← Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles
Loading summary
Transcript2 lines
- [00:00]
Janda
97.1Fm the drive presents the behind the Song podcast, taking you deeper into classic rock's most timeless tunes. Here's your host, Janda when you think.
- [00:12]
Unknown
About guitar players, there are a few names that come to mind. Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen, just to name a few. And then there's Peter Green. The One that even B.B. king said was the best. The one that gave him the cold sweatshirt when he played guitar. He was one of the blues players that helped shape the sounds coming out of England in the late 60s, and it was Peter Green who took over for Eric Clapton in John Mayall and the Blues Breakers, a hugely influential band that served as a talent pool for several musicians who later became household names, including Mick fleetwood and John McVie, who would join Peter Green in the formation of the band Fleetwood Mac in 1967. During Green's short three album tenure with Fleetwood Mac, before spiraling out of control, battling the twin demons of drug abuse and the schizophrenia that he was later diagnosed with, he cemented his reputation as one of the very best guitar players of his time, having already earned the tag of the Green God in England on the same graffitied walls that read Clapton is God. And importantly, it was Peter Green who wrote a powerfully memorable song for Fleetwood Mac that became a huge hit when it was covered by Santana, Black Magic Woman it's an amazing story. If you like this episode, don't forget to give it a like at the end and hit that subscribe button. Peter Green was born in London in 1946 and started playing guitar at around age 11. He met drummer Mick Fleetwood as early as 1965, when they were both playing in different bands around London and the two would become bandmates in John Mayall's Blues breakers along with John McVie on bass. When Green left John Mayall in 1967 to do his own thing, Mick Fleetwood had already been fired from Mayall's band due to insurmountable had gigs, but McVie stayed on for a short time, eventually joining his former bandmates in the new group just a few weeks later, at which time Green and Fleetwood fired their temporary bassist Bob Brunning. The new group was known as Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac and then by album number two shortened to simply Fleetwood Mac. That was Green's name for his favorite rhythm section, combining the names of Mick fleetwood and John McVie. He loved playing with them and it is telling that the band's name was shortened to the point that Peter Green's name wasn't on the bill at all he didn't want it there. Always more comfortable with his playing than with being the center of attention, he was headed for a rough road in the limelight as the frontman for the group. The original lineup of Fleetwood Mac also included Jeremy Spencer on second guitar who would leave the band in 1971 to join a religious movement, the Children of God. But that's a story for another time. The four piece original band were signed to a record deal with Blue Horizon in 1967 and released their self titled debut in February of 1968. This was their first self titled album, not to be confused with the second self titled Fleetwood Mac album which came out in 1975 after After Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined the band following the departure of Bob Welch on guitar and lead vocals who took over those duties after Green left. Also in 1968, 18 year old Danny Kerwin was brought on as a third guitar player. Christine Perfect, who played keyboards as a session player on Fleetwood Mac albums Starting from their second release, 1968's Mr. Wonderful onwards married John McVie, at which point she became Christine McVie. She officially joined the band two years later. Kerwin was fired and replaced in 1972 by Bob Weston, who had a short stint in the band before being sacked for having an affair with Mick Fleetwood's wife. Dave Walker from Humble Pie was also brought on during those turbulent years as were other players. Fleetwood Mac has never been short on drama to say the least. But anyway, in 1969 Fleetwood Mac released a compilation album called the Pious Bird of Good Omen in the uk. An album of blues covers, B sides and non album cuts. A great look at the psychedelic blues sound that Fleetwood Mac was all about in those early years. And that album title is a doozy, right? It's from a phrase found in a margin Note from the 1800s to the poem the Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. And it refers to the albatross, the big bird killed in the poem. Albatross was also a Fleetwood Mac hit single in the UK and it's also on the compilation. The COVID art for the Pious Bird of Good Omen is pretty striking. It shows a woman dressed as a nun holding one of the huge birds with a deadpan look in her eye. In the us a similar compilation was released around the same time under the much less weird sounding English Rose. One of the songs written by Peter Green that found its way to both versions of this compilation was a single that had been released the year before, Black Magic Woman, a song inspired by his girlfriend, a woman named Sandra Elsden, who he affectionately called Magic Mama. The song is the perfect vehicle for Peter Green's incredible guitar playing, his exquisite tone, and when Santana covered the song for his abraxas album in 1970, the general form of the song was unchanged, although he added percussive elements to his version, giving it that Santana sound, and recorded it as a medley with a cover of Gabor Szabo's instrumental Gypsy Queen. For Abraxas. Fleetwood Mac's version went into the top 40 in the UK, but Santana's version really blew up, going all the way up to number four on the Billboard chart in the us. Santana's keyboard player Greg Rowley, handled lead vocals on his version before leaving to join the band Journey a few years later. It was Peter Green who sang on the Fleetwood Mac original, and the lyrics go like I've got a black magic woman got me so blind I can't see that she's a black magic woman she's trying to make a devil out of me. Don't turn your back on me, baby stop messing around with your tricks don't turn your back on me, baby you just might pick up my magic sticks. You got your spell on me, baby turning my heart into stone I need you so bad magic woman, I can't leave you alone. The lyrics do their job, telling a story about being hooked on someone as if they had a literal spell on you. But the music is the star here. Both versions of the song are excellent, and this time period in Peter Green's musical output represented the apex of his vision to take the blues music that he loved into new areas. And he did get to meet and play with the blues legends from America that he loved, like Willie Dixon and Buddy Guy. When Fleetwood Mac recorded a double album's worth of blues songs from sessions at Chicago's Chess Records in 1969, released under the title Blues Jam in Chicago, in the fall of 1969, Fleetwood Mac released their third album, Then Play on, and it was the last for Peter Green. By 1970, Green was having long discussions with Mick Fleetwood and others in the band, showing concern about making too much money and wanting to literally give away all of their earnings. Money was something that he had no attachment to. He was still living at home with his parents. He started taking lsd, most notoriously at a hippie commune in munich, where Christine McVie said that the members of the commune were literally into black magic, and they were having acid parties with Green that he refused to leave. It was this nightmarish experience that led to him writing his last top 10 hit for Fleetwood Mac, a song about money literally being the devil, the Green Man, Alishi, which was of course later covered by Judas Priest. After that, Green's behavior became more and more erratic, always against the idea of being a rock star in favor of putting the band and the music first. He became disillusioned with the music business and with fame in general. Feeling that he couldn't go on with Fleetwood Mac and with what he perceived to be the constraints of the band, he left the group he founded in May of 1970. Green released a solo album later that year called the End of the Game, and he continued to play music off and on for a while. But in the mid-70s he smashed up all the furniture in his parents house and they had him hospitalized, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was given electroconvulsive treatments that put him in a trance like state. And he did give in to his obsession with giving all his money away to charity as a sort of spiritual cleansing. He then became homeless, completely penniless, living on the streets in West London for a time. He was married to a woman named Jane in 1978 and had a daughter, Rosebud, that same year, but they divorced by 1979. A son, Liam, was born to another girlfriend later in the 80s. Finally, Greene's brother Len took him in and he began his long road to recovery. During those years of living rough, as they say in England, he would have been completely broke were it not for the royalty checks that he received from his songs. In fact, royalties from Santana's cover of Black Magic Woman largely kept him from becoming completely insolvent after he gave all his money away. Peter Green died at home, in his sleep at age 73. In 20, his long, tough years battling schizophrenia behind him, he never stopped being a legend to guitarists who he played with and who came after him. Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, Joe Perry of Aerosmith, and Noel Gallagher of Oasis are just a few who count him as a major influence. He returned to recording music and playing live in the mid-90s, and he got into photography and creating visual art too. And coming full circle. When Fleetwood Mac were inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of fame in 1998, Peter Green was honored with the band and he played Black Magic Woman at the ceremony with Santana, who was also inducted that year. For Peter Green, the guitar was not just an instrument. It was a way of connecting his humanity to a spiritual otherness, an expression of his soul founded in the blues that he loved so much it was almost too much for him. Fragile as he was in the excellent documentary titled after one of his most mournful Fleetwood Mac songs, man of the World, he seemed to recognize that when it came to playing guitar, he wasn't the master of it, but rather it was the other way around. Filmed well after his recovery began, he said, the guitar used to speak for me, but I can't let it do that for me anymore. I can't let it break my heart again. I'm Janda and this has been behind the song. Special thanks as always to Christian Lane for the music you hear on these podcast episodes. If you like it, give it a thumbs up. Hit subscribe and check us out on TikTok too. You can find me on the air weekdays from 9 to 2 Central in Chicago at 971-8-nFM the Drive, Chicago's classic rockin at wdrv.com and on the way, much more classic rock and roll.