More of the Music of Fleetwood Mac
- With two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, this vintage British import will be very hard to beat
- Big, rich, energetic, with an abundance of analog Tubey Magic, this original Orange Label UK pressing has exactly the right sound for this music
- “Oh Well, Parts One and Two,” “Black Magic Woman,” “Man of the World,” and the surprise Number One single “Albatross” are all here and guaranteed to blow your mind
- Peter Green is hands down our favorite British Blues Guitarist of All Time – play this record and you will surely see why we feel that way
- This is a lot of money for a somewhat noisy copy, but the sound is so awesome and quiet pressings of the album so hard to come by that we hope someone will take a chance on it and get the thrill we did from hearing it sound right for once
- We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life.
If you’re a fan of Fleetwood Mac, this copy is guaranteed to blow your mind. Like all the best vintage British pressings, the sound is smooth, rich and full. This is Old School ANALOG, baby. They don’t make ’em like this anymore because they don’t know how to.
This original British pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records cannot even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.
If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.
What The Best Sides Of Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl import pressings like this one offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes beginning in 1968
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with the guitars and drums having the correct sound for this kind of recording
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional space of the studio
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
We Love The Early Fleetwood Mac
This is the first iteration of the band from way back in the day, back when they were playing their unique brand of Blues Rock with Peter Green leading the band — about as far from Rumours as you can get. If you like British Blues Rock, I don’t think any other band can hold a candle to the Mac from this period. Clapton may have been considered a god but Green is the better guitar player; this album is proof of that.
The best track that the early F Mac ever did? Oh, it’s here all right: “Need Your Love So Bad”. If that one doesn’t get to you deep in your soul, check your pulse. You may be dead.
What We’re Listening For On Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt — Martin Birch and Michael Ross Trevor in this case — would have put them.
- The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
- Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
- Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
- Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
More of What to Listen For
Most pressings are compressed, murky, veiled and recessed.
To find one that is transparent, clear, present and punchy is no mean feat.
On either side listen for the drums to punch through the mix.
Mick Fleetwood is banging the hell out of his toms on “Black Magic Woman.” If it doesn’t sound like he’s really banging away, you need a better copy (or a better stereo; one must always be open to the possibility that the system may not be up to reproducing punchy drums properly).
“Oh Well Part 1” has some big drums too, so now you can check both sides of your copy.
A Must Own Record
This is a recording that belongs in any serious Rock Collection. Others that belong in that category can be found here.
Side One
The Green Manalishi
Oh Well (Part 1)
Oh Well (Part 2)
Shake Your Money Maker
Need Your Love So Bad
Rattle Snake Shake
Side Two
Dragonfly
Black Magic Woman
Albatross
Man Of The World
Stop Messin’ Round
Love That Burns
AMG 4 1/2 Stars
Unissued, unfortunately, in the United States, this is a well-chosen, concise 12-song best-of covering the Peter Green era. Besides “Black Magic Woman,” “Albatross,” and “Man of the World,” it includes the hard-to-find (in the States, anyway) British hit single “The Green Manalishi.”
1975 / Finding the Magic
On a personal note, I saw the Buckingham Nicks iteration of the band at an all day stadium picnic concert shortly after the release of the first album they made with Mac, and they did a lot of this early bluesy material. And they played the hell out of it. They rocked!
At the time I didn’t know much about that early material, and didn’t fully appreciate what a special gesture of honor that was to the early band’s players.
Now those songs are some of my favorites by the band, and I play the early stuff ten times more often than the later stuff. Of course I’m a big fan of the middle period (with Bob Welch) and our commentaries forthose albums from the shootouts we’ve done for them are all over the site as well.