Fleetwood Mac - Stop Messin' Round ( S1.3 )

 (Fleetwood later remarked: "Shuffles ... I'm sick to death of fuckin' shuffles!")

The most prominent feature of "Stop Messin' Round" is Green's guitar work: only two 12-bar verses have vocals, the remaining four (album version) are devoted to Green's guitar soloing. Author Douglas J. Noble points out that Green's early blues guitar style reflects "a fluid approach to phrasing", where his notes are slightly behind or ahead of the beat. He adds "Green made great use of quarter tone bent notes", which is a feature of blues guitarists, such as B.B. King, to whom he was often compared. Noble's transcription shows a tempo of 132 beats per minute (or allegro) in the key of C, which he describes as "a straight-forward medium tempo shuffle blues". Green also uses both a C blues scale and C pentatonic major scale.

Releases

In mid-1968 in the UK, Blue Horizon released the 2:38 fifth take of "Stop Messin' Around" as the B-side to "Need Your Love So Bad", which was recorded during the same sessions. The single reached number 31 on the UK Singles Chart on 23 July 1968. Epic Records issued the single in the US, but it did not reach the record charts. Subsequently, the shorter 2:18 fourth take of the song was added to Fleetwood Mac's second British album, Mr. Wonderful (1968) and their second American album, English Rose (1969).

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