PETER GREEN,
THE SPLINTERED YEARS
‘TIME TRADERS’ and
‘REACHING THE COLD 100’
by PETER GREEN SPLINTER GROUP
(2014, Eagle Records EDG1015262)
‘Time Traders’ is from 2001, ‘Reaching the Cold 100’ from a few years later – in 2003, now repackaged together into a neat slipcase 2CD edition. They are made up of thirteen tracks each, consisting of songs written by Splinter Group member Nigel Watson (rhythm guitar), Roger Cotton (keyboards), and Pete Stroud (bass). Drummer Larry Tolfree is content to hold down the steady backbeat. Peter Green – credited by his birth-name Peter Greenbaum, gets just one writer credit, for the instrumental “Underway”, and that a retread of a track from Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Then Play On’ album, albeit with a guesting Snowy White helping out. “Uganda Woman” another track with Peter’s strong input, had previously been a 1972 B-side. This nevertheless marks the albums out from Peter’s more regular fare of Blues standards, and particularly the Robert Johnson catalogue. ‘Reaching The Cold 100’, the Group’s eighth and final album together, includes “Legal Fee Blues” perhaps hinting at symptoms of the group’s litigious demise. Whatever its internal politics, the Splinter Group proved vital as a support vehicle enabling Peter to resume live working and recording. We should be grateful for that, and it leaves some fine material here to enjoy.
Published in:
‘R2: ROCK ‘N’ REEL Vol.2 No.44’
(UK – March 2014)
‘PETER GREEN SPLINTER GROUP:
ME AND THE DEVIL’
(2008, Snapper SBLUECD 501X)
Robert Johnson exists in the twilight zone where truth spirals into haunted myth, hard facts are uncertain and legends shadow in the details. As such it’s entirely appropriate that Peter Green, a musician with more than his own share of tales to tell, used the Johnson songbook as part of his route-map back into Blues prominence. This 3CD set invites direct comparison between the full existing Robert Johnson catalogue, with the Splinter Group’s versions of exactly the same twenty-nine songs. It does considerable merit to both. There was Blues before Robert Johnson, but after him it could never be the same again. He invested it with a literacy and stripped-down poetry that remain spine-chillingly effective even across the decades since. “Ramblin’ On My Mind”, “Hell Hound On My Trail”, “Cross Road Blues” and “Me And The Devil Blues” stand as the cornerstones of the entire Sixties British Blues revival, covered and reinterpreted by everyone from Cream and Dylan, to Led Zep and the Stones, but seldom has the harrowing soul of the songs been as well captured as it is by Peter Green, less by meticulous replication, as through bone-weary empathy.
Published in:
‘ROCK ‘N’ REEL Vol.2 No.12’
(UK – November 2008)
‘THE VERY BEST OF
PETER GREEN SPLINTER GROUP’
by PETER GREEN SPLINTER GROUP
(2012, Madfish SMACD987)
Even if his adventures, and misadventures of the late-Sixties had never happened, Peter Green would still have written himself into Brit-Blues credibility with his series of eight Splinter Group albums and tours from 1997 through to 2003. As the curator of the Robert Johnson legacy he brings more than mere note-by-note replication to those seminal originals, he reinterprets them through his own bone-weary experience and battered soul, into contemporary demon-haunted relevance, singing and playing harp on “Steady Rollin’ Man”. This two-disc selection also includes two revisions of Peter’s tortured Fleetwood Mac originals – an abrasive rasp-voiced “The Green Manalishi” done live at his ‘Ronnie Scotts’ Soho Session, and an effectively understated instrumental “Man Of The World” that burnishes its sensitive beauty, plus the smoky Santana-esque samba “The Supernatural” from his John Mayall period. Plus Freddie King’s “The Stumble” with its long Peter Green association. New composition “Hiding In Shadows” even evokes the memory of “Albatross”. Guesting contributers include Paul Rodgers on “Sweet Home Chicago”, and Dr John, plus Otis Rush and the late Hubert Sumlin. There’s some gospel-flavouring from the Street Angels, and Peter’s “Underway” features some classy Snowy White guitar interplay. But Peter Green remains the solid centre of this fine album.
‘BLUES DON’T CHANGE’
by PETER GREEN SPLINTER GROUP
(2012, Eagle Records ER202622)
Begun as part of Peter’s rehabilitation following his long post-Fleetwood Mac lost years, the Splinter Group is now very much a respected integral part of the Blues scene. Although recorded in 2001, this album was only previously available at gigs or through the ‘Splinter Group’ website. So this is its first proper release, and it’s worth the wait. The eleven tracks don’t stray too far from standard Blues repertoire – “Little Red Rooster”, “Crawlin’ King Snake” and a spooky “Honey Bee”, but done with such easy authority they emerge renewed as part of a living tradition. Peter started out with the Blues, it’s embedded in his DNA, with the sympathetic supporting structure provided by Nigel Watson (bass), drummer Larry Tolfree, Roger Cotton adding keyboards and the second guitar of Pete Stroud. There’s no striving for histrionics. It flows natural. Peter’s lived-in rasp says all that needs saying about living the Blues life. With minimal rehearsal, done ‘live’ and pretty-much spontaneous in the studio, drawing from their touring set, this is an object lesson in Blues, the genre that ever-evolves, and yet, essentially don’t change…
Published in:
‘R2 (ROCK ‘N’ REEL) Vol.2 No.35’
(UK – September 2012)
‘ALONE WITH THE BLUES’
by
PETER GREEN &
THE ORIGINAL FLEETWOOD MAC
(2015, Metro Select METRSL118)
The music industry has not always treated Peter Green kindly. His natural unworldly quality has left him vulnerable to abuse and misuse from numerous unscrupulous agencies throughout his explosive rise, long decline and painful climb back into visibility. But his ability has never been in doubt. This 2CD 34-track anthology is no exception. Blues is Peter’s lodestone, the single constant that defines each life and career-phase. And although the track provenance is not always obvious, without scrupulous reference to Joel McIver’s liner-notes, it runs from early Brit-Blues “Long Grey Mare” lifted from Fleetwood Mac’s 1968 debut LP, woozy live versions of “Black Magic Woman” and no.1 single “Oh Well”, before sampling “Ride With Your Daddy Tonight” – his harmonica-driven contribution to the 1969 Brunning Sunflower Blues Band album ‘Trackside Blues’, plus session-outtake “Uranus”. The second phase is inaugurated by tracks from the 1979 ‘In The Skies’ set, with Snowy White and Peter Bardens on hand, through his neglected solo albums up to ‘A Case For The Blues’ (1985) with Vincent Crane and Ray Dorset. Stopping short of his relaunch with Splinter Group this set revisits familiar material, mixing it with lesser-known and rare tracks. Throughout, Peter’s ability has never been in doubt, no matter what company he’s found himself in.
Published in:
‘R2: ROCK ‘N’ REEL Vol.2 no.54’
(UK – November 2015)
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