Future Games is the fifth studio album by British rock band Fleetwood Mac, released in 1971. It was their first album with American guitarist Bob Welch and the first to feature Christine McVie as a full member. 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.
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.
There is an early version of “Morning Rain” with the title “Start Again”, as recorded in a BBC session on 5 January 1971
140 gram Vinyl
Single sleeve
Review
By the time of this album's release, Jeremy Spencer had been replaced by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. W Ruhlmann – Allmusic.com