Our Classic Album series revisits must-have albums from the '60s and '70s that are as vital today as when they were first released.
Record Collector SEPTEMBER 06, 2013 - by Paul McGuinness
Then Play On
Fleetwood Mac, as has often been remarked, are a funny old band. More accurately, they are a bunch of funny old bands, and Then Play On is the final page of their opening chapter.
Released in 1969, this was the first Fleetwood Mac album to feature Danny Kirwan and, crucially, the last to feature founder Peter Green.
As such, the guitars are where it’s at here. Licks trade and crunch on the bright, driving blues-rocker One Sunny Day, while the bottleneck on the relatively simple Show Biz Blues positively blooms – and what a truly splendid blues groove it is too. Elsewhere, Without You is a sultry blues with trademark gentle, Albatrossesque playing.
What happened next is the stuff of both myth and legend, with Green suffering from mental health problems, while his old band cruised the commercial highways. This last testament of the group Green created along with his fellow Bluesbreakers deserves greater acclaim.
Then Play On is available on vinyl in the Store