"Need Your Love So Bad" b/w "Stop Messin' Round" by Fleetwood Mac (CBS 3139)

This was the single that had just been released when I saw Fleetwood Mac in De Weerwolf in the village of Leersum, The Netherlands on Saturday 16 November, 1968. The gig was supposed to have taken place the night before, but Mac (travelling with two Ford Transits) had been unable to cross the North Sea by ferry due to the bad weather (rain and storm). As I had travelled about 35 kilometers on moped in the same weather with two schoolmates I was heavily disappointed that the Friday gig was cancelled. But we went back the next night by car (having an older pal with a driver's license was quite handy at the time). So the wet suit of the previous night was soon forgotten.
De Weerwolf was a disused farm converted into a kind of youth club / hippie center. Surprisingly the Mac didn't play any of the songs from their first three singles live. On this brief visit they also filmed a TV-clip (where, I don't know) in which they wore the same clothes and played the same instruments as on the show I witnessed: no Gibson Les Pauls here, only Fender Stratocasters! The clip helped make this Mac's first Dutch hit. Imagine: a blues single in the Top 10? Well, Mac had reportedly had a #1 in Norway with "My heart beat like a hammer".
Flipside was a rousin' Peter Green shuffle. I always preferred this take to the one used on the "Mr Wonderful" album which was also used on all subsequent releases up to the 1990s. It wasn't until the 1999 "Complete Blue Horizon Sessions" cd box that the single version became available again.
Rating: *****