Page 30 - the NOISE March 2014

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Well, almost. The man had a little surprise in his pocket.
Then Play On had been out a scant few weeks when a single was delivered to Reprise. It was called “Oh Well” and it was split into parts one and two. The label heads spun the disc and they couldn’t believe their ears. Now THIS was more like it! With a simple two-sided single, Peter Green had more than proven his worth. A GIANT step forward.
The two halves of “Oh Well” are almost schizophrenically opposed, and bear no dis- cernable similarities, aside from being in the same key. Fleetwood Mac hadn’t released a hard rock record since “Black Magic Woman” WAY back in March ‘68, and “Oh Well (Part 1)” was their hardest yet, a lightning fast start/ stop garage rocker with a chiseled-in-stone riff, Danny’s aggressive soloing, Mick’s pounding drums (and congas and cowbell), topped with Green’s coolly cynical vocal. “I can’t sing, I ain’t pretty, and my legs are thin” indeed! He’s even got the chutzpah to talk to God in verse two! And God responds! Incredible. And the damn thing’s barely 2 1/2 minutes long.
On the flip, Part 2 is even more languid than “Albatross,” with simple Spanish guitar, recorder, cello, piano, lots of reverb and lots of open
spaces. The instrumental resembles Ennio Morricone more than Muddy Waters. “Oh Well” was masterful, proof that Green could adopt any style he chose to. It was the most beautiful piece of music he would ever compose.
When coupled together, the record’s two sides were like the left and right hemispheres of Peter Green’s brain. It was true genius.
Reprise freaked. Then Play On wasn’t exactly tearing up the charts and “Oh Well” was just what was needed to push ... waitaminute, the single’s ON THE ALBUM, right? How could we possibly have missed it? Reprise looked and looked, but they couldn’t find it within the LP anywhere. They were stunned. It was almost unbelievable: Then Play On and “Oh Well” were separate entities.
For all their success in Britain and elsewhere, Fleetwood Mac were still rubes when it came to selling records in the states. It was a time- honored tradition in the United Kingdom to treat singles and LPs differently: singles were for kids and the top 40 crowd (although a lot of bands threw some pretty wild stuff on their b-sides), LPs were for serious fans. And except-
Fleetwood Mac, “Oh Well”
ing greatest hits collections, never shall they meet. The frugal Britons considered putting hit singles on LPs a rip off. It took them years to realize the American music industry operated on a different aesthetic.
One of the cornerstones of modern Ameri- can business is the art of selling the consumer something he already owns, but wrapped in a pretty new package. The US music industry definitely followed this model. The average Yank record buyer didn’t give a hoot if the 10- song LP he just purchased had two or more tracks he had previously bought on singles. That’s just how it was. In fact, an LP sticker reading “Contains the hit ...” (or naming the al- bum after its most popular track) was a major selling point. The days when companies made money on 7” records were coming to an end. Albums were where the big bucks were. The single was beginning to be viewed as a pro- motional tool for the album (or albums) which contained it.
Reprise in the US demanded Fleetwood Mac resequence Then Play On to include “Oh Well.” The band refused. Green, for one, was appalled at the show of barefaced greed. They had worked hard on the running order of the album, and “Oh Well” functioned brilliantly and conceptually by itself as a single. They had no desire to stick it somewhere it didn’t belong, just to move a few more units. They weren’t that kind of a band.
In the end, Reprise did it without them. For all their blather about being an “artists’ label,” they were still in the business of sell- ing records. Two more of Kirwan’s songs were chucked to make room for “Oh Well,” skewing the songwriting balance in Green’s favor. They also performed a faulty edit between the two sections. The beginning of Part 2 was acciden- tally repeated, making the album version a full minute longer than it should have been.
The ploy worked, though. The single never cracked the US top 40 (it hit #2 in England, their third in a row), but the revamped Then Play On began selling impressively, once “Oh Well” was on board (the LP was available only in this form until its appearance on CD, when Kirwan’s tracks were restored).
The band had to let this one slide. Back home, there was a bigger problem.
— Tony BallZ
30 • MARCH 2014 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us