Fleetwood Mac - "Future Games" (1971) - Reprise
Hello Friends,
What a weird fucking band Fleetwood Mac is!
Starting out a blues-based rock band that sounded like a slightly more psychedelic version of the Yardbirds and winding up as one of the biggest, most radio-friendly soft rock juggernauts of all time, there's still stuff we're discovering by the band that we've never heard before and it knocks our socks off!
First off, let's take a look at the band line-up circa 1971. Mainstays John McVie & Mick Fleetwood are present and accounted for. Founding member Peter Green is long gone--physically and mentally at this point-- as is his "replacement", Jeremy Spencer. Taking up the lead guitar and frontman duties is "long time" member, Danny Kirwan.
Future Games would be the first Mac LP to feature Christine McVie as a full-fledged member (although she does appear on 1970's remarkable, Kiln House) as well as guitarist-songwriter, Bob Welch, who would take over frontman duties on the next four records as well!
McVie would write and sing two songs on the record: "Morning Rain"-- a song that screams early 70's FM Radio-- and the LP's closer, "Show Me A Smile"-- a pretty & sweet sounding denouement that sounds a lot like early Wings.
Bob Welch would write the album's AMAZING Floydian title track/epic, as well as Side Two's rocker, "Lay It All Down."
First off, let's take a look at the band line-up circa 1971. Mainstays John McVie & Mick Fleetwood are present and accounted for. Founding member Peter Green is long gone--physically and mentally at this point-- as is his "replacement", Jeremy Spencer. Taking up the lead guitar and frontman duties is "long time" member, Danny Kirwan.
Future Games would be the first Mac LP to feature Christine McVie as a full-fledged member (although she does appear on 1970's remarkable, Kiln House) as well as guitarist-songwriter, Bob Welch, who would take over frontman duties on the next four records as well!
McVie would write and sing two songs on the record: "Morning Rain"-- a song that screams early 70's FM Radio-- and the LP's closer, "Show Me A Smile"-- a pretty & sweet sounding denouement that sounds a lot like early Wings.
The album's lone instrumental, the bluesy "What A Shame" is credited to all five members.
Fucking-A, right?
Kirwan contributes the trippy seafaring-themed, "Woman of 1000 Years", and the pensively-melodic, "Sands of Time", as well as the Burritos-sounding, "Sometimes".
Fleetwood Mac now had three songwriters with distinctive voices who could all write catchy hooks and killer melodies and who helped usher in the "middle" era of Fleetwood Mac's convoluted career. An era where song composition became paramount, harmonies became more important than guitar solos and moods got mellowed. If the Peter Green-era was like The Yardbirds-on-Acid and the Buckingham-Nicks-era was fueled by massive amounts of cocaine, this period of the band was their pot-smoking phase: mellow, warm, hazy and never in a rush!
Smoke 'em if you got 'em kids!
RATING: 4 real rhymes or reasons for those future games out of 5
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