Lindsey usually howls, growls, or screams out the words, letting it all out, here he sings it with no audience in sight, making the entire delivery more of an internal monologue than a theatrical look-at-poor-me tour-de-force. I can certainly dig that; this is an ‘I’m So Afraid’ for the genuine depressed recluse, rather than a desperate exhibitionist.

With that in mind, I would hardly have been surprised if Lindsey were to decide that the song was far too personal for live performances — there were, after all, some songs on classic Fleetwood Mac albums that they never or almost never played live, and ‘I’m So Afraid’ with all of its mega-bleakness could have been an easy candidate for exclusion. Yet Lindsey did take it with him on the road, and quickly established it as his signature song in concert. Funny bit of trivia: if you check any random setlist from the band’s tours in the 1977–1982 era, you will almost certainly find the song directly following ‘You Make Loving Fun’, which could, in a way, be defined as Christine McVie’s signature song — and, of course, ‘You Make Loving Fun’ and ‘I’m So Afraid’ could not be more dissimilar in their overall spirit and vibe. Was that just a coincidence (if so, why did it stick around for three full tours?), or was that a deliberate reminder of the band’s stylistic diversity and, more importantly, of the spiritual differences between its members? (Difference and unity, that is, because it is Lindsey who helps Christine complete the happy magic aura of ‘You Make Loving Fun’, and it is Christine’s organ work which helps Lindsey complete the somber funereal atmosphere of ‘I’m So Afraid’).

Anyway, we’re running a little ahead of schedule: let’s go back to 1975 first, when ‘You Make Loving Fun’ was not yet written and a big chunk of Fleetwood Mac’s live setlist was still occupied with performances from the Bob Welch era of the band. Already on that tour ‘I’m So Afraid’ was one of the principal tracks to establish Buckingham as a major individual force within the reorganized band — as can probably be seen best in this stunning rendition from a May 1976 concert in Santa Barbara (unfortunately, video quality is fairly low; there used to be a better version on YouTube, but, naturally, like all good things, it got blocked for copyright reasons; alternately, here’s a similar version from 1975 with slightly better audio and visuals, but it’s in black-and-white and it’s overall not nearly as powerful).

At this point, the song is still kept relatively short and sweet, unlike the EPIC versions from later years, but we can already see the multiple important changes from the studio version. Gone is the smooth production, replaced by a crunchier, heavier, bluesier vibe. The ladies take up a more active role, with Stevie very audible on the background vocals and Christine’s organ becoming the second most prominent instrument after Lindsey’s guitar — which is a good thing, giving the song even more of a church feel than it used to (Lindsey said that the melody itself was inspired by some of his churchboy experiences from childhood, and Christine drives that feeling home). There’s an extra «warm-up» blues-rock jam intro thrown in, which has remained an integral part of the song in concert ever since — I’m not sure whether it’s really necessary, but it’s become a successful teaser for the fans, at least. And, of course, by now the extended solo at the end of the song has established itself as that one part which always tempts you to skip right ahead to it... in fact, if you do, I won’t even blame you, as I’ve often been guilty of this myself.

The sober fact of the matter is that, as a song, ‘I’m So Afraid’ is just a bit... monotonous and repetitive. The second verse and chorus mostly just repeat the first one, and if they were altogether cut out, I’m not sure if anybody would even notice, let alone care all that much. The solo, on the other hand, becomes here a superb example of an emotional crescendo, giving Lindsey a chance to show off not just his unique technical proficiency, but also his capacity of gradually building up to a blissful climax — a perfect combination of emotion and intellect that very few lead guitarists possess (even Eric Clapton only gets it on a particularly good day, like September 6, 1968, for instance). The main body of the song could be criticized for excessive pathos (especially in light of the less-than-perfect lyrics); the instrumental conclusion is something that hardly lends itself to ridicule, no matter how jaded you are.

One particular advantage of the «Rosebud» version is that it is the only available footage of «classic Mac» performing the song in the open air, with Lindsey’s still oh-so-Seventies-Califor­nian hair swaying in the wind against cloudless blue skies. He was still playing a Les Paul guitar at this point, which usually gave him a sharper, more aggressive and distorted sound than the custom-built Rick Turner he’d switch to a few years later, and together with the open-air venue, the two factors combine in making this performance almost the total opposite of the studio version — that one was deliberately «roomy», reclusive and introspective, while here he’s screaming about his insecurities to the world at large. It’s not even the audience — what is breathtaking is seeing him send off those mindblowing guitar screeches straight into the air, as if the goal was to forever populate the skies with echoes of that pain.

Comparing the performance with the 1975 black-and-white version from New Jersey, or with any other audio recordings from the same time clearly shows that the Santa Barbara show was a special event — the whole thing feels even more dramatic than usual, and the solo seems to flow together excessively well, in a pre-meditated fashion yet still leaving room for improvisational touches and even a couple of probable mistakes that still work in Lindsey’s favor (at 3:42, the guitar gives the impression of «choking» from too much hysteria, when Lindsey throttles a particularly high note with several distorted power chords). The blue skies, the hair, the epic echo from the Gibson, the rawness and the wildness — as perfect an announcement as possible of the arrival of a new young guitar god of Shakesperian proportions into this world, fully equipped with his own thunder and lightning.

At this point, however, ‘I’m So Afraid’ was still essentially just one more song in Fleetwood Mac’s slowly growing setlist. It was relatively short — most of the performances from the Fleetwood Mac and Rumours tours are about 5-6 minutes long — and played at a relatively fast tempo, and although the intro and outro were varied every night, it could not really be said that the song occupied a particularly special place in the show. One could hardly have predicted that the song still had a major future open for it — in fact, it was perfectly possible that it would eventually be replaced by other stunning displays of guitar mastery once Lindsey finally got tired of it and decided to pour his heart into some other blues fiesta.

As we know, though, by 1978-1979, trapped and confused by the immense success of Rumours, Buckingham showed little interest in developing the bluesy side of his personality — in fact, the idea was to try and distance himself from the likes of the Eagles and suppress the cocaine-fueled sin-and-redemption schtick of the sunny West Coast in favor of something more experimental, urban, and East Coast-ish. Hence a new sound for the Tusk sessions and a new look for the Tusk tour — shaved beard, short hair, strict suits instead of leisure wear and kaftans — but while it was not too difficult to go for an image change and to dabble in new music genres, the old songs weren’t exactly going anywhere, and some of them needed reimagining for a new era.

‘I’m So Afraid’ survived the transition, but was probably the most seriously «mutated» number of them all, primarily because it was all Buckingham (Stevie and Christine were always more conservative in the treatment of material that they wrote on their own or in collaboration). It did not become «New-Wavified» as such, though; instead, Lindsey decided to slow it down, extend the solo even further and make it into a self-aggrandizing number on a previously unprecedented scale, especially now that he’d gotten himself a special new guitar model (the Rick Turner) that allowed him to produce lots of finger-pickin’ fireworks that were too uncomfortable to pull off on that Gibson — and now ‘I’m So Afraid’ was going to become his primary vehicle for showing off his ever-improving guitar-playing skills, though never at the expense of genuine emotion.

Fortunately for us, that genuine emotion still had plenty of real-life sources, more than ever, in fact: the huge commercial success of Rumours and the immense superstardom that came with it did nothing to heal the ruinous relationships within the band — if anything, they made them even worse — and nobody at the time was really in a good place, particularly if you throw in the wear and tear of constant touring and, of course, regular drug intake (I think Lindsey and Christine had it easier than Mick and Stevie, but it’s just a matter of degree). It worked with Fleetwood Mac the same way it worked with so many others: the less able they were to cope with their problems and to control their irrational instincts in the real world, the better they were able to channel all the pain, rage, and yearning to their stage act, which is why their live legacy from those troubled years is so psychologically fascinating.

The Tusk tour of 1979-1980 was particularly special, though, in that it captured the Mac at a once-in-a-lifetime intersection: pissed off and turbulent as hell, but not yet physically destroyed to the point of turning their live show into shambles. On the contrary, it was as perfect a combi­nation of emotional turmoil and tight musical discipline as possible — throw in an improved budget and a richer-than-ever-before concert setlist, and there is no doubt in my mind that the Mac were never as triumphant on tour as they were back in those two years, much like the Stones and the Who had their crowning moments in 1969-1970 that they could never quite live up to ever again in their entire career.

Every respectable Fleetwood Mac fan knows and cherishes the Live album that came out of that tour, though it has been criticized for the band cherry-picking the best performances from several shows instead of giving the fans a more authentic experience — well, not a big problem today with the availability of several complete or near-complete shows released as bonus tracks to various special editions, as well as bootlegs a-plenty. The version of ‘I’m So Afraid’ included on the album came from a May 20, 1980 show played in Cleveland — and note that it was placed last on the record (with the exception of an intimate cover of the Beach Boys’ ‘Farmer’s Daughter’ as a cute little post-scriptum), even if ‘I’m So Afraid’ was never played as the last number on the setlist, to the best of my knowledge; it just goes to show of what major importance this next renovation of the five-year old song was to Lindsey.

With the improvised blues-rock intro alone extended to over a minute, the song is now an ominous, ponderous, lumbering dinosaur — slowing down to a crawl, which, by the way, gives us even more opportunities to appreciate the joint work of John’s grim bassline, Mick’s cracking drums (he does this double-punch thing where the bass drum is just a tiny bit out of sync with the snare so that the whole thing lands on you with even more weight and power), and Christine’s organ, which now takes the place of principal rhythm instrument, giving Lindsey complete freedom to come in and out with his guitar whenever he thinks it necessary. The singing, too, is slowed down, and the lines are drawled out in a notably different way — passion and exuberance replaced with, arguably, a much more chilling delivery that reflects a post-traumatic state of emotional wasteland: hotness has been replaced by frost. The 1975-1977 edition of ‘I’m So Afraid’ was about a young adult who has just experienced the first pangs of existential angst; the 1979-1980 edition is all about a grown man who has pretty much become frozen in liquid paranoia and misanthropy. The earlier, short versions raised hell and became hystrionic fairly quickly, but the 1979 avatar of Lindsey Buckingham really has to work up to it. Sitting through any 8-9 minute version of the song from that tour is like watching a terrifying, immobile Ice Man gradually rev up and become an unstoppable machine of death right under your very eyes.

It is here that the extended instrumental conclusion was finally worked into a well-structured guitar crescendo, with things deliberately starting out slow and «droney» and then subtly, but firmly winding themselves into a veritable thunderstorm. I may be mistaken, but I think that switching to the Rick Turner model, although it may have removed some of the «rocking crunch» that we can hear in the Rosebud performance, allowed Lindsey more versatility with his finger-picking technique, which is why we are now able to hear him do all those insane speedy runs that you do not normally get on earlier records — yet this is hardly a solo that places dazzling instrumental virtuosity above emotional impact: each and every note, be it fast or slow, has an emotional meaning, so much so that sometimes I feel that, if I tried, I could come up with a decent translation of the entire solo into actual human language (approximate transcription, of course, since human language can never properly convey music’s emotionality — which is why we have music in the first place).

It is also at this point that the inevitable comparisons with David Gilmour start to crop up, especially since this was also the time of The Wall and, consequently, of ‘Comfortably Numb’ which, particularly in its stage incarnation, has obvious intersection points with ‘I’m So Afraid’: both songs are slow, serious, dark epics culminating in massive extended guitar solos — and both Lindsey and David usually build the solos up, driving them higher and higher before exploding them at the top of their guitars’ ranges to give you a brief glimpse of the proverbial rock nirvana. Both, of course, also place feeling and meaning above technique and virtuosity while never neglecting professionalism and discipline; and both rarely allow the song to solidify and stagnate, always looking for new ways to put those chords together in their lead playing.

But there the similarities end, since the end goals and overall atmospheres of ‘I’m So Afraid’ and ‘Comfortably Numb’ are entirely different. David Gilmour plays God — or, maybe, the Son of God, because ‘Comfortably Numb’, some of its lyrics and contextual settings aside, is really nothing less than a musical portrait of the Golgotha Ascension; its enduring popularity, the way my mind tells me, is there for pretty much the same reason as the enduring popularity of the New Testament — a mix of beauty, suffering, and hope for a brighter future in the face of evident despair that is pretty much irresistible for any normal human heart. It’s not a song about David Gilmour, or Roger Waters, or «Pink»; it aspires to be transcendental, and some — millions, in fact — would say that it succeeds at that pretty damn well. The emotions in that solo somehow seem to be channelled by David from above rather than from within; he becomes the medium between ourselves and some ultimate higher power.

Lindsey in ‘I’m So Afraid’, on the other hand, is not Jesus Christ, not Jehovah or even Zeus — on the contrary, he is much more like a Prometheus Bound, a human (well, technically, still a Titan!) of flesh and blood who is very much channelling all those emotions straight from his own heart. It is a far more personal experience, probably far more relatable to all those who have ever suffered from desperation, depression, irrational (or rational) fear and anxiety — and, might I say, perhaps for those very reasons so much less popular than ‘Comfortably Numb’, because the latter offers you catharsis and salvation while the former goes through a grim beginning, a morbid middle, and a hopelessly desperate ending (that might even suggest suicidal overtones to some). Basically, Gilmour is a pillar of strength on which I yearn to lean «when I find myself in times of trouble»; Buckingham is a brother-in-arms whose mixes of deep freeze and panic attacks reassure me that I’m not alone in this crazy mad world. Totally different vibes, really.

Unfortunately, as great as the Tusk tour was — it is really one of those legendary tours where systematic bootleg collecting makes perfect sense, what with songs like ‘I’m So Afraid’ played seriously differently every single night — precious little video footage of it has been preserved, with the exception of a rather silly documentary that mixes a tiny handful of insanely awesome performances with lots of boring backstage activity and footage from studio sessions (well, some fans like this kind of stuff but prioritizing it over shooting actual concerts is ridiculous). For some reason, despite putting on one of the most visually colorful shows of its time (mainly through the band members’ personalities rather than any actual visuals or special effects), Fleetwood Mac did not get around to making a proper concert movie, and everything that survives is still here courtesy of some local enthusiasts rather than the band itself.

This does give me a chance to do a little advertising of preserved footage from the Capital Centre in Landover, MD, which the Mac played on November 25, 1979: almost the entire show was actually filmed and is currently available on YouTube — alas, in truly horrendous video and audio quality, recommendable only for those fans of the band who do understand that Fleetwood Mac in 1979 was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, live band on the planet and that a poor quality video of the Mac from 1979 is worth a gazillion finest quality videos of the Mac playing anywhere, anytime in the 21st century. (There must surely be a better copy somewhere, since the filming was clearly done by a professional crew, not some hand-held camera from the audience; but so far, nothing has surfaced).

Even if you find the footage generally unwatchable (I certainly do, and I have a very high tolerance threshold for old audio and video treasures from the vaults), I do still recommend at least skipping to the performance of ‘I’m So Afraid’ (starting around the 1 hour and 22 minute mark into the video). Starting out a bit wobblier and with a slightly more relaxed vocal performance than the Live album version, it quickly picks up steam, and once Buckingham gets into the solo properly, we’re given a textbook example of what it is to be truly possessed onstage. The dynamics of the solo is nearly impeccable as it gradually gains in speed, pitch, and energy with every couple of bars, and yet it never feels like a carefully pre-meditated piece — both the ear and the eye perceive it as a clear sign of Lindsey’s «little demon» taking full control over his material body. It’s almost mesmerizing as the camera moves between his face (eyes either closed or vaguely staring into the distant unknown) and his fingers, which feel as if they have an autonomous life of their own — and then there’s the absolute fury unleashed at 1:28:22 as he literally whips you with a series of thunderbolts, long and full at first, then disintegrating into miriads of sixteenth-note sparkling fireworks that leave you no safe space whatsoever. The coolest thing about it is that, despite the technical and visual appeal of it all, not for one second does this feel like a «show» put on for entertaining the audience — it feels like just one guy busy with a life-saving seance of self-exorcism, it just so happened that he did it in public.

I do not want to say that every performance of the song on the 1979-80 tour was some sort of epiphany: I have heard bootlegs with great versions, and I have heard bootlegs with relatively underwhelming performances — on some nights, hell was empty and all the devils were there, but every once in a while they had other business to take care of. And that’s perfectly all right: the beauty of this whole thing was that Lindsey was always taking the song into whatever direction his inner voice was guiding him — after a while, you can see that the building blocks are generally the same, but their selection, ordering, and mini-mutations are completely unpredictable, and sometimes the results are more efficient and sometimes less so. What really matters is that the song, even when inflated to such mastodontic proportions, was living a full life of its own, showing how many different forms one man’s desperation can take.

Skip three years ahead now — 1982, the year of the Mirage tour. Three years during which the band members did really «go their own way», and it wasn’t necessarily for the better, because the concerts of 1982 showed them all wasted in ways that were only vaguely hinted at before. Of course, everybody knew about the cocaine binges, the fights and quarrels, the uncontrolled flying tempers of the 1970s, but all of that had at best an indirect effect on the live show, where personal quibbles and drug-fueled energy were always kept in check by tight musical discipline. The Mirage tour was arguably the first — and the last — event in the history of classic Buckingham-Nicks era Fleetwood Mac when that discipline seems to have been shattered.

Perhaps you couldn’t really tell this from the actual sound of Mirage, an album on which Buckingham’s experiments with new production values put a whole ton of stuffy makeup on the warts and pimples of the musicians’ personal lives. But you most certainly could by buying tickets to an actual Fleetwood Mac show in 1982 — or, pending that, watching live footage of the Inglewood, California show from October 22, the first ever official VHS/DVD recording of a (sadly abridged) single Mac concert where the word «wasted» does not even begin to properly describe the overall atmosphere.

Upon first impression, this version of ‘I’m So Afraid’ (for some reason, shorn of its usual blues-rock intro — perhaps the cameraman was busy changing the reel or something) might seriously pale in comparison with all those titanic performances from the 1979-1980 tour. Lindsey seems much more out of control here, exaggerating his vocal delivery, making more mistakes in his lead playing, and using a «whinier», less distorted and echoey guitar tone that somewhat diminishes the mindblowingly grandiose impression of past versions. The word «sloppy» comes to mind, and that alone might be a turn off for perfectionists who place uncontested discipline and virtuosity above subjective and flimsy «feeling».

And yet I dearly love this version, precisely because it adds yet another psychological dimension to the song, once again refreshing it to reflect a new twist in the whirlwind life of its author. The ‘I’m So Afraid’ of 1979 builds on primal terror mixed with romantic anger; it is the battle cry of a legendary hero defying the power of the gods, knowing that he will most certainly fail but still ready to do his best even in the face of a hopeless battle. The ‘I’m So Afraid’ of 1982 actually takes a step back and reverts us to the ideals of humanity and vulnerability — in this setting, Lindsey is actually crying out for help, and the softer, more generally mournful and weeping tone of the guitar is his way of signalling that.

He may still be retaining some of that Prometheus-Bound attitude, but it’s now a Prometheus who spent way too much time chained to his rock, anger and rebelliousness largely eroded away, perhaps with a little help from the bottle — maybe even too much help, as it would take one particularly reckless eagle to peck at this particular kind of worn-out liver. Staggering across the stage, unshaven, dishevelled, wobbling and whirling instead of standing his ground like a rock back in 1979 — naturally, one is bound to sound a bit sloppy when trying to deliver a complex instrumental performance in this condition. And yet there are still plenty of technically fabulous runs, and there is just as perfect an internal logic to the entire performance as on any of the best versions from previous years. To me, the Maryland rendition basically translates to "fuck you all, I’m going down and I’m taking all of you with me!" — the Inglewood one, in contrast, is "help me, somebody, I’m in a really bad place right now and I’m sorry for being so rude in the past!" After all this, the dramatic gesture during the closing bars — Lindsey pressing his hand to his chest, then stretching it out toward the audience for a few passionate shakes before the final chords — feels like a perfectly natural move, despite the theatricality.

Having listened to a couple of bootlegs from the tour, I can confirm that the same atmosphere was consistently present throughout — it wasn’t just Lindsey working for the camera, though perhaps some of the faces he’s pulling were there strictly for the filming crew, I don’t really know. In any case, the occasional sloppiness of the soloing and the relative thinness of the guitar tone agree perfectly with the artistic intention; once again, ‘I’m So Afraid’ is used as one of the man’s primary means (along with ‘The Chain’ and ‘Go Your Own Way’) to express his current state of mind, a curious and fascinating mess of disciplined professionalism, vibrating genius, and total and utter discombobulation.

It was the first two of these, probably, that prodded the man into reassuring the audience that "we just refuse to go away!" on every night of the Mirage tour, but reality dictated its own rules — the tour itself was pretty short, only covering a small bunch of major American venues, the band took a five-year hiatus after, reconvened to record Tango In The Night (their only record from the classic Buckingham-Nicks period on which Lindsey felt whipped by the production rather than production feeling whipped by Lindsey), then promptly kicked Lindsey out of the band for disruptive behavior. Not that he didn’t deserve it, but ultimately it meant that Fleetwood Mac would miss out on the bright chance to make a «classic comeback» in the early 1990s, when so many of their veteran peers were emerging out of the synth-pop midlife-crisis of the Eighties with records that at least partially and temporarily restored them to their true selves.

Meanwhile, Buckingham largely disappeared from public venues for almost ten years — after the Mirage tour, he did not truly take to the road again until a short solo tour to promote his Out Of The Cradle album. He did take ‘I’m So Afraid’ on that tour with him as expected, but although you can find video footage of him doing the song in 1992, I’m not going to share or seriously discuss it here, because (a) his backing band is no Fleetwood Mac, and without Christine’s organ, McVie’s pumping bass, and Mick’s wrecking-ball drums complementing the job the song is almost nothing; (b) ten years did take a toll, and it feels like much of the time Lindsey is just fussing around in an "oh wait, where does that chord go?" kind of way.

So let’s just forget that and skip directly five years ahead to the momentous event of The Dance — Fleetwood Mac’s famous 1997 reunion when all five classic band members came together and embraced not just each other, but a certain type of dignified middle-age rebirth. Back in 1997, youngsters like myself most likely scoffed at the band’s reappearance, but the wonder of The Dance is that it really gets better as you get closer to the band members’ own ages at the time and get more ready to accept the trade-in of wild, maniacal energy for extra melodicity, discipline, and overall classiness.

‘I’m So Afraid’ was no exception to the trade-in. This is probably the most widely seen performance of the song (over 2.5 million views on YouTube), given the heavy promotion of The Dance and the fact that it was Fleetwood Mac’s first ever concert to receive the «royal» filming treatment — and I cannot pretend to be seriously bothered by that, having watched it myself to the point of almost memorizing every note in my head.

The Dance was different from any other Fleetwood Mac performance in the past in that it was intentionally presented as a «perfect» show. Each song, clearly, was well-rehearsed in advance, and each member of the band was seriously bent on giving it their all — careful and nuanced singing, delicate and punctual playing, even elements of well-planned choreography. To some people, it might be initially disappointing because of this lack of rawness, but I think we should rather be perfectly happy to accept the existence of this intermediate dimension between studio smoothness and live noisiness: Fleetwood Mac is one of those perfect «pop-rock» bands, after all, where you can alternately turn the dial to the «pop» or «rock» speaker to emphasize melodic beauty or kick-ass energy, and the purpose of The Dance was specifically to try and recreate the melodic beauty in a live setting — and that purpose was achieved.

‘I’m So Afraid’ is taken here at the glacial pace of the 1979 tour, but with two major differences. First, it is neither angry-as-fuck as it used to be in 1979, nor whiny-as-shit as it was in 1982. Instead, this time around Lindsey infuses both his vocals and his guitar playing with a certain grim fateful melancholy that signals a mix of the old desperation with new acceptance. A good analogy is something like John Lennon’s ‘I’m Losing You’ on the Double Fantasy album: remember where he was all happy and peaceful and resplendent about finally settling down and accepting his own middle age and family life and taming his inner demons, but there was still a bit of «unsafe space» left for all the darkness and paranoia and panic attacks in the form of that one particular song? ‘I’m So Afraid’ now plays that same function for an older, wiser, and more peaceful Lindsey Buckingham. By day, you can think that you have finally found the proper way to function in this world and deal with its issues, but by night, you still got to do the howling-at-the-moon ritual because it’s also an essential component of keeping your sanity. Some of us learn this the hard way — not sure about Lindsey, but he does sound like he’s learned his lesson.

Second, it is unquestionably the most polished version of ‘I’m So Afraid’ in existence. Even the ubiquitous blues-rock intro here feels like an actual music theme with its own development (originally, it was usually an improvised chaotic mess). The actual song opens with a new grumbly riff, almost Nine Inch Nail-ian in its darkness, that was not there before but now suggests the presence of the Grim Reaper in attendance — yes, Lindsey is an old[er] man now, and old[er] people usually get a tighter grip on their mortality. All the vocal lines are drawled out and sustained to perfection without breaking down or cracking from too much extra drama. And, of course, the solo — still the chief attraction of the song — is delivered perfectly, with a near-ideal crescendo, with each theme and pattern smoothly and flawlessly transitioning into the next one. Some of the risky, head-spinning technical tricks and maniacal speedfests from the 1979-80 performances are clearly out of Lindsey’s reach at this point, but he more than compensates for that by giving the solo a flawless internal logic that was not really there before (or, at least, was not always there before). To the point, that is, when I feel like I could almost tie an actual story and a plotline to that solo.

As far as I am concerned, this performance is the perfect finish to a 22 year-long life cycle of the song that went through at least four different ages — the agitated kick-ass youthfulness of 1975–1977, the epic-romantic grandeur of 1979–1980, the agonizing crisis of 1982, and the deep middle-age maturity of 1997. But history, be it political or cultural, is a capricious bitch with little respect for perfection, and it just so happened that Fleetwood Mac, buoyed by the success of The Dance and the transparent demand for old heroes to still provide inspiration for new followers, went on the road again in the early 21st century... and, once again, inevitably took ‘I’m So Afraid’ with them as the quintessential Lindsey Buckingham guitar-hero showcase.

This final extra chapter is where our story takes a twist into a somewhat unpleasant direction for me. While I would never, in principle, object to Fleetwood Mac continuing to tour for as long as their health (not to mention their still turbulent relations to each other) still allowed them to do so, one thing — no, two things — seemed obvious about Lindsey at this point. First, that he’d managed to tame and subdue most of his demons, living a relatively tranquil and peaceful family life, clean, healthy, and nowhere near as volatile as he used to be at one time. This very fact would certainly threaten to take a bite out of the snappiness of ‘The Chain’, ‘Go Your Own Way’, ‘I’m So Afraid’ and all those other old classics that built on rage and frustration — however, as we have just seen on The Dance, there always remained a way to channel that frustration into a more meditative and transcendental riverbed. Sometimes the storm can be more impressive when you watch it looming on the horizon than banging on your very roof, you know.

The other thing, though, which was probably inevitable (but that still does not mean I have to like it), is that, as they have grown older themselves while the world around them has changed accordingly, the Mac have fully embraced the principle of «giving the people what they want». This does not even so much concern the actual setlist — which, for that matter, did contain a fair share of songs from their new album, Say You Will — as it concerns the feel that, for the first time in their history, Fleetwood Mac are actually performing into the audience rather than unto themselves. The biggest thrill of the Tusk and Mirage tours had been watching — feeling privileged to be let in on, I’d say — the fireworks fly between all five members as they were busy sorting things out between themselves, only occasionally becoming aware that there were those thousands of people down below. When Lindsey is scattering his thunder and lightning around on that 1979 Maryland version, it literally feels like there is only himself, his guitar, and God in the universe — that he is experiencing an epiphany all his own, and you are lucky enough to get to share it with him if you so desire.

But fast forward once again to Live In Boston, from 2004, and while there is still a lot to like about the performance — that is, if you are unfamiliar with most of the others — the most important feeling, that of reality and relevance, is all but gone. This is Lindsey Buckingham entertaining his audience, first and foremost. The audience has come to see him do what they want him to do: scream, wail, pull ridiculous faces, jump around while performing finger-pickin’ acrobatics at the same time, and kick the shit out of his guitar. In 1979 and in 1997, he stood still as a rock, mostly conveying emotionality through the mesmerizing fluctuations of his fingers; in 1982, he wobbled around the stage like a wretched, miserable drunk (which he probably was, to an extent, at the time). In 2004, he has pretty much resigned himself to being a circus act — most of those contorted poses, jumps, and distorted «guitar faces» feel hyperbolic and ridiculous, and when his formerly breathtaking lightning-speed arpeggios degenerate into furious quasi-Pete Townshend «thrashings» of the guitar, I cannot get rid of the feeling that this is where actual art is being sacrificed for the sake of rather cheap buffoonery. (For Pete, this was a natural and original part of his stage act — for Lindsey here, it’s more of a «what-else-can-I-do-to-drive-these-guys-wild?» kind of moment).

It does not help matters much — in fact, it sort of emphasizes my point — that at this moment in time, ‘I’m So Afraid’ pretty much ceases to evolve in live performance. With this being the 21st century and all, there’s a shitload of subsequent good-to-mediocre-to-awful quality videos of Lindsey performing it over the past 25 years, both on his Mac and his solo tours, and while at first, with the song being so important to me and all, I was avid to check as many of them as possible, I found myself quickly losing interest because I was not uncovering anything new for myself. A little bit of variation here and there, sure, and occasionally Lindsey would even seem to revisit the earliest roots of the song, making the main part more dreamy and atmospheric and breathy before cranking it up for the solo — but ultimately the vibe remained the same; it felt like the man had finally squeezed out everything that was possible to squeeze out from the melody and atmosphere, and finally settled with the «if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it» routine. As far as I’m concerned, ‘I’m So Afraid’ pretty much lost its soul with Live In Boston — and has never been able to properly recapture it again: technically satisfactory and still formally dazzling on its own, but highly disappointing in the context of its own glorious history.

Then again, on a rational level I’m glad these versions exist, because they seem to add yet another of the seemingly endless line of lessons to be extracted from the life story of the song — that of how thin, subtle, difficult to define and describe, yet ultimately real and important is the difference between art and entertainment. Some people might not feel it at all, or even flat-out refuse to believe that this dividing line does exist — but hey, if I gotta believe in something, I’d rather believe in an invisible dividing line between art and entertainment than in a (literal) Kingdom of Heaven or in a (figurative) salvational power of Artificial Intelligence. And it would be hard to find a more relevant illustration of that belief than the difference between the way Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac perform ‘I’m So Afraid’ in 1979 and the way they do it in 2004. See that difference? Hear it? Feel it? The first one is precisely what we no longer have in today’s world — not in the wide open public space, at least. The second is what pretty much everything has been reduced to.

In conclusion, I must state that I did waste about an hour or so of my time trying to find even a single cover version of ‘I’m So Afraid’ on YouTube — be it from serious indie acts, tribute bands, or random amateurs — that would favorably compare to any of the links in its Fleetwood Mac evolution chain, or at least bring something fresh and genuinely valuable to the table, and I can honestly state that I found nothing. It’s not even as simple as the fact that Buckingham has his own, self-taught playing style that nobody can approach; it’s more like the song is so deeply personal that nobody can quite relate to it in the same way. Even sincerely loving and admiring a great piece of music cannot guarantee that you will be able to properly infuse your own soul into it, no matter how many hours you spend practicing your singing and playing or how many dollars you spend on your guitars and equipment — and this is yet another lesson that a song like ‘I’m So Afraid’ is teaching us here. Unless you can really be as "afraid" as Lindsey Buckingham was when he first wrote the song, or when he carried it with him through his years and decades of personal troubles and insecurities, don’t even try to go there. Really.