“I WAS NEVER ANY GOOD AT CHORDS. I ALWAYS PREFERRED TO PLAY THE TUNE”
PETER GREEN ON GUITAR, FLEETWOOD MAC, THE YARDBIRDS AND MORE
“I’ve only recently begun to understand what blues is really all about. I used to think that it was all about cotton fields and country blues. I was always fluffing around with stuff that I didn’t really understand. I couldn’t latch onto it all at first.”
Peter Green is sitting quietly in the corner of a hotel bar in the shadow of Tower Bridge. If you’ve met Peter over the past decade, when hearing him talking today – sharing anecdotes and confidently reminiscing about his musical life – you’ll notice a sharp contrast between this relaxed and lucid character and the noticeably introverted man you’d have encountered just over a decade ago at the time of his re-emergence in 1996 with the Splinter Group. Slightly portly and with only a frizz of white curls that hint at his long-haired glory days, Peter has the air of a kindly, benevolent uncle.
It’s hard to reconcile this unassuming person with the legendary guitarist who led such an astonishing career as part of Fleetwood Mac. A mere two years after forming in the summer of 1967, the band was shifting more records than both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined. Equally remarkable was the way that a hard-nosed blues outfit featuring an Elmore James aficionado was able to transform into Fleetwood Mac the world-straddling pop stars, producing hit singles such as Albatross, Oh Well and Black Magic Woman. But then, for Peter Green, it all went wrong.
Maybe it’s the passage of time – after all, it’s been almost 40 years – but now the guitarist has no problem reflecting on his darkest days. “I know that after I had taken LSD, I was out of communiqué for a long time,” he says. “But it wasn’t
