"Tell Me All the Things You Do" | |
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Song by Fleetwood Mac | |
from the album Kiln House | |
B-side | "This Is the Rock" |
Recorded | 1970 |
Studio | De Lane Lea, London |
Length | 4:10 |
Label | Reprise |
Songwriter(s) | |
Producer(s) | Fleetwood Mac |
"Tell Me All the Things You Do" is a song by the British rock group Fleetwood Mac. It was written by Danny Kirwan and released as the second track from their 1970 Kiln House album. In France and the Netherlands, the song was also released as a single, with "This Is the Rock" serving as its B-side. [1] [2]
"Tell Me All the Things You Do" is largely an instrumental composition with minimal lyrics. The song also features some cowbell playing by Fleetwood and uncredited piano contributions from Christine McVie, who had yet to become an official member of the band at the time of the song's recording. [3] The band played the song live starting in the early 70s and it also appeared on a few setlists in 1977. [4] A live recording from when Spencer was still in the band was included on the Madison Blues album. [5]
The band did not perform the song again until their An Evening with Fleetwood Mac Tour in 2018–2019. [4] Mike Campbell, who joined the band in 2018 as one of the replacements for Lindsey Buckingham, had suggested the song's inclusion in the setlist. [3] Fleetwood Mac continued to perform the song through 2019, but they dropped it from the set later in the tour in part due to the audience's general unfamiliarity with the song. [3] [6]
In his review of Kiln House, J.R. Young wrote in Rolling Stone that listeners who purchased the album would "find [themselves] humming 'Tell Me All the Things You Do' for the next few months." [7] Along with "Station Man", Beat Instrumental cited "Tell Me All The Things You Do" as a successful demonstration of the band's "multi-guitar work". [8] Nick Logan of NME labelled "Tell Me All The Things You Do " as Kirwan's best song on the album. He found "a shade" of Peter Green in some of Kirwan's playing but also thought that the guitar playing to be "distinctive" and "unmistakably his own". [9]
Alexis Petridis of The Guardian felt that the song "pack[ed] enough muscular riffs into four minutes" and demonstrated the band's ability to emulate band's like Led Zeppelin. [10] Bruce Eder described the song as "hard-rocking" in his Kiln House review for AllMusic. [11] In Mojo Mark Blake characterised "Tell Me All the Things You Do" as a "great cheery Kirwan track [that] shone through" and said that it was a "brisk guitar groover embellished by uncredited new recruit Christine McVie's piano." [12]