Interview: Peter Green

 

PETER GREEN AND 

THE DEVIL BLUES 

PETER GREEN 

29 October 1946-25 July 2020

Peter Green, British Blues Legend and Acid-Damaged 

founder of Fleetwood Mac returns from the Dead Zone 

with a tribute album to Robert Johnson, the genius, womaniser, 

gambler and Blues Pioneer who sold his soul to the Devil 

and was then poisoned at twenty-six by a jealous husband. 

From strange... to stranger... 

A previously unpublished interview.

“Got those Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack 

John Mayall, can’t fail Blues...” 

 Adrian Henri/ The Liverpool Scene (1969)

 

There’s a Bill Hicks routine which goes ‘if you don’t believe that drugs have done some good things for us, go home tonight, take all your albums, all your CD’s, all your tapes – and BURN them, because the musicians who made all that great music that’s enhanced your lives throughout the years...? they were all real fucking high on drugs, man.’ He’s right. Of course. And that list of musicians who made all that life-enhancing music has got to include Syd Barrett... right? Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix... right? Kurt Cobain and Peter Green too. 

In Peter Green’s garden there’s a dim coffin-smelling gloom, sweet and oversweet with twice-blooming apple-blossom, and there’s lilac beyond the outer wall by the savage quiet sky, the sun impacting, distilled and hyperdistilled. Peter Green is sat across the rustic table from me. His is no designer slouch, just the unkempt growth of a genuine couldn’t give a shit. Look at the early photos. The Mayall shots. The first Fleetwood Mac line-ups. A nation bracing itself for decimalisation. The days before Alcopops. This is a man who began with the Blues. Now he’s returned to it again. Blues is the colour. 

And he’s returned to touring too, with possible Irish dates? ‘I’ve done lots of tours’ he says dismissively. ‘About six. Yeah. They were good. Ireland? We’ve played in Ireland. And yeah, we’re going back again. I fink we are. I enjoy playing most everywhere. And Ireland is a good place. It’s OK. It’s got a... what’s the word? a good bill – you know? They’ve got their things, you know? when you go there, it’s different. With different sort-of experiences and that.’ 

‘He enjoys most of the gigs he does’ adds live-in friend Michelle helpfully. 

‘I don’t’ he snorts. ‘Germany and (with heavy emphasis) TWO other places. But Switzerland, yeah. It was lovely in Switzerland. But everywhere we go to do our show, you have to appreciate it for what it is. When we go to Austria there’s not much night life there, not much going on in the way of shops and things. But it’s just nice. An old feeling, y’know. There’s an OLD feeling to it. And Naples. Naples was good. It was great there. Beautiful weather. The weather was... like being in Africa. It was so beautiful that it just cleared the head of all futuristic sort-of... er, futuristic er... I don’t know what to call it, all futuristic weather, with acclimatisation to where we were it just cleared the head completely. I felt marvellous. It was like Africa, so African.’ 

The album? Oh yeah – we’re here to talk about the remarkable ‘The Robert Johnson Songbook’, recorded by Peter with his current ‘Splinter Group’, a sixteen-track tribute to the Spookily near-mythic ‘King of the Delta Blues’, featuring heavy inputs from Nigel Watson (Michelle’s brother) and guest vocals by Paul ‘Superlungs’ Rodgers on “Sweet Home Chicago”. That’s Paul Rodgers as in Free, Bad Company, and that annoying Chewing Gum TV-ad about the two kids on the bus. No mean Blues-Wailer in his own right. But it’s never less than Peter Green’s album. Neil Spencer (in The Observer) comments that ‘sadly, the emotional demands of Johnson’s often harrowing songs prove beyond Green’s ravaged voice, while the guitar licks he would once have rattled off are now merely adequately played.’ Mr Spencer, I suggest, misses the point. 

This album is the work of a musician who started out with the Blues, with the fanatical purist’s devotion to reproducing its every detail in pristine academic perfection. The sparse “Stop Breaking Down” here most closely resembles the raw force of those old John Mayall days, with brief but precise solos. But now Peter Green has gone beyond that. He’s lived it. His voice is more scuffed and cracked than it was then. He knows the music inside out. It still benefits from those countless hours spent poring over albums, meticulously replicating their sounds. But now the ache comes direct from authentic lived experience. “Love in Vain” for example. The song about waiting at the station, suitcase in my hand. It was last sighted on the Rolling Stones’ ‘Let It Bleed’ (1969) album. They do it stark, electric, and extreme. Peter opts for less histrionic drama. But his is a weary, truer, more convincingly Gospel-edged reading. Closer, probably, to Johnson’s original intention. Like the easy-rolling harmonica-edged “When You Got A Good Friend”, or the mood of abstract desolation caught by Roger Cotton’s slow Blues piano as it perfectly matches Peter’s cracked vocals on “Phonograph Blues” 

‘But I might never be allowed past the Blues Pearly Gates’ he admits, ‘‘cos it seems that there’s a magic somewhere on those old records. A lot of people say there’s trickery under the recording, or in the production. That they’re completed through certain processes. They sound sort-of, really unique. Sounds that you can’t copy. You can’t do it. Elvis Presley’s records used to sound a bit like that, didn’t they? “Blue Suede Shoes”. A special sound. “Hound Dog” as well – all that (he handclaps “Hound Dog” in perfect sync), all that sort-of clapping, it all sounds like it’s as NATURALLY HAPPENING as it is when you pull the toilet chain. It all sounds SO NATURAL. Like a fried egg or something. It just sounds so natural. But you don’t know how long they worked on it. There might be 122 takes on it or something.’

 

‘He likes Robert Johnson’ coaxes Michelle. 

‘I like Robert Johnson’ he confirms. ‘Me and Nigel are great fans of Robert Johnson.’ The Splinter Group comprises Peter and Nigel, plus former-Whitesnake bassist Neil Murray and keyboardist Spike Edney, ex-Bob Geldof. There was also Cozy Powell on drums, until his untimely death in a 104mph auto-wreck earlier this year (‘a super bloke, no doubt about it, and he’d got a beautiful place to go, if we wanted to go somewhere. A lovely cottage’ says Peter now). His drum-chair has since been taken by Larry Tolfree. 

Meanwhile, a Todd Terry remix shoves the highly videogenic Corrs into the Top Ten with their Mac-relic “Dreams”. And the ‘Rumours’-vintage platinum albums/ platinum noses MOR Mac reform for ‘The Dance’ (1977) and its attendant commercial feeding-frenzy. But Fleetwood Mac would never have existed without Peter Green. Mick Fleetwood acknowledged as much. There’s a new compilation of studio out-takes and oddities to prove it, ‘The Vaudeville Years Of Fleetwood Mac 1968-1970’ (Receiver Records Ltd RDPCD 14Z) consisting of long unedited seventeen-minute Blues jams complete with pauses and false starts, but between the sound of nails scratching the bottom of barrels there are also alternate takes of “Green Manalishi”, “Man Of The World”, “Oh Well” and forgotten gems like “Someone’s Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight” (originally credited to Earl Vince & The Vincents), essential ingredients from the most vital of the ‘Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack, John Mayall can’t fail Blues’ days (Chicken Shack – for those too young to remember, was Christine McVie’s highly rated pre-Mac band). All recorded with Peter, prior to his fateful meeting with New York Acid Guru Stan Owsley III, the Willy Wonka of LSD, and hello to the drugs hell that left his brain as limp as a salad in a sauna. ‘We went to the States, y’know. And we... erm... crossed paths with the Grateful Dead. I remember sitting on stage with them taking this acid and then trying to sing...!’ Bill Hicks fails to mention that. And Fleetwood Mac? ‘It was a load of clowns of some kind’ he muses now. ‘I don’t know what to make of all those guys. They’re very secretive. They turn up in all kinds of places, in all kinds of situations. But – um, I dunno. That’s a long while ago. It’s a sharky business as well. Not just the managers, you’ve got to watch out for everything (he pronounces it ‘everyfing’). Anything can fool you...’ 

Now he’s an ageing Boy Scout relearning how to tie all those tricky Blues knots. Despite the acid shrapnel in his head. ‘I couldn’t... sort-of... get back. What I learned on those LSD trips was so special to me, meant so much to me that I was told I could have this all the time. Your mind is in a state. You can’t locate yourself. You just see a mist and you don’t feel clear. I’m not really clear now, but at least I can see little things.’ At one point he suddenly asks me ‘John Bonham’s dead, isn’t he? Who plays drums for Led Zeppelin now?’ Bonham died in September 1980. There’s been no Led Zep at least since Live Aid in July 1985. But who knows where the time goes? ‘Jimmy Page’ he adds, ‘he became a great personality, didn’t he?’ 

And the legendary long nails? They’re still long... ish, but chopped off square, as though hacked off with scissors just prior to my arriving. He’s unfazed. More at ease and content with his life than he’s been for years. Decades even. ‘I’ve been doing millions of interviews’ he grins. ‘Saying anything and everything that comes my way. Saying all kinds of queer things.’ 

“I’d rather jack than Fleetwood Mac ...” 

(single by Stock-Aitken-Waterman’s REYNOLD’S GIRLS 

which hit no.8 1st April 1989)

 

‘THE ROBERT JOHNSON SONGBOOK’ 

by PETER GREEN & THE SPLINTER GROUP 

(Artisan Records SARCD 002)

 and 

‘THE VAUDEVILLE YEARS OF 

FLEETWOOD MAC 1968-1970’ 

(Receiver 2CD Digipack Receiver Records Ltd RDPCD 14-Z, 

including 56-page Booklet, issued 21 September 1998)