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Fleetwood Mac · S1 E5
Then Play On
The album that showed Green's genius and his growing darkness. Blues giving way to something stranger
September 1969. A British blues band releases an album that doesn't sound like blues at all, and the guitarist who wrote most of it is already talking about giving away every penny he earns.
Fleetwood Mac, Oh Well (1969). One of the most ferocious guitar riffs ever recorded, followed by one of the gentlest acoustic passages in rock. Two songs in one, two sides of Peter Green in three minutes.
The Third Album
Then Play On is a left turn nobody sees coming. The first two albums were blues records packed with covers, but this one opens with a Danny Kirwan folk ballad. Green's songs are stranger, more personal, and increasingly haunted. When the label asks for another "Albatross," he delivers the opposite.
“I don't want to be a blues band anymore. I want to write songs that come from somewhere real, not just copy American records.”
— Peter Green, quoted in Martin Celmins, "Peter Green: The Authorised Biography," 2003
Oh Well, Fleetwood Mac (1969)
Part 1 opens with a riff so aggressive it sounds like Green is trying to break his own guitar. The lyrics are funny and self-deprecating, a rare flash of humor from an increasingly serious songwriter. Part 2 drops into a gentle acoustic passage with cello, timpani, and flamenco-influenced fingerpicking that Green taught himself specifically for this recording. Most radio stations only played Part 1. Heard together as Green intended, it is a journey from fury to serenity.
TAP TO REVEAL: What did Peter Green want to do with all of Fleetwood Mac's money?
"Oh Well" is famous for being two songs in one. What does Part 2 feature that no one expected from a blues rock band?
Closing My Eyes, Fleetwood Mac (1969)
A Danny Kirwan deep cut from Then Play On that barely anyone talks about. Gentle, fingerpicked guitar, a soft vocal, and a melody that drifts somewhere between folk and dream pop, decades before dream pop existed. Kirwan was 19 when he wrote it, and it sounds like the work of someone twice his age.
Closing My Eyes, Fleetwood Mac (1969)
Read the lyrics while you listen. "Someday I'll die, and maybe then I'll be with you." Kirwan was 19, writing about longing with the weight of someone who had already lost something he couldn't name.
Then Play On is the peak, but something is breaking inside Peter Green. Next: "The Green Manalishi," LSD, and the sound of a mind coming apart.
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