Page 29 - the NOISE March 2014

them and it’s only a matter of time before they
conquer America, the money is rollin’ on in, yet ... something’s wrong. Peter Green is unhappy
and he doesn’t know why.
Or maybe he does. Peter Allen Greenbaum
feels the harsh spotlight glare of fame and it makes him uncomfortable. He couldn’t be- lieve the size of the royalty checks arriving on his doorstep. He had grown up dirt poor, they ALL had, and now that he was pulling down more money in a few months than his father had earned in a lifetime ... he wasn’t sure he deserved it.
All his friends, the band included, have been turning to him for approval and his answers to questions both cosmic and mundane, as if he had a special knowledge, a key to the infi- nite ... f*ck it all, he was still Greeny, a regular yob like them ... he ate and slept and shat and screwed like everyone else ... just because he played a mean guitar and wrote a few good tunes and had a sharper than average wit, that didn’t make him ... God ... sure there was that Green God nonsense, but that’s all Clapton’s trip anyway ... hell, Eric was a normal bloke too, he didn’t walk on water ... now, take someone like Django Reinhardt, THERE’S a man who had a direct line to the Creator and he died practi- cally in obscurity ... Christ, all this money piling up felt evil ... the world was full of innocent people who starved to death daily, they need- ed food more than he needed a new Bentley ...
It was beginning to feel like too much. Something was going to have to give.
“Man Of The World” was released on Im- mediate, a new label started by Rolling Stones ex-manager Andrew Loog Oldham. When their Blue Horizon contract expired, the Mac fielded dozens of offers, including one directly from John Lennon to sign with Apple Records (Len- non would write a sly tribute to “Albatross” and place it on The Beatles’ Abbey Road LP). The band chose Immediate, which immediately went bankrupt after the single came out, leav- ing them free agents again.
Their second choice was the Warner Broth- ers-distributed Reprise Records, founded by Frank Sinatra as an “artists” label, and home to Neil Young, Randy Newman, The Kinks, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, and other big and smaller names. It would be a long and fruitful relationship.
On the eve of Fleetwood Mac’s Reprise de- but, their former label issued the Pious Bird Of
Fleetwood Mac, Then Play On
Good Omen LP (August 1969), which featured the A- and B-sides of all four Blue Horizon sin- gles, with a few ringer LP tracks, but no “Man Of The World.” Too bad, it would have made the album a lot stronger. It raced up the British charts anyway.
The eagerly anticipated third album Then Play On was released in September 1969 by Reprise. The band hadn’t put out a new studio LP since Mr. Wonderful way back in August of
‘68 when they were still a blues quartet.
After Danny Kirwan entered the fold, he was casually informed by Peter Green that he
would be expected to share songwriting du- ties as well. Kirwan, a guitar wiz at 18 but still a novice composer, was confused. Why the hell would a musician like Green, who was turning out classic after classic, want his drops of ge- nius placed next to Kirwan’s inconsequential ditties? But over the course of the last year, Green had allowed Kirwan to observe his cre- ative process in the hope that Kirwan’s song- writing, like his guitar playing, would rise to the occasion. For the most part, it did.
The British Then Play On consisted of four- teen cuts: seven by Kirwan, five by Green, and two heavily edited “jam” tracks credited to Fleetwood and Mac. Jeremy Spencer does not contribute to the record. A planned EP of his rock and roll tunes to be part of the LP pack- age was scrapped at the last minute. He does appear in the gatefold photo.
In the states, two of Kirwan’s songs had al- ready been released on English Rose, so the original US Then Play On has twelve tracks, with an even 5/5 Green/Kirwan split. One won- ders what Reprise thought of the album. They had just outbid everyone including the Beatles to sign this guy hyped as a genius, and half the LP is written and sung by ... the other guy. Not the funny short guy with the gold suit and the dildo (and where the hell was HIS stuff, any- way?), the OTHER other guy, the kid.
Then Play On’s virtues are subtle. On first lis- ten, it sounds like the mellowest Mac yet and indeed, both Green and Kirwan contribute quite a few slow shoegazing ballads. Repeated spins reveal Then Play On as a distillation of all things Green, everything he’s absorbed and spat out over the last two years. The Blues. Twi- light instrumentals. Hard rock. Acoustic ballads. Psychedelic pop. Dead-style jamming. Moody introspection. With the exception of Spencer’s oldies, it’s all there.
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