Development of the British Blues and Rhythm
--- show
22 --- 1-14-2014
Fleetwood Mac
Love Sculpture
It seems like whenever I play Fleetwood Mac I get a lot of response from listeners and our last two
shows were no exception. I had a lot of
good conversations, graciously accepted compliments for how good the music was
(like I had a hand in making it!), and even got three pledges during the show
which is unusual because I always mention it is a good idea to pledge during
the marathons. Anyway, apparently a good
time was had by all and that feeling should carry over through this and the
next show. Originally I planned on doing
three shows, but after going through all their music in my collection I was
surprised at the amount of material that is out there from a band that was only
together between August 1967 and April 1970, the date Peter Green dropped out.
Our first show was comprised entirely of material
recorded over a three-day span at the Boston Tea Party in February of 1970 which
were intended to be winnowed down into a fourth Fleetwood Mac album but was
shelved for decades when Peter Green departed.
What finally came out are three CDs, each containing the full show for
one of the appearances with very little redundancy. Then last time we went into their earliest
studio sessions comprising 45s and their first two UK LPs. We open up today’s show with a live
assemblage of Jeremy Spencer’s take on 50s Rock which was previously only
represented by his one side for Immediate, Somebody’s Gonna Get Their Head
Kicked in Tonight, before the numerous post-mortem releases came to light. Our second set focuses on the band after Danny
Kirwan joined as another influence on the group’s musical direction, and the
third and closing set is made up of four instrumentals from the Then Play On
album (their third) which are cumulatively referred to as the Madge sessions. Our next airing will show more of Spencer’s
50s Rock taken from live BBC sessions and later his parodies of some of the
respected musicians of the day intended for an EP release that was to be
concurrent to the Then Play On album. So
it’s not like I’m running out of quality content and settling for filler; in
fact, we’ll likely revisit the band later in the year to showcase a double LP
with several of the Chess Records Chicago Blues luminaries and a separate album
joining the great pianist Otis Spann.
These were bucking the trend at the time of American Bluesmen traversing
the Atlantic to gather together Britain’s best artists in that these sessions
were recorded in Chicago and New York.
Peter Alan Greenbaum was born October 1946 in East London’s
Bethnal Green district. His first
influence was Bill Haley and other mid-50s rockers but, like so many other
young British guitarists, the Shadows began to influence his playing by
1960. In 1962 he joined the pop-oriented
Bobby Denim and the Dominoes. In 1964,
in addition to his day job as a butcher’s trainee and already into the Blues, Peter
moved on to the Muskrats, which included future Chicken Shack and Savoy Brown
drummer Dave Bidwell. Until joining the
Muskrats Peter had taken to playing the bass, but around the end of his time
with them switched back to guitar. From
the Chuck Berry / Bo Diddley-styled group he moved on to the Bluesbreakers late
in October 1965, months after Clapton took off for a working holiday in Greece. His time with Mayall was cut to just one week
when Eric returned to the band.
Early in 1966, Peter signed on with Peter B and the
Looners, the B standing for Bardens, already a veteran of the Irish band
Them. Mick Fleetwood was the drummer,
the third band in which he was with Bardens, the Senders and the Cheynes being
the predecessors. Peter got his first
studio experience when the Looners put out a single, If You Wanna Be Happy /
Jodrell Blues in March 66, but its lack of success led the mostly instrumental
group to add vocalists Rod Stewart and Beryl Marsden, changing their name to
Shotgun Express, structurally similar to and just after Rod left the short-lived
Steampacket which also featured Long John Baldry, Brian Auger and Julie
Driscoll. Green left before the band
broke up in early 1967, likely due in part to Marsden’s declining Peter’s
marriage proposal.
In August Green began his second term with Mayall’s
long-standing rhythm section of drummer Hughie Flint, a Bluesbreaker since July
1964 as well as playing with John back in Manchester, and John McVie, member of
a Shadows imitator band until he joined Mayall in April 1963. It is reported that at their first gig Mayall
said something like “Let’s do a 12-bar in C” with McVie responding, “What’s
that?” Aynsley Dunbar replaced Flint
shortly after Green joined, together putting out the Hard Road album and a
handful of singles. Mayall was not
entirely pleased with Dunbar’s drumming; not the quality but that it was too
technical and busy for what the bandleader wanted so, upon Green’s suggestion,
Mick Fleetwood was brought in as Dunbar’s replacement. Fleetwood would only last about five weeks,
some sources say even a shorter term, because he partied too much at the gigs. I like the way it was phrased in one of my
well-used books, The Blues-Rock Explosion: “Fleetwood’s need for boozed-up good
times at gigs was greater than his need to keep good time on the drums.” Mayall had already been coping with the same
problem with McVie for years, resulting in multiple terminations of the bass
player, and he wasn’t about to put up with it from the start with a new band member. In spite of
his brief time in the Bluesbreakers, Fleetwood did join McVie and Green in
backing Mayall on the 45 Double Trouble and It Hurts Me Too.
“If John Mayall made up a tape for you, you could bet
on it that there would be everything there about a guitarist or band you needed
to know.” Still, with all the respect
Green had for Mayall’s influence and instruction, neither he nor McVie were
happy with the direction the Bluesbreakers were heading by adding horns to the
stage lineup.
When Green left the Bluesbreakers, he and McVie were
contemplating a visit to Chicago, or maybe Peter would just put in some time
jamming around for a while, but complications acquiring visa and work permits put
an end to dreams of an American visit.
In the meantime, one of the producers for Decca Records Mike Vernon,
especially present on Blues recordings, along with his brother Richard was
trying to put together a new label of their own, Blue Horizon. Being a fan of Green from his time with
Mayall, Mike convinced Peter to instead put together his own group and Green
desired Fleetwood and McVie to round out the trio.
Fleetwood was fine with the idea and gave up his
newly-started interior design business, while McVie also liked the idea but was
not ready to give up the financial security of being a Bluesbreaker. Found through an ad placed in the music
magazine Melody Maker for a temporary bass player, their choice Bob Brunning
was now embarking on two new careers after also just receiving his teaching
credential. Bob had played in some local
groups and would go on to form the Brunning-Hall Sunflower Band, but Mac was
his first truly professional gigging and even though his term was limited he
remained a friend of the band, as evidenced by Peter adding his guitar work (and
some vocals) to four tracks for the Sunflower Band LPs. From Mac’s earliest session, Brunning
appeared on two released tracks: their first single I Believe My Time Ain’t
Long (its B-side required no bass) and from their first LP Long Grey Mare. The
45 would be released in November 67 with the LP following in February 68 and
staying on the UK charts for nearly a year.
Against Peter’s wishes, Vernon wanted to name the album Peter Green’s
Fleetwood Mac, but through Green’s persistence this was modified to add ”featuring
Jeremy Spencer”, thus giving all four members a portion of the title.
Once the lineup seemed set as a trio, Green wanted to
find someone to open up for the band in order to not have to hit the stage to a
cold audience, so Vernon pointed out the diminutive (5’4”) Jeremy Spencer in what
was by all accounts an otherwise lackluster Levi Blues Set. Most impressive was Jeremy’s mastery of the
style of Elmore James, but he was also an accomplished piano player and vocalist,
all of which should satisfy Green’s desire to share the spotlight. With this in mind and the band already signed
to Blue Horizon, Vernon convinced Green to make Spencer a full-fledged member
of the group. After a brief rehearsal
period, the band was prepared for their debut at the Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival
on August 13th, 1967. Brunning’s
total time with the band would turn out to be only about a month as McVie would
join the lineup in time to easily make the November studio session that would
fill out the debut album. The band was
finally set as it had been originally conceptualized, plus the added talents of
Spencer.
Regarding the debut album, Beat Instrumental declared
it “the best English Blues LP ever released here”, and a writer from the New
Musical Express found relief from his pondering: “I wondered where the early
Animal and Stones music had gone…well, here it is.” But by the time the LP reached our shores,
Rolling Stone’s appraisal was only halfway as complimentary: “On this, their
first recorded effort, Fleetwood Mac have established themselves as another
tight English Blues Band.” “(They) 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.”
A month after the successful release of their first
album, the March release of the single Black Magic Woman topped out at #37,
curiously low considering its influence especially on one Carlos Santana. Their next release in July, Need Your Love So
Bad which featured orchestral backing, fared a little better at #31, but that
month also saw their first American tour turn out a disaster mostly due to
mismanagement on the US side.
By now, Spencer’s role within the band was becoming
increasingly diminished which caused him to feel as though he were being
slighted, so he would sit backstage and mope.
His actions did not please Green either.
“I had two parts to play because Jeremy wasn’t going to make the effort
to learn my things – to play properly on the piano. I was told he could play properly but never
saw him do that.” Therefore, when May
rolled around and it was time to record the second LP, Mr. Wonderful, McVie’s
girlfriend Christine Perfect (who had recently retired from “the other” Blue
Horizon band Chicken Shack) was enlisted to provide piano on some of Green’s
material. Also used on the album were
Johnny Almond on tenor sax (one of four horn players) and Peter’s one-man-band
buddy Duster Bennett blowing away on harmonica, who himself was now signed to
Blue Horizon as well. Spencer is listed as playing piano but I must
presume this is solely on his own material.
The album came out in August and peaked at #10 UK but its American
counterpart English Rose didn’t find its way into the record bins until six
months later (just as was the case with the first LP) and failed to chart at
all. I don’t have reviews of the full
LP, but Rolling Stone did deem the album’s track Love That Burns the “finest
white recording of the Blues ever made.”
On August 14th 1968 after the band returned
from their US tour, an addition was made in the form of guitarist / vocalist /
songwriter Danny Kirwan who, with his trio Boilerhouse, had opened up for Mac
in shows dating as far back as about a year earlier. Like Spencer before him, Danny was the
standout in this mediocre trio and knocked out his headliners. At first, an attempt was made to find an
adequate rhythm section for Kirwan to front but, when that failed, Vernon
suggested Danny would meet Green’s desire to have another guitarist to work off
of. Green remembers Fleetwood
suggesting, “’Why don’t you get him in?”
I didn’t want to at first, but Mick persuaded me that we could do some
interesting things with two guitars…and he was right. I would never have done Albatross if it
wasn’t for Danny. I never would have had
a number one hit record”. Brunning saw
Danny at the time he joined the band as “a painfully shy and polite new-boy who
was in awe of everyone in the band and even in awe of people like me who were
to do with the band”.
For the group’s second American LP English Rose,
several of the tunes from Mr. Wonderful were replaced by newer ones featuring
Kirwan. My thought was that they wished
the album to be more like the stage show but my information says the disc came
out in February while the tour ended in January, so something is askew. Strange that the company wouldn’t have the
two coincide.
Around December of 1968, Fleetwood Mac headed out for
their second US tour which went better than the last one. The highlight of the tour was not any of the
concerts but the fact that they had the opportunity to play with some of the
best American Bluesmen. In January,
probably due to his status as A&R man for Chess Records, Willie Dixon was
able to put the boys together for two days of sessions featuring various
combinations with guitarists Buddy Guy and Dave “Honeyboy” Edwards, harpman Big
Walter “Shakey” Horton, tenor saxist J.T. Brown, drummer S.P. Leary and pianist
Otis Spann at the label’s Chicago recording studio. Dixon, of course, added some stand-up bass to
the sessions including a handful of tunes featuring Jeremy Spencer’s
adaptations of Elmore James’ material. Sitting
in on those tracks was Brown, who was Elmore’s sax player on so many of those
classic 50s recordings, and he was blown away by the accuracy of Spencer’s
renditions. I have no chart data for the album, but it must have suffered considerably
since the double LP was held back until December when the band’s direction was morphing
away from the strict Blues they had been known for at the beginning of the
year. Spann was impressed enough that he
got Green, Kirwan and McVie to join him and Leary at the end of their tour
later in January for the sessions which produced his Blue Horizon album The
Biggest Thing Since Colossus.
Blue Horizon had signed Mac to a one year contract
with a company option for a second year but somehow the Vernons forgot to renew
and Mac became free agents just as Albatross was riding the very top of the
charts and just before the tour began.
In keeping with Green’s ideas toward money not being the be all and end
all of any kind of agreement, he was against the change but this time lost out
and in early summer the band signed with Reprise. Also recorded in New York before their journey
home was their next single, Man of the World paired with Jeremy’s rocker
Somebody’s Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight under the pseudonym Earl
Vince and the Valiants. The 45 was
released in April 1969 on the Immediate label as a one-off deal falling between
the two contracts. It started slowly but
payola brought about airplay and the disc rose to #2 and kicked Mac from the
large pub scene into the more profitable concert halls and stadiums.
Jeremy Spencer’s humor was an integral part of the Fleetwood
Mac stage shows, and an October 1968 session was held just for the purpose of
creating the experience on an EP. It was
plenty funny to me and I imagine some of this style of jocularity would be a
hilarious addition interspersed with his 50s Rock mimicry. The imaginary Milton Schlitz is supposed to
typify the American MCs who might also supplement their income by doing TV ads
for used car lots. On the semi-musical
side, he portrays Alexis Korner, a Doo Wop group, Lightnin’ Hopkins (the only
tune omitted because it was just a little too slow), a generic psychedelic
group and winds up mocking Peter Green’s mentor John Mayall. The irreverent disc was to be an accompanying
piece to the band’s third LP, Then Play On, which indeed Jeremy did not play on. While the album came out in September, the EP
never hit the record racks. Green said, “We would like him to do that sort of
thing more often, but if an audience is cold he won’t do it.”
Spencer’s humor could often be pornographic and/or
tasteless as in the time the band was banned from the Marquee after the focal
point on stage was a 16” pink dildo (named Harold and Jeremy’s proud possession)
protruding outside his trousers. As
Chicken Shack and later Savoy Brown bass player Andy Silvester put it, “I
always remember Fleetwood Mac as a happy band but a band with a bizarre
humor. They used to take things too far,
and Jeremy was the instigator of this”.
Ultimately, Jeremy was in a world of his own. While the others were out doing things on
their days off during the 1970 US tour, Jeremy could be found all on his
lonesome smoking dope and reading the New Testament.
Mac was in the studio over a four month span beginning
in April 1969 to lay down tracks for their first Reprise LP, Then Play On,
released in September. According to
Green, “We should have had a producer on Then Play On, then it might have sold
better. We tried to produce it
ourselves, like other bands did at the time, thinking it would be more fun.”
Recording engineer Martin Birch took on much of that
responsibility although not the producer’s title. Around this time, Kirwan began to think of
his idol Green as more of a competitor, and Birch recalled, “When we’d finish
one of his tracks, Danny would say, ‘I’d like Peter to hear this’. And Peter would say, ‘Well, if you like it
then that’s fine with me’. I often got
the impression that Danny was looking for Peter’s approval whereas Peter wanted
Danny to develop himself by doing it himself.”
In an attempt to cash in on one last time on the
recordings still in their vault, Blue Horizon put together The Pious Bird of
Good Omen LP and released it just before the Reprise album. The album, comprised of outtakes and 45 sides
that had not been on British albums previously, reached #18.
The British press came out strongly in favor of the
new album, with Melody Maker seeing Then Play On as “a great leap forward for
the Mac” and Beat Instrumental declaring it “Fleetwood Mac, at their very, very
best. … Peter Green’s characteristic guitar is evident throughout, and this LP
can only add to his fast-growing stature as one of the best guitarists in
Britain.”
In a Rolling Stone review of the album, the magazine
suggests that Mac is giving up the Blues: “Tired of being another British Blues
band, the group has said goodbye to Elmore James and has moved into the
pop-rock field. On this album they fall
flat on their faces”, which prompted Green to say during the 1970 US tour, “We’re
not getting out of Blues or out of anything.
It’s just that we’re getting into more things – you see we did some
blues tonight“. He also spoke of the
album in September 1969, “There is nothing I feel I could have done better”.
Released the same month as Then Play On was Oh Well
(parts 1 & 2): “I like it because it represents me at my two extremes – as
wild as I can be and my first sort of semi-classical attempt.” Within a week of its release, the 45 reached
#2 and stayed on the charts for 16 weeks
Although highly respected, Fleetwood Mac never did
quite make the top tier as Mick felt they should. “I believe we’d have had the same status as
Led Zeppelin in America. Led Zeppelin
had a schtick, they had a lead singer with an image. I think Fleetwood Mac had a great image, a
fun-loving bunch of lads. Peter Green
was every bit as much a talent as Jimmy Page.”
“There were a million groups making a mockery of the
Blues. And a million guitarists playing
as fast as they could and calling it Blues.
Some people think that the Blues is just a way of playing guitar but it
isn’t. The Blues really is about having
the Blues.” These were Green’s comments
during the sixties and in a February 1996 article in Guitar Player Magazine he
expressed that, “I didn’t understand the Blues well enough so I stopped. The Blues was too deep. It got too painful. … the Blues is something
you spend a lifetime in, and you have to understand it to play it. …The Blues
ended up hurting my soul so I stopped it and started to make up stories instead.
… I had to give up because it wasn’t mine, it didn’t belong to me. … The Blues
is something you have to work at and I wasn’t learning it fast enough.”
In a May 1998 Guitar Player interview, Kirwan
concurred. “If you’re a white man you
have to learn the Blues, you don’t know them.
It’s as simple as that. … those guys were blacks singing and playing
about what it is to be black in their country, which isn’t really their
country.”
This
would appear an appropriate place to interject another view, that of Leroi
Jones in his excellent book Blues People, with one black man’s perspective on
whites taking up black music. "The
Negro's music changed as he changed ... (and ultimately) created a music that
had offered such a profound reflection of America that it could attract white
Americans to play it or to listen to it. ... Unlike the earlier blackface acts
and the minstrels who sought to burlesque certain facets of Negro life, ...
white jazz musicians ... wanted to play the music because they thought it emotionally
and intellectually stimulating. ... the entrance of the white man at this level
of sincerity and emotional legitimacy did at least bring him, by implication,
much closer to the Negro ... (and) served to place the Negro ... in a position
of intelligent regard it had never enjoyed before. ... The music of the white jazz musician ... was
... a learned art. ... blues is an extremely important part of jazz. ... jazz
utilizes the blues 'attitude' ... the white musician could understand ... to
arrive at a style of jazz music. ... Afro-American music did not become a
completely American expression until the white man could play it!"
During all three of Mac’s American tours a friendship
with the Grateful Dead grew as the bands shared the same tickets and occasionally
got together on stage. “When I first
heard Grateful Dead’s jamming, I thought it was a bit boring. But then if you listened to it when you’d
taken some LSD you could get into it and understand what they were doing.” Whether it was the LSD or some other
influence, Peter became obsessed with not needing money. He wished to follow in the footsteps of the
Dead with free concerts and encourage bootleg tapes of their appearances.
Green was more deeply embracing both Christianity and
Buddhism to the point that he even renounced his Jewish faith. “I had a strong feeling I was walking and
talking with God. I was drawing away
from music into being just a Christian person and it made me such a very, very
happy person.” Towards the end of the
Then Play On sessions, he and Spencer announced plans to do an orchestral
project telling the story of Jesus but it never reached fruition.
There is a myth that was going around how Peter was
abducted while in Munich and brainwashed by the use of LSD, but both Green and road
manager Denny Keen, the only member of the Mac entourage who accompanied him
claimed, first off, that he accepted an offer to join this group of artists for
an afternoon during which, secondly, he did take the drug but that everything
he did was by his own choice and not forced upon him. They stayed overnight as Green spent some
time jamming to some downbeat avant garde music, but regarding the next day’s
concert, “I felt marvelous – kind of fresh not grubby. We played all our usual stuff, but then when
I jammed I couldn’t believe what I was coming out with – I was coming out with
things I didn’t know I could play and the notes seemed to be going all around
the room like machine-gun fire which left bulletmarks in the walls”.
Peter’s final gig was at the Bath City Football
grounds at the end of May, followed up shortly with one last BBC
appearance. The last of his recordings
with the group was released that month, The Green Manalishi (with the Two Prong
Crown) b/w World in Harmony, going to #10 in the UK. September saw the release of Kiln House, the
first Fleetwood Mac disc sans Green, which was recorded as a quartet. Peter’s first solo release came in November
with a series of instrumental jams under the album title The Name of the Game.
There is more to say about the circumstances
surrounding the departures of Spencer and then Kirwan, but in order to get this
out today that shall have to wait ‘til our next show, so I think I’ll make my
outro here from Mick’s 1990 biography Fleetwood: My Life and Adventures with
Fleetwood Mac: “We were a rude, wild, fun-loving bunch of people who simply
didn’t give a fuck. Fleetwood Mac never
wanted to be pure Blues like John Mayall or Rock like Hendrix or Cream. We were a funny, vulgar, drunken vaudeville
Blues band in that time (1967-70) playing music as much to amuse ourselves as
please an audience and make money.”
*************************
Tiger
Great Balls of Fire
Tutti Frutti
Teenage Darling
Keep A-Knockin’
Jenny Jenny
Fleetwood Mac
Stumble
3 O’clock Blues
I Believe to my Soul
So Unkind
Summertime
Wang Dang Doodle
On the Road Again
Come Back Baby
Blues Helping
Shake Your Hips
Love
Sculpture
Albatross
Jig Saw Puzzle Blues
Show Biz Blues
My Dream
Oh Well
Like Crying
Although the Sun is Shining
October Jam #2
Mighty Cold
Rattlesnake Shake
Fleetwood Mac
Sabre Dance
The Promised Land
You Can’t Catch Me
Sweet Little Rock ‘n’ Roller
(I Am) A Lover Not a Fighter
(added if time permits)
I Hear You Knockin’
Farandole
Love
Sculpture
The Madge Sessions #1
Searching for Madge
The Madge Sessions #2
Fighting for Madge
Fleetwood Mac
