Fleetwood Mac was put together by guitarist Peter Green back in late 1967 after he had left John Mayall's Blues Breakers (check out the album A Hard Road) with drummer Mick Fleetwood and bass player John McVie (hence the band's name) and a relative newcomer named Jeremy Spencer whose particular talent was his guitar and vocal renditions of the great Elmore James. McVie had joined the Blues Breakers way back in 1963 and actually wasn't willing to leave immediately so Bob Brunning held down the bass slot for a very short period and actually appeared on their earliest recordings, most notably Long Grey Mare from their first album. Fleetwood was a veteran drummer Green had recommended to Mayall in 1967 but only lasted about 5 weeks. The star of the band, though, was Green, who had become a sensation when he was able to capably replace Clapton in the Blues Breakers, and he was also the one who penned most of their originals. In fact, during the show I made it sound like Carlos Santana did the original of Black Magic Woman, so I am glad to take this opportunity to state without doubt that the Peter Green tune was originally done by Fleetwood Mac, although it was Santana's respectful later version that really popularized it. Jeremy Spencer was supposedly the fourth member, but my understanding is that he didn't perform with the band except when he was the lead vocalist; whether he joined them in studio is something I must look up as well as whether I am correct in thinking he also occasionally played piano. In addition to his Elmore stuff, Jeremy had an alter ego / band called Earl Vince and the Valiants where he would come out spiffied up in a gold lame suit and do some dynamite classic rock tunes. Their performance of a Jerry Lee Lewis tune and three by Little Richard are presented in the 3CD live recordings I used for the Mac portion of this show, along with plenty of Spencer's Elmore tributes. There is also a long jam with Eric Clapton and Joe Walsh coming up from the audience.
When the band was about to put out their self-named first album, the Blue Horizon record label demanded they call it Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac to take advantage of his recent superstar status. Due to its cover photo, the album was often referred to as the garbage can album (or as the Brit's would call it a dust bin) and was followed by the UK release Mr. Wonderful, most of which was put out stateside as English Rose. Possibly to make up for the fact that they were so often a three-piece band at Spencer's whim, another guitar player was added to the group in Danny Kirwin, who complemented Green by being an additional songwriter and taking part of the vocal burden off his shoulders. Kirwin's impact showed up well on their third release, Then Play On, and it was their intention to then put out a live album. To this goal, they set up recording equipment at a three night gig in a Boston nightclub, but the album was scrapped when Green unexpectedly left the band. Years later parts of the recordings came out, but eventually three individual CDs were released for each of the nights, two entitled Live at the Boston Tea Party while the other one is just Live in Boston. It is possible they are available in a box set, but however you purchase them will be well worth the investment. I also have two box sets of their studio output: one is a 3CD set that I believe captures all of the stuff up to Then Play On and the other is a much more complete 6CD set, but the problem with it is that they leave the chatter before and after the music which is only cool once or twice, not to mention some of that stuff isn't suitable for airplay. The 6CD set also includes the entire Blues Jam in Chicago sessions where the guys sit in with Willie Dixon, Walter Horton, Honeyboy Edwards and Otis Spann (who later had the band back him on his album The Biggest Thing Since Collosus), and especially interesting was sax man J.T. Brown joining Spencer on tunes he had originally done with Elmore James all recorded at the legendary Chess studios.
I only got to see the band once but, unbeknownst to me, it was after Green had departed. I had been jamming on bass with some guys at Guitar Player magazine and they asked me to go up to the Fillmore and get an interview with McVie. I went backstage and made an appointment to meet with him the morning after the shows were over. As my future ex-wife and I were heading up 101, we had a tire blow out and when we got to the motel a little late found out they had already checked out ..... three hours before our due time! Needless to say, he is not my favorite musician but their music has stood the test of time better than any of the genre. Spencer left the band soon after, but did you know the band still survived for decades and actually had some hit songs, although no longer in a Blues vein?
By the time I saw them, Christine Perfect (actually McVie since her wedding to John) was in Fleetwood Mac, possibly as a replacement for Green. Her piano and vocal stylings had previously been one of the highlights along with singer / guitar player Stan Webb in the four piece Blues band Chicken Shack. They fronted a rhythm section of drummer Dave Bidwell and bassist Andy Silvester. I had picked up one of their albums at a Flea Market for probably fifty cents but rarely if ever listened to it, so when I found a 3CD set of their first four albums for about $15 I snatched it up. Miss Perfect played on the first two albums but was replaced by keyboardist Paul Raymond when she opted to spend more time with her new husband in his band. Obviously I knew little about them before the show but they proved to be a good, strong addition to my Brit Blues collection that was getting stale with few recent infusions.
I do recall one early morning getting a cab dispatch to pick up at a party around Camden and 17 and finding out that the three or four guys I was transporting to a hotel way out on Lawrence past 237 were members of a band that was on tour and playing at the Keystone in Palo Alto. Of course we talked about music and somehow I found out that one of them claimed to be Paul Raymond. Now, I can be gullible sometimes, but the real Paul Raymond has a unique, somewhat youthful face that I had seen on at least three Savoy Brown albums plus the one Shack album I had, so when he got out of the cab (I couldn't really see him before because he was seated directly behind me), it became obvious that he was .... yeah, the real guy. Of course, or else why would I be mentioning this? When I read the liner notes for the Chicken Shack CD, I assumed it must have been UFO that he was with at the time. Anyway, it was some band I'd never heard of. The only other "celebrity" I have given a ride was when I got a call from JJ's because they knew I would treat Junior Walker and a couple of his All Stars properly.
One of the earliest impressions I can recall about Savoy Brown was the cover of their second English album. Savoy Brown established a tradition of extreme lineup changes, and that happened from the beginning. At this point they were known as the Savoy Brown Blues Band. The first album, Shakedown, was actually not released in the U.S. so I bought it and their follow-up album, Getting to the Point, as imports. The second English album had different cover art than its American counterpart and showed a rendering of a face (I always assumed it to be Kim Simmonds) with glasses and the reflection in each of the lenses was of a black man. It bothered me because the original album's lineup included two black players and now that the band was all white, here was this depiction of two black men on the new cover. I couldn't imagine any person so respectful of the Black music could be racist, but still it crossed my mind almost any time I saw that cover. Actually, I was born in Canada and I think there would be many similarities with the U.K. like the fact that there was no history of racial oppression as was the foundation of the United States, therefore no fear of retribution thus never leading to widespread and brutal bigotry.
Anyway, let's get back to the band. The show began with the Getting to the Point album, which had the rhythm section of Roger Earle on drums and Rivers Jobe on bass backing up guitarist Lonesome Dave Peverett and vocalist Chris Youlden. Kim Simmonds was the only constant through the entire history of the band and pianist Bob Hall was a carryover as a part-time player from the Shakedown album. Tone Stevens replaced Jobe on bass at the end of 1968 and this lineup lasted the next albums (now going simply as Savoy Brown) Blue Matter, A Step Further and finally Raw Sienna, all represented in this show. I wound up their portion of the show with songs from Looking In with the same crew with the exceptions of Youlden and Hall. But the whole purpose of this show was to follow four of the players from Chicken Shack, but we didn't quite get to it on this show so more was to come two weeks later. The next album was Street Corner Talking with a whole new cast of characters including Chicken Shack's drummer Dave Bidwell, bassist Andy Silvester and keyboardist Paul Raymond joining Simmonds and new lead vocalist Dave Walker. The band went unchanged (and it was probably my favorite incarnation) on Hellbound Train and the only change on Lion's Share was bassist Andy Pyle replacing Silvester.
I had the opportunity to see Ten Years After twice before their performance at Woodstock and they were an exciting band surpassed only by the Jeff Beck Group when they had Rod Stewart or the two times I saw Cream and, of course, the Sunday night show back on June 18th, 1967 at the Monterey Pop Festival. In order to keep me happy there must a moving bass line and Leo Lyons provided that as few others could. Lots of people at that time considered Alvin Lee to be a cheap, revved up imitation of Eric Clapton, but if you had the chance to catch the band live you had to be impressed. Drummer Ric Lee (no relation) and keyboardist Chick Churchill were also strong musicians. Anyway, they seemed like a natural fit to complement Savoy Brown on the show. Their self-titled first album was a mediocre assortment of mostly Blues tunes but there follow-up release was an excellent live set titled Undead (did you catch that? If it's not dead it must be live) that showcased much of the sonic excitement I was to later experience in person. The next one was titled Stonedhenge and it was kind of a concept album: each side had five cuts and, spaced between the regular song stuff, cuts two and four on each side gave four short selections to allow the four musicians to individually strut their stuff on solos. This album kinda took a while to win my affection because it somewhat got away from the Blues, but their fourth album Sssh... put them right back in a driving groove. I really think that although I had to acclimate to these new albums, each one was progressively better than the previous. Except maybe the Undead album because it was such a dynamite example of their early live shows. And then we got to see Alvin and the boys performing I'm Going Home in the movie Woodstock and all of a sudden they were stars, even though the version from Undead was just as good but lacked the Jerry Lee Lewis, etc., segments. Then they had to make records for the masses and you'd be hard pressed to find one or two decent songs per album, including Cricklewood Green which was recorded before the movie came out. The 7-26 show featured a few selections from the premier album and Stonedhenge in its entirety and we came back the next show with Undead and Sssh... in their complete original versions. The CDs that I have include no outtakes, which is too bad because their label Deram released Alvin Lee and Company, a conglomeration of songs that had not appeared on album before, when their contract ran out. While it really wasn't worth buying, it would have been nice to incorporate them into the albums they were recorded for.
We also did some Foghat so I'll add comments about them when I have time.
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