Page 29 - the NOISE July 2014

Fleetwood Mac, circa 1967, record company archives
BY TONY BALLZ
woman who had outlasted everyone but Fleetwood and Mac decided to call it a day. 2003’s Say You Will was the first Fleetwood Mac LP released in over 30 years without the presence of Christine McVie.
In 2009, the BBC produced a laudatory documentary, Peter Green — Man Of The World, which featured much rare footage and interviews with his former bandmates, including Jeremy Spencer. Rumours of an original-lineup Mac reunion abound.
The Splinter Group broke up in 2003, and Green now tours with Peter Green And Friends. As of 2011, he has performed more concerts solo (and released more mu- sic) than he ever did in Fleetwood Mac. He shows no signs of stopping.
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During their 21⁄2-year existence, the record- ed output of Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac consisted of: 7 singles, 3 studio LPs proper (Fleetwood Mac, Mr. Wonderful, Then Play On), 1 UK compilation (Pious Bird Of Good Omen), 1 US compilation (English Rose), and 2 LPs culled from the Blues Jam At Chess sessions. By the standards of today, when most top 10 acts take anywhere from 2-5 years to make an album, this seems like a lot, but it is actu- ally pretty average for the time.
Between the years 1964-1970, bands like the Beatles and Rolling Stones released 2-3 LPs and up to a dozen singles a year, second- tier acts a bit less. Rock & roll still carried the stigma of a fad that might reach its end at any moment, and popular groups felt the need to stay in the public eye month-to-month. This resulted in a wealth of glorious music pouring out of the radio every day with new groundbreaking sounds just around the cor- ner each week.
Over the last 20 years or so, a multitude of unreleased material from Green’s glory pe- riod has been unearthed and issued on CD. Most are quite revelatory, such as the Live At The Boston Tea Party set from 1970, two discs of recordings for the BBC, Ryko’s Shrine ‘69, an expanded Blues Jam At Chess, the 2 CD reissue of John Mayall’s A Hard Road featur- ing Green and McVie, the 6 CD Complete Blue Horizon Sessions, 4 discs of unreleased studio outtakes, as well as a 4 CD Peter Green Anthol-
ogy box set covering both pre- and post-Mac recordings.
Most rock musicians to whom the tags “classic” or “legendary” are affixed have large sprawling bodies of work encompassing dozens of albums and hit singles, especially
if that artist is still active. Eric Clapton, for ex- ample, has a catalog that stretches from the first Yardbirds LP in 1963 to the present day, nearly half a century (he also shows no signs of stopping).
I’m willing to stake Fleetwood Mac’s place in this realm on five songs, the five Green- penned singles from 1968-1970: “Black Mag- ic Woman,” “Albatross,” “Man Of The World,”
“Oh Well (Pt. 1 & 2),” and “The Green Manali- shi,” barely over 20 minutes of music, a lone LP side. Played end-to-end, they constitute a songwriting and performing range and ma- turity most rock musicians achieve only over decades and multiple albums.
The band explored every corner of the blues: the country blues of Mississippi, Chica- go’s electrified uptown sound, Britain’s inter- pretations (Duster Bennett, John Mayall), and repetition, repetition, repetition. They even invited some of the music’s architects along.
Having done this, they turned to rock & roll and began looking around: the heavy blues/ rock of “Black Magic Woman,” the 3 A.M. tran- quility of “Albatross,” the lonely introspection of “Man Of The World,” the garage punk of
“Oh Well (Pt.1),” the cinematic scope of Part 2, and the heavy metal of“The Green Manalishi,” not to mention their oldies revival of Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and Elvis. They helped destroy the boundaries of what a rock band could and couldn’t do. One might argue that they kept on doing this after Green’s depar- ture, fusing the sunny Brian Wilson-inspired pop of Buckingham and Nicks to their gritty bar-band roots.
All of these paths lead back to Peter Green, a musician with enough faith in himself to prove to his bandmates, peers, and fans that the world of music is big enough to contain it all. The man still plays guitar, draws air, and sets foot upon this earth. Catch him if he’s around.
| Tony BallZ may be found sizing up vinyl at a record store near you. music@thenoise.us
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