Mr. Wonderful (Fleetwood Mac album)

Background

For their second album, Fleetwood Mac stuck close to the blueprint of their first, though the lineup and recording approach shifted. Instead of plugging directly into the mixing board, the band played live in the studio with microphones on their amplifiers and the PA system. Vocals were run through a Vox amplifier to distort them, and most of the album was cut in mono. A horn section featured throughout, and Christine Perfect, later known as Christine McVie from Chicken Shack, contributed keyboards. Producer Mike Vernon set up baffles and wooden partitions between the instruments to keep the sound from bleeding together.

Peter Green’s songs were taped on April 28, 1968, the same day the group re-recorded their version of “Need Your Love So Bad.” That session included five takes of “Stop Messin’ Round,” plus “Rollin’ Man,” “Love That Burns,” “If You Be My Baby,” and “Lazy Poker Blues.” Green recalled that Jeremy Spencer sat out his tracks. Clifford Davis, listed as C.G. Adams, received writing credits on Green’s songs—a move Green later called a tax dodge in a 1994 interview. A second session handled six Spencer-sung tracks, where Spencer told the horn section to “just blow” and decide their own parts. The entire album took four days to finish. The closing song, “Trying So Hard to Forget,” was a duet between Green on guitar and Duster Bennett on harmonica.

In a June 1968 interview, Green said he wouldn’t be singing only his own material on the record. He later told NME the album would feel closer to their live shows than their debut, that his harmonica would be less prominent, and that other musicians, including Perfect and Stan Webb, would appear on his songs.

Title and cover art

The band originally wanted the title A Good Length, with an "obvious phallic symbol" on the cover, but the label rejected it as too obscene. Udder Sucker was proposed next, and drummer Mick Fleetwood went to his godmother's farm to photograph under a cow, but the label also refused. Original bassist Bob Brunning said he suggested Mr. Wonderful while socializing with Green at a restaurant, mimicking talk-show hosts who eulogized guests as "the truly wonderful". On the cover, Fleetwood posed naked except for a hat and some fig leaves; the foldable cover, photographed by Terence Ibbott, revealed his full body holding a doll and a toy dog, wearing a loincloth of branches. Vernon called Ibbott's ideas "daft" and sometimes "vulgar to the point of being irresponsible", but described his work on the cover as "extraordinary".

Critical reception

Compared to the success of the band's first album, Mr. Wonderful received mixed reviews. Allen Evans of New Musical Express praised its "deep, exciting blues sounds" and noted that the vocals of Green and Spencer had a "smack of the Deep South" on some tracks. Derek Boltwood of Record Mirror wrote that the songs were "all recognizably Fleetwood Mac" despite the saxophone section, describing "Lazy Poker Blues" as not as lazy as its title and "Need Your Love Tonight" as "psychedelic-Hawaiian blues". Melody Maker dismissed the album as "unadventurous" and inferior to work by contemporaries like Ten Years After and Cream. Retrospectively, Richie Unterberger of AllMusic called it "a disappointment", finding Spencer's creative limits exposed and Green's material below his other work. Mojo characterized the album as a "misfire" lacking the spark of singles like "Albatross" and "Man Of The World". Tom Pinnock of Uncut described it as "lacking in inspiration" and "old-fashioned", more tied to mid-1960s industry practices than progressive blues.