‘Oh Well’: The classic track Fleetwood Mac considered a “throwaway”
Some of the greatest riffs of all time usually come from a spur-of-the-moment jam. Since most songwriters spend time with an acoustic guitar in their hand, constantly working through their arrangements until they sound right, it normally takes a guitarist to lock in with a drummer to find the right sense of rhythm for a guitar riff. It’s easy to question what sounds good out of a jam, and when Fleetwood Mac put together ‘Oh Well’, Peter Green was a bit wary of even recording it.
Like all great early Fleetwood Mac songs, ‘Oh Well’ wouldn’t have existed without the blues. The band’s entire ethos seemed to be carrying on the tradition of acts like John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers half the time, so playing jams that would one day end up on albums wasn’t out of the question.
By the time Green started working on ‘Oh Well’, they had already been moving past the traditional sounds of the blues. Make no mistake, they could still tear it up when they wanted to, but a song like ‘Albatross’ saw them taking on a much more intricate version of standard rock and roll, trading in the fiery leads with mellow volume swells.
That initial fire never goes away, though, and ‘Oh Well’ is probably one of the most perfect marriages of guitar and drums. Despite laying it down in the studio on a whim, Green remembered the whole thing being a bit too ordinary compared to the rest of the material they had been working on.
Speaking with Guitar Player, Green said that what he heard in his head was something closer to Spanish music than anything blues, saying, “I had the idea after hearing some Spanish guitar music on the radio one day while I was riding in the back of a car. It was written and played on a Ramirez Spanish guitar I had just bought… What became ‘Part I’ was just intended as a throwaway riff for the B-side, but it became the A-side.”
Green had the initial plan for the riff, but one of the unsung heroes in making the song work is Mick Fleetwood. The guitar line is what people remember more than anything, but if you remove Fleetwood from the situation, it would just be any ordinary blues riff. It’s got the attitude, but bringing the rest of the band in behind Green is what gives it more soul.
Regardless of who was playing on it, Green still had a firm grasp on what the group was doing then. After being heralded for his experimentation, this was just a reminder for the fans of heavier music that he could still ignite a guitar lick whenever he got the chance.
Despite Fleetwood Mac going through one of the biggest lineup changes any band had ever seen, ‘Oh Well’ never left their setlist, even being played on the inaugural tour with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks added to the lineup. And to think, if Green had just tried taking things in another direction, we would have ended up hearing his take on flamenco rather than this classic.
