Fleetwood Mac Album: “Essential Fleetwood Mac”

If you've chanced to come across this Amazon listing for the "Essential" Fleetwood Mac, know that this 2-disc set covers an era of the band with absolutely no musical ties whatsoever to the more famous (and indeed excellent) Lindsay Buckingham/Stevie Nicks era of the band. Rather it focuses on the original Peter Green/Jeremy Spencer blues outfit of the late '60s.

More importantly, if you're genuinely interested in exploring this era of the band (which made a big splash in England back in the day as part of the legendary late '60s Brit-blues boom, but is really only known in the US for the single "Black Magic Woman" that Santana later popularized), this is NOT the place for you to begin. Don't be misled by the generous-looking tracklisting and double-disc format: this set omits the best and most intriguing material from the Peter Green era, focusing instead strictly on the tracks they cut with the Blue Horizon label from 1967 to early 1969. What that means is these two CDs include material from the first self-titled album (the exquisite and varied Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac), the rather dreary follow-up (the repetitive and questionably produced Mr. Wonderful), and the singles released around that time. ("Black Magic Woman" and "Albatross" are the two gems from this era, but the delightfully odd strings 'n' blues mash-up of "Need Your Love So Bad" is a treat as well. A lost Mac classic, this one.)

Unfortunately, what that ALSO means is that the songs Mac recorded and released immediately AFTER this period, the ones which turned them a visionary blues-rock band for a short period before Peter Green suddenly left, are NOT included here. You see, early Fleetwood Mac as represented on this particular set was a competent blues band (Green is an utterly dynamite blues guitarist, Clapton-caliber for sure), but they were trapped in a very narrow "all blues, all the time" straitjacket. The #1 single "Albatross" - chronologically the last song recorded during the Blue Horizon era - marks the beginnings of their move into something more intriguing.

But the real meat of the Peter Green years, the music that saw Green fusing blues with ambitious rock, folk, and psychedelic elements, came after the band had left Blue Horizon. Therefore the critical singles "Man Of The World," "Oh Well" (the template for Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog," no less) and "Green Manalishi" are absent. Even worse, there's nothing from the one truly essential Peter Green-era album: Then Play On. THAT album, and THOSE singles, are what the legend of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac is primarily built upon. I shudder to think that someone might buy THIS set, hear a bunch of accomplished but monochromatic 12-bar blues songs, and dismiss Green's work without realizing that there was so much more to it than that.

As you might guess, finding a definitive commercial compilation of this era of the Mac is so hard because of the rights issues involved with work released on several different labels. But there is an answer! If you want to sample this great forgotten era of Fleetwood Mac, head over to the Amazon page selling "The Best Of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac" and purchase that exquisitely selected compilation. It has everything you'll want and more: early blues rave-ups; the classic single sides; the massively important singles and "Then Play On" album cuts recorded right after the band left Blue Horizon; and even a pricelessly rare 1971 single that until now couldn't be found on CD ("Dragonfly").