Peter Green (born Peter Allen Greenbaum, 29 October 1946) is a British blues rock guitarist and the founder of the band Fleetwood Mac. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 for his work with the group, Green's songs have been recorded by artists such as Santana, Aerosmith, Midge Ure, Tom Petty, Gary Moore and Judas Priest. A major figure and bandleader in the "second great epoch" of the British blues movement, Green inspired B. B. King to say, "He has the sweetest tone I ever heard; he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats." Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page have both lauded his guitar playing. Green's playing was marked with idiomatic string bending and vibrato and economy of style. Though he played other guitars, he is best known for deriving a unique tone from his 1959 Gibson Les Paul. He was ranked 38th in Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". His tone on the Bluesbreakers instrumental "The Super-Natural" was rated as one of the 50 greatest of all time by Guitar Player. In June 1996 Green was voted the third-best guitarist of all time in Mojo magazine. Green made his recording debut in 1966 with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers on the album A Hard Road (1967), 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". In 1967, Green decided to form his own blues band and left the Bluesbreakers. Green's new band, with ex-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. 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. Their repertoire consisted mainly of blues covers and originals, mostly written by Green but some by slide guitarist Spencer. The band's first single, "I Believe My Time Ain't Long" with "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. 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 more successfully 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). In 1969, the group signed with Warner Bros. Records and recorded their fourth studio album "Then Play On" that year, prominently featuring the group's new third guitarist Danny Kirwan. Spencer, however, made virtually no contribution to Then Play On, owing to his reported refusal to play on any of Green's original material. Beginning with "Man of the World"'s sad 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 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". While touring Europe in late March 1970, Green binged on 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. 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 Green. 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.

• published: 04 Dec 2013
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