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| A l b u m D e t a i l s |
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Label: | Castle Communications |
| Released: | 1995.09.23 | |
| Time: |
56:55 / 51:52 |
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| Category: | Pop/Rock | |
| Producer(s): | Fleetwood Mac | |
| Rating: | |
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| Media type: | CD double |
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| Web address: | www.fleetwoodmac.com | |
| Appears with: | ||
| Purchase date: | 2012 | |
| Price in €: | 1,00 | |
| S o n g s , T r a c k s |
| A r t i s t s , P e r s o n n e l |
| C o m m e n t s , N o t e s |
After many years of waiting I am proud to be able to present to you an incredible selection of Fleetwood Mac songs found deep from within the archives of the BBC. I searched for a way in this first release to portray the magic of those early Fleetwood Mac days and to also show a very different side of the band that many of you may not have even known existed.
This journey into my past was one that has not only reconnected me with many personal memories, but one that has given me insight; a reminder of why the passion of playing has stayed with me for all these years. Now you may be asking who all these young players are? We are Peter Green, John McVie, Jeremy Spencer, Danny Kirwan and Mick Fleetwood. In simple language, we were a group of young Englishmen who assembled themselves around one person - Peter Green. Even looking back now it amazes me how Peter's vision came through his music, and how that vision helped to create, and to leave behind an incredible feast of work. These BBC recordings may for the first time allow many of you an insight into Peter's live performances with Fleetwood Mac. Peter was a player with passion, a special touch and incredible talent. He was a player I am proud to say I was able to play drums with!
Jeremy Spencer, now how does one describe this tiny man of 5 feet 3 inches with the power of a giant. As you will hear on these recordings, Jeremy brought not only his love of the blues (which is demonstrated with his passion for Elmore James), but also his obsession for rock and roll, a side of him that in many ways would leave its imprint on the band's history. While performing live Jeremy always had a sense of fun with the music. I only wish that some of these sessions had been caught on film, for seeing was believing this crazy man on stage. Lest we not forget, he was also one hell of a slide guitar player.
John McVie and myself put together, for we are still just that, together. Musically he is a bass player that has an innate ability to be there always in the right amounts and at the right time. His sense of knowing is still very often my guiding light.
Danny Kirwan was to join the original four members of Fleetwood Mac and to add a freedom to our music. This freedom of having 3 guitars was something especially Peter had found the need to explore. On these tapes you will certainly hear that musical magic between Peter and Danny. I believe there was an innocence in Danny that lent itself to the bands journey into the world of harmonies and melody. In the end I think it is fair to say that all five original members contributed their own musical steps to the dance that was Fleetwood Mac.
I hope you, like myself, enjoy the spirit of these BBC recordings.
Mick Fleetwood
Fleetwood Mac
The BBC Broadcasts
The Fleetwood Mac that recorded these 36 songs for the British Broadcasting Company in 1969/70 was the hottest band in Europe. Playing Chicago-style blues in an era of country rock, late psychedelia and the decline of the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac enjoyed a run of Macmania in 1969 that included frenzied fans flghting to get into still-small gigs, hit singles and poll wins in the music papers. The band's genius was founding guitarist Peter Green, perhaps the most beloved musician in England for his stunning simplicity and integrity, who emerged from John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with globular electric blue tone that B. B. King said was the only thing he ever heard that made him sweat. Jimmy Page ranked Peter Green with Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, and in America younger players like Carlos Santana and Joe Perry of Aerosmith regarded the Green God as the greatest of them all.
Peter Green, drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie had all played with John Mayall's bands. Jeremy Spencer was a tiny, fire-breathing 18-year-old slide-guitar player from Lichfield, Staffordshire, who had been discovered impersonating the late bluesman Elmore James dead-on by producer Mike Vernon, who had signed Peter Green to a recording contract and with his brother Richard Vernon was really responsible for assembling the original band. Named for all four members, the band made it's debut as "Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac Featuring Jeremy Spencer" at the Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival in September 1967. Their first two albums, released in 1968, made them overnight stars in Britain and headliners in the psychedelic ballrooms of late-60's America. After a few months, Peter Green, uncomfortable with the spotlight, hired 19-year-old Mac fan Danny Kirwan away from his Brixton band to fill out the line-up as third guitarist.
It was no accident that Peter Green named Fleetwood Mac after his rhythm section. John McVie was the best blues bassist in England. He really knew how to rock a band and was at first reluctant to leave the security of The Bluesbreakers and join this new band that Peter Green wanted to name after him. Mick Fleetwood's powerful drumming had been honed in a series of mid sixties London bands. By the time he met Green and McVie, Mick was a striking 6'6" dynamo whose playing packed a serious wallop, and whose fun-loving persona overlaid an unpretentious vibe over the bands shows.
Fleetwood Mac was actually three discrete bands. Peter Green's fluid, moving blues songs were original masterpieces that stand with the most serious work of the rock movement. Jeremy Spencer was a brilliant mimic and rock chameleon whose studies of the early masters - Elvis, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Little Richard - inspired whole sets of rock & roll parodies alternating with hilarious displays of vulgarity and phallic imperialism that got Fleetwood Mac banned from some of the best clubs in London. Finally there was the rambling, jamming Fleetwood Mac of Peter Green and Danny Kirwan, whose twinned sensibilities inspired extended improvisatory voyages a la the Grateful Dead and led to some of Peter Green's classic compositions "Black Magic Woman," "Searching For Madge," and many others.
These BBC broadcasts represent all three styles of the original band at the height of its powers. Peter Green starts off Disc 1 with "Rattlesnake Shake," his majestic jam on self gratification from the band's then current album, 'Then Play On'. The next song, "Sandy Mary," written for Peter's girlfriend Sandra Ellsdon, would have been the title track of the next Fleetwood Mac album if Peter Green hadn't left the band in 1970, just after the last of these recordings.
Then Jeremy takes over with "Believe My Time Ain't Long," one of his uncanny Elmore reincarnations and Fleetwood Mac's first single from late 1967. Then two Danny Kirwan songs, "Although The Sun Is Shining" and the great Sixties pop of "Only You" with its delicate weave of guitars. Then back to Jeremy-as-Elvis on "You Never Know What You're Missing." This mix of Peter's soul, Jeremy's oldies and Danny's teenage pop pretty much duplicates the live shows that captivated audiences in the year that Fleetwood Mac outsold the Beatles in Europe.
Peter Green resumes with "Oh Well," another trademark lick that evolved into one of their biggest singles. Then he does Fats Domino's "Can't Believe You Wanna Leave."
Next Jeremy transforms the band into its Fifties alter ego, Earl Vince and the Valiants, and does "Jenny Lee," "Heavenly," the Everly Brothers' "When Will I Be Loved," "Buddy's Song" and the Rock & Roll Trio's classic Rockabilly love call, "Honey Hush." Danny Kirwan does "When I See My Baby." Jeremy performs the eerily prophetic "Preachin'" in 16 months he too would leave the band to preach the Baptist gospel like the restless character portrayed in the old blues.
Peter Green liked to do the late harmonicist Duster Bennett's "Jumping At Shadows," a big centrepiece for Fleetwood Mac that was close to the nervous state that the basically shy musician lived with. He carries this mood through with a superb acoustic rendering of Robert Johnson's "Preachin' Blues" and the band's third single, Little Willie John's "Need Your Love So Bad." Peter Green leads off Disk 2 with "Long Grey Mare." Pete, Jeremy and Danny trade licks on the old R&B standard "Sweet Home Chicago," a prime example of the telepathic interplay Fleetwood Mac used to get on a good night. Jeremy does Elmore James's "Baby Please Set A Date" and Danny interprets Little Walter's "Blues With A Feeling."
"Stop Messing Around" was one of Peter Green's show stoppers - soulful, controlled, discretely passionate. He makes a smooth switch from this work of art to a casually artless send-up of Freddie "Boom Boom" Cannon's "Talahassie Lassie," a typical stunt that showed how Fleetwood Mac refused to take themselves or their act too seriously.
Next Jeremy does a letter-perfect take on Tim Hardin's "Hang On To A Dream" that like much of Jeremy's work, goes beyond mimicry to a slate of transubstantiative possession. Same with the next two tracks, Buddy Clark's "Linda" and Elmore James's "Mean Mistreatin' Mama."
"World Keeps On Turning" is another magisterial Peter Green composition. Jeremy's "I Can't Hold Out" is a retitled version of Elmore James's "Telephone Blues." "Early Morning Come" is a Danny Kirwan song that leads to "Albatross," Peter Green's perennial hit instrumental that was so big in England in 1968 that the Beatles were inspired to write "Here Comes The Sun" in tribute to the Green God.
Peter continues with a brilliant performance of "Looking For Somebody" and the terribly sad and quite prophetic "A Fool No More" that seems to presage his strategic retreat from the music business within a few months of these final BBC sessions. The set winds down with Jeremy's version of Mississippi Fred McDowell"s "Got To Move," Peter and Danny's chiming harmonics on "Like Crying, Like Dying," and Peter Green's abject, haunting "Man Of The World," another hit record that sent a candid message to the band's audience that storm clouds were forming on the horizon.
Not long after the last BBC broadcast of Fleetwood Mac's powerful blues show, all three guitarists left the band, which then emigrated to California to regroup in 1975 as one of the biggest acts in history. some of whose sales records still stand. But when veterans of the Sixties talk about seeing Fleetwood Mac at the Marquee or the Fillmore or the Boston Tea Party, this is the legendary band they mean, along with its brilliant philosopher king, Peter Green.
Stephen Davis
This compilation (P) 1995 Fleetwood Records Ltd. (C) 1995 Castle Communications PLC released by arrangement with BBC Worldwide Ltd.
Essential Records
All rights of the producer and of the owner of the recorded work reserved. Unauthorised copying, lending, hiring, public performance, diffusion and broadcasting of this work prohibited.
Made in England
Compact Disc Digital Audio
LC 6448
5 017615 8 23
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