Thoughts on a Grey Day

Long loved this album title and record cover (the shot was taken by John McVie) , but never listened to the music until now.

The image has a powerful English-nostalgia effect, memories of walking to school through fog or mist... 

But it could easily have been taken in California

The fog in the Bay Area is something else. I once approached San Francisco in a taxi from the airport, which is further inland. As we drove along, I could see tentacular plumes of low-lying mist  creeping up the creek beds - the fog was able to extend further inland on lower ground than the main body of its miasma could reach. An eerie sight - the fog seemed to be advancing sinisterly, like a formless army of  stealthy occupation.

It's also been misty morned here in LA recently. Which I've noticed because I seem to be waking up at 5.30 AM or 6 AM no matter when I go to bed. This happens in old age, right?

The record? Well, it's post-Peter Green and pre-Buckingham/Nicks, the inbetweeny years, the hitless years (Green-era FMac actually had way bigger UK hit singles than the later, poppier phase). So it's got this kind of amiable, washed-out, bluesy quality, not unlike Climax Blues Band. 

Actually what it reminds me of is Wishbone Ash - pleasant but inessential. 

Perhaps the thematic of misty greyness in the title and image was suggested by the music's indistinction.

I say "hitless" - but until the Buckingham/Nicks era this was the only Fleetwood Mac record to sell a million in America. I guess it's very Frampton-like blandness helped on FM radio.

However there is the remarkable track at the very end. 

 

from Fleetwood Mac wiki: 

Aileen Scarrott, credited as Mrs Scarrott, was a resident of Headley in Hampshire where Fleetwood Mac lived between 1971 and 1974. She was featured reciting her poem Thoughts On a Grey Day on the band's 1972 album Bare Trees.

She was born Aileen Katie Mary Huggett in 1904 at Eastbourne in Sussex. At the time of the recording she was married to Harry Scarrott, the third marriage for both of them. Harry had lived in Headley for at least forty years beforehand. Her previous marriages were to Alfred F. Cager at Brighton in 1935 and Charles E. Smith at Willesden, London in 1947.

She died in 1984 at Cannock Chase in Staffordshire.

The recording of Ms. Scarrot's poem "Thoughts On A Grey Day" that was used for the Bare Trees album was actually read by Mick Fleetwood who was trying to sound like a sweet old lady.

I wonder if that last bit of contradicting info is really true? If so, it's a bloody good impersonation of a dear frail old lady. 

Some other versions of the cover have a faint mauve tinge to them

Ah, there's a back cover with a similar sort of wintry image