Random runners-up is back! Following on from my latest recap, let’s take a break from analysing all those chart-toppers, and lavish some attention on those records that fell at the final hurdle: #2.
These records are genuinely chosen at random (thank you random.org), and this time the generator has kindly thrown up a chart-topper from each of the five decades we’ve covered so far. We’ll be going back as far as 1955, and as close to this blog’s ‘present day’ as 1996. But first up, it’s the sixties.
The generator has also thrown up three acts who we’ve already met in pole position. Fleetwood Mac had scored their only UK number one in January 1969, with the atmospheric instrumental ‘Albatross’.
‘Man of the World’, by Fleetwood Mac
#2 for 1 week, from 28th May – 4th June 1969 (behind ‘Get Back’)
They followed that up with a couple of #2s, the first of which was ‘Man of the World’. It starts off as a simple acoustic number, with some echoey guitar flourishes, and some nice echoes back to ‘Albatross’ in the cymbal crashes and the rhythmic bass. Peter Green, then the band’s main singer and songwriter, mournfully drawls: I could tell you about my life, They say I’m a man of the world… There’s no one I’d rather be… Before howling: But I just wish I’d never been born…
Legend has it that it was these lyrics that first alerted his bandmates to the fact that Green might not have been mentally okay. Just a year later he left the band. It’s a well-worn topic, how fame and fortune don’t always lead to health and happiness, but seldom has it been spelled out as beautifully as on ‘Man of the World’. After a wonderful bluesy middle-eight about how a ‘good woman’ might help, it ends with a murmured And I wish I was in love…
When I was very young, I had a ‘Best of the Sixties’ cassette compilation. It was cheap, so it didn’t have the huge hits on it; but it had this. And so I knew ‘Man of the World’ long before I’d ever heard ‘Don’t Stop’, or ‘Little Lies’. Which is perhaps fitting, because it is this original incarnation of Fleetwood Mac that had the most UK singles chart success: a chart-topper, and two number twos. They would have to wait almost two decades for their next biggest hit: a #4 for ‘Everywhere’ in 1987.
By then, of course, and for most of their huge seventies successes, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie – whose surnames were combined to create the band’s name – were the two remaining original members. Peter Green meanwhile, struggled with his mental health throughout the seventies and eighties, but was sporadically involved in the music business, and with the other members of Fleetwood Mac. He joined the band for its induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, and died in 2020.
Tomorrow we have a seventies #2…
The UK Number Ones Blog 
System having trouble loading my comment again!
Now that’s what I call a true classic – you must have guessed this would be right up my street. The Mac have been staggeringly successful since their mid-1970s re-invention, but the Anglo-American band never unleashed anything quite so starkly poignant as this confessional soul-bearing tune. I’ve read some comments online calling this one of the saddest songs ever. I can just remember seeing them performing this on Top of the Pops as a new release, and it is so unornamented that they could probably have brought their amps into the studio and played it 100% live. Now I think back to how incongruous a lyric like this must have seemed for the masses in the TV studio audience who were there basically to see their idols and dance to the hits of the day. P.S. My screen says ‘video not available’. Try here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GPR848mhIs
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Your comment got through in the end! And thanks, I’ve replaced the video in the post for the one you suggested.
I can see why this is seen as the saddest song ever. It’s not overwrought, just plain and honest. And yes, a very odd sight on TOTP, and high up in the singles charts.
Sadly, the video isn’t available here in the UK, but this one works:
I bought the single at the time. Loved it then and always have: still in my all time top three singles.
Oh wow, high praise! Go on then…. what are the other two??
Ps. thanks for the heads-up with the video. I’ve replaced it in the post.
I hope the replacement works for others!
Losing any credibility I might have with this one, but my #3 is Words, by the Bee Gees. MOTW is my #2, and still my favourite after all these years is Alone Again Or, by Love. I bought all three as singles, back in the day.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one, by Love. I’ll check it out!
It’s the opening track on their classic album, Forever Changes. There was a poor cover by, I think, The Damned.
While I think it’s fair to say Fleetwood Mac are best known for their “classic period,” most notably “Rumours”, I find there’s definitely way more to the picture. It’s almost like looking at three distinct groups: The Peter Green era band, the aforementioned classic Mac and the period in-between.
The title “Man of the World” vaguely sounded familiar, but I didn’t recognize the actual song. It’s perhaps not as memorable as “Albatross” but still a nice early track!
Yes, I find it very interesting that it was Fleetwood Mac’s first era that had the most success on the UK charts (singles, that is; Rumours is obviously one of the biggest selling albums of all time, but the songs from it didn’t even break the Top 20…)
Wow, I didn’t realize the comparatively meager performance of the “Rumours” singles in the U.K. That’s really interesting and somewhat perplexing, given the album topped the British albums charts and went 15x platinum there!
Yes, it’s strange, right? ‘Dreams’ was the highest, at #24. I suppose at that time it was common for a band to be a ‘singles’ or an ‘albums’ act… Pink Floyd and Led Zep have very few chart hits either, but then they rarely even released singles.
I love this…many times I like the #2 better than #1… Fleetwood Mac has two sets of fans I believe. Yes there are crossovers but many people I know either A: Love the Green period and really pour the hate on the pop period or B: Love the pop period and pretend the other era didn’t happen…or they just ignore it.
I am a crossover but…I’m beginning to reallly like the Green era more because since I’ve been blogging…I’ve found out more about that period.
I’ve never really gotten into Fleetwood Mac… My parents used to play them in the car when I was a kid, and I used to get bored of it. The two songs that stood out to me at that time though were ‘Little Lies’, and this one (two completely different sounding songs, from either end of their long career…)
I’m so burnt out on their pop career that it’s hard to listen to a song. Maybe that is the reason I’m liking the Green stuff.
The pop /rock stuff is fine, but possibly over-familiar as a result of the extraordinary success of ‘Rumours’ – ‘how can we miss you when you never ago away?’ The blues era FM, up to 1970 and ‘The Green Manalishi’, was almost another group entirely. How prescient was it that they named themselves after the rhythm section, the two members who stayed and stayed and stayed? There was a brief period, late 70s, when a lot of people were quite dismissive of the ‘Rumours’ line-up as just another slick pop/soft rock outfit who shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath as the Peter Green-led quintet. Even if they sold far more albums…although bizarrely none of the singles charted anywhere close to the dizzy heights of ‘Albatross’, and the two singles that followed.
It’s a very sad ballad that I liked at the time, poor Peter had a terrible time of it. It’s more powerful when you know what’s behind it, I think. Mac the Eternal Era took a while to register in the UK, soft rock bubbled under the UK singles charts but never really hit big until Chicago grabbed a one-off monster followed by Rumours. Airplay was modest, Punk and disco were happening, I Feel Love arrived like a bomb on the sound of music with synths, and Fleetwood Mac just sounded so old fashioned on radio in comparison. It was word of mouth that sold Rumours – by College room-mate played it a lot so much I ended up buying it too, it really was only Dreams that got substantial airplay, but on the back of the album grabbing an audience Tusk became a top 10 hit in 1979 as a single. I know I rushed to buy it!
Mentions of Words, nothing wrong with Bee Gees, no worries here! – I was mad on World, Massachussets, Gotta get A Message, First Of May, Saved By The Bell, I Started A Joke, and others when I was 9/10/11 years old, top notch ballad drama all. I also suggest Love’s Alone Again Or, it’s a classic non-hit – The Damned did a great hit cover in ’87, but the original remains awesome.