Fleetwood Mac
Greatest Hits

If you're a fan of Fleetwood Mac, this copy is guaranteed to blow your mind. Like all the best vintage British pressings, the sound is smooth, rich and full. This is old school analog, baby. They don't make 'em like this anymore because they don't know how to.

This original British pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records cannot even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to "see" the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It's what vintage all analog recordings are known for -- this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl import pressings like this one offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes beginning in 1968
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange -- with the guitars and drums having the correct sound for this kind of recording
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional space of the studio

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

We Love The Early Fleetwood Mac

This is the first iteration of the band from way back in the day, back when they were playing their unique brand of Blues Rock with Peter Green leading the band -- about as far from Rumours as you can get. If you like British Blues Rock, I don't think any other band can hold a candle to the Mac from this period. Clapton may have been considered a god but Green is the better guitar player; this album is proof of that.

The best track that the early F Mac ever did? Oh, it's here all right: "Need Your Love So Bad." If that one doesn't get to you deep in your soul, check your pulse. You may be dead.

What We're Listening For On Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren't "back there" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt -- Martin Birch and Michael Ross Trevor in this case -- would have put them.
• The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

More of What to Listen For

Most pressings are compressed, murky, veiled and recessed. To find one that is transparent, clear, present and punchy is no mean feat.

On either side listen for the drums to punch through the mix.

Mick Fleetwood is banging the hell out of his toms on "Black Magic Woman." If it doesn't sound like he's really banging away, you need a better copy (or a better stereo; one must always be open to the possibility that the system may not be up to reproducing punchy drums properly).

"Oh Well Part 1" has some big drums too, so now you can check both sides of your copy.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus is about as quiet as any vintage British pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of later pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful originals.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

A Must Own Record

This is a recording that belongs in any serious Rock Collection. Others that belong in that category can be found here.

Side One

• The Green Manalishi
• Oh Well (Part 1)
• Oh Well (Part 2)
• Shake Your Money Maker
• Need Your Love So Bad
• Rattle Snake Shake

Side Two

• Dragonfly
• Black Magic Woman
• Albatross
• Man Of The World
• Stop Messin’ Round
• Love That Burns

AMG 4 1/2 Star Review

Unissued, unfortunately, in the United States, this is a well-chosen, concise 12-song best-of covering the Peter Green era. Besides "Black Magic Woman," "Albatross," and "Man of the World," it includes the hard-to-find (in the States, anyway) British hit single "The Green Manalishi."