Review of FM at the BBC

[ThePenguin]

Dug this up....
-Lis



"Don't worry if you come in too early. You won't come in too early. But if you come in too late I'll ****ing brain you, right?"
- Peter Green to Mick Fleetwood, hopefully in jest, right before they nail the final take of Need Your Love So Bad, 1969.


The words Fleetwood (model of Cadillac, doo-wop group, Lancashire port town, Irish paint company) and Mac (high-quality personal computing device, cheap raincoat, hamburger-like food object) will call up many associations, both separately and together. And usually when we think of the band Fleetwood Mac, we think of the band that brought out great albums like Rumours, Tusk and Tango In The Night. The Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, "supergroup" Fleetwood Mac. The "Penguin" Fleetwood Mac, if you want. Which is fair enough. An excellent band, who defined an era with some great tunes. I was busy fighting in the punk wars myself at the time, mind, but it was hard not to like them especially with Skin giving them heavy rotation on the family turntable. Nifty playing, heavenly harmonies, pretty ladies in diaphanous dresses, I'll have a bit of that, thankyouverymuch.

But, as a fully paid-up member of the Legion of Superannuated Guitarists, I will always have something of a bone to pick with the way that history has been rewritten. I'm not saying that people have forgotten about the original, Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac, it's just that I feel a bit queasy at the way their early catalogue has been dismissed as some sort of false start, or eccentric juvenilia, or a couple of spotty English boys sleepwalking their way through "generic blues". Not all their early stuff is completely stellar, but most of it deserves a fair hearing. Early Fleetwood Mac was a beacon for the rest of the Sixties Brit-blues scene, something for all of that era to aim at. When they had a hit with their cover of Little Willie John's Need Your Love So Bad, purists turned up their noses. It had strings on it. It was "too commercial". It was like when all those Clapton fans got bummed out because For Your Love, his last single with the Yardbirds, had a harpsichord and (ulp!) bongoes on it.

Genre mimicry (generic mimesis, even)? Not a bit of it. When B. B. King was asked to name his favourite English blues guitarist, he didn't say Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page, he quite rightly pointed to the boy who was born Peter Greenbaum in London's East End. But mere mimicry was never going to be enough for Greeny and the boys. By the time he'd bowed out of the band, they'd tried their hand at some pretty ambitious musical settings that went way beyond the standard twelve-bars-and-keep-moving-your-little-finger: The Green Manalishi anyone? Oh Well, with its clever modulation from tomcat-piss rock workout to chamber strings and spanish guitars? It's worth remembering that Carlos Santana didn't write Black Magic Woman either...

In fairness: I think Lindsey Buckingham is one of the few musical figures of the past 20 years or so that you could rightly call a genius - a songsmith, singer and studio wizard who's created and participated in some fine pieces of music, and not just with Mac. But he's still no Peter Green. Okay, the old Fleetwood Mac and the new Fleetwood Mac have two members in common, Mr. Fleetwood and Mr. McVie, but it's fair to say that they are two very different bands. (Neither of whom were complete without the former Mrs. McVie.)

Recent years have seen some nice re-issues of stuff from the old Fleetwood Mac. There's a spiffing little box set of their first few, Blue Horizon albums that isn't too expensive and will satisfy diehard fans, though it might put off the initiate. It will definitely set the record straight as regards the band's place up there at the top of the Brit-blues hierarchy. There are plenty of extra tracks and studio out-takes, a fan's treasure trove. Plus a few sessions from Chicago where they got people like Otis Spann, Willie Dixon and Buddy Guy to drop in for a scrape of a few chewns. The one quibble with the box set is that perhaps the Blue Horizon people are scraping the bottom of the barrel a bit too much: a body can only take so many versions of Dust My Broom before it's necessary to call in the authorities. Such was the case back in the old days too: every time Greeny and his posse came out with a few new tunes, Blue Horizon would bring out yet another album's worth of their old blues jams. But I want to draw your attention to one particular artefact of that era, released a few years ago at a competitive price: Fleetwood Mac at the BBC.

Hear that sound in the background? That is the sound of major backside being kicked by a set of two compact discs. And this is not just about Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie either. She who would become Mrs. McVie also sits in on a few, for one thing, but it's also about two very original and creative guitarists and singers, both of whom would have shone in any group that didn't have Peter Green in it: step forward Danny Kirwan and Jeremy Spencer. Spencer eventually walked out on the band on a U. S. tour to join some cult. Recent reports show that he's alive and well, free of cult association and playing away happily. (Check out the link for further updates and some downloads too. It's good to know he's still around.) Kirwan, for his part, braved it on and helped carry the band when Green and Spencer had left, but his behaviour got more and more erratic and he was sacked. I'm not so sure about his current whereabouts, but apparently he's not a well man, and probably won't be gracing any stages any time soon, which is a great pity.

With no less than three excellent guitarists, Peter Green's Spencerkirwan Fleetwood Mac became a strange sort of beast. On album, it was very much Peter Green's baby. He wrote and took the lead on the lion's share of the songs. You could make a pretty good case for saying that the group was in fact poorly represented on album, and Blue Horizon deserve a slap on the wrist for clogging up their release schedule with all the grot they put out to cash in on the name. But this BBC sessions collection shows that the band, as a live proposition, were a more flexible arrangement: effectively, three different groups for the price of one. Green would sing and play lead on the better known tunes, and then step aside to let one or the other of his protegés do their thing.

And what a thing. Jeremy Spencer, for instance, was a slide whiz as well as a peerless musical mimic. He would step forward, stick a steel appendage on his finger and wail away at Shake Your Moneymaker or (the inevitable) Dust My Broom. And Kirwan wrote some nifty tunes all his own, too: Like Crying was always a favourite of mine, with a hypnotic little open-tuned guitar lick that sticks in the memory like peanut butter to the roof of your mouth. He was also a great musical foil to Green, and there's a great version of Rattlesnake Shake here that culminates in some pretty inspired guitar duelling. He also had an ear cocked to the folk/psychedelic things that were happening across the water, and some of his compositions (the peerless Dragonfly, for instance) recall early David Crosby or Moby Grape.

But there was more. Some of the tunes included on the BBC Sessions set remind us of the existence of a sort of alternate, parallel-dimension Fleetwood Mac. According to legend, their story went something like this: Always up for a few bob extra, Fleetwood Mac would tell promoters they could supply their own support band. The promoters didn't need to know that Mac themselves were the support band. They would dress up differently,crack filthy jokes between songs and put the short, Welsh guy out front instead of the tall Jewish guy. Often, they would dress as outlandishly as possible, augmenting their costumes with... how shall we put this? DEVICES obtained from the sex shops of Soho. Think of Orgasmo and Choda Boy with guitars. An unfeasably large, phallic-shaped object protruding from the top of the bass drum. In the mid-Sixties.

The short Welsh guy (Spencer) would often dress up as Elvis Presley, and do note-perfect covers of rock'n'roll hits. Sometimes they would write their own tunes, in the style of Elvis or Buddy Holly. Sometimes they would change the words of the originals and sing smutty double-entendres. This went down a treat, especially at provincial venues. Remember, Elvis was still alive at this point, and always fudging on promises to come over and play in the U. K. It's also worth remembering that at this point in history there were deep divisions between fans of imported R&B (mods) and fans of rock'n'roll (rockers). This, at any rate, was as close as most of their U.K. audience would ever get to seeing The King live on stage. In fact, you could even say Jeremy Spencer was the first ever Elvis impersonator. Which must have been something to see, because judging from photos it's doubtful that the man was much over five feet tall.

In any event, some of the BBC set is given over to stuff like this, and it's good fun to listen to. Not only would they cover popular rock'n'roll hits, but Spencer also often wrote his own pastiches. You Never Know What You're Missing is a great one - you'd almost swear it came straight out of Sun Studios - and Jenny Lee and Buddy's Song are both clever little tributes to Buddy Holly. Some of Spencer's stuff reminds me eerily of Marc Bolan and early T-Rex, - who didn't come on the scene until a bit later. And Spencer did resemble Bolan very strongly... in fact, you never saw the two of them in the same room together...

Anyway, if you like your Brit-blues lean and hungry and you have a few bob to spare, you could treat yourself to the Blue Horizon box set (as long as you don't mind sitting through yet another retread of Dust My Broom). If you still need convincing about Green's prowess as a blues guitarist, listen to the sessions for Need Your Love So Bad. They go through several different treatments, and every time Green plays something different. Every single time, what he plays is perfect, heartfelt, eloquent and completely spontaneous. What he threw out is better than what most people leave in. Plus, you get to hear him threaten to brain the drummer. It's about time somebody did.

The BBC sessions collection is what we doctors call a bit of a gem actually, and easy enough to come by at a reasonable price, but it probably won't make sense if you weren't a fan of this line-up in the first place. The 1971 Greatest Hits compilation is probably the ideal port of call for the novice. No home should be without Need Your Love So Bad, The Green Manalishi the full version of Oh Well, or Kirwan's gorgeous Dragonfly. It was reissued on CD not too long ago, and should be fairly cheap to pick up.

"Penguins" are all very well. But if you're still not convinced that there was life before Lindsey Buckingham, I have only one word to say to you:


"ALBATROSS!"