ON THIS DAY IN 1969 - PETER GREEN RECORDED A MASTURBATION SONG ABOUT MICK FLEETWOOD WITH A REAL RATTLESNAKE ON THE TAPE

ON THIS DAY IN 1969, Fleetwood Mac released Then Play On — carrying a Peter Green song about masturbation, inspired by drummer Mick Fleetwood and completed with the sound of a real rattlesnake. 🐍

The track was “Rattlesnake Shake,” one of the album’s toughest blues-rock performances. Beneath its grinding guitar riff and pounding rhythm was an unmistakably mischievous idea: the song introduces a man named Mick who performs the title move whenever he is without female company. 🎸

Even before the album appeared, the subject was being handled carefully. A contemporary NME report described it only as concerning a male function that polite society preferred not to discuss. The suggestive language preserved the joke without explaining it outright. 🤫

Peter Green eventually removed any remaining ambiguity. In a 1999 question-and-answer session, he identified “Rattlesnake Shake” as a song about masturbation and said Mick Fleetwood had probably inspired it. Fleetwood later confirmed the interpretation himself, acknowledging that he was the man immortalized in Green’s joke. 🥁

Then there was the reptile.

Green revealed that Fleetwood Mac used a tape recording of an actual rattlesnake for the track’s snake-like sound effect. The detail turned a cheeky lyrical metaphor into something listeners could literally hear slithering through the production. 🎛️🐍

What emerged was more than an inside joke. “Rattlesnake Shake” wrapped bawdy humor, a bandmate’s name and an authentic animal recording inside a fierce piece of British blues rock.

A wink, a rattle and a brutal groove: sometimes rock history leaves its strangest fingerprints in plain hearing. 🔥

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