Released 30 years ago today, Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Live at the BBC’ was just one of a number of archive albums recorded at the Beeb that came out in the mid 90s’. Even though a number of BBC Sessions had seen the light of day on the Strange Fruit label, these tended to be a single session and not a career overview. This changed with The Beatles and their BBC sessions album from 1995 and a year later, Mac followed suit. The band were billed as Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, but some of the songs were recorded after he had left with one song being recorded as late as 1971, a full year after Green had gone. What I found surprising is that there wasn’t a contribution from Christine McVie included. The songs were not in chronological order and the sleeve notes were a little on the small side making it quite difficult to read which sessions they did come from. It did not stop this from being an awesome compilation especially as the band did not record some of these songs for one of their studio albums.
As there were a good deal of songs recorded for the BBC that did not make the cut, I thought that on the 30th anniversary of this compilation there should be a follow up. I was genially surprised there has not been a second volume, especially as there was enough material to compile one. Not all of the sessions were kept by the BBC and you can tell that some of them are off air recordings.
Some have also been released on compilations down the years but did not acknowledge they were BBC sessions in the sleeve notes, once again showing the disregard Fleetwood Mac have had when it comes to the majority of their archive releases.
Like the first volume, I took songs from the same years but this time there some audible contributions form Christine McVie. She can heard singing backing vocals on ‘Station Man’ as well as contributing some keyboard parts. For the most part, I have tried to keep the material blues based which is what the band were famous for at the time.
Unlike the majority of my what-if records, this one is designed for CD in the same way the first one was*.
Disc 1
- Coming Your Way
- My Baby’s Sweeter
- Talk With You
- How Blue Can You Get?
- Please Find My Baby
- Buzz Me Baby
- Underway
- Lazy Poker Blues
- Got To Move
- Tell Me All The Things You Do
- I Can’t Stop Loving Her
- Station Man
- I Have To Laugh
- Stranger Blues
- Love That Burns
- I’m So Lonely & Blue
Disc 2
- Bo Diddley
- Black Magic Woman
- Tiger
- You’re The One
- Sweet Little Angel
- You Need Love
- Mean Old World
- Peggy Sue Got Married
- Dead Shrimp Blues
- Albatross
- Without You
- The Sun Is Shining
- Wine, Whiskey & Women
- The Green Manalishi (With The Two Pronged Crown)
- Leaving Town Blues
- Great Balls Of Fire
The cover mirrors Vol.1, except with a blue tone instead of the sepia one of the original. Unfortunately I cannot remember where I found it online.
*This record did see a limited vinyl release in Japan in 1996, but had exactly the same songs as the standard CD which were over 50 minutes in length. Not exactly a vinyl friendly length.