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Fleetwood Mac – Best Of 1969-1974

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What does it sound like?:

When Fleetwood Mac signed for Reprise the future looked bright. With the addition of Danny Kirwan on guitar and Peter Green at the helm, they forged a unique kind of fluid and instinctive Blues Rock tinged with Latin flavours that was also chart-friendly. The first album as part of the deal, Then Play On, and its contemporaneous singles, Oh Well and The Green Manalishi (With The Two Pronged Crown), comfortably made the top ten in the UK and left a mark in the US. Green, however, started to fret about making too much money, took to wearing robes and a crucifix, and, shortly after a spiritual experience on LSD at a commune near Munich, left the band. Without their talisman, they drifted in a wilderness for five years, multiple personnel lost along the way, while releasing six more albums. Mick Fleetwood and John McVie were the only constants. Jeremy Spencer, Danny Kirwan, Bob Welch, Bob Weston, Dave Walker, all came and went. Kirwan’s alcohol-fuelled rage, smashing his Gibson Les Paul and refusing to play, was spectacular, and Weston’s affair with Fleetwood’s wife was unwise, but Spencer’s disappearance from the grid, subsumed by the Flirty Fishing religious movement Children Of God, was the most remarkable. Christine McVie joined in 1971 and clung on, despite the strain on her marriage to John.

Here is a nineteen track, eighty minute compilation of the period, on CD or double LP, which you can have on blue coloured vinyl if you prefer. Despite Welch’s and Kirwan’s best efforts, there is no escaping the fact that the first three Peter Green era tracks eclipse the rest. Thereafter, they became Soft Rock, unobtrusive, polite, struggling to find a decent hook or a vaguely memorable melody. Christine McVie takes some time to find her feet but she, too, seems to be waiting for something to galvanise her. Nothing set the airwaves alight but all the albums managed moderate placings in the US and Australia. At one point, the band nearly ended in disarray when Mick Fleetwood and John McVie lost the rights for their name to their manager, Clifford Davies, who put together a New Fleetwood Mac to exploit their relative popularity in America. The real Fleetwood Mac escaped to California and started managing themselves. James McNair describes all the twists and turns in his new liner notes.

It’s a mystery who this is for. The keen fan will already have bought the 2020 8CD box 1969-1974, including all of these albums, bonuses of the A and B sides and an eighth disc of a live concert. It’s still available for less than forty quid, although, if this really is a Best Of it, an awful lot of the rest must be poor. A passer by might misread the title, overlook the dates, and be sorely disappointed when they hear it.

In 1975, they made their last album for Reprise. They called it Fleetwood Mac to signify a fresh start, a page being turned. It features Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. It’s rather good. The 2018 remaster is readily available at less than half the price of this “Best Of”.

Frankly, the story of this period is more gripping than most of the music.

What does it all *mean*?

What is the opposite of “imperial” phase? “Ignoble”?

Goes well with…

An obsession with Fleetwood Mac.

Release Date:

26/07/2024

Might suit people who like…

Feeling sad and directionless.

23

Comments

    • That Greatest Hits album is a belter. I’ve had it for years, forget it for a while and then, when I re-discover it, can’t stop playing it. The second coming of the band was great but the high points of the first incarnation excite me more.

  3. “Then Play On” is a dull album. Oh Well and Green Manalishi were astonishing singles. If you add them to the album it only makes it seem weaker. I quite enjoy the Bob Welch years, but it’s not the same band, not the same sound. The original band lost the plot when Green did. I don’t know about spiritual conversion, but he was given some extremely bad acid. Fleetwood Mac was named after the rhythm section, the only thing that remained solid during years of chaotic change. Foxy gets it right – everything you need is on the Greatest Hits album, which is still “better than” everything which came after, even the band that should have been called Buckingham Nicks.

    • There’s an idea for a thread: adding contemporaneous singles to an album and making it worse. I’ve never managed a satisfactory Beatles For Sale or Between The Buttons, for example.

      • BFS

        1. “No Reply”
        2. “I’m a Loser”
        3. “Baby’s in Black”
        4. “Rock and Roll Music”
        5. “I’ll Follow the Sun”
        6. “Leave My Kitten Alone
        7. “Kansas City/Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!”

        Side two
        1. “I Feel Fine”
        2. “Eight Days a Week”
        3. “Honey Don’t”
        4. “Every Little Thing”
        5. “She’s a Woman”
        6. “What You’re Doing”
        7. “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party”

        Could replace Honey Don’t with Matchbox but that would be pushing it a bit and Ringo can’t go 2 albums without a vocal.

        BTB

        1. “Let’s Spend the Night Together”
        2. “Yesterday’s Papers”
        3. “Ruby Tuesday”
        4. “Connection”
        5. “She Smiled Sweetly”
        6. “Back Street Girl”

        Side two

        1. “All Sold Out”
        2. “My Obsession”
        3. “Who’s Been Sleeping Here?”
        4. “Complicated”
        5. “Miss Amanda Jones”
        6. “Something Happened to Me Yesterday”

  4. Bought FMGH on vinyl when it came out. Not played it in years

    Hope I still have it as this thread has given me the boot up the arse I needed to dig it out
    and give it a spin

  6. Wasn’t aware of this new release so thanks for the review Tig.
    Whilst I love Peter Green and some (certainly not all) of the original Mac output I also have a particular penchant for the ‘forgotten years’ post Green and pre Buckingham Nicks. Danny Kirwan was a wonderful player and writer but was of course overshadowed by PG . He then had to come to the fore, alongside Christine McVie and the newly recruited Bob Welch as the co leader and to my mind the album ‘Future Games’ was the natural precursor to the later FM sound. The overall direction changes (although things like Dragonfly and Albatross kind of pointed the way) with the blues style almost completely disappearing but it has its own magic. Danny Kirwan’s subsequent solo albums also had some great songs – but overall were of mixed quality.

    I feel the track listing on this new comp misses quite a few gems but just a few weeks I put together my own Spotty playlist of this period

  8. I always thought the post Greeny phase was thin gruel. In my view everything they did with him is essential. The Blue Horizon reissue of the Green albums is definitive though slightly annoying in that that outakes such as false starts, messing about etc is inserted into the running order before the final version of the track.

  10. All you need is the box set “Fleetwood Mac – The Blue Horizon Sessions”. It has EVERYTHING from those early years, lots of demos/outtakes etc, as usual, and excellent detailed liner notes. Overseen by producer Mike Vernon.

    FM after Peter Green don’t interest me at all.

    OOAA of course

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