FESTIVAL OF CHICHESTER: Bubsie gets ready to take you on the Rumours rollercoaster

Last year Bubsie and The Beat Brothers revisited Joni Mitchell's Blue album for the Festival of Chichester.
BubsieBubsie
Bubsie

This year they return to the Festival of Chichester to repeat their success from the year before. For 2016 they will be recreating once again Fleetwood Mac’s million-seller Rumours.

This time they will be doing it as part of the new Priory Park Festival, taking to the stage among the musicians lined up for Sunday, July 10.

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Bubsie Yates is looking forward to playing her third Festival of Chichester: “Rumours is a really great album. People really enjoy hearing it, and we love performing it. There are classic songs on there, great songs, break-up songs.

“There is a lot of tension in the songs, but it is timeless. They are pop song that are passed to the next generation. Younger people are now listening to the album as well.

“I first started listening to it about ten years ago. I suppose I came to it quite late.

“I got into Fleetwood Mac in my mid-20s. It was just through other people, I suppose. You are just very inspired by the people you listen to while you are at university, and I started listening to Fleetwood Mac and loved them.”

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Part of the attraction is to be playing the album in its entirety, recognising that the songs on the album all belong together as part of a whole: “It’s a shame that people don’t always listen to albums in that way these days, but the artists created the album as a whole, a collection of songs that are all part of the same thing. I think artists recognise that a lot of people do like that kind of thing.

“I think the album is telling a story. I know for a fact we get the super fans in, and you can feel a lot of pressure because it is very important you pay proper respect to the artists. But I know I have still got a lot of Fleetwood Mac still to pursue and explore.

“Some of their later 80s stuff is really important, and I really like a lot of their early blues career stuff.”

For Rumours, Fleetwood Mac went into the studio, but unfortunately the two couples in the band were splitting up.

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“John and Christine McVie were going through a divorce, and Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were breaking up as well. You can sense the turmoil in the lyrics. They wrote the majority of the songs, and the others in the band would come in with their input, but you can sense what was going on, with songs like Go Your Own Way.

“Christine McVie came up with the song You Make Loving Fun about her current boyfriend who was part of the extended Fleetwood Mac crew, but John wouldn’t let him into the studio. John was obviously going through a lot of pain.

“But out of that emotional turmoil came an album that people love and revere. Everyone has been in that situation.

“The songs are fairly simple, but they are engaging and well-written pop songs that transcend their time. People relate to them now, and that’s something we have noticed when we have played them. It’s something that people of every generation notice.”

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Bubsie’s task is to sing songs sung by four different people on the album: “I generally sing the lead vocals of each song, but I always sing as Bubsie. It is always my interpretation of what I am singing.

“I really enjoy Stevie Nicks, but she is such a distinctive singer. I think it is far more authentic if we are doing it as us. It makes more sense to do it as us.”

And so it will continue. Next year will be the 50th anniversary of 1967, a hugely-important year in British music which inevitably suggests lots of possibilities for the next album for Bubsie and The Beat Brothers to tackle.

“I am thinking maybe Sly and the Family Stone…”

Weekend tickets from for the Priory Park Festival are available on www.chichesterlive.co.uk.

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