Fleetwood Mac were formed in July 1967 in London when Peter Green left the
British blues band
John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. Peter Green had replaced guitarist
Eric Clapton in the Bluesbreakers,
[8] and received critical acclaim for his work on their album
A Hard Road. After he had been in the Bluesbreakers for some time, Green asked if drummer
Mick Fleetwood could replace
Aynsley Dunbar. Green had been in two bands with Fleetwood—
Peter B's Looners and the subsequent
Shotgun Express (which featured a young
Rod Stewart as vocalist).John Mayall agreed and Fleetwood became a member of the band.The Bluesbreakers now consisted of Green, Fleetwood, John McVie and
Mayall. Mayall gave Green free recording time as a gift, in which
Fleetwood, McVie and Green recorded five songs. The fifth song was an
instrumental which Green named after the rhythm section, "Fleetwood
Mac". (Wikipedia)
Shake Your Monymaker
Soon after, Green contacted Fleetwood to form a new band. The pair
wanted McVie on bass guitar and even named the band 'Fleetwood Mac' as a
way to entice him. However, McVie opted to keep his steady income with
Mayall rather than take a risk with a new band. In the meantime, Peter
Green and Mick Fleetwood teamed up with slide guitarist
Jeremy Spencer and bassist
Bob Brunning,
who was in the band on the understanding that he would leave if McVie
agreed to join. The Green, Fleetwood, Spencer, Brunning version of the
band made its debut on 13 August 1967 at the Windsor Jazz and Blues
Festival as Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac featuring Jeremy Spencer.
Brunning merely played at a handful of gigs with Fleetwood Mac. Within weeks of this show, John McVie agreed to join the band as permanent bassist.(Wikipedia)
Albatros
Fleetwood Mac's first album,
Fleetwood Mac, was a no-frills blues album and was released on the
Blue Horizon label in February 1968.
[13]
In fact there were no other players on the album (except for the song
"Long Grey Mare", which was recorded with Brunning on bass). The album
was successful in the UK, hitting No. 4, though it did not have any
singles on it. The band soon released two singles "
Black Magic Woman" (later a big hit for
Santana) and "
Need Your Love So Bad".
The band's second album,
Mr. Wonderful,
was released in August 1968. Like the first, it was an all-blues album.
The album was recorded live in the studio with miked amplifiers and PA
system, rather than plugged into the board.. They also added
horns and featured a friend of the band on keyboards, Christine Perfect of
Chicken Shack.(Wikipedia)
Like Crying
Shortly after the release of their second album, Fleetwood Mac added guitarist
Danny Kirwan,
then just eighteen years old, to their line-up, recruited from the
South London blues trio Boilerhouse, consisting of Kirwan on guitar with
Trevor Stevens on bass and Dave Terrey on drums.
[17]
Green and Fleetwood had been to watch Boilerhouse rehearse in a
basement boiler-room and Green was so impressed, he invited the band to
play support slots for Fleetwood Mac. Green wanted Boilerhouse to become
a professional band but Stevens and Terrey were not prepared to turn
professional at the time, so Green sought to find another rhythm section
by placing an ad in
Melody Maker. There were over 300 applicants, but when Green and Fleetwood ran auditions at the Nag's Head in Battersea (home of the
Mike Vernon Blue Horizon
Club), the hard to please Green could not find anyone good enough to
replace the pair, so he invited Kirwan to join Fleetwood Mac as their
third guitarist.(Wikipedia)
O Well
Green had been frustrated that Jeremy Spencer had little desire to
contribute to Green's songs. A self-taught guitarist, Kirwan's signature
vibrato and unique style added a new dimension to an already complete
band. With Kirwan, the band released their first number one single in
Europe, "Albatross". Around this time they released their second
American album,
English Rose, which contained half of
Mr. Wonderful, new songs from Kirwan, and their third European album called
The Pious Bird of Good Omen, which was a collection of singles, B-sides, and a selection of some work the band did with
Eddie Boyd.(Wikipedia)
I,m Worried (Njardhallen in Oslo, Norway, november 3, 1969)
When the band went to the United States in January 1969 they recorded many songs at the soon-to-close
Chess Records Studio, with some blues legends of Chicago including
Willie Dixon,
Buddy Guy and
Otis Spann.
These would prove, however, to be Fleetwood Mac's last all-blues
recordings. Along with their change of style, the band was also going
through some label changes. Up until this point, they had been on Blue
Horizon. With Kirwan in the band, however, the musical possibilities
were too great for them to stay on a blues-only label. The band signed
with the
Immediate Records label and released "
Man of the World",
another British and European hit single. For the B-side Spencer fronted
Fleetwood Mac as "Earl Vince and the Valiants" and recorded "
Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonite",
typifying the more raucous rock 'n' roll side of the band. Immediate
Records was in bad shape and the band shopped around for a new deal.
Even though
The Beatles wanted the band on
Apple Records (Mick Fleetwood and
George Harrison were brothers-in-law), the band's manager
Clifford Davis decided to go with
Warner Bros. Records (through
Reprise Records, a
Frank Sinatra-founded label), the label they have stayed with ever since.(Wikipedia)
Give me All Your Love
Fleetwood Mac's first album for Reprise, released in September 1969, was the well-regarded
Then Play On.
Although the initial pressing of the American release of this album was
the same as the British version, it was altered to contain the song "
Oh Well", which featured consistently in live performances from the time of its release through 1997, and then again starting in 2009.
Then Play On, which was the band's first rock album, featured only the songs of Kirwan and Green. Jeremy Spencer, meanwhile, recorded a
solo album (he was backed by the rest of the band) which consisted of many 1950s-style rock and roll songs.(Wikipedia)
Peter Green solo
In July 1969, Fleetwood Mac opened for
Ten Years After at the
Schaefer Music Festival at New York City's
Wollman Rink. They re-appeared at the festival in 1970.
By 1970, Peter Green, the frontman of the band, was not in good health. He had taken
LSD in Munich, which may have contributed to the onset of his
schizophrenia.
[19] German author and filmmaker Rainer Langhans mentions in his autobiography that he and
Uschi Obermaier
met Peter Green in Munich, where they invited him to their
"High-Fish-Commune". They were not really interested in Green; they just
wanted to get in contact with
Mick Taylor: Langhans and Obermaier wished to organise a "Bavarian Woodstock". They wanted
Jimi Hendrix and
The Rolling Stones
to be the leading acts of their Bavarian open air festival. They needed
Green just to get in contact with The Rolling Stones via Mick Taylor.(Wikipedia)
Rattlesnake Shake
Green's last hit with Fleetwood Mac was "
The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Prong Crown)" (first recorded at the
Boston Tea Party in February 1970 and later recorded by
Judas Priest).
This recording was released as Green's mental stability deteriorated,
and he wanted to give all of the band's money to charity. Other members
of the band did not agree, and subsequently Green decided to leave the
band. His last show with Fleetwood Mac was on 20 May 1970. During that
show, the band went past their allotted time and the power was shut off,
although Mick Fleetwood kept drumming. Some of the Boston Tea Party
recordings (5/6/7 February 1970) were eventually released in the 1980s
as the
Live in Boston album, with a more complete remastered 3-volume compilation released by
Snapper Music in the late 1990s.(Wikipedia)
The end of a beautiful era......
More Fleetwood Mac:
http://arthurfromholland.blogspot.nl/2010/01/fleetwood-mac-new-years-concert-french.html
http://arthurfromholland.blogspot.nl/2015/05/fleetwood-mac-green-manalishi-1970.html
