[Doctor Brown]

Hi becca!

This is the third time I've sat down to address your post. There's a lot here. But you raise some good points for which I will try to give my point of view.

First, as far as Jeremy devoloping, we have to look at the time factor. Everything that he did was within about a three year time frame. He was brought in to play Elmore James and rock and roll, which he did. I've never heard anyone say that they thought that Elmore James should PROGRESS. Playing slide-guitar is kind of a narrow field.

I have a theory that, at whatever stage a person begins listening to FM, that becomes their mental vision of who FM were. So for you to have been drawn to the stuff that was on "Then Play On", it would make sense that you would see Jeremy as a side attraction because he sat that one out and the previous stuff was so much different. Jeremy's picture was on the album cover because he was still in the band.

As far as consciously overdoing certain aspects. That is subjective. It's a double edge sword. If you take the first album, I don't think there is anything redundant there. When they did "Mr. Wonderful", I believe that there was some conscious repitition. I haven't gotten a good answer from Jeremy on this yet but, I think that he and Mike Vernon really thought that they had something with that "Dust My Broom" thing. And they thought that all they had to do was to come up with the right lyrics, and they would have a hit.

Back then you could take "Johnny B Goode" and put new lyrics to it and have a hit. So this is why I believe that you have so many similiar sounding tracks. I think that they were shooting for a hit single. And really the way that they were sequenced on the albums, it was just more of "that sound", and didn't sound like the same thing over and over.

I don't think that "Kiln House" is offbeat and uneven. When you say "backward looking" I assume that you mean retro. That is what it was designed to be, and really was not that much different than what you would have seen at a live show. Peter Green was not there, but Danny Kirwan filled in nicely with tunes like "Station Man" and "Tell Me All The Things You Do". Compare the material to the "Vaudeville Years". Same type of stuff.

He had a good song on that album called "One Together". I think that if he were to have stayed with the band and grown or progressed, it would have been in this direction. It was on parallel with Neil Young and some other artists of that time.

You didn't think that Jeremy was one who could lead. He did in fact lead, his own group, and he, and Peter, and Danny, did the same thing in FM. They were all "Front Men". Who lead their particular material.

As far as contributing, well he did contribute to other people's material on "Kiln House" and on "Purple Dancer". What was great was when Peter contributed to his stuff. Like on tunes like "Tiger". The infusion of Peter's guitar on this type of thing was what took that stuff to a new level.

Peter and Jeremy playing together was great. Jeremy felt that he was continuing to be well recieved on stage, so why change. Peter felt that if they were going to move forward, he would have to take the music in a different direction. This is when they grew apart.

Peter says that he didn't want to be the leader and have all the responsibility fall on his shoulders, but HE was calling the shots, and told Danny that he could have half of the next album. Thats why Jeremy didn't play on "Then Play On".

Jeremy wanted to move forward and away from the blues, but didn't know where to go. He said that he really tried to relate to where Peter's music was going and to some of the other music of that day, but he just couldn't get into it. I can understand this.

Yes, Jeremy's strengths became his weaknesses. Which was basically that he played blues and rock and roll. Like anything else it only goes so far.

I do think that he could do as well today as a touring blues act, as the rest of them. If he would play the things, that he knows it would take, for him to be successful.

Maybe you will hear his "Red Sky Blues". If you like blues at all you can't help but like it.

When Dave Walker came onboard, that band was lost. They didn't know what to do except to keep playing music. And it was OK. But they moved on pretty quickly.

I don't think Christine McVie or Bob Welch are trivial talents at all.

Thanks for keeping an open mind in discussing this.

Doc