• AllMyVinyl #29
• Band: Fleetwood Mac
• Album Title: The Best Of Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac
• Release Date: 11 Nov 2002
• Date purchased: 27 Jan 2021
• Location purchased: Target.com
• Color of vinyl: Black
• Number of discs: 2
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube {doesn’t exist} ]

As the 70’s passed their midpoint, I was only 10.  At that point I didn’t know much about rock music – ESPECIALLY didn’t know about lineup changes, and things of that nature at that young age.  I’d heard some stuff on the radio back then, but my command of music wasn’t what it is now.  To that, when I heard of Fleetwood Mac originally, the entire Peter Green (aka “before Stevie Nicks”) era of Fleetwood Mac ended.  In their entire history, Fleetwood Mac has a total of 17 studio albums ranging from the first in 1968 until the last in 2003 (note these are full studio albums I’m talking about, not EPs).  Anyway, of the 17, over half of them (nine total) happened in the first seven years.  The band put out ALL these albums from 1968-1974: “Fleetwood Mac”, “Mr. Wonderful”, “Then Play On”, “Kiln House”, “Future Games”, “Bare Trees”, “Penguin”, “Mystery to Me”, & “Heroes are Hard to Find”.  What’s the common denominator?  No Stevie Nicks or Lindsay Buckingham.  Now that era is generally referred to as the “Peter Green” era, but Green himself was out in 1970 after the third album.  There was some turnaround in those years, with Christine McVie joining, and also the names Bob Welsh, Bob Weston, Dave Walker, & Danny Kirwan coming and going.  But ALL that happened before the fist (self titled) album with Buckingham & Nicks in 1974.

I was one of those people who at first thought Black Magic Woman was a Santana song and Green Manalishi was a Judas Priest song.  Nope, they’re both Fleetwood Mac songs, and they come from this era.  Which when I found that out told me I had a lot to learn.  It never gripped me when I was young though, I had to grow up musically before I got into this era, and when did – man was this shit good.  I remember buying a Fleetwood Mac “Greatest Hits” album the late 80s (this one), and being annoyed there was nothing from the pre Nicks era.  Again, with “growing up later” I found the album I’m writing about today on CD back in Jan of 2010 on sale for $5, so I bought it.  I’ve had it all this time, but when I got back into vinyl in 2020, I knew I wanted this.  So I found a copy on sale (at Target’s website of all places), and ordered it in.  Got it in in early Feb 2021, and man – that’s when it hit me.  This was some seriously great shit.  I’ve owned it for awhile, but perhaps it was the idea of having it on vinyl that made it click FULLY in my head.

This compilation has 20 songs on it total, spanning two vinyl discs and of course four sides.  The majority of it is all songs written by Peter Green (hence the name), but it’s not 100% his work. There’s a handful of cover tracks (Little Willie John, BB King, Etta James), and a couple of songs where Green has a co-write, and a song by Kirwan & Spencer. But the bulk of this is Peter Green written material, and the album is fucking brilliant.

I’m not getting into individual tracks here as the entire album is almost like one giant song to me.  It’s a massively awesome slab of blues based rock – with some extra blues on top, and side order or two of blues.  The aforementioned Black Magic Woman & Green Manalishi are here.  But my all time favorite track from this era of Mac is on here, too.  “Oh Well”.  ADORE that song.  The moods here go from super slow blues to faster guitar licks – it’s all over the place.  That’s a great thing, as it’s not just a single sound for 20 songs in a row, there’s some variety here, and oh yeah here comes another helping of blues slapped onto the ones I mentioned before.

If all you know is stuff from the Rumors album, and are looking for some great blues rock, you simply cannot go wrong here.  This is amazing stuff, and I thoroughly enjoyed the album today when I listened to it.  Cannot recommend this highly enough.

Given the age of the material, there’s no formal music videos as such, so I’ll just pull a few live tracks of songs I like from the album for the videos below.  I also really dug Deep Purple’s cover of Oh well, I’m including that as well.