Fleetwood Mac – ‘Kiln House’
1970 was never the best-remembered time for Fleetwood Mac. Much like Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac were trying to find their new identity after the loss of their main creative force, Peter Green. Green was the founder of the band, he had named the band, and he had written most of the band’s best-known original material. To most, he was the face and soul of Fleetwood Mac, one of Britain’s pre-eminent acts of the blues explosion. So what can you do when he’s gone?
The truth was that Fleetwood Mac was never just Peter Green. By 1968, the band had taken on a pair of additional guitarists and singers: original founder Jeremy Spencer and later third guitarist Danny Kirwan. Spencer and Green had split songwriting duties on the band’s 1968 debut while Kirwan began to write and sing his own songs with 1969’s Then Play On. When Green left Fleetwood Mac, Kirwan and Spencer each tried to pull the band in a different direction.
Let’s not mince words: Kiln House is a mess. It’s often a joyous and wonderfully weird mess, but it’s still a mess. Spencer’s contributions are mostly goofy pastiches, channelling the sounds of rock and roll’s then-recent past with nods to Buddy Holly and The Jordainaires. Kirwan alternates between earnest singer-songwriter material and keeping the band’s hard-driving blues rock sound intact. Occasionally, detours are taken into hippie folk, psychedelic rock jamming, ethereal instrumentals, and podunk country music. Needless to say, nothing gels particularly well.
Spencer leads off with Elvis-indebted ‘This Is The Rock’. Like all of Spencer’s material, he and the rest of the band are fully dedicated to bringing the throwback sound of the past back to life. In this case, it’s the classic Sun Records sound, complete with Jodanaires-like backing vocals and Fleetwood’s use of brushes.
Now’s as good a time as any to ask: why is Spencer’s material either parodies or deliberate genre take-offs? Well, that was Spencer’s style: you can hear him do much of the same on his self-titled solo LP that was released nine months before Kiln House. Spencer worked on the album with Fleetwood Mac while the rest of the band wrote Then Play On, a psychedelic blues/folk odyssey that didn’t feature Spencer at all. While Spencer stepped back into the fold once Green left, it seemed as though he had one foot out the door already by 1970.
Whether you find Spencer’s varied material hilarious, annoying, or just a bit strange, it keeps the album from even approaching anything cohesive. ‘Blood on the Floor’ is an old-school country murder ballad, a style that was actually becoming increasingly popular at the time, especially in the San Francisco rock scene. But ‘Blood on the Floor’ has more to do with the offbeat country leanings of Ween than anything the New Riders of the Purple Sage ever did.
That’s not to say that Spencer is always unsuccessful in his throwbacks. By leaning into the band’s blues expertise, he’s able to conjure up a solid Big Joe Turner cover in ‘Hi Ho Silver’, complete with some real menace in his voice once he starts talking about baseball bats. ‘Buddy’s Song’ might read like a lazy Holly tribute, and it is, but it’s not Spencer’s work. Although credited to Holly’s mother Ella, ‘Buddy’s Song’ was actually a Bobby Vee cover written by Holly’s one-time tour mate, outlaw country icon Waylon Jennings. Green’s version of the band recorded the Holly song that ‘Buddy’s Song’ was based on, ‘Peggy Sue Got Married’, in 1968.
For the album’s B-side, Spencer turns over to hippie-dippie folk on ‘One Together’ and traditional pop on ‘Mission Bell’. The former is an original, and the latter is a cover, but at this point, it doesn’t matter. Spencer can’t seem to find his own identity, giving his contributions a hodge-podge factor that the album never really recovers from.
Meanwhile, Kirwan is more focused on integrating his bandmates and bridging the gap between Fleetwood Mac’s blues past and harder-rocking future. Fleetwood Mac had become increasingly popular as a live act in the American rock scene, inspiring longer jams and a more traditionally 1970s sound from Kirwan’s songs. Compared to Spencer’s obvious throwbacks, Kirwan sounds more contemporary to the times, even if his material also has its faults.
‘Station Man’ is largely a meandering rock track that occasionally splits off into unexpected chords and sections. It’s never clear whether those changes are intentional or random, and ‘Station Man’ doesn’t have a noticeable enough hook to make the track memorable. ‘Earl Gray’ is a lovely, if slight, instrumental piece that doesn’t add or detract from the album in any meaningful way.
But when Kirwan does hit, he’s the highlight of Kiln House. ‘Jewel Eyed Judy’ is a cohesive singer-songwriter ballad that transforms into a hard-hitting rock number once every builds up to the chorus. The track is a great showcase for Kirwan’s voice, even if it is hard-panned to the left. ‘Tell Me All The Things You Do’ is a boogie-heavy rock jam that features wah-wah guitar, dynamic twin lead guitar interplay, wild percussion and a solid groove from Fleetwood, plus funky keyboard fills courtesy of John McVie’s wife, Christine Perfect.
Oh yeah – Christine McVie is on this album. She went uncredited on the original release, but her keyboards can best be heard on ‘Tell Me All The Things You Do’. She also illustrated the album’s bucolic cover. The McVie’s had married in 1968, and Christine would leave her blues band Chicken Shack the following year. Under her birth name, McVie released a solo album the same year as Kiln House. She had added keyboards to albums like Mr. Wonderful and Then Play On, but it wouldn’t be until 1971’s Future Games that McVie would be considered an official member.
Whatever you happen to think of when someone says the name “Fleetwood Mac” – whether it’s the massively successful Buckingham-Nicks era, Peter Green’s early leadership, Bob Welch’s jazzy middle period, or anything in between – this version of the band isn’t it. Spencer would depart less than a year later to join the Children of God religious movement, leaving the door open for Bob Welch to take over as the band’s first American member. A new path toward soft rock was being forged, quickly rendering the overt silliness of Kiln House out of step with what Fleetwood Mac was evolving into. While it remains a fun and bizarre time capsule, Kiln House is still one of the more inconsequential albums in the long history of Fleetwood Mac.
