Artist: Fleetwood Mac
Title: Future Games
Year Of Release: 2017 (1971-09-03)
Label: Rhino / Warner Bros. Records
Source: HDtracks
Genre: Pop/Rock, Blues-Rock
Quality: FLAC (tracks) [24Bit/192kHz]
Total Time: 42:10
Total Size: 1,7 Gb (Full Scans)


Release of the album: 1971, September, 3 [LP Reprise Records, Cat.# K 44153, UK]
Release of this HDtracks edition: 2017 [Label: Rhino/Warner Bros. Records]
Note: Digitally Remastered
(p) 1971 Reprise Records. Marketed by Rhino Entertainment Company, a Warner Music Group Company.
(c) 1971 Reprise Records.

Credits:

Bass – John McVie
Drums – Mick Fleetwood
Engineer – Martin Rushent
Guitar, Vocals – Bob Welch, Danny Kirwan
Originally Mastered By – Porky (5)
Photography By [Cover Photo] – Sally Jesse
Photography By [Group Photos] – Edmund Shea
Piano, Vocals – Christine McVie
Producer – Fleetwood Mac
Saxophone [Saxes] – John Perfect
Sleeve, Design – John Pasche
Written-By – R. Welch (tracks: 3, 4, 7), C. Perfect (McVie) (tracks: 2, 3, 8), Danny Kirwan (tracks: 1), D. Kirwan (tracks: 3, 5, 6), J. McVie (tracks: 3), M. Fleetwood (tracks: 3)

Tracklist:

01. Woman Of A Thousand Years (05:24)
02. Morning Rain (05:36)
03. What A Shame (02:16)
04. Future Games (08:19)
05. Sands Of Time (07:21)
06. Sometimes (05:25)
07. Lay It All Down (04:29)
08. Show Me A Smile (03:20)

[hr]

"Future Games" is the fifth studio album by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released on 3 September 1971. It was their first album to feature Christine McVie as a full member. This album was also the first of five albums to feature American guitarist Bob Welch . “He was totally different background – R&B, sort of jazzy. He brought his personality,” Mick Fleetwood said of Welch in a 1995 BBC interview. “He was a member of Fleetwood Mac before we’d even played a note.” Without the 1950s leanings of departed guitarist Jeremy Spencer, the band moved further away from blues and closer to the melodic pop sound that would finally break them into America four years later. After the band completed the album and turned it in, the record label said that it would not release an album with only seven songs, and demanded that they record an eighth. "What a Shame" was recorded hastily as a jam to fulfill this request. In 2001, Sincer Records re-released the album on CD. A heavily edited version of "Sands of Time" was an unsuccessful single in the United States and some other territories. However, the album did get airplay on FM radio. The title track "Future Games" was later re-recorded by Bob Welch for his 1979 solo album The Other One. Future Games is featured in the 2000 movie Almost Famous. There is an early version of "Morning Rain" with the title "Start Again", as recorded in a BBC session on 5 January 1971.
~Wikipedia~

By the time of this album's release, Jeremy Spencer had been replaced by Bob Welch and Christine McVie had begun to assert herself more as a singer and songwriter. The result is a distinct move toward folk-rock and pop; Future Games sounds almost nothing like Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. Bob Welch's eight-minute title track, featuring lead guitar from Danny Kirwan, has one of Welch's characteristic haunting melodies, and with pruning and better editing, it could have been a hit. Christine McVie's "Show Me a Smile" is one of her loveliest ballads. Initial popular reaction was mixed: the album didn't sell as well as Kiln House, but it sold better than any of the band's first three albums in the U.S. In the U.K., where the original lineup had been more successful, Future Games didn't chart at all; the same fate that would befall the rest of its albums until the Lindsey Buckingham-Stevie Nicks era.
~Review by William Ruhlmann~