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Live On Radio and TV 1970 – 71

Fleetwood Mac

Tracklisting

Side One

1. Crazy ‘Bout You Baby (Jacob)
2. Down At The Crown For Now (Kirwan)
3. Tell Me All The Things You Do (Kirwan)
4. Station Man (Kirwan, Spencer, John McVie)
5. Dragonfly (Kirwan, Davies)
6. Start Again (Christine McVie)
7. Preachin’ Blues (House)

Side Two

1. Purple Dancer (Kirwan, Fleetwood, John McVie)
2. Down At The Crown For Now (Kirwan)
3. Get Like You Used To Be (Webb, Perfect)
4. Dragonfly (Kirwan, Davies)
5. Station Man (Kirwan, Spencer, John McVie)
6. One Sunny Day (Kirwan
7. When The Train Comes Back (Perfect)
8. I Believe My Time Ain’t Long (Johnson)
9. Teenage Darling (Spencer)

Recording Details

Side One

Tracks 1 – 3 recorded for BBC Radio 1 Club on November 10^th 1970, transmitted on December 14^th

Track 4 recorded for BBC Radio Sounds Of The Seventies on November 24^th 1970 and broadcast on December 1st

Tracks 5 – 7 recorded for BBC radio Top Gear on January 5^th 1971, transmitted on January 23^rd (Tracks 6 & 7) and March 27^th (Track 5)

Side Two

Tracks 1 & 2 recorded for BBC Radio Sounds Of The Seventies on November 24^th 1970 and broadcast on December 1st

Track 3 recorded for BBC radio Top Gear on January 5^th 1971, transmitted on January 23^rd

Track 4 Recorded for German TV Beat Club at Radio Bremen, June 26^th 1971

Tracks 5 – 8 Recorded for the TV documentary Black And White Blues in 1970, transmitted in 1971

Track 9 recorded for BBC radio Top Gear on January 5^th 1971, transmitted on January 23^rd

Sound Quality

All tracks are Excellent except on Side Two where tracks 2 and 5-7 are Very Good and tracks 3, 8 and 9 are Good but still very listenable.

Personnel

Danny Kirwan – guitar, vocals

Jeremy Spencer – guitars, maracas, vocals (except Side Two, Track 4)

John McVie – bass

Mick Fleetwood – drums

Christine McVie – piano, vocals

Bob Welch – guitar (Side Two, Track 4)

Sleevenotes

By the time these tracks were recorded Fleetwood Mac were highly successful, renowned internationally for both releasing hit singles and performing exhilarating live gigs. However they were also without lead guitarist and songwriter Peter Green, who had become thoroughly destabilised after a bad trip during a German tour.  Peter played his last gig on May 20^th 1970.

What happened next was Kiln House, a converted oast house in Hampshire. The band lived there communally with their families for a six-month period with Kiln House also becoming the title of their next LP, released in September 1970.  By now bass player John McVie had married Christine Perfect, formally the lead singer with Chicken Shack. Christine provided (uncredited) keyboards and backing vocals on Kiln House before joining the band in time for their November 1970 BBC sessions. Station Man was the centrepiece of Kiln Houseand this version features extensive guitar interplay between Kirwan and Spencer with Christine McVie’s vocals and electric piano adding a new element. Purple Dancer was frequently played live but would never make it on to a studio LP despite its excellent blend of slide quitar and vocal harmonies. There is more fine slide on Danny Kirwan’s Down At The Crown For Now. Little Walter’s Crazy ‘Bout You Baby was originally recorded by Christine Perfect on her eponymous 1970 solo LP, it is also known as Can’t Hold Out Much Longer. With her taking the lead vocal and an uptempo arrangement it proves a good fit for this incarnation of Fleetwood Mac. A second version of Down At The Crown For Now features an echo-laden guitar solo. There is some uncertainty as to whether the version of Tell Me All The Things You Do was actually broadcast. Another Kirwan song from Kiln House it once again features excellent twin guitar parts.

Black And White Blues was a 1970 TV documentary that allowed disgruntled US blues artists to air their grievances about being exploited musically and financially. As part of the programme four song fragments were recorded by Fleetwood Mac in the music room of either Kiln House or its successor. I Believe My Time Ain’t Long was the very first Fleetwood Mac single. Jeremy Spencer optimistically clamed a writing credit (as “G.Spence”) but the song is actually Dust My Broom by Elmore James, written by Robert Johnson. Danny’s Sunny Day was released on Then Play On,here his Flying V combines well with Christine’s keyboards. This version of Station Man features Spencer on slide and more of a groove. Christine originally recorded When The Train Comes Back with Chicken Shack: the solo version here frames her melancholy vocals with more slide guitar. Get Like You Used To Be is another Chicken Shack number, here recorded for the BBC in early 1971. Christine’s piano is prominent as the band take the song at a relaxed shuffle, allowing plenty of space for guitar solos and unison vocals. Dragonfly is the great lost Fleetwood Mac single. A poem by WH Davies set to music by Kirwan it has a gentle evocative melody and deserved to be a hit but the release failed to chart anywhere in the world. Teenage Darling is one of Spencer’s classic fifties cover versions, except that he wrote it himself – it was released as the B-side of his single Linda. The spoken interlude and backing vocals positively drip with grease. From the same BBC session comes a solo Jeremy Spencer cover of Son House’s Preachin’ Blues which highlightshis exemplary slide guitar.  Christine’s Start Again would appear on the next Fleetwod Mac LP Future Games (September 1971), re-titled as Morning Rain. Another highly melodic number it suggested a new direction for the band: less guitar pyrotechnics, more keyboard- and vocal-driven melodies.

Fleetwood Mac had thus successfully reinvented themselves, overcoming the loss of Peter Green and finding in Christine McVie someone who could help them forge a new musical direction. This new-found stability was threatened during a tour of the US in February 1971 when Jeremy Spencer decided to join the religious sect The Children Of God. His short-term replacement was a returning Peter Green. His permanent replacement was US guitarist Bob Welch, who can be seen in the performance of Dragonfly from Beat Club in June 1971. Despite eye-wrenching “psychedelic” effects this specially recorded track benefits from Fleetwood’s restrained percussion and Danny’s closing solo, making the song a worthy successor to Albatross. Welch would stay with Fleetwood Mac for five years during which time he would encourage the band to move to the US, where they would encounter an unsuccessful songwriting duo named Buckingham Nicks. Fleetwood Mac would once again metamorphise, this time achieving commercial success on an unprecedented  scale.

Sleevenotes: Ben I. Folds

Christine Perfect’s Chicken Shack

Live At The BBC 1968 – 69

Tracklisting

Side One

1. I’d Rather Go Blind (James, Jordan, Foster)
2. Hey Baby (Perfect, Vernon, Webb)
3. No Road Is The Right Road (Perfect)
4. Get Like You Used To Be (Perfect, Webb)
5. It’s OK With Me Baby (Perfect)
6. When The Train Comes Back (Perfect)
7. Mean Old World (Jacobs)
8. Love Me Or Leave Me (Mayfield)
9. Interview

Side Two

1. No Road Is The Right Road (Perfect)
2. With Pen In Hand (Goldsboro)
3. When You Say (Kirwan)
4. Hey Baby (Perfect, Vernon, Webb)
5. It’s You I Miss (Perfect)
6. Gone Into The Sun (Perfect)
7. Side Tracked (King, Thompson)
8. Night Life (Buskirk, Breeland, Nelson)
9. Interview

Recording Details

All tracks recorded for BBC Radio:

Side One

Tracks 1 & 2 for Symonds On Sunday April 14^th 1969, transmitted April 20^th

Tracks 3 & 4 for Symonds On Sunday January 27^th 1969, transmitted February 2^nd

Tracks 5 & 6 for Top Gear January 9^th 1968, transmitted January 28^th

Track 7 for Top Gear September 4^th 1968, transmitted September 8^th

Track 8 for Top Gear April 17^th 1968, transmitted April 28^th

Side Two

Tracks 1 – 3 for Top Gear October 13^th 1969, transmitted November 1^st

Tracks 4 – 6 for Dave Lee Travis November 24^th 1969, transmitted November 28^th

Tracks 7 & 8 for Top Gear September 4^th 1968, transmitted September 8^th

Sound Quality

Excellent throughout

Personnel

Side One and Side Two Tracks 7 & 8 – Chicken Shack

Stan Webb – guitar, vocals

David Bidwell – drums

Andy Silvester – bass

Christine Perfect – keyboards, vocals

Duster Bennett – harmonica (side one, Track 7)

Side Two – Tracks 1-3 Christine Perfect

Christine Perfect – vocals, piano

The Derek Wadsworth Orchestra

Side Two – Tracks  4-6 – The Christine Perfect Group

Christine Perfect – vocals, piano

Top Topham – guitar

Rick Heyward – guitar

Martin Dunsford – bass

Chris Harding – drums, percussion

Sleevenotes

“I’ve got those Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack, John Mayall, can’t fail blues”

Adrian Henri, The Liverpool Scene (1970)

Guitarist Stan Webb was born in Fulham but after leaving school he moved with his parents to Kidderminster. He formed The Strangers Dance Band in 1962 to play instrumental versions of contemporary hits but had a musical epiphany when he heard the LP Freddy King Sings playing at The Diskery record shop in Hurst Street, Birmingham. Local blues singer David Yeates invited Stan to join his group The Sounds Of Blue, which included Andy Silvester on rhythm guitar and saxophonist Chris Wood (later to join Traffic). Stan recalls that “the main thing was this one gig at Dudley Liberal Club every Sunday, it was absolutely packed. On bass and harmonica sometimes was Christine Perfect. Then Phil Lawless took over on bass and Christine switched to piano and Chris Wood played sax.” Christine remembers “I didn’t have a clue as to what to do on piano. Stan Webb bought me a Freddie King album and that was the beginning of my absolute love for the blues.” Perfect listened closely to Sonny Thompson, the pianist who played and co-wrote many songs with King.

After graduating from art college, Christine played in a duo on the Birmingham folk and blues circuit with fellow graduate Spencer Davis. Sounds of Blue eventually disbanded but Andy Silvester and Stan Webb decided to form a new blues-based band with drummer Alan Morley. The name Chicken Shack was suggested by American blues pianist Champion Jack Dupree as an old blues term for a road house, Christine had been working as a window dresser in London but was persuaded by Andy’s persistent letter writing to join the new band. In April 1967 the band headed to Hamburg’s legendary Star Club for a six week residency. Alan Morley left in 1968 to be replaced by Dave Bidwell. Record producer Mike Vernon signed the band to his Blue Horizon label where they joined fellow blues enthusiasts Fleetwood Mac and Duster Bennett.

The UK “blues boom” was in full flow when Chicken Shack recorded their first session for BBC radio programme Top Gear in January 1968. This involved submitting the recordings to an Audition Panel whose verdict was “unanimous pass” and “girl singer / pianist received special praise”. It’s OK With Me Baby was the first Chicken Shack single and highlighted Christine’s piano and singing. When The Train Comes Back was another Perfect number, this time featuring her organ playing. In June the band’s first LP was released, entitled Forty Blue Fingers, Freshly Packed And Ready To Serve. Reviews were positive with Melody Maker calling the band “one of the most inventive blues bands in the country. Musically Chicken Shack reach moments of high excitement, especially on Stan Webb’s extended guitar solos.” John Peel was another champion of the group, writing in his International Times column ”I think Chicken Shack deserve better than ‘competent club blues group’. I saw them play in Leeds recently and was most impressed.” Love Me Or Leave Me was recorded for Top Gear, a jaunty version of the Percy Mayfield song built around Perfect’s jazzy piano. A further Top Gear session saw Duster Bennett guesting on harmonica for Little Walter’s Mean Old World plus a brace of instrumentals in Side Tracked (Freddie King) and Night Life (Willie Nelson). The Perfect / Webb co-write Get Like You Used To Be appeared on the second Chicken Shack album O.K. Ken? (February 1969) which like its predecessor made the UK charts. Christine’s No Road Is The Right Road was notincluded even though it is a good song and a strong vocal performance.

Everything changed for Chicken Shack when their single version of I’d Rather Go Blind became a UK top 20 single in May 1969. The version here lacks the horn section of the single but the quality of Christine’s vocal and her soulful organ more than compensates. From the same April 1969 session comes Hey Baby, the B side of When The Train Comes Back. Christine had been going out with Fleetwood Mac bass player John McVie and when he proposed she accepted, leaving Chicken Shack with the aim of becoming a housewife. Ironically she had just been voted Best Female Vocalist by the readers of Melody Maker.

Our final two sessions place Christine stage centre. On a session from October 1969 she is backed by a full orchestra on a remake of No Road Is The Right Road plus a sensitive cover of Bobby Goldsboro’s With Pen In Hand anda version of Danny Kirwan’s When You Say. The latter would feature on Christine’s solo LP entitledChristine Perfect (1970). A final BBC session was recorded by The Christine Perfect Group and features a remake of Hey Baby plus two songs not recorded elsewhere, It’s You I Miss and Gone Into The Sun. The twin guitar line-up is reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac, who Christine McVie would join in time for their 1970 American tour. Her influence on Fleetwood Mac can be heard on the LP Christine Perfect’s Fleetwood Mac Live On Radio and TV 1970 – 71 (R&B168), which contains their take on Get Like You Used To Be. Christine McVie would go on to massive critical and commercial success with Fleetwood Mac, but she always referred fondly to her formative years on the blues club circuit with Chicken Shack.

Sleevenotes: Les Douze-Barres