Fleetwood Mac – Live 1969 (Oslo & The Hague)

The first part of this record is devoted to Fleetwood Mac in concert at The Hague on the evening of February 28th 1969. By starting at the unusually early time of 7.15 the band were also able to fit in a second performance at midnight in Amsterdam, 66 km away. Opener One Sided Love is a cautiously paced Danny Kirwan original that was not recorded in the studio. Stop Messin’ Around is a co-write between Peter Green and manager Clifford Davis, here using his C.G Adams pseudonym. Taken at a fast shuffle the song showcases some wildly exciting guitar interplay between Green and Kirwan. San Ho-Zay is a Freddie King instrumental from 1961 which never appeared on a Fleetwood Mac LP. Albatross is enthusiastically received: released as a single the previous November it reached Number Two in the Norwegian singles chart. The pounding cover of Freddy Cannon’s Tallahassie Lassie gives the Flamin’ Groovies 1972 version some serious competition. A raucous Blue Suede Shoes puts Jeremy Spencer in the spotlight: some very authentic backing vocals fail to completely mask some dodgy Spencer vocal improvisation. The broadcast ends with a snippet of Twist and Shout that sounds more like the Clash than the Beatles.

The four songs included here were recorded in front of an all-seated and somewhat sedate audience for Norwegian TV during November 1969. I’m Worried is an Elmore James number, otherwise unrecorded by the band. Like It This Way never featured on a Fleetwood Mac studio LP but here showcases the ability of Danny Kirwan and Peter Green to trade call-and-response guitar riffs in a way that would be copied (badly) by many other bands. When Kirwan breaks a string Green plays a solo electric version of The World Keep On Turning originally recorded on the band’s self-titled debut LP. Rattlesnake Shake was the first single released from third album Then Play On but it did badly on both sides of the Atlantic, causing Oh Well to be released as a much more successful follow up. Rattlesnake Shake proved to be a very popular live number with a powerful riff, an undulating rhythm and risqué lyrics. Whilst this is a relatively compact version, the song could be open-ended as Mick Fleetwood explained. “It incorporated the freedom to go off on a tangent, to jam. We learned that as players. You hear that alive and well in the double-time structure that I put in at the end, which on stage could last half an hour. It was our way of being in The Grateful Dead.”

The breadth of material – both covers and originals – is truly remarkable. We are delighted to finally bring some of these more obscure tracks to public attention: they are every bit as enjoyable as their better known siblings.