Quote:
Originally posted by SteveMacD
Okay, here's my speculation:
I think the legend has been overstated. Musically, Mick, John, Danny, and Christine could have toured as a four piece. Christine did it with Chicken Shack for years, and the Mac, to my ears, only used two guitarists at one time when they had three guitar players. So, being a quartet wouldn't have been so unusual.
However, I don't think Danny and Christine had enough material ready to go on as a four piece. Neither had a lot of non-blues material out at the time, and the band was trying to break away from the blues. What they needed more than an extra musician was a way to fill time. So, they asked Peter, and he agreed on the condition that HIS contributions to the set would be jams based around "Black Magic Woman."
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That makes a lot of sense to me. It's just hard for me to believe that their ENTIRE show would have been jamming.
By the way, I listened this weekend to side 2 of the old "Merely a Portmanteau" album, and I believe it's from a '71 show with Peter and Nigel ("The Nigel Factor" is unmistakable). I'm not 100% sure that it's not the same show as the San Bernadino disc though - I need to listen & compare the two again. The "Portmanteau" album contains only "Station Man" and "Tell Me All the Things You Do".