FLEETWOOD MAC – "Albatross"

Yes! (Though “Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter” may not be one of them).

That doesn’t explain it returning to #2 on re-release in spring ’73 though. Interestingly this was pretty much the exact time that the Shadows disintegrated and IIRC there was much dark brooding in the Marvin/Welch quarters of the “oh fuck why didn’t we think of that” variety (even though it’s essentially Santo and Johnny’s “Sleep Walk” a decade on and four floors below in the basement, imagining skies, and freedom, and pinkness) – compare minimalist approach of “Albatross” with maximalist, all-strings/FX out approach of “Slaughter On Tenth Avenue,” the Shads’ final single (at that stage), five-and-a-half minutes long, which sold about five copies.

The pious bird of good omen, no less. The phrase comes from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner–a lesson to any potential albatross killer. I remember seeing the cover of the FMac album by this name in a trendy little record shop where they actually sold imported LPs. (The ability to purchase non-US albums in local stores was very new back then.) The cover had a very sexy looking woman (dressed as a nun and presumably pregnant) with an albatross (or some such bird, real or otherwise) perched on her hand. I don’t know if the LP had a US release–if it did, surely it didn’t have this cover.

This is the FMac I actually liked. I’ve never been able to deal with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, who dramatically reduced the collective IQ of the group with their insipid lyrics (not to mention SN’s irritating nasality and the constant soap opera about their intertwined personal lives). (No, Rosie, I’m your age and I don’t have a copy of Rumours either.) I must say, though, that I’ve continued to like Christine Perfect McVie, who has an incredibly sexy contralto voice.

“Albatross” received a very singular honor before the year was up–its atmospheric quirks were obviously the inspiration for the intro to the Beatles’ “Sun King” on Abbey Road.

Hey Pete, no need to get paranoid! It’s probably best to think of pop-Mac and blues-Mac as separate bands who happened to share an eponymous rhythm section. The latter had Peter Green and that’s good enough for me. By the way, you forgot about the bloke with a gurl’s name!

As I’ve intimated, by this time I and most of my peers were parting company with the singles charts and taking more of an interest in the suddenly-burgeoning album market and alternative music – the driving force behind this was, no doubt, John Peel’s Sunday afternoon show which formed the backdrop to my weekend homework. It was the time of bitching in school on Friday morning about the eternal crapness of Top of the Pops, the breath of fresh air when they had Blodwyn Pig on not amounting to anything. Somebody must have been buying the pop stuff in droves, but it wasn’t my contemporaries. This for us was the age of Velvet Underground, The Doors, Leonard Cohen, Frank Zappa – which we felt to be ‘grown-up’ music. (It would be about this time that some of the lads would wave Trout Mask Replica about – something that it took me many years to come to terms with!)

Forgot to say, BTW, about the chart dates – the convention (followed by all the chart books) is to date them with the issue date of the music paper they appeared in, which is always a Saturday. Hence the chart which was announced earlier this evening is officially the chart of 16th September 2006. Of course, nowadays it’s done within hours but I think back then it took them the best part of a week to do all the maths.

“In the case of “Albatross” there’s not even a film to prompt you, so its associations need to be even more compelling”…

Not so – there WAS a film – The BBC used it as the soundtrack to a piece of nature footage, after it had just been release, and that’s actually why it made the charts.

I think I’m right in saying, The Ventures did “Slaughter On Tenth Avenue” before either The Shadows or Ronno

the US had surf music we had Duane Eddy & Bert Weedon.

ok just Bert then

1967 = happy happy pop-will-save-the-world
1968 = turmoil and chaos everywhere (which rock culture reflects and expresses)
1969 = the grim morning after (even if you DIDN’T have the flu)

She is like a kid in the dark. Then she is the darkness. Dreams unwind and love is hard to find.

My actuality, btw: 1967, generally unhappy, terrified; despised self, occasional resurrection of esteem as year goes on. 1968, tentatively taking initiative. 1969, flat-out happy, esp. the second half (and on like that through mid 1970).

U.S. actuality, 1969: Jets and Mets win championships. Everything is wonderful. Billboard Top Ten: 1. Sugar, Sugar, The Archies 2. Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In 5th Dimension 3. Honky Tonk Women, The Rolling Stones 4. Come Together/Something, The Beatles, 5. Everyday People, Sly &The Family Stone, 6. Crimson And Clover, Tommy James &The Shondells, 7. I Can’t Get Next To You, The Temptations 8. Get Back, The Beatles W/Billy Preston, 9. Someday We’ll Be Together Diana Ross &The Supremes, 10. Dizzy, Tommy Roe. (Well, not everything is wonderful, but just want to bring in other perspectives.)

Summer of Love, 1967: Newark, July 12 to July 15, 23 people dead, 725 injured, property damage $10 million. Detroit, July 23 to July 28, 43 dead, 467 injured, property damage $40 to $80 million.

Not that Mark’s line is wrong for the general movement of the counter culture; listen to the Airplane’s buoyant “Ballad of You, Me & Pooneil” from early ’68 and then to the grim “Ballad of Pooneil Corners” later that year. (Grace, though, got grim before everybody else.) But (1) that’s only the counterculture (“La La I Think I Love You” and “Yummy Yummy Yummy” don’t reflect turmoil and chaos, and there’s a lot more of that on the charts than anything that does; highest ranking rock-that-is-supposedly-not-also-pop-song is “Sunshine of Your Love”), and (2) counterculture mood ’69 not a morning after at all in U.S., but rather, now we resist and organize. And 1969 much more than 1967 has the idea We Are Something New And We Will Win.

Also, spring ’68 in Europe, spring ’70 in U.S. So, different time-line.

I barely know the Peter Green era of Fleetwood Mac at all – “Albatross” may be the only track I’ve heard. Don’t even think I’ve heard their “Black Magic Woman.” In 1970 and 1971 I’d visit my friend Hoppity and we’d listen to albums from the next era (what is generally known as The Penguins Fucking Era). I remember liking this but honestly can’t tell you what it sounds like. I’m sure I’ve heard some of the Bob Welch stuff, but again I can’t really tell you anything about it. And way-back-when I owned the famous Clapton-era John Mayall’s Bluesbreaker album, but can’t tell you anything about the bass playing.

So I’m going to basically make up some things that might connect the early and the late Fleetwood Mac. Let’s say in the mid ’60s McVie and Fleetwood aren’t just listening to “real” American blues music, they’re listening to the Yardbirds and the Kinks and taking in those groups’ experiments with drones and crescendos and with simple note repetitions that erupt out of a song and become the basis for rhythm-built rave-ups. So, whenever it is in late ’74 or ’75 that Fleetwood hears Lindsey Buckingham, he’s hearing something he’s familiar with, a guitarist who uses drones and single-note leads and rhythms to build up an overall sound, rather than one who takes his guitar to the center; so, one who can work with Christine’s piano atmospherics. (Well, Fleetwood’s hearing something I’m familiar with, at any rate. As I said, I’m making this up.) Lindsey and his cute girlfriend (part of Lindsey’s condition for joining the group is that Stevie be invited as well) can also create catchy songs out of such drones and repetitions (e.g., “Dreams,” “Rhiannon”) and can create songs from which drones and repetitions take over (“Gold Dust Woman,” “The Chain,” and live versions of “Rhiannon”, one of which I’ve linked for you). In addition, the cutie-pie girlfriend turns out to be a spitfire of a vocalist. And the group can layer California harmonies atop all. But really, underneath, the form has more in common with the Yardbirds, Kinks, and Velvets than it does with the Eagles or Linda Ronstadt. At least on the songs of theirs I love.

This was a rare case of a record being loved by all and sundry in my family including my dear old Edwardian dad, who despised pop/rock and all its works. The old bugger was 48 at the time of “Albatross”, which in today’s money is about 73. I still maintain that this piece of music is superb and will always stand the test of time. I had totally forgotten that it came back in the seventies and got within a whisker of repeating the trick again. As has been mentioned, “Man Of The World” and “Oh Well” followed for Mac and both stalled at number two. Far from finding these “bleak” (Marcello!), the child Waldo thought they were both cracking and, after all, quite different from each other, the former a rather sad, soft little ballad and the latter a Zeppelin-esque rock blast. The fact that we don’t get to discuss either of them in their own right I think is a pity.

Some interesting comments here on the only Mac song to make the list, but in all seriousness does anyone know if the ‘latterday’ incarnation ever performed this in concert? I can just about imagine Lindsey taking the lead (“tonight Matthew, I’m going to be Peter Green!”) but what would Stevie have done – stood patting disconsolately on a tambourine? Same goes for their other other 60s hits, I suppose it would have been difficult for the ‘classic’ lineup to carry them off. I always liked ‘Man of the World’ though.

Oh and hello, by the way.

As far as I’m concerned the Peter Green lineup is the classic lineup.

Even in the Motown/Stax-a-go-go euphoria of the 1969 chart cheerfully counted down by Blackburn on Saturday’s POTP (well, he has every right to be cheerful about this chart since he was directly responsible for most of it), “Blackberry Way” at number one and this at number two made a suitably sobering, if somewhat deflating, British cherry for the cake; Stevie bursting out of “For Once In My Life” for post-MFK/RFK America, followed by…um, it’s raining, wonder if my Co-Op Dividend Stamps book will be filled up today…

#46: Don’t know what their reaction to it initially was but their musical reaction was pretty great – Green Manalishi is alive with malevolence, a really fat groove played loud and driven into the brain. Fleetwood and McVie in particular play the hell out of it. I think Peter Green’s ululations in the fade out sound like what he was about to go through (or at least a decent metaphor of it – the descent into hell, with the spectral vocal lost in the fire). For me, it’s one of the best “drug” records – and, a bit like Renton coming off heroin in Trainspotting or pretty much all of Requiem For A Dream, it doesn’t make them sound like much fun at all.

Even Kermit the Frog was sympathetic to Pete’s plight….”It’s not easy being Green….”