I was very familiar of the detailed history of Fairport Convention by the middle of 1970, and followed it closely through the 1970s. My experience of Fleetwood Mac was very different, knowing them until 1974 only as the group which had produced four magnificent singles in 1969 and 1970, being “Albatross”, “Man of the World”, and “Oh Well”, in 1969, and “The Green Manalishi” in 1970. I subsequently learned much more as I acquired just about everything the Peter Green line-ups had recorded, for which, in much detail, see far above in this blog.
Furthermore, of course, both groups underwent massive changes in personnel over the period in question. However, throughout its entire existence, there has always been a “Fairport Way” of doing a song, which could be loosely described as “folk/rock”. This was patently not the case with Fleetwood Mac, which started out as a straight 12 bar blues combo. Even by the time Peter Green left, in May 1970, the band had become a three in one thing; in addition to the blues, there were comic rock’n’roll parodies and softer ballad style stuff.
We had got to the end of 1970 with both groups before this long project commenced, both groups having by then lost key members: Peter Green from the one and Ashley Hutchings and Sandy Denny from the other.
To be continued.
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