Fleetwood Mac - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1969

First off, sadly, I have to report that Peter Green died a few days ago, on July 25, 2020, of natural causes. He was 73 years old. He was a true musical giant in my opinion, one of the greatest lead guitar players of all time. He will be missed, even though most of his musical reputation rests on his years with Fleetwood Mac, from 1967 to 1970.

I had been preparing some new and/or revised albums from the years Fleetwood Mac was led by Peter Green, but I hadn't gotten around to posting them yet, mostly because making revisions to existing albums is a pain in the rear. But I wanted to do something to commemorate Green's death, so here we go.

This album is part of a revision of all of Fleetwood Mac's BBC material. Previously, I had posted six albums of that, all but the last one taking place during the band's Peter Green years. I found better sounding versions of many songs for all six albums, so you should redownload them all due to that alone. But also, around what had been Volume 4, I found some new songs, enough to split the album into two. This is the first half of that. There are four newly discovered songs here (songs 1, 2, 11, and 12), plus one moved from Volume 3 (the third song). What had been Volume 4 was an unusually long album to begin with, so after all the changes there was enough to split the album in two. The rest of what had been on Volume 4 became Volume 5 (plus one more new song). Since there already had been a Volume 5, as well as a Volume 6, those have been renamed Volumes 6 and 7 respectively.

Confusing, I know. The bottom line is you now have more music than before. If you redownload all seven BBC volumes, it'll all straighten out for you. Here's the link to Volume 5, since that's the other half of the split. I trust you can search for the others on your own:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/02/fleetwood-mac-bbc-sessions-volume-4.html

With that thorny issue out of the way, now let me address the actual music on this album. Only four of the 12 songs on it are officially released. However, I think you'll find there's very little sound quality difference between those and the rest. All of the BBC performances come from just two sessions, and probably the released and unreleased versions ultimately come from the same recorded versions.

There are four songs not from the BBC. Two of these ("San-Ho-Zay" and the "Blue Suede Shoes" medley) come from a Dutch radio show. The other two ("Like It This Way" and "All Over Again [I've Got a Mind to Give Up Living]") come from a Finnish radio show. I'm not a stickler that all songs on a BBC compilation have to actually come from the BBC - I figure other radio or TV show appearances are fair game as well. By the way, every version Fleetwood Mac did of "All Over Again" is awesome, thanks to Green's soulful lead guitar playing. This is a relatively short version (and the more soloing the better for that song), but it's still one of the best, due to the excellent sound quality.

There's nothing wrong sonically with the bonus track, "Albatross." The only reason it's a bonus track is because I have another version of the band playing the song on an earlier album in this BBC series. There are remarkably few instances of the band playing the same song twice on the BBC, so any duplicates are downgraded to bonus tracks.

01 Can't Believe You Wanna Leave (Fleetwood Mac)
02 San-Ho-Zay [Instrumental] (Fleetwood Mac)
03 Blue Suede Shoes - Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On - Blue Suede Shoes (Fleetwood Mac)
04 Blues with a Feeling (Fleetwood Mac)
05 Tallahassee Lassie (Fleetwood Mac)
06 Early Morning Come (Fleetwood Mac)
07 Heavenly (Fleetwood Mac)
08 Man of the World (Fleetwood Mac)
09 Jumping at Shadows (Fleetwood Mac)
10 Linda [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
11 Like It This Way [Edit] (Fleetwood Mac)
12 All Over Again [I've Got a Mind to Give Up Living] (Fleetwood Mac)

Albatross [Instrumental] (Fleetwood Mac)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15211732/FleetwodMc_1969f_BBSessionsVolum4_atse.zip.html

I'm not sure exactly when or where the cover art photo is from. But given their appearance, and especially the inclusion of Danny Kirwan (who joined in 1968), I think it's likely it's from 1969.