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Originally Posted by louielouie2000
I just don't know about that. The reason why Led Zepplin were so special and made it so big was because they took something very familiar, the blues, and put it into a blender with the then unheard of hard rock. They basically invented heavy metal. It was the innovation that put them on the map, and kept them there. Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac just wasn't that kind of innovative. While Peter was a fine guitar player (I don't think his tone and soul can be matched by anyone), the Green era Mac just didn't break any new ground. There wasn't anything inherently unique about what they were doing... which was essentially regurgitating blues standards. You could argue Led Zepplin did just the same thing... but they fused blues standards with hard rock, and created an entirely new genre. I often listen to Zepplin's albums and wonder just how alien they must have seemed when they first came out. We have to face it... Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac just isn't in that realm. They were just another British blues band (albeit with an exceptional guitar player). By the dawn of the '70s, popular music was moving on from the blues. Unless Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac came up with a way to set themselves apart and break some new ground, their biggest moments were always to be a flash in the pan in the '60s.
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Respectfully, that's very wide of the mark. Fleetwood Mac sold more records in 1969 than the Beatles or the Stones, let alone Led Zeppelin. They were a
lot bigger than Zep when Peter left. By that time Mac had stopped "regurgitating blues standards" and were moving blues-rock a long way down the road towards shaping the kind of hard rock that dominated the 1970s. Zeppelin's albums alien? By what standards? Yes, by the dawn of the 70s popular music had moved away from the blues, and it was bands like Mac that did exactly that. Unless people are still labouring under the impression that Green Manalishi and Man of the World are old blues songs. Saying that the Green-era Mac didn't break any new ground is incredibly inaccurate.
Zeppelin are massively overrated in this concept of inventing heavy metal as well. Mildly heavy folk with a wailing bloke. Deep Purple and Black Sabbath were infinitely more influential than Zeppelin. I never saw Judas Priest cover any Zep songs. And let's not forget that "Whole Lotta Love" was just yet another blues standard tarted up and passed off as something else. Not only that, Fleetwood Mac had already introduced and dropped it from their set.
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Originally Posted by LukeA
Fleetwood Mac as big as Led Zeppelin? haaaaaa. They needed a viable, charismatic/interesting frontman to make that leap, and Peter wasn't/wouldn't have ever have been it. Their potential ceiling (of commercial success) was what Cream achieved. Nothing too legendary/earth shattering.
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As I said, they were bigger before Peter left. Bands don't necessarily require a charismatic frontman to become huge - Eagles etc - and suggesting that Cream were "nothing too legendary" is pretty funny.