The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
Heart Beat Like A Hammer (Take 1); Merry Go Round (Take 1); I Love Another Woman (Take 1, 2, 3, 4); I Love Another Woman (Take 5, 6); Cold Black Night (Take 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6); You’re So Evil; I’m Coming Home To Stay
Further listening: Fleetwood Mac: The Complete Blue Horizon Sessions 1967–1969 (1999)
Further reading: Peter Green: The Biography (Martin Celmins, 1998) gives the most detail on the early days of Fleetwood Mac; www.fleetwoodmac.net
Download: HMV Digital; iTunes
In the summer of 1967, Peter Green was wondering where to go next after leaving John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. He half thought about going to Chicago and hanging with the true blues guys. Then again, Mayall’s producer, Mike Vernon, was starting a new label, Blue Horizon. Green wondered whether there might be a role for him as house guitarist, like Buddy Guy was for Chess. Vernon, however, keen to sign Green, encouraged him to form a band. By the autumn, Fleetwood Mac had come together and embarked on a hectic schedule of dates which left time only for sporadic recording. Vernon says the whole process was protracted, spread over five months with the end result being ‘a series of short stories rather than a novel’.
Disenchanted with John Mayall’s lurch towards jazz, Green wanted to record a no-nonsense 12-bar blues album. He provided the BB King stylings, Jeremy Spencer did a mean Elmore James and the whole thing was locked down by the Fleetwood and McVie rhythm engine. But they all had a very casual approach, didn’t really believe the band would come to much, and were just out to have a good time. This did their recordings no harm, contributing to the louche, loose-limbed bounce of Shake Your Moneymaker and No Place To Go, which proved beyond all expectation that a British blues band could swing.
But their laid-back ways often drove Vernon to distraction. Spencer repeatedly sang all the wrong words to Hellhound On My Trail, and then, as the producer tried to get My Heart Beats Like A Hammer underway, the band subjected him to a barrage of raucous guitar intros until he rapped schoolmaster-like on the talk-back microphone to bring the urchins to order. The FM Blue Horizon boxed-set version of the album (see below) carries the full gamut of cock-ups Vernon had to put up with before he could patiently craft a final take.
Despite all the misdemeanours along the way, the ‘dog and dustbin’ album – Chicago south side by way of the back streets of Battersea – proved a massive seller and an abiding testament to the stomping blues glory of swinging ’60s London.
Love
Forever Changes
An unclassifiable trove of bittersweet pop.
Record label: Elektra
Produced: Arthur Lee and Bruce Botnick
Recorded: Sunset Sound Recorders, Los Angeles; June 9, 10 and 12; August 11–12; September 10 and 25, 1967
Released: February 1968 (UK) November 1967 (US)
Chart peaks: 24 (UK) 154 (US)
Personnel: Arthur Lee (g, v); Bryan Maclean (g, v); John Echols (g); Ken Forssi (b); Michael Stuart (pc); David Angel (ar); Hal Blaine (d); Billy Strange (g); Carol Kaye (b)
Track listing: Alone Again Or (S); A House Is Not A Motel; Andmoreagain (S); The Daily Planet; Old Man; The Red Telephone; Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark And Hilldale; Live And Let Live; The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This; Bummer In The Summer; You Set The Scene
Running time: 42.58
Current CD: Warners 8122735372 adds: Hummingbirds (Demo); Wonder People (I Do Wonder) (Outtake); Alone Again Or (Alternate Mix); You Set The Scene (Alternate Mix); Your Mind And We Belong Together (Tracking Sessions Highlights); Your Mind And We Belong Together (Single Version); Laughing Stock (Single Version)
Further listening: Da Capo (1967) for signs of incipient greatness; Love Story (1995) for the bigger picture
Further reading: Love: Forever Changes 33 1/3 (Andrew Hultkrans, 2003)
Download: iTunes
A psychedelic masterpiece with neither lengthy jams nor studio wizardry; folk rock with scant hint of protest or sweet harmonies; Forever Changes is an enigma wrapped in a web of contradictions – which hasn’t harmed its impeccable cult credentials one bit. Starting life as a British Invasion-fixated bunch of Byrds acolytes, Love’s primary weapon was Arthur Lee, a precocious songwriter reared on The Beatles, Beethoven and James Brown. ‘It was my name, my band, my music,’ Lee said, ‘and my music forever changes.’ It did, and rapidly, too. Besides Lee’s dominating presence, Love’s multi-racial mix juxtaposed Latin flavours with Lee’s quirky R&B and Maclean’s gentle folk-pop.
After releasing two albums (Love and Da Capo) in quick succession, the band retreated to Bela Lugosi’s old mansion in the Hollywood hills, known as ‘The Castle’. While they virtually fell apart, the acrimony magnified by paranoia-inducing quantities of heroin and acid, Love’s Elektra rivals The Doors were succeeding fast. ‘The way I wrote music then was according to my lifestyle and environment,’ Lee later recalled. That certainly helps explain the disturbed, claustrophobic feel which undermines the album’s deceptively blissful demeanour.
It was recorded in just seven sessions, over a period of four months. Neil Young produced the first day’s work (The Daily Planet, Andmoreagain), with Phil Spector’s ‘Wrecking Crew’ (Hal Blaine, Billy Strange and Carol Kaye) providing backing. After some tearful complaints, Young and the session players were banished and the band reclaimed the songs the following day by overdubbing new parts. David Angel’s elegant string arrangements, so vital to the album’s dreamlike charm, were added late in September at the end of the recordings. After Lee and Maclean grudgingly approved them, the results were mixed in a gruelling 17-hour session: ‘No coffee, a few cigarettes and a lot of cocaine’, recalled Ken Forssi. Out of chaos came, according to Elektra at the time, ‘a vast study in moods’. Maclean’s Old Man and Alone Again Or were almost unbearably plaintive, but it was the nagging expressions of a seething irascibility (the contradictory voices on The Red Telephone, the spontaneous guitar duels on A House Is Not A Motel and Live And Let Live, Lee’s alienated visions and sardonic delivery) that fortified the album’s eggshell melodies with tough, impervious centres.
Nirvana
The Story Of Simon Simonpath
Sumptuous soft-psych classic from the original UK Nirvana.
Record label: Island
Produced: Chris Blackwell
Recorded: Pye Studios 1 and 2, London; early 1967
Released: February 1968
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Patrick Campbell-Lyons (g, v); Alex Spyropoulos (k); Herbie Flowers (b); Frank Riccotti (g); Alan Parker (g); Alan Hawkes (k); Michael Coe (French horn); Sylvia Schuster (c); Barry Morgan (d); Clem Cattini (d); Sue & Sunny, Madeleine Bell, Lesley Duncan (bv); Brian Humphries (e); Syd Dale (ar)
Track listing: Wings Of Love; Lonely Boy; We Can Help You; Satellite Jockey; In The Courtyard Of The Stars; You’re Just The One; Pentecost Hotel (S); I Never Found A Love Like This; Take This Hand; 1999
Running time: 25.35
Current CD: Island IMCD301 contains both stereo and mono mixes of all tracks on the orginal album.
Further listening: All Of Us (1968)
Further reading: Rainbow Chaser (Patrick Campbell-Lyons: unpublished