“Kiln House” / Pacific National Coliseum, British Columbia,

August 11, 1970 / Swing Auditorium, San Bernardino, CA, February 19, 1971

Peter Green played his last show with Fleetwood Mac at the end of May, 1970.  The following month, the remaining members of the band began work on their next album, “Kiln House’.

            Of the album’s ten songs, Danny Kirwan contributed four.  Of the remaining six titles, three were covers, with Jeremy Spencer taking the lead, and the other three were Spencer originals.

            The covers that Spencer chose to do and two of his originals saw him continuing to follow his passion for 1950’s rock ‘n roll, far removed from the sound of Fleetwood Mac’s last album, “Then Play On”.

            Kirwan’s songs could have easily fit on that last album and more importantly, seemed designed to easily transition to live performance.  (an important distinction as they had lost one third of their stage act).

            Two of Kirwan’s songs from the album would eventually be pulled as the A & B sides of a single, but I always felt that the record company erred in not releasing ‘Tell Me All the Things You Do’ as the A-side of a single*.

Fleetwood Mac

Danny Kirwan: guitar & vocals / Jeremy Spencer: guitar & piano /

John McVie: bass / Mick Fleetwood: drums

Christine Perfect: vocal & Wurlitzer electric piano

Recorded June – July 1970 (De Lane Lea, London)

Released September 18, 1970

Available: “Kiln House” (Reprise 1970)

Fleetwood Mac – Tell Me All The Things You Do (4:10) –

         The track begins with only Kirwan’s strummed guitar setting the rhythm.  The full band comes in at the six second mark and the vocal begins six seconds after that.  A very short intro. 

The lyrics, as in many of Kirwan’s songs are little more than space filler between the instrumental passages.

            The first break comes thirty seconds in, led by Kirwan’s driving electric guitar break.  It is also here that Mick Fleetwood shows himself a much stronger “rock” drummer than a “blues” drummer, using his sticks on the rims to take the band out of the break and into the verse.

            During the verse, we also hear (briefly) Jeremy Spencer on piano and Christine Perfect on the Wurlitzer electric piano, as well as Fleetwood continuing his stick work, each adding another layer to the sound.

            The second break comes just over a minute after the first and will serve as the number’s outro.

            The second break begins by mirroring the first, with Kirwan’s wah-wah dialing up the energy with Spencer’s rhythm guitar and the rhythm section charged with driving the number as Kirwan wails.

            Then, at around two minutes and seventeen seconds, the tempo shifts and Spencer does a run across the keyboard, bringing in Perfect in his wake. 

            Till the end of the number, Perfect lays the foundation beneath Kirwan’s guitar and Spencer’s guitar leads the rhythm section, shifting tempo beneath Kirwan, as well as adding splashes of piano in the mix.

            The band shift to a more staccato rhythm as the number drifts towards an unsatisfactory slow fade rather than building to a climax. 

            This type of ending actually works better in the single format as listeners are accustomed to having songs fade before their proper conclusion due to (record company and radio station emplaced) time limitations.

         Commercially, there are two live versions available, recorded at The Fillmore West on August sixth and seventh, 1970.

            I prefer the one first released on the 3CD box set, “Madison Blues (Live and Studio Recordings)” (Shakedown Records 2003)** recorded at the Pacific Coliseum, Vancouver, B.C. on August eleventh, 1970.

Fleetwood Mac

Danny Kirwan: vocals & guitar /

Christine McVie: vocals & keyboards /

John McVie: Bass / Mick Fleetwood: drums

Recorded August 11, 1970 –

Pacific Coliseum, Vancouver, B.C.

Available on: Crazy About the Blues (Secret Records 2010)

Fleetwood Mac – Tell Me All The Things You Do (Live) (5:44) –

This performance follows the template of the studio recording quite closely, clocking in at only a little over a minute longer than the original. 

They have extended the opening by over a minute and a half as well as the first break by an extra minute and removing time from the outro.

Rather than second guitar, Perfect’s electric piano joins Kirwan early on the intro, joining the rhythm section in building the energy on the number must sooner.

Kirwan’s wah-wah now squawks rather than squeals.

His vocal is strong, but again, the words carry no weight, it is the music that provides the excitement.

In the second verse, as Kirwan gets to the end of the first line, he and (Spencer?, Perfect?) tag on a harmonized “Do-ooo!”, adding an unexpected jolt to the hard-charging beat.  

The second break finds Kirwan dialing up the wah-wah to the point of distortion, his notes crackling like electricity jumping between electrodes.  This elicits a satisfied “Ahhh!” from Kirwan and the band kick up the energy as Kirwan’s guitar wails.

It is hard to picture Kirwan rooted to one spot, on stage, only vigorously  nodding his head to allow his lank hair to cover his face, rather than striding across the stage as most “guitar heroes” are want to do, stopping to pose for the audience at the foot of the stage, legs spread wide, before moving further down to bask in the adulation of the next seating section.

Kirwan and the band again tier the rhythm but here, bring the number to a definitive conclusion.

            The first American tour (without Peter Green) had started on August 01, 1970 and ran through the second week of September.

            Returning home to England, the band were back on the road on the second week of October, playing clubs and colleges in the U.K. along with a few BBC sessions through December 21, 1970.

            They kicked off the New Year with another BBC session (on January 05) and released their first single without Green on January 06, 1971.

            They did a short tour of Scotland in mid-January and kicked off another American tour on February 06, 1971 (this one scheduled to run until April 02, 1971).

            On February 15, 1971, Jeremy Spencer failed to show for a scheduled appearance that night at the Whisky a Go Go and three nights of shows were cancelled.

            Before Spencer had been found, manager Clifford Davis called Peter Green and in his words, “convinced” him to fly to the States and help out his old band mates by taking Spencer’s place, allowing them to finish their tour.

            Green agreed and brought his friend Nigel Watson along with him, as well as setting certain conditions for his return.

            In Watson’s telling, he and Green played their first show with the band after a half hour rehearsal in the dressing room, having been driven straight to the venue from the airport.

            The following track is the encore performance from that show.

Fleetwood Mac

Danny Kirwan: vocals & guitar /

Christine McVie: vocals & keyboards /

John McVie: Bass / Mick Fleetwood: drums

Peter Green: guitar / Nigel Watson: congas

Recorded February 19, 1971 –

Swing Auditorium, San Bernardino, CA

Available on: bootleg / YouTube

Fleetwood Mac – Intro (0:23) / Tell Me all the Things You Do (Live) (5:01) – ends at (5:15)

Fleetwood Mac – San Bernardino Jam (17:06) starts at (1:45) – ends at (17:12)

‘Tell Me all the Things You Do’– possibly due to not being sure how much time they have left, the tempo on this performance has been kicked up to double time, (closer to the unrecorded Kirwan gem, ‘Only You’ than the studio recording of this song) making it one of the shortest performances of the song.

            According to the available accounts of Spencer’s disappearance the band may or may not have been aware that he had been found safe at show-time and everyone’s nerves must have surely been on edge.

Yet listening to the full show they all seem determined to fulfill the old show-biz adage, “The show must go on”.

The number “concludes” but the band continue to play; the jam that follows reminds one that it had only been ten months since Green had left the band, and he and Kirwan and McVie and Fleetwood pick up right where they had left off. 

San Bernardino Jam – C. McVie leads them into the jam with some nice keyboard work and it is from this point on that Green takes the lead. He is still playing rhythm, as Kirwan plays fills whenever and wherever he can find a point of entry.

The band plays with a ferocity that they rarely displayed. Green keeps the beat steady and Fleetwood matches him, pounding at his drums with multiple rolls. Around the seven-minute mark, they break it down just a bit and Kirwan steps forward.

A few minutes later, C. McVie makes herself heard, her organ burbling like a calliope.

As they steam past the ten-minute mark, the intensity increases and C. McVie begins to howl and moan as Fleetwood bashes his kit.

They then begin to bring it down and Green now takes the lead for a few bars before they return to the pounding rhythm. Harder and harder they play, and Kirwan’s guitar fights to make itself heard.

Twelve minutes in, Watson joins the band on congas, and Fleetwood switches to cymbals as C. McVie adds washes of organ. It must be said that Watson proves himself more adept at the hand drums than either Green or Kirwan ever had on numbers such as ‘The Green Manalishi (with the Two Prong Crown)’ or ‘Coming Your Way’.

The number slowly winds down, and everyone plays softly; inevitably, they begin to pick up the pace once more, with Fleetwood leading the way. The audience at this point is screaming and yelling for more, loving every minute of it.  Objectively, this is more successful than many of the Green lead jams in 1970. 

The number slowly begins to wind down, and everyone plays softly before they inevitably begin to pick up the pace once more, with Fleetwood leading the way. The audience at this point is screaming and yelling for more, loving every minute of it.  Based solely on the audience reaction (not the musical quality), this is more successful than many of the Green lead jams in 1970. 

The band might have taken this as a cue to work more of these types of jams into their live sets going forward, which might have helped them to become an even bigger touring act in the U.S.

Rounding past the ten mark, the jam seems to be losing steam, until Fleetwood rallies the troops with some rumbling drums; they are spinning their wheels now as they had speed towards an unplanned finish, eventually, both Perfect and Fleetwood drop out, leaving only the wah-wah guitar fluttering ever softer and then Perfect comes back on mike to tell the audience, “…we’re going to start saying ‘good-night’ to you now, ’cause they’re going to push the power off any minute, or something.  So, thank you for listening, and good night from us.  Thanks very much.  Thank you and good night.”

            With that, they have gotten through their first show under challenging conditions and emerged unscathed, receiving an enthusiastic reaction – maybe they could go on…

The seven numbers from the Swing Auditorium show in 1971 (including the Jam) have been in circulation for some time, including on a commercial CD on a Japanese label, Midnight Dreamer that came out in 2006 under the bizarre title “Great Piece”.

            It is also available on a number of “download sites” on-line and the show and many of the individual tracks can be found on YouTube.

            The problem is, many, if not most are dated incorrectly (some placing the show in July of 1971) and of greater concern, the songs are of varying lengths.

            The most widely circulated (I believe) recording, with the best sound quality, was made by Harry Kraslow. 

            The earliest release of this material appeared in 1974, with two numbers, ‘Station Man’ and ‘Tell Me All the Things You Do / ‘Jam’,  from the show, making up the second side of the LP “Merely A Portmanteau” (The Amazing Krazyphone Record Label – TAKRL).

‘Station Man’ is identical to the Kraslow recording, but the “Jam” after ‘Tell Me All the Things You Do’ differs dramatically.

            On the Kraslow bootleg, the ‘Jam’ runs thirteen minutes and twenty-four seconds. I’ve seen it listed as short as nine minutes and twenty-eight seconds and as long as just over seventeen minutes (the seventeen minute was found on YouTube – availability uncertain)

*The song was released as the A-side of a single (backed with Spencer’s album opener ‘This is the Rock’) in France.  In all other territories, North America (U.S. and Canada), Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Greece, Lebanon and India the single from the LP was ‘Jewel Eyed Judy’ backed with ‘Station Man’ (both songs were trimmed for time for the single)

Note, the French single was released in a picture sleeve, with a photo of the Peter Green led five piece band.

The German picture sleeve features the four piece band (Kirwan, Spencer, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood) while the one for the release in the Netherlands, uses a picture of the “new” five piece, with Christine McVie.

** In 2010, what was the first Disc of “Madison Blues Live & Studio Recordings”, containing the seven songs from August 11, 1970 show, appeared as a single disc collection titled “Crazy About the Blues” on the Secret Records label.