The news came by Internet, and then passed on by voice. Cecelia told me a great is gone. So, teardrops will fall. I am here today to mourn a most soulful and heartfelt musical talent.
That is because Peter Green is dead at 73. I count him as a giant of the Blues. Certainly, among people from across the Atlantic, he was one of the bravest and brightest to contribute to the Blues.
Green was the founder of what was and is now called “Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac” – convenient naming as the eventual, successful, and very Californian Fleetwood Mac bore slight resemblance to Green’s blues bashing open-for-anything original. That would be the late 1960s.
Green and cohorts John McVie, Mick Fleetwood and Jeremy Spenser came out of the London blues scene of 1967 somewhat in the wake of Cream. Previously, Green had replaced Eric Clapton in John Mayall’s Blues Breakers, and had proved replacing “God” was possible, as Mayall’s band missed not a beat with Peter Green on guitar. In a matter of months Green went on to form Fleetwood Mac, being joined by Blues Breaker mates McVie and Fleetwood.
The band’s first album and second albums on Blue Horizon were very determined blues outings – punctuated by Jeremy Spenser’s many slide homages to Elmore James. Green took turns at the Elmore James legacy too with a version of Shake Your Money Maker that out shook Elmore and Mike Bloomfield, among others. Green had the musician’s soul and was happy to be part of a band, and not a blooming virtuoso.
Fleetwood Mac’s direction then was different than the direction taken by Clapton and Cream. Different as well from Led Zepplin, the descendant of the defunct Yardbirds. And different as well than the lastest '60s incarnation of the original London blues phenom, the Rolling Stones. Fleetwood Mac spent a lot longer time purely in blues. The basic band backed Eddie Boyd and other true blues stars, creating a sympathetic accompaniment of the highest order.
A musician friend who was also a friend of Eddie Boyd’s assures me Boyd had the highest respect for Peter Green. For his part, the friend shares this: Peter Green played with soul and heart.
But, while Fleetwood Mac never went the power trio route Cream carried forward, although like most British bands in that vaunted era it finally did (1969) head toward the new music called rock, much Green did here proved to be special.
Commercial success was a sparse for Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, which had one top UK single in Albatros, a modern twist on Santo and Johnny’s “Sleepwalk” that paired Green’s playing with Danny Kirwin, a very young third guitarist that joined the band in 1968. Perhaps the biggest success was by way of Santana’s cover Green’s Black Magic Woman. But commercial appeal was seldom upfront; Green fully absorbed the ‘60s spirit, and was not really into "material orthodoxy".
Like competitors Humble Pie, Savoy Brown and Jethro Tull, the band began to ply the American concert circuit. Here it found more success than it had on vinyl. Beside Santana, the band influenced ZZ Top, J.Geils, Aerosmith and others, and became the secret favorite for many blues and rock fans throughout the world.
ii.
He was shy of game, carried the counterculture flame, and found guitarists and bandmates with which to share the spotlight. In “Then Play On” the group entered the experimental realm, while generally maintaining a high-energy profile. It found new blues.
The “Then Play On” record was big on Milwaukee WTOZ (Wauwatosa) and the three-guitar sound was fantastic. Playing the Fillmore West, the Boston Tea Party, the Electric Circus and so on, they honed a helleva sound. Oh, well. And excuse me for high-horsing here but I see as many similarities in their rock incarnation with the Grateful Dead and Velvet Underground, not to mention the more obvious similarities with Santana and the Allman Bros.
They could be spotty, reports indicate, but at their best they were the best. They created a big drone and researched it crannies and nookies. Through all time the Mick Fleetwood-John McVie rhythm section has very few peers. But in the era of Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac it was at the service of Green’s Blue Genius.
Band was capable of razor’s edge improvisation as well as meditative acoustics. The Beatles were looking to sign them to Apple Records and admitted that they were looking for a Fleetwood Mac sound in part of Abbey Road. Green held utopian idealism and became conflicted about the bands direction, all the while taking LSD.
In 1967 Green and company recorded their last blues outing at Chess Records Studio in Chicago with S.P Leary, Otis, Spann, Buddy Guy and other blues stalwarts. A European tour that same year led to a terrible downfall. When they reached Munich, Peter was whisked away by some trendy partying Euros that the others in the band called ‘the German Jet Set.” A multiday, mad party acid trip followed from which Green did not fully return. He left the band. In coming months and years guitarists Kirwin and Spenser went through somewhat different but similar spinouts, which eventually led to a US-based reformulated Hall of Fame Fleetwood Mac (the band nobly and rightly invited Green to join them in the Hall induction.
That the Mac guitarists, Green most pointedly, so drastically crashed at the end of the 60s is not too surprising when you look at the Youtube video posted here. That is, the appearance on Playboy After Dark. It is a bit like Caligula meets Velveeta. Includes Hugh Hefner, Barbi Benton, Don Adams and Arte Johnson (as Yorik in search of a joke). Peter, with his show biz winks, seems to be enjoying the ride.
The lyrics of Green’s composition give a view into his turmoil.
Green Manalishi
Fleetwood Mac
Now, when the day goes to sleep
And the full moon looks
The night is so black that the darkness cooks
Don't you come creepin' around
Makin' me do things I don't wanna do
Can't believe that you need my love so bad
Come sneakin' around tryin' to drive me mad
Bustin' in on my dreams
Makin' me see things I don't wanna see
'Cause you're da Green Manalishi with the two prong crown
All my tryin' is up, all your bringin' is down
Just takin' my love then slippin' away
Leavin' me here just tryin' to keep from followin' you.
Green developed schizophrenia, and went back to his parent’s home. He spent the rest of his life far from the limelight. He was committed, and the drugs the shrinks and authorities prescribed were not an improvement on the LSD. But he found a balance in the end, enjoying fishing and other hobbies, although he just occasionally played music on par with his past, and the few interviews we have show him to be pretty befuddled. As half of the remaining Who said at a Green tribute: “He was something of a sad story.”
This was part of the hard learning that went with living. There was a brief utopia - then there was unexpected, painful debris.
For a period, he went back to blues and toured with pub rockers that formed The Splinter Group. I was fortunate enough to see him in Boston at the Roxy in the old Bradford hotel (where thanks to Blues Drum Guru Paul DeMark I had first met Hubert Sumlin). It was a full band, and Green played sparingly at the start. It was hard to pick him out among the crew, but finally it was clear that the Charles Laughton figure in the colorful bukharan cap was Peter Green. As the evening proceeded, he played with increasing intensity. One number, Don Nix’s Im Going Down made me feel as tho he was Samson in a palace and the music could bring down the hotel upon us. So: heavy stuff.
Strange to admit, I wasn’t immediately a fan of Fleetwood Mac back in the late ‘60s. But over time Green and the band took a place in my pantheon along with Paul Butterfield and Canned Heat, and the Grateful Dead and Velvet Underground – as odd as that may sound.
When their records first appeared stateside, I was studying in the atelier called Soulville – a record store where beat Norman Wilde ensured I was discovering the original bluesmen of Chicago – Howlin Wolf, Jimmy Reed, Elmore James, others. It was the year or two before that we’d started buying Yardbirds, Rolling Stones, Blues Project, Paul Butterfield, Canned Heat, Taj Mahal there, and now under Norman’s direction we were going to those group’s sources. I was digging the font, and it was then over many years that I learned the legend of Peter Green.
In February 2020, just before COVID-19 closed the opera and other music halls and houses, Mick Fleetwood successfully put on a stellar rock tribute to Peter Green. Said Fleetwood:
“I wanted people to know that I did not form this band — Peter Green did,” Fleetwood says. “And I wanted to celebrate those early years of Fleetwood Mac, which started this massive ball that went down the road over the last 50 years.”
More than many, Fleetwood laments “the left turn” that took Green out. But he noted that Green was at peace in his life, and had “no ego.”
It is no easier to identify what made Green’s guitar so different than it is to understand what caused him to go off course. But writing in Rolling Stone Rob Sheffield describes it pointedly in Green’s own words:
The English blues scene was fixated on technical dexterity, but Green had a deep contempt for show-offs. As he sneered, “Good luck to the Snoggley Blues Band who are growing very popular now in the white blues world with a rhythm guitarist who can play 7,541 notes a minute.”
That wasn’t his style — he was all about emotion. “Sumlin and Wolf had it,” Green told Mojo in 1996. “The guitarists who copied them old black players were doing an interpretation, but couldn’t get to the feeling behind it. It was too deep, too painful if you do it right. It got too deep for me anyway. It ended up hurting my soul so I started to make up stories instead.” - Jack Vaughan
Playboy After Dark-Caligula meets Velveeta. W Hugh, Barbi and Arte
The discussion of the European tour starts at about the 3:49 point. And gets taken down for copyright infringement not for the first time.
Links:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/mick-fleetwood-peter-green-tribute-show-lindsey-buckingham-938279/ Green tribute
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53539989?fbclid=IwAR3ifqdp2oJHMLi5q95v_NA7l9O5XanZTJ9pLTyDFvD7z06SA5UdT8XZWIQ BBC obit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRu7Pt42x6Y teaparty mélange
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjOGaDseKgw&list=RDxov_wYtCwOI&index=6 santo and johnny tribute
Some Faves:
I need Your love so bad
My heart beat like a hammer
Homework
Oh Well Pt 1 and 2 - Then Play On
Rattlesnake Shake - Then Play On
Coming Your Way - Then Play On
Albatros
You got to reap just what you sow - w Eddie Boyd
October Jam #1 – Boston Tea Party (Men of the World)
Madison Blues -Blues Jam in Chicago (J.T. Brown, S.P. Leary, Others)
Steady Rolling Man – with the Splinter Group
Fresh shrimp blues – with the splinter Group
He was shy of game, carried the counterculture flame, and found guitarists and bandmates with which to share the spotlight. In “Then Play On” the group entered the experimental realm, while generally maintaining a high-energy profile. It found new blues.
The “Then Play On” record was big on Milwaukee WTOZ (Wauwatosa) and the three-guitar sound was fantastic. Playing the Fillmore West, the Boston Tea Party, the Electric Circus and so on, they honed a helleva sound. Oh, well. And excuse me for high-horsing here but I see as many similarities in their rock incarnation with the Grateful Dead and Velvet Underground, not to mention the more obvious similarities with Santana and the Allman Bros.
They could be spotty, reports indicate, but at their best they were the best. They created a big drone and researched it crannies and nookies. Through all time the Mick Fleetwood-John McVie rhythm section has very few peers. But in the era of Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac it was at the service of Green’s Blue Genius.
Band was capable of razor’s edge improvisation as well as meditative acoustics. The Beatles were looking to sign them to Apple Records and admitted that they were looking for a Fleetwood Mac sound in part of Abbey Road. Green held utopian idealism and became conflicted about the bands direction, all the while taking LSD.
In 1967 Green and company recorded their last blues outing at Chess Records Studio in Chicago with S.P Leary, Otis, Spann, Buddy Guy and other blues stalwarts. A European tour that same year led to a terrible downfall. When they reached Munich, Peter was whisked away by some trendy partying Euros that the others in the band called ‘the German Jet Set.” A multiday, mad party acid trip followed from which Green did not fully return. He left the band. In coming months and years guitarists Kirwin and Spenser went through somewhat different but similar spinouts, which eventually led to a US-based reformulated Hall of Fame Fleetwood Mac (the band nobly and rightly invited Green to join them in the Hall induction.
That the Mac guitarists, Green most pointedly, so drastically crashed at the end of the 60s is not too surprising when you look at the Youtube video posted here. That is, the appearance on Playboy After Dark. It is a bit like Caligula meets Velveeta. Includes Hugh Hefner, Barbi Benton, Don Adams and Arte Johnson (as Yorik in search of a joke). Peter, with his show biz winks, seems to be enjoying the ride.
The lyrics of Green’s composition give a view into his turmoil.
Green Manalishi
Fleetwood Mac
Now, when the day goes to sleep
And the full moon looks
The night is so black that the darkness cooks
Don't you come creepin' around
Makin' me do things I don't wanna do
Can't believe that you need my love so bad
Come sneakin' around tryin' to drive me mad
Bustin' in on my dreams
Makin' me see things I don't wanna see
'Cause you're da Green Manalishi with the two prong crown
All my tryin' is up, all your bringin' is down
Just takin' my love then slippin' away
Leavin' me here just tryin' to keep from followin' you.
Green developed schizophrenia, and went back to his parent’s home. He spent the rest of his life far from the limelight. He was committed, and the drugs the shrinks and authorities prescribed were not an improvement on the LSD. But he found a balance in the end, enjoying fishing and other hobbies, although he just occasionally played music on par with his past, and the few interviews we have show him to be pretty befuddled. As half of the remaining Who said at a Green tribute: “He was something of a sad story.”
This was part of the hard learning that went with living. There was a brief utopia - then there was unexpected, painful debris.
For a period, he went back to blues and toured with pub rockers that formed The Splinter Group. I was fortunate enough to see him in Boston at the Roxy in the old Bradford hotel (where thanks to Blues Drum Guru Paul DeMark I had first met Hubert Sumlin). It was a full band, and Green played sparingly at the start. It was hard to pick him out among the crew, but finally it was clear that the Charles Laughton figure in the colorful bukharan cap was Peter Green. As the evening proceeded, he played with increasing intensity. One number, Don Nix’s Im Going Down made me feel as tho he was Samson in a palace and the music could bring down the hotel upon us. So: heavy stuff.
Strange to admit, I wasn’t immediately a fan of Fleetwood Mac back in the late ‘60s. But over time Green and the band took a place in my pantheon along with Paul Butterfield and Canned Heat, and the Grateful Dead and Velvet Underground – as odd as that may sound.
When their records first appeared stateside, I was studying in the atelier called Soulville – a record store where beat Norman Wilde ensured I was discovering the original bluesmen of Chicago – Howlin Wolf, Jimmy Reed, Elmore James, others. It was the year or two before that we’d started buying Yardbirds, Rolling Stones, Blues Project, Paul Butterfield, Canned Heat, Taj Mahal there, and now under Norman’s direction we were going to those group’s sources. I was digging the font, and it was then over many years that I learned the legend of Peter Green.
In February 2020, just before COVID-19 closed the opera and other music halls and houses, Mick Fleetwood successfully put on a stellar rock tribute to Peter Green. Said Fleetwood:
“I wanted people to know that I did not form this band — Peter Green did,” Fleetwood says. “And I wanted to celebrate those early years of Fleetwood Mac, which started this massive ball that went down the road over the last 50 years.”
More than many, Fleetwood laments “the left turn” that took Green out. But he noted that Green was at peace in his life, and had “no ego.”
It is no easier to identify what made Green’s guitar so different than it is to understand what caused him to go off course. But writing in Rolling Stone Rob Sheffield describes it pointedly in Green’s own words:
The English blues scene was fixated on technical dexterity, but Green had a deep contempt for show-offs. As he sneered, “Good luck to the Snoggley Blues Band who are growing very popular now in the white blues world with a rhythm guitarist who can play 7,541 notes a minute.”
That wasn’t his style — he was all about emotion. “Sumlin and Wolf had it,” Green told Mojo in 1996. “The guitarists who copied them old black players were doing an interpretation, but couldn’t get to the feeling behind it. It was too deep, too painful if you do it right. It got too deep for me anyway. It ended up hurting my soul so I started to make up stories instead.” - Jack Vaughan
Playboy After Dark-Caligula meets Velveeta. W Hugh, Barbi and Arte
The discussion of the European tour starts at about the 3:49 point. And gets taken down for copyright infringement not for the first time.
Links:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/mick-fleetwood-peter-green-tribute-show-lindsey-buckingham-938279/ Green tribute
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53539989?fbclid=IwAR3ifqdp2oJHMLi5q95v_NA7l9O5XanZTJ9pLTyDFvD7z06SA5UdT8XZWIQ BBC obit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRu7Pt42x6Y teaparty mélange
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjOGaDseKgw&list=RDxov_wYtCwOI&index=6 santo and johnny tribute
Some Faves:
I need Your love so bad
My heart beat like a hammer
Homework
Oh Well Pt 1 and 2 - Then Play On
Rattlesnake Shake - Then Play On
Coming Your Way - Then Play On
Albatros
You got to reap just what you sow - w Eddie Boyd
October Jam #1 – Boston Tea Party (Men of the World)
Madison Blues -Blues Jam in Chicago (J.T. Brown, S.P. Leary, Others)
Steady Rolling Man – with the Splinter Group
Fresh shrimp blues – with the splinter Group
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