Fleetwood Mac
The Blues Years

THE REVIEW

I write this review first and foremost for myself and secondly to introduce a bit of Blues to those who haven't yet had the pleasure.

The Blues. It is more than "the root of modern popular music." It is the womb. Blues is what most closely resembles the primordial and incomprehensible instinct that drives man, the animal, to produce music, or simply to tap his foot in rhythm.
Three chords, no frills.

Many music scholars (see also Scorsese's documentary "Feel Like Going Home") trace it back to African tribal chants. Exactly, the same Africans deported to America starting from the 1500s. Three chords, 12 bars, and away you go. A pattern that allows even two musically illiterate farmers to improvise a jam session on the porch in the evening, while the old women help Jim's wife give birth and the others have just finished filling the sacks of cotton. And it also happens that a 21-year-old student-worker from Rome sits in his room with the slide on his finger and plays more or less those same songs, deriving rare pleasure.
I'm digressing, as usual, let's get back to Fleetwood Mac. Of Peter Green, I mean. I know practically nothing about the others. - I open another beer -. I struggle to express what this music causes inside me...
It is bigger than me, it's as if God picked up the guitar and said: "Ok, now shut up and listen".
1800 characters are certainly not enough.
I can tell you nonetheless that "Rattle Snake Shake" is a trance-inducing song. It’s powerful. Passionate.
"Black Magic Woman" is Black Magic Woman. "Oh Well" has a riff that Tom Morello is crapping himself over. "Jumping At Shadows" is poignant, sincere, and disarming. "Red Hot Mama" is full of life. "Man Of The World" is a bit pathetic, but if you read Peter Green's biography, you might understand why.