2000 Great Songs #1400: Oh Well

Having previously snagged a few songs each from the Lindsey Buckingham and Bob Welch eras of Fleetwood Mac, it's about time we headed back to the beginning. Now, not being much of a blues guy, I don't spend a ton of time listening to the records with original guitarist Peter Green, who founded the band in 1967 with bassist John McVie and drummer Mick Fleetwood, with whom he'd been playing in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. But that version of the band's third LP (and last with Green), 1969's Then Play On (along with some contemporaneous singles), expanded on the pretty straight blues rock of the earlier records, and was a little more interesting to me.

1969 single "Oh Well" is particularly striking. Sure, it's still based on a rousing blues riff. But Green's solo vocals alternating with a full-band attack are wicked cool, as much heavy garage rock as blues, while the song then melds into a quiet acoustic guitar & flute bit that sounds like the theme of a Spaghetti western, giving the overall piece a psychedelic vibe. (A few more minutes of that instrumental acoustic vamp carry over onto the single's flip-side, "Oh Well Pt. 2.")

Plus, the song has some bonus gravitas as yet another in the long line of examples of Led Zeppelin songs which, to put it politely, borrow heavily from earlier recordings (in this case, "Black Dog" from 1971's Led Zeppelin IV).

Live on tv, 1969:

1975 performance with brand new singer/guitarist Lindsey Buckingham:

Performed by Haim, 2014:

See the entire Top 2000 to date in a sortable database!