Now hang on a minute, Hughesy, I hear The Incredulous Reader interpose, not Fleetwood Mac. Don't tell me you're into Fleetwood Mac...
My reply is that while the latest incarnation of the rhythm section in search of people to play out front in the spotlight leaves me close to cold I have fond memories of the first two or three incarnations and I'm interested in establishing where along the timeline things changed from classy to, IMHO, dreck.
Maybe dreck is taking it a bit too far, but I found it difficult to get excited by anything from Rumours onwards, and I'd managed to miss most of what transpired between Then Play On and Rhiannon.
Which is, of course, the reason behind the current exercise, prompted, in turn by grabbing the five disc Original Album Series which gives me a second copy of Then Play On and carries the story on to Mystery To Me.
And we need to sort out the sequence of comings and goings in the Fleetwood Mac revolving door, don't we?
As it turns out, the comings and goings continue way past the point where I lost interest, so we only need to go so far...
Not that any of this was on the horizon when Peter Green jumped ship from John Mayall's Bluesbreakers in 1967. He was looking to form a new band and initially thought he had drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie with him.
Green and Fleetwood went back a bit, having played together in Peter B's Looners (the B being Peter Barden on keyboards) and Shotgun Express (the expanded Looners featuring Rod Stewart out front). One Dave Ambrose played bass in those two outfits. Green went from there to Mayall (replacing a certain Eric Clapton), and when drummer Aynsley Dunbar left The Bluesbreakers Green suggested his mate Mick for the vacancy.
Fleetwood had left Shotgun Express five weeks earlier and had been working as an interior decorator. The Mayall gig only lasted a month, and Fleetwood "got the boot for drinking a bit too much." (most of these details can be confirmed in Pete Frame's excellent Rock Family Trees).