Fleetwood Mac - BBC Sessions, Volume 7: 1970-1971

This is the seventh and last of my albums of Fleetwood Mac performing for the BBC.

I wish I could keep going, but their last appearances on the BBC was in 1971. It seems a lot of bands stopped playing for the BBC in the early 1970s. I think that was mostly due to a change of formats for the BBC. Up until about 1971, bands often played a few songs in the BBC studios each time. But that largely stopped, and was replaced by broadcasts of live concerts that went on much longer. Unfortunately, it seems Fleetwood Mac didn't do any of those.

This volume is fairly different from all the previous ones in this series in that guitarist Peter Green left the band just before the time period covered here. Instead, guitarist Danny Kirwan plays a more prominent role. And Christine McVie finally joined the band, and played a prominent role too. Actually, the first two songs are from before McVie joined the band. Then the third to fifth songs are McVie performances during her brief time as a solo artist. The rest are when she was a part of Fleetwood Mac, and she sings lead on some of those.

Only three of the 13 songs here are officially unreleased. Two of those, "Tell Me All the Things You Do" and "Dragonfly," are BBC performances that somehow got missed by all the official releases. "Lay It All Down" is unreleased because it actually isn't from the BBC. It's from the German TV show "Beat Club" instead. (The bonus track is a different version of "Dragonfly," also from Beat Club.) I would have included more TV or radio appearances other than BBC ones, except I couldn't find more. It doesn't help that the band's popularity declined a lot after about 1971, before reviving in a big way in 1975.

Four of the songs have "Edit" in their titles because I made big edits on them. The available version of "Station Man" didn't have an intro, probably due to some BBC DJ talking over the music, and started right when the vocals did. I fixed that by patching in some music from later in the song. "Get like You Used to Be" lacked a good ending. If I recall correctly, the recording faded out in the middle of McVie singing a verse. I also fixed that by patching in music from elsewhere in the song. For two other songs, "Dragonfly" and "Morning Rain," I used the audio editing program X-Minus to wipe the BBC DJ talking while keeping the underlying music. 

As an aside, this version of the song "Morning Rain" usually has the title "Start Again" on bootlegs because the DJ said the band had just written it, and that was the title the decided on as they entered the BBC studio to record it. But obviously they later changed their minds, because it was called "Morning Rain" on the next studio album, so that's what I call it here.

This album is 43 minutes long, not counting the bonus track.

UPDATE: On June 16, 2022, I updated the mp3 download file. The song "Morning Rain" had been a pretty bad sounding bonus track. But thanks to musical associate Marley giving me access to BBC transcription discs, I was able to replace that with a great sounding version, allowing me to include it on the album proper. At the same time, I found a true BBC session version of the song "Dragonfly" that hasn't been bootlegged anywhere, as far as I can see. I'd already had a version of the song here, but from the Beat Club TV show. That now has been demoted to bonus track status. It has perfectly fine sound quality; I just don't like having two versions of the same song on one album.

01 No Road Is the Right Road [Edit] (Christine McVie)
02 Jenny Lee (Fleetwood Mac)
03 When Will I Be Loved (Fleetwood Mac)
04 Honey Hush (Fleetwood Mac)
05 When I See My Baby (Fleetwood Mac)
06 Buddy's Song [Peggy Sue Got Married] (Fleetwood Mac)
07 Tell Me All the Things You Do (Fleetwood Mac)
08 Down at the Crown (Fleetwood Mac)
09 I Can't Stop Loving Her (Fleetwood Mac)
10 Crazy 'bout You Baby [Can't Hold Out Much Longer] (Fleetwood Mac)
11 Station Man [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
12 Dragonfly [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
13 Preachin' (Fleetwood Mac)
14 Morning Rain [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
15 Lay It All Down (Fleetwood Mac)

Dragonfly (Fleetwood Mac)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15116029/FleetwodMc_1970h-1971_BBSessionsVolume7_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is from 1971. It shows the band while it was mainly led by Christine McVie, Jeremy Spencer, and Danny Kirwan. Note how drummer Mick Fleetwood is a head above anyone else because he's a very tall guy and not standing on something.