Live at the Carousel Ballroom, June 8th, 1968

[Johnny Stew]

We've talked about Wolfgang's Vault over on the Rumours Forum before -- the site features streaming live concerts from Bill ("Wolfgang") Graham's archives. Previously, the only Mac concert they had available there, was the 1975 show from Passaic, New Jersey, but they've just added a Peter Green-era show from 1968 that was recorded in San Francisco....



Fleetwood Mac
Carousel Ballroom
San Francisco, CA
06/08/1968

Mick Fleetwood - drums
John McVie - bass
Jeremy Spencer - guitar, vocals
Peter Green - guitar, vocals
Danny Kirwan - guitar

• Madison Blues
• My Baby's Gone
• My Baby's Skinny
• Worried Dream
• Dust My Broom
• Got To Move
• Trying So Hard To Forget
• Jam
• Have You Ever Loved A Woman
• Lazy Poker Blues

This performance was the second night of a three-night stand at San Francisco’s Carousel Ballroom. This was years before Fleetwood Mac would add Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham and transform itself into one of the biggest pop acts of all time. At the time of this show, Fleetwood Mac was still very much a straight ahead blues rock band, having only broken away from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers eighteen months earlier.

This outstanding early performance by Fleetwood Mac occurred only a week into their first visit to the United States, when Peter Green was only 21 years old. Falling right between the release of their self-titled debut album and their follow-up, Mr. Wonderful, this show captures the band in its early incarnation, when they were still a quartet – and one of the crusaders of the late ‘60s English blues movement. Peter Green was the chief architect of the band’s sound at this point, and was providing the bulk of their original material. This show was recorded on the same tour when they stopped at Chess Studios in the windy city and recorded their legendary Fleetwood Mac in Chicago LP, which featured blues legend guests, including Honeyboy Edwards, Otis Spann and Willie Dixon. Several of the tracks during this show eventually appeared on the Chicago album, and most of the rest appear on the first two Mac albums, originally issued on Blue Horizon Records.

Since neither John McVie nor Mick Fleetwood sang, it was guitarists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer who primarily steered the ship and sent the band in this musical direction. In less than two years both Green and Spencer would be gone, the victims of excessive drug use and mental illness. Third guitarist Danny Kirwan and keyboardist Christine McVie (John’s wife and former member of Chicken Shack) would be on board as band vocalists within a year, and together they began engineering the change toward a more radio friendly pop direction. But for those who enjoyed the original Fleetwood Mac and the strong leaning they had toward American blues, this live show will bring back some wonderful musical memories.

Highlights include “Madison Blues,” “Dust My Broom” (the Elmore James classic), “Got To Move” (also covered by the Rolling Stones), and “Have You Ever Loved A Woman?” (an old blues song also resurrected on the Derek & the Dominoes’ Layla album).