Peter Green Has Died: July 25, 2020

[michelej1]

7/28/20 Globe & Mail (Toronto Can.) A12

Fleetwood Mac co-founder Peter Green gave it all up, but made his mark
BRAD WHEELER

The family of Fleetwood Mac co-founder Peter Green said the guitarist died "peacefully in his sleep" this past weekend at the age of 73. If he did pass in such a fashion, peacefully, he did not die as he had lived.

Green was a sensitive soul with melancholy in his fingers - so much fury and vulnerability transmitted through his instrument. Now considered Southern California rock legends, Fleetwood Mac was at the forefront of the British bell-bottom blues movement when Green split for good in 1971, after just four years with the group.

He was disillusioned. He donated his money to various charities. He gave everything away - really. And what he didn't give, others took. Led Zeppelin based the a cappella vocals of its classic Black Dog on Green's Oh Well. Another of Green's Fleetwood Mac compositions, Albatross, was the inspiration behind the Beatles' Sun King.

Prior to creating Fleetwood Mac, Green was with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, as was the rhythm section of drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie. In 1967, Green formed Fleetwood Mac around those two, selflessly naming the band after them.

Like Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd, Green was too brittle, though. An acid trip too far and a spiritual crisis immediately preceded his departure from Fleetwood Mac. Over the years, suffering from mental illness, he sporadically retired and unretired from music.

By the time Green briefly married a Canadian fiddler in the late 1970s, Fleetwood Mac had gone on to fame and fortune without him. Green was just one more entry in the Rock 'n' Roll Eats Its Own file.

He will be remembered for the sweet tone of his Les Paul model guitar. Green could do more with three notes than most could do with seven, and his economy extended to his lyrics.

Can't help about the shape I'm in, I can't sing, I ain't pretty and my legs are thin, But don't ask me what I think of you, I might not give the answer that you want me to.

The song is 1970's Oh Well (Part 1).

Epitomizing the apologetic self pity of the blues and the sneering defiance of punk, the verse is rock 'n' roll encapsulated. A god's hammer guitar riff was the bravado Green otherwise lacked.

Green's Latin-tinged Black Magic Woman flopped as a Fleetwood Mac single in 1968, but another band, Santana, had huge success with it as a cover version.

One of the last compositions he wrote for Fleetwood Mac was The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown); it later became associated with the metal group Judas Priest.

All that memorable music, from a forgotten man.

A line of singer-guitarists took Green's place handling Oh Well over the years, including Bob Welch and Lindsey Buckingham.

Fleetwood Mac booted Buckingham out in 2018. On the band's 2019 tour, Mike Campbell from Tom Petty's Heartbreakers sang the "I can't sing" bit.
No one is irreplaceable. Fleetwood Mac is a business. Green helped build it, but he wasn't built for it.

[michelej1]

7/27/20 Conversation (U.K.) (Pg. Unavail. Online)

Peter Green: troubled Fleetwood Mac founder leaves legacy of brilliance that shines still

Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University

A virtuoso guitarist and songwriter, Green's career was blighted by drug-amplified mental health problems.

Blues virtuoso Peter Green in 1970. Nick Contador via Mikimedia Commons, CC BY-NC-SA

One of rock's clichés, originating in a Neil Young song lyric , is that "it's better to burn out than to fade away". And indeed, many of its most celebrated casualties – from Jimi Hendrix to Kurt Cobain – departed the stage in sudden, shocking fashion thanks to tragic premature deaths. But even those whose play-out was lengthy, after a brief initial burst, can leave a hefty legacy.

Such was the case for Peter Green, founder of Fleetwood Mac, who passed away on July 25 aged 73, leaving an indelible stamp on generations of guitar players based primarily on a core body of work between 1966 and 1970.
Born Peter Greenbaum in 1946, the youngest son of an East End Jewish family – and, like many of his generation, transfixed by imported blues records from America – he emerged just after the initial wave of British blues-rock guitar heroes – notably the celebrated triumvirate of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page.

He made his name by filling Clapton's shoes in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers – a kind of academy and clearing house for many who would move on to some of the biggest rock acts of subsequent decades. Having substituted for Clapton on the occasional gig, Green took up a place in the band when Clapton left to form Cream. Green, in his turn, would be replaced in the band by Mick Taylor, before Taylor joined the Rolling Stones in 1969.

Replacing Clapton was a daunting task for Green. Clapton's fan-base among London's blues aficionados was vocal – famously demonstrated by the graffiti " Clapton is God " that appeared on a wall in London at the time.

Green rose to the challenge, however, stamping his mark on the next Bluesbreakers album, A Hard Road (1967), both as a singer, and with instrumental compositions such as The Supernatural that established him as an eminent instrumentalist in his own right.

Importantly, he did this by veering away from the overt virtuosity of the other guitar heroes of the day. As Mick Fleetwood would put it :
He went immediately for the human touch, and that's what Peter's playing has represented to millions of people – he played with the human, not the superstar touch.

Forming Fleetwood Mac

A key tension within Green's career – and personality – was between ambition and independence, on the one hand, and diffidence and fragility on the other. This was clear when, keen to set up his own group, he split from the Bluesbreakers after one album – taking drummer Mick Fleetwood and, later, bassist John McVie with him – but naming the new band Fleetwood Mac after his rhythm section and sharing lead guitar and vocal duties with new recruit Jeremy Spencer.

In this new outfit, his capacity for innovation came to the fore. A series of hits drew on his growing confidence as a songwriter and pushed the boundaries of the blues. Others, including Clapton, drove the role of the "guitar hero" forward through ever-lengthier expositions of fretboard dexterity. But Green, despite his technical ability, focused on the more nebulous merits of "feel" and "tone", eventually making these indispensable facets of the rock guitar arsenal. He would recall ,

Playing fast is something I used to do with John Mayall when things weren't going very well. But it isn't any good. I like to play slowly and feel every note.

A trip too far

His comparatively brief sojourn with Fleetwood Mac yielded standards including Oh Well! (which inspired the Led Zeppelin staple Black Dog) and Black Magic Woman – later a signature song for Santana.
But in his songs, the fractiousness of The Green Manalishi (With The Two Prong Crown) – its sonic density a forerunner of heavy metal – and the uncertainty of Man of the World , evidenced a growing unease that would crash his career. On tour in 1970, following an LSD trip at a commune in Germany – one of several he took – he abruptly quit the band, unable to cope with his growing fame.

Fleetwood Mac would spend the next few years with a rapidly rotating line-up – including a brief return by Green to help them complete a tour after Jeremy Spencer left to join a cult. They relocated to America and, having recruited Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, delivered one of the defining albums of the 1970s: the hugely successful Rumours .

Green himself struggled. Like Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett , whose band achieved stratospheric success after his own LSD-exacerbated mental illness precipitated his departure, Green made occasional recordings in the early seventies, but never found his equilibrium.

Later diagnosed with schizophrenia he oscillated between stints as a gravedigger and hospital porter. There were episodes of erratic behaviour – trying to give away all of his money – and spells in psychiatric hospitals, where he received electroconvulsive therapy.

He re-emerged sporadically, first with solo recordings in the 1980s and then, on a series of albums with The Splinter Group in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Leaning heavily on standards and cover versions, and garnering a respectable, if sympathetic, following, they rarely troubled the upper reaches of the charts, or recaptured his earlier fire.

Rich legacy

If the headlines mainly remembered Green as a tragic div, like other innovators of his generation that were brought low by drugs and collapse, his quiet influence was much deeper. Not the first, or most famous, of the British guitar heroes, his emphasis on tone, economy and space nevertheless shaped the vocabulary of rock guitar.

The likes of Jimmy Page and Gary Moore – the latter of whom recorded an album of Green's songs – attested to his impact. No less a luminary than BB King would remark : "He has the sweetest tone I ever heard; he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats."

[michelej1]

7/27/20 Herald 22

Herald (Glasgow, Scotland)

Renowned guitarist who founded one of the world's biggest groups

By Russell Leadbetter

IT was late 1969. Fleetwood Mac, a band that had been formed just two years previously, was one of the biggest acts in the world. In Europe they outsold The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in terms of record sales and concert tickets, and they consistently did well in readers' polls.

Peter Green, their guitarist and co-founder, whose death at the age of 73 was reported at the weekend, had established himself as one of the most innovative and soulful guitarists of his generation. The late BB King once said of him that he "has the sweetest tone I ever heard. He was the only one who gave me the cold sweats".

An instrumental single, Albatross, had reached No 1 in 1968. Their third album, Then Play On, with its classic song, Oh Well, had sold 100,000 copies in America alone.

Come 1969, the band finally felt they were on to something, writes drummer Mick Fleetwood in his memoirs. "All of us were ecstatic about it - all except Peter. Our popularity, our tour schedule and our record sales had the opposite effect on him; they put him into a dark, depressed cocoon of his own making." Green had already begun talking about leaving before Oh Well became a hit.

Fleetwood relates how Green, who had been regularly taking LSD, became more disillusioned and sensitive, distressed by other people's sufferings and poverty. At one point he gave £12,000 to charities and wanted the band to live and tour monastically and give all of their profits to charity. He took to wearing kaftans and robes, and a large wooden crucifix. Fleetwood describes

Green's personal problems in 1970 as a "complicated mental illness".
Green's departure that February - there was one final episode involving well-off German hippies and a large supply of LSD - meant that he was not part of the Stevie Nicks-Lindsey Buckingham incarnation of Fleetwood Mac, which achieved global success by selling in excess of 45 million copies of their 1977 album, Rumours.

Guitarist Peter Frampton tweeted at the weekend: "Most sadly [we] have lost one of the most tasteful guitar players ever. I have always been a huge admirer of the great Peter Green."

Bernie Marsden, another noted guitarist, who tweeted a photograph of himself with Green, taken in February, said Green had touched "millions of musicians". Marsden said his friend's "talent for guitar playing, vocals and harmonica would have been more than most people could have possibly wished for, and then you add those wonderful songs, original, vibrant, atmospheric, outright psychedelic and much fun to listen to and witness".
The photograph was taken on the day of a huge show in Green's honour at the London Palladium, which was hosted by Mick Fleetwood and featured such musicians as David Gilmour, Pete Townshend, Bill Wyman and Noel Gallagher.

Fleetwood said in a statement before the event: "The concert is a celebration of those early blues days where we all began, and it's important to recognise the profound impact Peter and early Fleetwood Mac had on the world of music. Peter was my greatest mentor."

Peter Allen Greenbaum was born into a working-class Jewish family in Bethnal Green, London, in October 1946. He did various jobs, including butcher and furniture polisher, but he was a guitar enthusiast from an early age and by the time he was 15 he was playing professionally.

In 1965 he briefly replaced Eric Clapton in a renowned group, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, and the following year he became a full-time member of the band upon Clapton's departure. In1967 he put together a band of his own, with Fleetwood, guitarist Jeremy Spencer and bassist John Brunning, who quickly gave way to John McVie (who, like Fleetwood, had been in the Bluesbreakers). The new band was named Fleetwood Mac after the rhythm section.

Green and Fleetwood had also been part of another group, Shotgun Express, that had Rod Stewart as vocalist, and it was during that time that Green's prodigious guitar skills led to him being christened the "Green God", just as graffiti across London had referred to Clapton as "God". Mick Fleetwood said Green was "the most brilliant musician I have ever played with. When he was well, he was on a par with a genius like Miles Davis".

One of Fleetwood Mac's early fans was the pianist and singer Christine Perfect. Recalling those days in an interview in 2017, she watched Fleetwood Mac play in "small, sweaty clubs" and was struck by what she recalls as "their phenomenal ... kick-ass chemistry". Mick and John were a force to be reckoned with, and you had little Jeremy Spencer playing slide .... [and] Peter Green, who was like Jesus, playing out-of-this-world guitar".
Perfect married McVie in 1968. Two years later, as Christine McVie, she became a full member of the band.

Green was confined in a mental hospital in 1977 after an incident involving his manager. He was released later that same year, and married Jane Samuels in 1978. They had a daughter, Rosebud, and divorced the following year. Green also has a son, Liam Firlej.

He had a sporadic career as a solo and session guitarist, releasing some half-dozen solo albums. He left the music scene in the mid-1980s but returned with the Peter Green Splinter Group in 1997.

The band he had formed in 1967 went on to experience many ups and downs, and several changes in personnel, before, with Fleetwood, the McVies, Buckingham and Nicks, it found commercial success in the mid-1970s.

In 1998, Green was on stage as the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Fleetwood thanked Green for forming the band. He added: "He left us with a stage that was to continue until today. Lunacy, heartache, happiness, unhappiness and, thank God, a sense of healing, has come to all of us up here on the stage."

[michelej1]

7/26/20 Associated Press (AP) Newswires 01:30:56

Fleetwood Mac blues guitarist Peter Green dies at 73

ROBERT BARR and DANICA KIRKA, Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Peter Green, the dexterous blues guitarist who led the first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac in a career shortened by psychedelic drugs and mental illness, has died at 73.

A law firm representing his family, Swan Turton, announced the death in a statement Saturday. It said he died "peacefully in his sleep″ this weekend. A further statement will be issued in the coming days.

Green, to some listeners, was the best of the British blues guitarists of the 1960s. B.B. King once said Green "has the sweetest tone I ever heard. He was the only one who gave me the cold sweats."

Green also made a mark as a composer with "Albatross," and as a songwriter with "Oh Well" and "Black Magic Woman."

He crashed out of the band in 1971. Even so, Mick Fleetwood said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2017 that Green deserves the lion's share of the credit for the band's success.

"Peter was asked why did he call the band Fleetwood Mac. He said, 'Well, you know I thought maybe I'd move on at some point and I wanted Mick and John (McVie) to have a band.' End of story, explaining how generous he was," said Fleetwood, who described Green as a standout in an era of great guitar work.

Indeed, Green was so fundamental to the band that in its early days it was called Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac.

Peter Allen Greenbaum was born on Oct. 29, 1946, in London. The gift of a cheap guitar put the 10-year-old Green on a musical path.

He was barely out of his teens when he got his first big break in 1966, replacing Eric Clapton in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers — initially for just a week in 1965 after Clapton abruptly took off for a Greek holiday. Clapton quit for good soon after and Green was in.

In the Bluesbreakers he was reunited with Mick Fleetwood, a former colleague in Peter B's Looners. Mayall added bass player McVie soon after.
The three departed the next year, forming the core of the band initially billed as "Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac featuring (guitarist) Jeremy Spencer."
Fleetwood Mac made its debut at the British Blues and Jazz festival in the summer of 1967, which led to a recording contract, then an eponymous first album in February 1968. The album, which included "Long Grey Mare" and three other songs by Green, stayed on the British charts for 13 months.
The band's early albums were heavy blues-rock affairs marked by Green's fluid, evocative guitar style and gravelly vocals. Notable singles included "Oh Well" and the Latin-flavored "Black Magic Woman," later a hit for Carlos Santana.

But as the band flourished, Green became increasingly erratic, even paranoid. Drugs played a part in his unraveling.

On a tour in California, Green became acquainted with Augustus Owsley Stanley III, notorious supplier of powerful LSD to the The Grateful Dead and Ken Kesey, the anti-hero of Tom Wolfe's book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test."

"He was taking a lot of acid and mescaline around the same time his illness began manifesting itself more and more," Fleetwood said in 2015. "We were oblivious as to what schizophrenia was back in those days but we knew something was amiss."

"Green Manalishi," Green's last single for the band, reflected his distress.
In an interview with Johnny Black for Mojo magazine, Green said: "I was dreaming I was dead and I couldn't move, so I fought my way back into my body. I woke up and looked around. It was very dark and I found myself writing a song. It was about money; 'The Green Manalishi' is money."
In some of his last appearances with the band, he wore a monk's robe and a crucifix. Fearing that he had too much money, he tried to persuade other band members to give their earnings to charities.

Green left Fleetwood Mac for good in 1971.

In his absence, the band's new line-up, including Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, gained enormous success with a more pop-tinged sound.

"I am so sorry to hear about the passing of Peter Green," Nicks said in a statement. "My biggest regret is that I never got to share the stage with him. I always hoped in my heart of hearts that that would happen. When I first listened to all the Fleetwood Mac records, I was very taken with his guitar playing. It was one of the reasons I was excited to join the band. His legacy will live on forever in the history books of Rock n Roll. It was in the beginning, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac and I thank you, Peter Green, for that. You changed our lives."

Green was confined in a mental hospital in 1977 after an incident with his manager. Testimony in court said Green had asked for money and then threatened to shoot out the windows of the manager's office.
Green was released later in the year, and married Jane Samuels, a Canadian, in 1978. They had a daughter, Rosebud, and divorced the following year. Green also has a son, Liam Firlej.

Green returned to performing in the 1990s with the Peter Green Splinter Group.

In 1998, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with other past and present members of Fleetwood Mac.
___

[michelej1]

7/26/20 Independent Online (U.K.) (Pg. Unavail. Online)

Peter Green: Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks lead tributes to Fleetwood Mac co-founder

'His talent for guitar playing, vocals and harmonica would have been more than most people could have possibly wished for,' says Whitesnake's Berni...
Roisin O'Connor, Jane Dalton

'His talent for guitar playing, vocals and harmonica would have been more than most people could have possibly wished for,' says Whitesnake's Bernie Marsden

Peter Green 's former Fleetwood Mac bandmates have led tributes to the influential guitarist and songwriter, after his death aged 73 . He died peacefully in his sleep at home, his family said.

The co-founder of the legendary group was described as "inspirational" and "one of the greats" by his peers.

Mick Fleetwood , who co-founded the band with Green in 1967, said: "For me, and every past and present member of Fleetwood Mac, losing Peter Green is monumental.

"No-one has ever stepped into the ranks of Fleetwood Mac without a reverence for Peter Green and his talent, and to the fact that music should shine bright and always be delivered with uncompromising passion."

The 73-year-old added: "Peter, I will miss you, but rest easy your music lives on. I thank you for asking me to be your drummer all those years ago. We did good, and trail blazed one hell of a musical road for so many to enjoy.
"God speed to you, my dearest friend."

Stevie Nicks – who joined Fleetwood Mac with her then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham five years after Green quit due to mental health issues – said her biggest regret was missing the chance to share a stage with Green.
"I am so sorry to hear about the passing of Peter Green. My biggest regret is that I never got to share the stage with him. I always hoped in my heart of hearts that that would happen," she wrote in a statement posted to Twitter.
"When I first listened to all the Fleetwood Mac records, I was very taken with his guitar playing. It was one of the reasons I was excited to join the band.
"His legacy will live on forever in the history books of Rock n Roll. It was in the beginning, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac and I thank you, Peter Green, for that. You changed our lives."

Singer and guitarist Peter Frampton said: "Most sadly have lost one of the most tasteful guitar players ever. I have always been a huge admirer of the great Peter Green may he rest in peace."

Yusuf/Cat Stevens said Green had become "something of a model" for him, writing: "God bless the ineffable Peter Green, one of the unsung heroes of musical integrity, innovation and spirit. When I heard he left Fleetwood Mac in 1970 to get a real life and donate his wealth to charity, he became something of a model for me."

Green was born in Bethnal Green, London, on 29 October 1946. formed Fleetwood Mac in 1967 with drummer Mick Fleetwood, guitarist Jeremy Spencer and bassist John McVie. Regarded as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, Green wrote hits for the band including "Albatross", "Black Magic Woman", and "Oh Well".

He received his first guitar from his older brother, Len, who had lost interest in learning how to play. One of Green's musical heroes was The Shadows' lead guitarist Hank Marvin, although his other influences were mostly blues greats, from BB King to Otis Rush.

In 1966, Green replaced Eric Clapton in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. Mayall told his producer, who was scandalised at losing Clapton: "He might not be better [than Clapton] now. But you wait… he's going to be the best."
Green was the songwriter behind classic Fleetwood Mac hits including "Albatross", "Black Magic Woman", and "Oh Well".

Mick Fleetwood said in 2017 that Green deserved the lion's share of the credit for the band's success.

"Peter was asked why did he call the band Fleetwood Mac. He said, 'Well, you know I thought maybe I'd move on at some point and I wanted Mick and John (McVie) to have a band'. End of story, explaining how generous he was," said Fleetwood. Green stood out in "an era of great guitar work", he added.

Green was among the eight Fleetwood Mac members inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.

Mumford and Sons guitarist Winston Marshall also tweeted a touching tribute, thanking Green for his work. "Man of the world, oh well, albatross, need your love so bad. Some of my favourite songs and performances of all time. Thank you for the music," he wrote.

"Peter Green was one of my biggest inspirations when I first started playing guitar. I love the way he played and I probably play guitar now because I wanted to be like him," said Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos,
Paul Stanley, co-lead vocalist for rock band Kiss, compared Green to the great figures from Britain's blues history, including Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page.

He tweeted: "RIP Peter Green. One of the absolute hierarchy of the original British Blues Greats. Clapton, Page, Beck and Green."

Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler also described Green as "one of the greats". Maximo Park frontman Paul Smith remembered Green as a "master of tone".
Whitesnake guitarist Bernie Marsden shared a picture and his memories of Green in a long tribute on social media.

He wrote on Instagram: "I can't quite express my feelings this afternoon after learning of Peter's death. I'm just thinking of the times we spent together in the last couple of years, hanging out with him at his home was very special. A memory I'll cherish. He made me laugh, cry, wonder, and never failed to make me pinch myself when we were alone one to one.

"There I was, sat [sic] with my hero. As a musician, I can only be one of the millions he touched, his talent for guitar playing, vocals and harmonica would have been more than most people could have possibly wished for, and then you add those wonderful songs, original, vibrant, atmospheric, outright psychedelic and so much fun, to listen to and witness. Those early days of Fleetwood Mac will stay in my mind for ever."