Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 113

Record label: Blue Horizon

Produced: Mike Vernon

Recorded: CBS and Decca studios, London; November–December 1967

Released: February 24, 1968

Chart peaks: 4 (UK) 198 (US)

Personnel: Peter Green (g, v, hm); Jeremy Spencer (g, v); John McVie (b); Bob Brunning (b); Mick Fleetwood (d); Mike Ross (e)

Track listing: My Heart Beat Like A Hammer; Merry Go Round; Long Grey Mare; Hellhound On My Trail; Shake Your Moneymaker; Looking For Somebody; No Place To Go; My Baby’s Good To Me; I Loved Another Woman; Cold Black Night; The World Keep On Turning; Got To Move

Running time: 34.20

Current CD: Sony 5164432 adds: My Heart Beat Like A Hammer (Take 1); Merry Go Round (Take 1); I Love Another Woman (Take 1, 2, 3, 4); I Love Another Woman (Take 5, 6); Cold Black Night (Take 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6); You’re So Evil; I’m Coming Home To Stay

Further listening: Fleetwood Mac: The Complete Blue Horizon Sessions 1967–1969 (1999)

Further reading: Peter Green: The Biography (Martin Celmins, 1998) gives the most detail on the early days of Fleetwood Mac; www.fleetwoodmac.net

Download: HMV Digital; iTunes

In the summer of 1967, Peter Green was wondering where to go next after leaving John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. He half thought about going to Chicago and hanging with the true blues guys. Then again, Mayall’s producer, Mike Vernon, was starting a new label, Blue Horizon. Green wondered whether there might be a role for him as house guitarist, like Buddy Guy was for Chess. Vernon, however, keen to sign Green, encouraged him to form a band. By the autumn, Fleetwood Mac had come together and embarked on a hectic schedule of dates which left time only for sporadic recording. Vernon says the whole process was protracted, spread over five months with the end result being ‘a series of short stories rather than a novel’.

Disenchanted with John Mayall’s lurch towards jazz, Green wanted to record a no-nonsense 12-bar blues album. He provided the BB King stylings, Jeremy Spencer did a mean Elmore James and the whole thing was locked down by the Fleetwood and McVie rhythm engine. But they all had a very casual approach, didn’t really believe the band would come to much, and were just out to have a good time. This did their recordings no harm, contributing to the louche, loose-limbed bounce of Shake Your Moneymaker and No Place To Go, which proved beyond all expectation that a British blues band could swing.

But their laid-back ways often drove Vernon to distraction. Spencer repeatedly sang all the wrong words to Hellhound On My Trail, and then, as the producer tried to get My Heart Beats Like A Hammer underway, the band subjected him to a barrage of raucous guitar intros until he rapped schoolmaster-like on the talk-back microphone to bring the urchins to order. The FM Blue Horizon boxed-set version of the album (see below) carries the full gamut of cock-ups Vernon had to put up with before he could patiently craft a final take.

Despite all the misdemeanours along the way, the ‘dog and dustbin’ album – Chicago south side by way of the back streets of Battersea – proved a massive seller and an abiding testament to the stomping blues glory of swinging ’60s London.