He was the musician who encouraged a generation of teenagers to pick up the guitar but Peter Green’s own career was marred by psychedelic drugs and mental illness.
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Last night, the world of rock and blues was in mourning after the death of the Fleetwood Mac co-founder at the age of 73. Green, nicknamed the Green God by fans, formed the band with drummer Mick Fleetwood and bass guitarist John McVie in London in 1967. He was so instrumental in the band’s early years that its original name was Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac.
Their greatest hits included Albatross, Man of the World, Oh Well and The Green Manalishi. After he left the band, he missed out on their biggest success, the 1977 Rumours album.
Fleetwood Mac enjoyed staggering success, with four hit albums. In 1969, the band sold more records than The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, combined, and Green became one of the most famous musicians in Europe. But he left the band at the height of its fame after a final performance in 1970. He said he was leaving the music business “for my freedom” but was also suffering from mental health issues, and was hearing voices. He later had schizophrenia diagnosed.
He had gone off the rails after taking LSD. In 1996, he admitted that the drug had left a lasting impression on him. “I’m still there. . . I never did come back off the trip. I guess I took one trip too many,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
While on tour in Munich, Germany, to promote their third album, Then Play On, matters came to a head. “Peter took some more drugs,” said Mick Fleetwood in the 2012 BBC documentary Man of the World, “and never really came back from that.”
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Green was met by a group of people Fleetwood referred to as “the German Jetset,” who whisked him away to a party after their show. “It was a hippie commune sort of thing,” said Fleetwood Mac guitarist Jeremy Spencer.
“We arrived there, and [road manager] Dennis Keane comes up to me shaking and says, ‘It’s so weird, don’t go down there. Pete is weirding out big time and the vibes are just horrible.’”
Green was already set to leave the band, but this was, said Fleetwood, “the final nail in the coffin”. Friends say he was never the same after the “Munich incident”. He began to give away his guitars and, and after he left the band, had a series of odd jobs, including a gravedigger. In the following years he spent time in various psychiatric hospitals and underwent electro-shock therapy.
Green was never enamoured with either fame or money. As the royalty cheques flooded in as Fleetwood Mac became ever more successful in the 1970s and news fans scoured the back catalogue, Green did not want the cash or the attention. He was trying to enjoy a much simpler life.
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Green contacted a former Fleetwood Mac manager about his finances — because he was upset the money kept pouring in. In January 1977, armed with a shotgun, he went to see his accountant, David Simmons, and threatened to shoot him. The police were called and Green ended up in jail.
“I was quite happy in prison, so I thought I’d be all right,” Green said. “But they said, ‘You failed the psychiatrist test.’”
He endured long stretches of mental illness and destitution in the 1970s and 1980s, later moved in with his older brother Len, and his mother in their house in Great Yarmouth, where he started to recover.
In 1977, Fleetwood Mac, without Green, released Rumours, which sold more than 45 million copies worldwide.
Green married Jane Samuels in January 1978. The couple had a daughter, Rosebud Samuels-Greenbaum, but divorced in 1979.
With advances in treatments for schizophrenia, he began to recover and took up the guitar again in 1996. He then formed the Peter Green Splinter Group, which recorded nine albums during their time together.
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In February, a concert was held at the London Palladium in Green’s honour, with performances by rock royalty including Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd, who played a rendition of Albatross, and Noel Gallagher of Oasis, who performed three of the band’s early acoustic numbers.
Last night, the guitarist Bernie Marsden of the band Whitesnake, who saw him recently, shared his memories of Green in a long tribute on social media.
“I can’t quite express my feelings this afternoon after learning of Peter’s death,” he wrote on Instagram.
“I’m just thinking of the times we spent together in the last couple of years, hanging out with him at his home was very special.
“There I was, sat with my hero. As a musician I can only be one of the millions he touched, his talent for guitar playing, vocals and harmonica would have been more than most people could have possibly wished for, and then you add those wonderful songs, original, vibrant, atmospheric, outright psychedelic and so much fun, to listen to and witness.”
The rock singer David Coverdale, formerly of Whitesnake, also paid tribute to Green on Twitter: “An artist I truly loved and admired from the first time I heard him. I supported the original Fleetwood Mac at Redcar Jazz Club when I was in a local band. He was a breathtaking singer, guitarist and composer.”
John Mcvie, a former bandmate in Fleetwood Mac, previously said of Green: “He was one of the best, if not the best. That’s why it’s such a tragedy that it all went the way it did. He could have been so much more.”