ROCK BAND #24 - BOB WELCH Traditional Cache
Jtmlam59: Because it's time.
ROCK BAND #24 - BOB WELCH
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(small)
Related Web Page
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
Note to cachers: Please be easy on the holly bushes. It only requires a gentle touch, the right angle to spot this cache. Rated 2 due to muggle factor. Don't have to leave the pavement to reach the cache.
For those of us who grew up in the 70's, who doesn't remember the Bob Welch album "FRENCH KISS"? And I don't mean because of the cover picture! :-)
We were attending College when this first album was released. I remember blasting the song "Mystery Train" from my "high tech" combo AM/FM Radio, record, and cassette player.
So let's get to it. Grab your "SENTIMENTAL LADY", or that "PRECIOUS LOVE" and head to the "OUTSKIRTS" of this bike and cache trail to find this cache. But before you do, don't forget to grab your I-POD and load up the songs "HOT LOVE COLD WORLD", MYSTERY TRAIN", and "CAROLENE". Don't "LOSE YOUR HEART" looking for this and be careful where you step because it is "EASY TO FALL" if your not paying attention.
"DON'T GIVE IT UP" looking for the cache. Just use your "EBONY EYES" and you should be able to spot it. "REMEMBER" how you feel each time you find the cache. You'll probably have "DANCING EYES" and will feel like singing "DANCHIVA"!
Robert Lawrence "Bob" Welch, Jr. (born August 31, 1945) is an American musician. A former member of Fleetwood Mac, Welch had a briefly successful solo career in the late 1970s. His singles included "Hot Love, Cold World", "Ebony Eyes", "Precious Love", and "Sentimental Lady".
Early life:
Welch was born in Los Angeles, California into a show business family. Raised in Beverly Hills, his father was movie producer and screenwriter Robert L. Welch, who worked at Paramount Pictures in the 1940s and 1950s, producing films starting Paramount's top box office stars, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. He also worked as a TV producer, responsible for the 25th Annual Academy Awards TV special in 1953 and The Thin Man TV series in 1958-59. Bob's mother, Templeton Fox, had been a singer and actress who worked with Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre in Chicago, Illinois and appeared on TV and in movies from 1962 to 1979.
As a youngster, Welch learned clarinet, switching to guitar in his early teens. He had received his first guitar at the age of eight. The young Welch developed an interest in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock music. After graduating from high school, Welch eschewed attending Georgetown University, where he had been accepted, to move to Paris, professedly to attend the Sorbonne. Welch told People in a 1979 interview that, in Paris, "I mostly smoked hash with bearded guys five years older." He spent time "sitting in the Deux Magots café" rather than attending to his studies, and eventually returned to Southern California, where he studied French at U.C.L.A..
Fleetwood Mac:
Bob Welch struggled with a variety of marginal bands until 1971, when he was invited to join Fleetwood Mac, then an erstwhile English blues band that had lost two of its three front-line members, Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer, within a few months. Along with fellow newcomer Christine McVie, a keyboardist/singer-song-writer (formerly of the British blues band Chicken Shack) married to bassist (and long-time band member) John McVie, Bob helped to steer the band in a more melodic direction, particularly after lead guitarist/singer-song writer Danny Kirwan left the band in 1972.
Evolution of the band:
In the summer of 1971, the remaining members of Fleetwood Mac held auditions at their retreat in England, Kiln House, while seeking a guitarist to replace Spencer. Judy Wong, a friend of the band who served at times as their secretary, recommended her high school friend Bob Welch to the band. Welch (who has been described as Wong's high school boyfriend) was living in Paris at the time.
The band had a few meetings with Welch and decided to hire him without actually playing with him or listening to any of his recordings. Welch was tasked for the role of rhythm guitar, backing up lead guitarist Danny Kirwan. It was felt that having an American in the band might extend Fleetwood Mac's appeal across The Pond. Welch eventually went to live in the band's communal home, a mansion yclept Benifold, which was located in Hampshire. (Using mobile equipment borrowed from The Rolling Stones, the band would record four albums at Benifold: Future Games, Bare Trees, Penguin and Mystery to Me.)
In September 1971, the band released the first Fleetwood Mac album featuring Bob Welch, Future Games, with the title song written by Welch. This album was radically different from anything the band had done up to that point. The choice of Welch seemed to be paying off as there were many new fans in America who were becoming more and more interested in the band. In 1972, six months after the release of Future Games, the band released the well-received album Bare Trees, which featured Welch's song Sentimental Lady. (The song would become a much bigger hit for him five years later when he re-recorded it for his solo album French Kiss. He was backed on the album by Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, and Lindsey Buckingham, who had replaced Welch as the band's guitarist.)
Challenges:
The next two and a half years proved to be the most challenging for the band. In the three albums Fleetwood Mac would release in this period, they would constantly change line-ups around the core of Mick Fleetwood, the McVies and Welch. The band then faced the ultimate challenge, a very threat to their existence, when their manager put a band on the road in America under the name Fleetwood Mac that contained none of the band members, precipitating a legal row.
Kirwan was replaced by Savoy Brown lead singer Dave Walker and Bob Weston on lead guitar. Both Walker and Weston appeared on Penguin, released in January 1973, cracking the Top 50 on the Billboard Top 200 album chart in the U.S., reaching #49. Walker's style did not mesh with Fleetwood Mac and he was amicably dismissed, failing to appear on Mac's second album of 1973, Mystery to Me, which was shipped to market six months after Penguin.
Mystery to Me contained the Welch song "Hypnotized", which got a lot of airplay on the radio in the United States and became one of the band's most recognizable Fleetwood Mac songs to date. However, Mystery to Me only reached #67 in The States, as that market became increasingly important to the band, which was shipping albums in the respectable range of 250,000 units at the time.
Fake Mac and the move to Los Angeles:
Internal stresses caused by line-up changes, touring and the failing marriage of Christine and John McVie (exacerbated by John's alcoholism), and an affair between lead guitarist Bob Weston and Mick Fleetwood's wife Jenny Boyd proved debilitating to the band. Mick was devastated by his wife's revelation of the affair, and Weston was sacked from the band. Mick's distress led to the cancellation of a planned tour in the United States, the band's most important market.
In what would be one of the most bizarre events in rock history, the band's manager, Clifford Davis, determined not to cancel the tour, claimed that he owned the name Fleetwood Mac. According to Bob Welch, Davis sent letters to all the remaining Fleetwood Mac band members saying he was putting a new "star-quality, headlining act" together and offering them jobs in this new band. Welch said that he believed that Davis' gambit was ignored by them all. Without telling any of the band members, he then set up a tour with a new group of musicians, booking them into venues in the United States.
Davis announced that Bob Welch and John McVie had quit Fleetwood Mac, and put the "fake Mac" band out on to tour the United States. None of the "fake Mac" members was ever officially in the real band, but it was announced that Mick Fleetwood and Christine McVie would be joining the band at a later date. The members of Fleetwood Mac obtained an injunction preventing the fake Mac from touring under their name, while Davis obtained an injunction preventing them from touring. The lawsuits resulting from the fake Mac tour, which was aborted, put the real Fleetwood Mac out of commission for almost a year.
During this period, Bob Welch stayed in Los Angeles and connected with entertainment attorneys. Welch quickly realized that the band was being neglected by Warner Bros., the parent of their label, Reprise Records. He came to the conclusion that if the band wanted to get better treatment from Warner Bros., they would have to change their base of operation to Los Angeles. The rest of the band agreed immediately. Rock promoter Bill Graham wrote a letter to Warner Bros. to convince them that the "real" Fleetwood Mac were in fact Fleetwood, Welch and the McVies. While this did not end the legal battle, the band was able to record as Fleetwood Mac again.
Instead of getting another manager, Fleetwood Mac decided to manage themselves. After the courts ruled that the "Fleetwood Mac" marque belonged to Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, the two band members set up their own band management company, Seedy Management.
Heroes Are Hard to Find:
In 1974, for the first time in its history, Fleetwood Mac had only had one guitarist, Bob Welch, who took over lead guitarist duties. The quartet of Welch, Mick Fleetwood, and the McVies represented the ninth line-up in the band's seven year history.
Warner Bros. made a new record deal with the real Fleetwood Mac, after which the quartet of Mick Fleetwood, the McVies and Welch recorded and released the album Heroes Are Hard to Find on Reprise in September 1974. (The band did not switch to the parent label Warner Bros. Records until 1976, after the multiple platinum success of the 1975 album Fleetwood Mac, with Rumours marking their first release on the Warners' label in 1977.) The Heroes Are Hard to Find album was the first to crack the US Top 40 in the United States, reaching #34 on the USA Billboard 200 chart.
The Heroes Are Hard to Find tour proved to be the last one for Welch. The constant touring had taken its toll on him. His marriage was failing and he felt that he had hit the end of his creative road with the band. In a 1999 online question and answer session on the Fleetwood Mac fan site The Penguin, Welch also said he felt somewhat estranged from the British members of the band after four years. He claimed he felt close to Mick Fleetwood, with whom he claimed he was running the band in 1974, but felt estranged from John and Christine McVie.
Bob Welch resigned from Fleetwood Mac in December 1974 and was replaced by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.
Of the Fleetwood Mac albums on which Welch appeared, American album sales totaled 500,000 units shipped between 1971 and 2000 for Future Games; 1 million units of Bare Trees between 1972 and 1988; and 500,000 units of Mystery to Me between 1973 and 1976, when it was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America.
The Buckingham-Nicks version of Fleetwood Mac achieved supergroup status with the albums Fleetwood Mac (1975) and Rumours (1977), which shipped 5 million and 19 million units in the US, alone, both reaching #1 in the US. (Rumours, which has shipped 40 million units worldwide, is one of the most successful sound recordings ever released.) Welch's French Kiss, released in 1977, was his sole platinum album, and after his gold-certified album Three Hearts (1979), his career faded. Mick Fleetwood continued to manage Bob Welch's career into the 1980s.
Paris:
In 1975, Welch formed the short-lived hard rock power trio Paris with ex Jethro Tull bassist Glenn Cornick and ex Todd Rundgren's Nazz drummer Thom Mooney. Paris released two albums; Paris and, after Hunt Sales replaced Mooney, Big Towne 2061. Sales' brother Tony subsequently replaced Cornick before the group split.
In a 1979 interview with People, Welch said that the two Paris albums were "ill-conceived." Due to the misfire of Paris, his finances had deteriorated until he had only $8,000 left. Mick Fleetwood and members of Fleetwood Mac would soon help him reinvigorate his career as a solo act.
Solo:
In September 1977, Welch released his first solo album, French Kiss (originally to have been called Paris 3), a mainstream pop collection featuring contributions from former band mates Mick Fleetwood and Christine McVie. This release brought Welch his greatest success, selling one million copies being certified by the RIAA on 5/1/78. It yielded three hit singles: a revamped version of "Sentimental Lady", the rocker "Ebony Eyes" and "Hot Love, Cold World".
Welch followed up French Kiss with 1979's Three Hearts, an album that replicated the rock/disco fusion of French Kiss. It was certified Gold by the RIAA on 2/23/1979, and spawned the top 20 hit "Precious Love", while the follow-up single "Church" also charted. He also hosted a music video program, Hollywood Heartbeat.
Welch released solo albums into the early 1980s (The Other One, Man Overboard, Bob Welch, and Eye Contact) with decreasing success, during which time he also developed a heroin addiction. After cleaning himself up in 1986, Welch turned away from performing and recording and focused his attention on songwriting for others. In the early 1990s, he moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where he put together a short-lived group called Avenue M, which backed him on tour and recorded one song for a greatest hits compilation. He later moved to Nashville, Tennessee.
In 1999, Welch released an experimental jazz/loop based album, Bob Welch Looks at Bop. He followed this up in 2003, with His Fleetwood Mac Years and Beyond, which contained new recordings of songs he originally recorded with Fleetwood Mac, as well as some solo hits. In 2006, he released His Fleetwood Mac Years and Beyond 2, which mixed a half-dozen new compositions, along with a similar number of his Mac/solo remakes.
Here are some tracks of Bob Welch:
(visit link)
(visit link)
(visit link)
(visit link)
(visit link)
Congrats to terryandsherrie and hombre_rana for the FTF!
PLEASE USE STEALTH WHEN RETRIEVING AND REPLACING CACHE. The first container was taken. Stealth will ensure this container last longer than the first. Thanks and happy caching!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Fznyy pnzzb'q cvyy obggyr.
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
Loading Treasures