Fleetwood mick / fleetwood mac

British Blues mentor’s star-strewn first decade, over four discs...

This week’s new issue of Uncut features another 50 Great Lost Albums – those that are unavailable new or as legal downloads right now – chosen by the mag’s readers. Consequently, I thought it’d be useful to put our original Top 50 online, as they appeared in issue 156 of Uncut (Neil Young was on the cover, narrowing it down a little).

We count down from 100 to 51...

Fleetwood Mac man's punchy pop-rock manifesto

Maybe it’s all the Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac in the office these past few weeks, but there’s a lot of “Tusk” in the air at Club Uncut tonight. The gated tribal rumbles, the lush, clenched-teeth harmonies, the general air of progressive pop.

Residual indie prejudices can be tough to shake off and, for me, one lingered longer than most: a profound distrust of Fleetwood Mac. I read all the essays about them – and especially about Lindsey Buckingham – where they were extolled as great emotional confessors and discreet musical radicals. But their records always seemed to me the epitome of hollow decadence, redolent of a certain air-conditioned, blow-dried Hollywood vulgarity, the criticism of which is now every bit as clichéd as the original material. Not for the first time, of course, I was wrong.

OK, so now it’s 101 degrees and the crowd is crawling from patch of shade to tented shelter, the mass influx of Hollywood types and music biz bigwigs (them that’s left!) arriving in limos when the sun goes down.

Expanded, long-overdue remasters from the prime proponent of song-noir

Return of the Mac—another crazy episode in the longest-running soap opera in rock'n'roll