Julie
07-25-2000, 06:53 AM
MOJO, August 2000
HELLO, GOODBYE
At first it was just playing the blues in scruffy clothes. Then they started to look like clowns and he left the circus. This month, the lazy union and departure of ….
Peter Green & Fleetwood Mac
Interview by Harry Shapiro
HELLO
June 1967
I told John Mayall I was going to Chicago because I wanted to play with that real African blues sound. But Marsha Hunt put me off. She said if I played in some of those South Side clubs some copper would pull me off the stage and ask to see a work permit, which of course I wouldn't have. So then I thought I'd just be the house guitarist for the Blue Horizon label like Buddy Guy was for Chess. But people were saying, "You're into the blues, you're good technically and if you can be half as good as we think your ambition is, which is to be 10,000 times better than Eric Clapton …." So the band came together like that.
Ric Grech was going to be the bassist but he pulled out at the last minute. Dave Ambrose said no as well. Bob Brunning was a super guy, but I don't think he was among the broken-hearted – he hadn't cracked up in his life. Then John McVie phoned and said he was fed up playing with John Mayall. Which was good otherwise it would have been a bit like, "Where's the Mac?", I suppose. I wanted Tony McPhee in the band, but he was a bit more serious than I was. But I didn't use to laugh much at Jeremy [Spencer]'s jocular attitude. We were scruffy looking, but we didn't worry about it. I felt I needed to make it a poverty thing and not wear smart clothes. If the Windsor Festival [FM debut gig] had been a big joke, then Blue Horizon would have just had to get by with Chicken Shack.
GOODBYE
March 1970
The rest of them started to look like clowns to me, and I'm not part of the circus. They were only half into it, I wasn't into it at all. I don't know what all this 'had enough of the pressure' is all about. A lot of people ask me about this and perhaps I had a different answer at the time. You can't really tell what it's all about – it's just Showbiz Blues. Or The Green Manalishi, which was a big wad of green notes. I wanted to give some of the money away. They seemed to think I wanted to give all of it away.
I was invited to go to this mansion near Munich in the countryside. I took some LSD there, and I might have stayed up all night playing and slept during the day. I woke up on this mattress; a girl came in and wanted to climb in with me. I remember walking outside this place just to look at the stars. There were about four of us playing in this torture chamber, a cellar I suppose it was. I played like B.B. King, but with an extra note that I had never played before and I was blown away by that tape. I thought it was fantastic. I heard Snowy White play all this stuff, just like it is on that tape. I must ask him where he heard it.
I wanted to leave before Oh Well was released. I put cello on the B-side because that's what I was going to study. I told them I was going to leave because I wanted to study classical music. I felt that was more where my spirit was. I didn't have to stay playing the blues or whatever you think Fleetwood Mac had become. They should have come forward more as a group, rather than letting me take all the onus. I wasn't trying to be an international star – I had Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix over me. Peter Green? You're not going to get anywhere with a name like that, are you?
HELLO, GOODBYE
At first it was just playing the blues in scruffy clothes. Then they started to look like clowns and he left the circus. This month, the lazy union and departure of ….
Peter Green & Fleetwood Mac
Interview by Harry Shapiro
HELLO
June 1967
I told John Mayall I was going to Chicago because I wanted to play with that real African blues sound. But Marsha Hunt put me off. She said if I played in some of those South Side clubs some copper would pull me off the stage and ask to see a work permit, which of course I wouldn't have. So then I thought I'd just be the house guitarist for the Blue Horizon label like Buddy Guy was for Chess. But people were saying, "You're into the blues, you're good technically and if you can be half as good as we think your ambition is, which is to be 10,000 times better than Eric Clapton …." So the band came together like that.
Ric Grech was going to be the bassist but he pulled out at the last minute. Dave Ambrose said no as well. Bob Brunning was a super guy, but I don't think he was among the broken-hearted – he hadn't cracked up in his life. Then John McVie phoned and said he was fed up playing with John Mayall. Which was good otherwise it would have been a bit like, "Where's the Mac?", I suppose. I wanted Tony McPhee in the band, but he was a bit more serious than I was. But I didn't use to laugh much at Jeremy [Spencer]'s jocular attitude. We were scruffy looking, but we didn't worry about it. I felt I needed to make it a poverty thing and not wear smart clothes. If the Windsor Festival [FM debut gig] had been a big joke, then Blue Horizon would have just had to get by with Chicken Shack.
GOODBYE
March 1970
The rest of them started to look like clowns to me, and I'm not part of the circus. They were only half into it, I wasn't into it at all. I don't know what all this 'had enough of the pressure' is all about. A lot of people ask me about this and perhaps I had a different answer at the time. You can't really tell what it's all about – it's just Showbiz Blues. Or The Green Manalishi, which was a big wad of green notes. I wanted to give some of the money away. They seemed to think I wanted to give all of it away.
I was invited to go to this mansion near Munich in the countryside. I took some LSD there, and I might have stayed up all night playing and slept during the day. I woke up on this mattress; a girl came in and wanted to climb in with me. I remember walking outside this place just to look at the stars. There were about four of us playing in this torture chamber, a cellar I suppose it was. I played like B.B. King, but with an extra note that I had never played before and I was blown away by that tape. I thought it was fantastic. I heard Snowy White play all this stuff, just like it is on that tape. I must ask him where he heard it.
I wanted to leave before Oh Well was released. I put cello on the B-side because that's what I was going to study. I told them I was going to leave because I wanted to study classical music. I felt that was more where my spirit was. I didn't have to stay playing the blues or whatever you think Fleetwood Mac had become. They should have come forward more as a group, rather than letting me take all the onus. I wasn't trying to be an international star – I had Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix over me. Peter Green? You're not going to get anywhere with a name like that, are you?