Firefall and Fleetwood Mac: Jock Bartley of country rockers Firefall told us about his Fleetwood Mac experience.
Jock Bartley: I’ve seen so many amazing live shows in my life and musical career. My band Firefall had the great fortune and timing to tour with Fleetwood Mac frequently in 1976 and 1977.
It may sound presumptuous for me to name here a concert that I played on. But our last concert ever opening for Fleetwood Mac during their Rumours tour on May 1, 1977 was in Firefall’s hometown of Boulder, Colorado at Folsom Stadium in front of nearly 70,000 people.
The bill that day was Fleetwood Mac, Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Bank, Firefall and a late addition of John Sebastian to open the show. Crazy! Only two years earlier, Firefall was playing a little club in Boulder, The Good Earth, preparing to go into Criteria Studios in Miami to make our very first album - and on this 1977 show, we played in front of our largest crowd ever in our home-state of Colorado!
Fleetwood Mac was absolutely the biggest band in the world at that time and always put on a fantastic show with all those great songs they had, and this concert stands out to me for many reasons. I remember taking my son Jamey who was 2 years old at the time; when we finished playing and I went back to our dressing room, I found him asleep in Rick Roberts’ acoustic guitar case.
(In 2023 Jamey designed the striking album cover of the new Firefall album Friends & Family.)
Firefall's Friends & Family album is out from September 22.
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