Editor’s note
This week, from back to front. In his column, Grant Smithies revisits Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, 35 years old this month and an album I wilfully ignored in my youth. Then a few years ago I saw one of those Classic Album documentaries on the TV about the making of this record and I was hooked. Now I understood that behind that FM-friendly radio fodder was a bitterly honest revelation of a potential lifetime’s worth of cheating, drugs, sex and heartbreak – wrapped up in 39 minutes and 3 seconds.
As Smithies writes: ‘‘It was the sound of pain polished to a high gloss under the unforgiving LA sun, with lyrics that touched on the defining themes of the era – the drugs, the sexual shenanigans, the emotional carelessness, the hippie dream beginning to curdle and sour.’’
There’s nothing curdled or sour however in this week’s travel, food and drink special. From Queensland to Clyde, Ireland to Italy and stop-offs in London and Taipei along the way, there’s something to tempt the tastebuds of any traveller. Me, I’m dreaming of a coffee-drinking jaunt through Italy’s finest cities, followed by a quick stop in London, where gin, that sometimes revered, sometimes reviled spirit, has once again become the new big thing. Just the tonic this summer.
CONTACT US
Editor: Angela Walker angela.walker@star-times.co.nz
Deputy editor: Stephanie Holmes stephanie.holmes@star-times.co.nz
Feature writer: Grant Smithies grant.smithies@star-times.co.nz
Features assistant: Kate Mead kate.mead@star-times.co.nz
Advertising manager: Jason Hussey jason.hussey@fairfaxmedia.co.nz