One question springs immediately to mind upon listening to our next #1: This is Fleetwood Mac? The Fleetwood Mac? The ‘Don’t Stop’, ‘Go Your Own Way’, ‘Little Lies’… Fleetwood Mac? Well yes, yes, and yes.
Albatross, by Fleetwood Mac (their 1st and only #1)
1 week, from 29th January – 5th February 1969
And that’s not the only strange thing about this record. In fact, pretty much everything about this record is strange. It is one of the least ‘number one’ sounding number one records ever. It’s a musical interlude, the background soundtrack to an advert for roast lamb, the music played in a wellness spa… It’s ‘Chillout – Vol I’, three decades early.
That’s not to say it’s bad. I like it. It’s not the sort of thing I usually like; but I do. It’s a song called ‘Albatross’, which sounds exactly like an albatross soaring over the ocean. The insistent, see-saw bass is the bird’s wings, the guitar its call, and the cymbals the waves crashing below… As an instrumental it works. It doesn’t need lyrics. Lyrics might, and I’m going to contradict everything I’ve ever written about instrumental records here… Lyrics might have ruined it.
Placing this in context, in the late sixties, it is definitely the sort of record that you’d slip on before lighting up your bong and settling down to stare at a magic-eye picture. So, in some ways it’s a random January chart-topper; in other ways it makes complete sense for it to have hit #1 when it did.
What makes less sense is that this record will be Fleetwood Mac’s sole UK #1 single. One of the biggest bands of the seventies and eighties scored their one week at the top in 1969. In truth, they enjoyed far more singles chart success in the States than in their homeland. 1969 was actually their best year in the UK – one number one and a couple of number twos. Their huge hits from ‘Rumours’: ‘Dreams’, ‘Don’t Stop’ and ‘Go Your Own Way’ were huge hits only in America. Over the Atlantic none of them broke the Top 20.
Having said that, this Fleetwood Mac are a very different Fleetwood Mac to the one that everyone thinks of. Christine McVie would join in the early seventies, Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham in the middle of that decade. Only Mick Fleetwood and John McVie were around for ‘Albatross’, when they were a much blues-ier band.
In my mind, Fleetwood Mac will be forever linked with The Moody Blues, for the simple reason that my parents would play them – a lot – during long car journeys, and my heart would always sink when the tape came out. The Beatles, The Stones, The Eagles or ABBA? No problem. Simon and Garfunkel? Tolerable. The Moody Blues or Fleetwood Mac? Time to get my Walkman out. I’ve grown to like the Mac in old age more than I have The Moody Blues. But still, when I hear the synth intro to ‘Little Lies’ I instinctively shudder. Perhaps if the ‘Greatest Hits’ my parents owned had included their sixties hits, and their one and only chart-topper, I might have been won over much earlier…
The UK Number Ones Blog 
I love this song…but it’s hard to believe it was number 1 and not the Rumors songs… I like the echo they used…it has a lot of breathing room in the song.
Its a very atmospheric song, and really not the usual number one material… It really paints a picture, I think
Ok. That’s just weird. I had heard that Mac’s sound had changed considerably after the 60s but…wow. Big difference later on.
Reminds me of early Journey. Journey had a much different sound compared to the Perry days. Bad Company’s sound changed, too, when Paul Rodgers left.
Reminds me a bit of T Rex too, who were very folky before going glam.
It wasn’t long ago that you did a piece on the BeeGees. Another example of sound change & direction.
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Ah, here comes the sun king. Seriously, I’m surprised Fleetwood Mac didn’t sue the Beatles for royalties because “Sun King” is basically this song with lyrics and vocals. I guess for them it must have been a compliment for the biggest band in the universe “ripping off” their song.
Weird that this is their only No. 1 in the UK. When you think of Fleetwood Mac, this is definitely not the song you think of. I think of Rumours, the self-titled white album, even Mirage or Tango in the Night. But it’s good. It’s nice.
It’s very nice. Like you say, it’s not what you think of when Fleetwood Mac come up. In fact, though the history of the band is pretty fuzzy in my mind, I believe this was long before Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, and Lindsay Buckingham joined to make the ‘classic’ 70s-90s line up. So it isn’t really ‘Fleetwood Mac’ at all…
Rating: 4/5
Wow, hah, John Lennon totally ripped off this song for “Sun King” for the Abbey Road medley. The first 30 seconds of this song, I was immediately taken aback by the similarity. I guess Fleetwood Mac never cared. It’s a very warm and pleasant sounding song. Great background music.
I agree with all the other commenters that this is such a bizarre choice for a Fleetwood Mac chart-topper. Most people would be befuddled to learn that this was their sole UK No. 1. I was surprised to also learn that Rumours’ singles never even made it to the Top 10 in the UK whereas all of them were Top 10 in the US, even though the album itself went No. 1 and was multi-platinum.
Yes, it is a mystery as to why the Rumours singles didn’t do so well… Though the mid-late seventies was probably the peak of the album-acts: the Eagles, Meat Loaf and Fleetwood Mac all released some of the biggest selling albums of all time without making much of an impact on the singles chart
Rumours’ lack of success on the UK singles market is really surprising, given that it’s the 11th best-selling album in the UK. You would think that at least one single would’ve been a Top 10 hit, but none of them even reached the Top 20. Crazy.
Meat Loaf is kinda not surprising. Bat Out of Hell is legit rock opera – it’s a Springsteen album revved up to 11 and on steroids. All the songs on that album are a bit too long for UK radio. In the US, that’s fine because FM radio played longer tracks and even AM radio was branching out into more longer songs. But in the 70s, I’m pretty sure rock radio wasn’t really a thing in the UK.
I’m actually surprised the Eagles have multi-platinum success in the UK. I never thought you Brits would be that into them given they are such an American entity – I’m Australian and the Eagles were and remain pretty damn big down under, but were and continue to be astromically more popular in US/CAN (they’ve sold 150-200 million records and most of those sales come from the States – but Hotel California is 6x Platinum in the UK and Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 is Platinum. And most of their albums went at least Gold in the UK.