“Fleetwood Mac Unreleased BBC Sessions 1967 – 1971”

& “Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac: 1967-1971 Unreleased BBC Sessions”

#1

Collection Title: “Fleetwood Mac Unreleased BBC Sessions 1967 – 1971” (Posted January 13, 2022)

Mean Old World

I Need Your Love (That Ain’t It)

May I Have a Talk With You (Talk With You)

Shady Little Baby – Duster Bennett

Wine, Women, Whiskey

Lazy Poker Blues (incomplete)

My Baby (My Baby’s Sweet) (incomplete)

Love That Burns (incomplete)

Yonder’s Wall (Crutch & Cane)

Psychedelic Song (Intergalactic Musicians Walking Through Pools of Velvet Darkness)

Dead Shrimp Blues

Fool That I Used To Be (I Have to Laugh)

*Dragonfly – January 05, 1971

*Start Again – January 05, 1971 – early version of ‘Morning Rain’

*Get Like You Used To Be – January 05, 1971

You Need Love

Watch Out For Me (Watch Out)

Oh Well (Version 2) (P. Green)

*(No participation from Peter Green)

The first three titles on each are taken from the 2019 three CD set “Fleetwood Mac – Before the Beginning 1968 – 1970 Live & Demo Sessions” (Sony Music) reviews of each of the three discs can be found under “My Back Pages” – “CD Reviews” here: www.smilingcorgipress.com

Billed as “Demos” on the 2019 release, they are in fact, performances done for BBC Radio.

‘Mean Old World’ most likely comes from a broadcast done for Radio Three, on “Blues in Britain” recorded February 26, 1968.  The broadcast date is uncertain. 

Pre-Kirwan, this T-Bone Walker cover is performed as a trio, with just Green, McVie and Fleetwood.

‘I Need Your Love’ this number is most often listed as ‘That Ain’t It’ (as on the compilation posted on January 14^th) – originally recorded by Jimmy Rogers under the title ‘If It Ain’t Me (Who You Thinking Of)’, it became a signature song of Big Walter Horton, who recorded it under a variety of titles, including ‘I Need Your Love’, released on Volume One of Fleetwood Mac’s “Blues Jam in Chicago”

This performance dates from May 27, 1968; broadcast on either June 02 or July 07 on Top Gear.

‘May I Have a Talk With You’ both compilations use this unnecessarily longer title for Danny Kirwan’s ‘Talk With You’ (the shorter title was used for its official release on “Blues Jam in Chicago Volume Two”)

The performance here comes from Danny Kirwan’s first BBC session with the band, a marathon session of eleven tracks recorded on August 27, 1968.  The songs from the session were broadcast on three different dates in two groups of four, and one of three.  This performance was one of four broadcast on October 13, 1968.

‘Shady Little Baby’ – the fourth song here is not a Fleetwood Mac performance, but rather Duster Bennett on vocal and harmonica being backed by both Peter Green on guitar and Jeremy Spencer on slide guitar. 

A beautiful rendition of the song, it comes from a poorly documented session done on March 17, 1969. 

Fleetwood Mac performed four numbers, including one with Christine McVie sitting in on piano; Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer then backed both Duster Bennett and Alexis Korner on a few numbers. 

This performance and another five from this session turned up on another compilation that will be reviewed separately.

It is heartbreaking that the sound quality on this track is very poor, with tape warble and volume fluctuations marring Spencer’s lovely slide break.

‘Wine, Women, Whiskey’ this is another performance from the lengthy August 27, 1968 session; it was broadcast on November 24, 1969.

This raucous cover of an obscure Papa Lightfoot song, finds Green singing into his harmonica mike and distorting his voice, leading many to think that it was Spencer on the lead vocal.

The next three titles all come from the same session, the show “Colour Me Pop” on BBC-2 Television on July 19, 1968 and are all taken from the same source, the 2CD collection “The Vaudeville Years of Fleetwood Mac – 1968 to 1970”(Receiver 1998).

The video portion of the show apparently no longer exists, but we thankfully still have the audio.

Each of these performances is inexplicably incomplete and the sound quality is equally poor on each. 

‘Lazy Poker Blues’ has the poorest sound and more importantly is incomplete.

The running time on “The Vaudeville Years” was three-minutes-and twenty-two seconds. 

The running time on the two YouTube compilations is two-minutes and fifty-three seconds, twenty-five seconds shorter.

It is the same recording, but without the intro and first verse.  The number picks up during the break and then goes into the reprise of the verse and the outro. 

The recording here sounds as if the recording was made by taping it from an external source; strengthening that supposition are the muffled bangs heard during the outro, as if someone is accidently knocking things over while taping the number.  Very strange.

‘My Baby’ both compilations again use an incorrect title, this time shortening the correct one, ‘My Baby’s Sweet’

This recording is buried in a blizzard of tape hiss and appears to have been run at an incorrect speed, making the tempo seem faster than it is.  The recording on “The Vaudeville Years” clocks in about thirty seconds longer.

‘A Love That Burns’ often cited as a favorite among Peter Green fans, the hiss badly distracts from the listening experience.  The mangled final seconds of the recording here only add insult to injury.

Although the original CD compilation is out of print, these three tracks have appeared on many CD compilations since then.  Those cleaner, more complete recordings can also be sourced easily enough on YouTube.  Avoid these.

‘Yonder’s Wall’ there are literally dozens of variations of this number dating back to 1946.  The best known is probably Elmore James’ version from 1961.  Three years later, Homesick James Williamson cut the number with a few variations in the lyrics under the title ‘Crutch & Cane’ and this is the song that Jeremy Spencer sings.  This is the third song so far from the August 27, 1968 BBC session.

‘Psychedelic Song’ depending on the bootleg, I’ve seen this title listed as ‘Psychedelic Song’, ‘Psychedelic Send-up’, ‘Delta Head’ and ‘Intergalactic Musicians Walking Through Pools of Velvet Darkness’ the title that host John Peel claims John McVie wanted to give the number from May 27, 1968

‘Dead Shrimp Blues’ this track comes from the same May 27, 1968 and could not stand in further contrast.  Green takes on Robert Johnson’s least covered number solo. 

As with the other Johnson songs that Green covered around this period, he doesn’t seem all that familiar with the song, dropping verses and changing words, staying true to the spirit of the number, rather than the letter.

It is a wonderful performance from Green, but unfortunately, the listener must struggle to hear it due to the poor sound quality.  Another recording of the same song, in far superior sound quality is available on YouTube and should be sought out.

‘Fool That I Used To Be’ yet another track from the August 27, 1968 session, number four, from the August 27, 1968 session, I have written about this mis-titled performance of Otis Rush’s ‘I Have to Laugh’ here: https://smilingcorgipress.com/addendum-previously-unreleased-performance-of-i-have-to-laugh/

I have had no success so far, in identifying the source of this previously unreleased performance.

For no apparent reason, the next three songs, ‘Dragonfly’, ‘Start Again’ and ‘Get Like You Used To Be’ jump ahead in time to a session recorded on January 05, 1971, when the line-up of Fleetwood Mac consisted of Danny Kirwan and Jeremy Spencer on guitars and vocals; Christine McVie, vocals and keyboards; John McVie, bass and Mick Fleetwood on drums. (This has been corrected; I originally wrote that Spencer was no longer in the band and that Bob Welch was – thank you to Robert Byrne for pointing out the error – R.O.) These three tracks will be reviewed under a separate blog entry.

‘You Need Love’ – this song is frequently titled ‘Whole Lotta Love’ on both bootlegs and when posted on-line, the Fleetwood Mac / Led Zeppelin pairing apparently too good to resist.  The song was originally recorded by Muddy Waters and Led Zeppelin simply retitled it and gave it a new arrangement.

Led Zeppelin’s version is the best known, but hardly the first; the Small Faces had recorded the song back in 1966 as ‘You Need Loving’ (also claiming the song as their own) and Savoy Brown recorded an extended version to close their second LP, “Getting to the Point”, released in July of 1968.  Fleetwood Mac’s more straightforward performance was done a month later, this track coming (once again) from the August 27, 1968 session.  The fifth here from that session. 

Led Zeppelin’s retitled cover would be released in October of 1969.   

‘Watch Out For Me’ – as odd as the inclusion of the three tracks from 1971 were, this one, I feel is even stranger.  This performance is not from any BBC session (to the best of my knowledge, they never recorded it for the BBC) this is the studio recording, from January 04, 1969 of Peter Green’s ‘Watch Out’, the lead track on Volume 1 of the “Blues Jam in Chicago” (Blues Horizon 1969)

‘Oh Well (Version 2)’ – the band played the number four times for the BBC, three times for BBC-TV and once for Radio 1.   Two of the television broadcasts were done within a week of one another on Top of the Pops.  At least one of those broadcasts did feature a live vocal over the original backing track. 

The track here isn’t any of those.   This is Side 1 of the original single. 

Please see my write up for this here:

#2

Collection Title: “Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac: 1967-1971 Unreleased BBC Sessions”

(Posted January 14, 2022) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbjw0rju0jU&t=2510s

In the credits on the YouTube page, it states: Christine McVie on piano & vocals and Eddie Boyd vocals

Note that Christine McVie only appears on the tracks* and Eddie Boyd does not appear on any of the songs

Mean Old World

That Ain’t It (listed as ‘I Need Your Love’ on the other collection)

May I Have a Talk With You (‘Talk With You’)

Shady Little Baby (Duster Bennett)

Wine, Women, Whiskey

Lazy Poker Blues

My Baby (‘My Baby’s Sweet’) (incomplete)

Love That Burns (incomplete)

Yonder’s Wall (‘Crutch & Cane’)

Psychedelic Song (‘Intergalactic Musicians Walking Through Pools of Velvet Darkness’)

Dead Shrimp Blues

Fool That I Used To Be (‘I Have to Laugh’)

Dragonfly*

Start Again*

Get Like you used to Be*

You Need Love

Watch Out For Me (‘Watch Out’)

Oh Well (Version 2)

*(No participation from Peter Green)