Peter Green (born
Peter Allen Greenbaum, 29 October 1946) is a blues
rock singer-songwriter and guitarist.
[2] As a co-founder of
Fleetwood Mac, he was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Green's songs, such as "
Albatross", "
Black Magic Woman", "
Oh Well", "
The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)" and "
Man of the World", appeared on singles charts, and several have been adapted by a variety of musicians.
an English
Green was a major figure in the "second great epoch"
[3] of the
British blues movement.
B.B. King commented, "He has the sweetest tone I ever heard; he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats."
[4][5] Eric Clapton has praised his guitar playing;
[6] he is noted for his use of string bending,
vibrato, and economy of style.
[3][7]
Rolling Stone ranked Green at number 58 in its list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".
[8] His tone on the instrumental "The Supernatural" was rated as one of the 50 greatest of all time by
Guitar Player.
[9]
In June 1996, Green was voted the third-best guitarist of all time in
Mojo magazine.
[
Early years
Peter Allen Greenbaum was born in
Bethnal Green, London on 29 October 1946, into a
Jewish family,
bass guitar in a band called Bobby Dennis and the Dominoes, which performed
pop chart covers and
rock 'n' roll standards, including
Shadows covers. He later stated that
Hank Marvin was his guitar hero and he played The Shadows song
Midnight on the 1996 tribute album "Twang." He went on to join a
rhythm and blues outfit, the Muskrats, then a band called The Tridents in which he played bass. In 1966, Green played
lead guitar in
Peter Bardens' band "Peter B's Looners", where he met drummer
Mick Fleetwood. It was with Peter B's Looners that he made his recording début with the single "
If You Wanna Be Happy" with "Jodrell Blues" as a B-side.
[13] His recording of "If You Wanna Be Happy" was an instrumental cover of a song by
Jimmy Soul.
[14]
the youngest of Joe and Ann Greenbaum's four children. His brother,
Michael, taught him his first guitar chords and by the age of eleven
Green was teaching himself. He began playing professionally by the age
of fifteen. He first played
John Mayall's Bluesbreakers
After three months with Bardens' group, Green had the opportunity to fill in for
Eric Clapton in
John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers for three concerts. Soon after, when Clapton left the Bluesbreakers, Green became a full-time member of Mayall's band.
[3]
Mike Vernon, a producer at
Decca Records recalls Green's début with the Bluesbreakers:
As the band walked in the studio I
noticed an amplifier which I never saw before, so I said to John Mayall,
"Where's Eric Clapton?" Mayall answered, "He's not with us anymore, he
left us a few weeks ago." I was in a shock of state [sic]
but Mayall said, "Don't worry, we got someone better." I said, "Wait a
minute, hang on a second, this is ridiculous. You've got someone better?
Than Eric Clapton?" John said, "He might not be better now, but you
wait, in a couple of years he's going to be the best." Then he
introduced me to Peter Green.[14]
Green made his recording debut with the Bluesbreakers in 1966 on the album
A Hard Road (1967),
[15]
which featured two of his own compositions, "The Same Way" and "The
Supernatural". The latter was one of Green's first instrumentals, which
would soon become a trademark. So proficient was he that his musician
friends bestowed upon him the nickname "The Green God".
[16] In 1967, Green decided to form his own blues band and left the Bluesbreakers.
[3]
Fleetwood Mac
Green's new band, with former Bluesbreaker Mick Fleetwood on drums and
Jeremy Spencer on guitar, was initially called "Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac featuring Jeremy Spencer".
Bob Brunning was temporarily employed on bass guitar, as Green's first choice, Bluesbreakers' bassist
John McVie, was not yet ready to join the band.
[17]
Within a month they played at the Windsor National Jazz and Blues
Festival in August 1967 and were quickly signed to Mike Vernon's
Blue Horizon label.
[citation needed] Their repertoire consisted mainly of
blues
covers and originals, mostly written by Green, but some were written by
slide guitarist Jeremy Spencer. The band's first single, Spencer's "I
Believe My Time Ain't Long" with Green's "Rambling Pony" as a B-side,
did not chart but their
eponymous debut album made a significant impression, remaining in the
British charts for over a year. By September 1967, John McVie had replaced Brunning.
Although classic blues covers and blues-styled originals remained
prominent in the band's repertoire through this period, Green rapidly
blossomed as a songwriter and contributed many successful original
compositions from 1968 onwards. The songs chosen for single release
showed Green's style gradually moving away from the group's blues roots
into new musical territory. Their second studio album
Mr. Wonderful was released in 1968 and continued the formula of the first album. In the same year they scored a hit with Green's "
Black Magic Woman" (later covered by
Santana), followed by the guitar instrumental "
Albatross" (1969), which reached number one in the British singles charts. More hits written by Green followed, including "
Oh Well", "
Man of the World" (both 1969) and the ominous "
The Green Manalishi" (1970).
[14] The double album
Blues Jam in Chicago (1969)
[18] was recorded at the
Chess Records Ter-Mar Studio in Chicago. There, under the joint supervision of Vernon and
Marshall Chess, they recorded with some of their American blues heroes including
Otis Spann,
Big Walter Horton,
Willie Dixon,
J. T. Brown and
Buddy Guy.
In 1969, after signing to
Immediate Records for one single ("Man of the World",
[19] prior to that label's collapse) the group signed with
Warner Bros. Records' Reprise Records label and recorded their third studio album
Then Play On, prominently featuring the group's new third guitarist, 18-year-old
Danny Kirwan.
Green had first seen Kirwan in 1967 playing with his blues trio
Boilerhouse, with Trevor Stevens on bass and Dave Terrey on drums.
[20]
Green was impressed with Kirwan's playing and used the band as a
support act for Fleetwood Mac before recruiting Kirwan to his own band
in 1968 at the suggestion of Mick Fleetwood.
[21] Spencer, however, made virtually no contribution to
Then Play On, owing to his reported refusal to play on any of Green's original material.
[citation needed]
Beginning with "Man of the World"'s melancholy lyric, Green's
bandmates began to notice changes in his state of mind. He was taking
large doses of
LSD, grew a beard and began to wear robes and a
crucifix.
Mick Fleetwood recalls Green becoming concerned about accumulating
wealth: "I had conversations with Peter Green around that time and he
was obsessive about us not making money, wanting us to give it all away.
And I'd say, 'Well you can do it, I don't wanna do that, and that
doesn't make me a bad person.'"
[14]
While touring Europe in late March 1970, Green took LSD at a party at a
commune in
Munich, an incident cited by Fleetwood Mac manager
Clifford Davis as the crucial point in his mental decline.
[22][23] Communard
Rainer Langhans mentions in his autobiography that he and
Uschi Obermaier met Green in Munich, where they invited him to their
Highfisch-Kommune. Fleetwood Mac
roadie
Dinky Dawson remembers that Green went to the party with another
roadie, Dennis Keane, and that when Keane returned to the band's hotel
to explain that Green would not leave the commune, Keane, Dawson and
Mick Fleetwood travelled there to fetch him.
[24]
By contrast, Green stated that he had fond memories of jamming at the
commune when speaking in 2009: "I had a good play there, it was great,
someone recorded it, they gave me a tape. There were people playing
along, a few of us just fooling around and it was... yeah it was great."
He told Jeremy Spencer at the time "That's the most spiritual music
I've ever recorded in my life." After a final performance on 20 May
1970, Green left Fleetwood Mac.
