They play well, and if it sounds a little scratchy at times it’s because that’s the way they happen to feel at that particular moment. Their music retains an unaffected rough quality.
#PETER GREEN FLEETWOOD MAC ALBUMS MAC#
Like most modern white bluesmen, Fleetwood Mac try very hard to live the kind of music they play - not picking cotton in the Delta, but maintaining the hard-life blues tradition, gigging at small clubs in Northern England and in scruffy halls in the East End. The record has a strange, prematurely vintage (if there can be such a thing) sound to it, like an old classic recording made in the late Forties or early Fifties. Green’s composition “Long Grey Mare” is one of the best cuts on the album, anchored by McVie’s strong bass line. The harp work is proficient in most places but rather weak on “Got to Move,” the old Sonny Boy Williamson song. Green is a more than competent guitar player, and the Mac’s treatment of “Shake Your Moneymaker” is just as powerful as the first Butterfield version (on the Paul Butterfield Blues Band album). Fleetwood Mac (the name is a combination of the names of members of the group), know what they’re doing, they dig the music they’re playing and that’s great - but the drawback here is that they don’t put enough of themselves into it instead of what they’ve heard from the original artists. The piano riffs on “Hellbound on My Trail” are lifted directly from Slim’s classic “If You See Kay,” but it’s done well, if perhaps a little too self-consciously. Green, like Mayall, has studied the records and performances of Howlin’ Wolf, Memphis Slim, Junior Wells and Elmore James carefully. Whereas Clapton expanded onto new horizons with Cream, Green has chosen to remain dedicated to the blues, and on this, their first recorded effort, Fleetwood Mac have established themselves as another tight English blues band - joining Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Ten Years After and Savoy Brown as chief practitioners of blues in England. Now Green has formed his own group, Fleetwood Mac (along with another former Bluesbreaker, bassist John McVie). After Clapton left Mayall, moving on to form Cream, Peter Green replaced him. When John Mayall formed the Bluesbreakers it was out of respect and admiration to those performers and he’s stayed with the blues, cultivating a number of fine young blues musicians including guitarists Eric Clapton and Peter Green. Performers like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Howlin’ Wolf and even Freddie King and Bo Diddley were stars in England before making it big in their own country.
Previously unreleased, this exceptional recording is now available in its entirety on this new CD, for the first time.The Blues has always been popular in England. The group played a stunning show, mixing Green and Kirwin originals with blues and rock n roll classics, and the whole concert was recorded for live FM broadcast across the city. By early January 1970, Messrs Green, Fleetwood, Kirwin and Spencer were on the West Coast and their first gig of the New Year took place at Bill Graham s Fillmore West on the 4th. The band then spent the remainder of the year performing in cities across the USA, and by New Year s Eve they were in Chicago, for a show the Kinetic Playground. Mac went on to play several more dates in the Big Apple, including a splendid set at the Fillmore East, supporting Joe Cocker, on November 21st.
DYNAMIC EARLY 1970 BROADCAST FROM PETER GREEN & CO Fleetwood Mac s Autumn & Winter tour of 1969/1970, moved from Europe to the US on 19th November 69, and by 21st they were performing in New York at the Irving Meadows venue, supported by King Crimson.
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