The Jeremy Spencer Imposter
 

In his book, Bob Brunning talks about meeting a Jeremy Spencer imposter.

To be able to pass himself off as JS even for a short time this guy would presumably had to have had a number of attributes: a Midlands accent (which could be faked), a severe lack of height (which couldn't) and if he was playing gigs at least some modicum of ability.

Was anything else ever heard or known about this guy?

I've never heard of this. I knew there was a Peter Green imposter who had lots of guys fooled (including Queen's bassist).

Never heard of this. Can you give som more information??????

BB's book is currently out on loan from the library where I borrowed it, and this library's on-line catalogue doesn't show when it is due back like others do.

From memory, this guy was playing gigs (in Europe?) as JS, BB met with him and actually took JS's parents along to a show.

BB mentions a PG impersonator, but this was just some guy in a pub using his likeness to get free drinks. When confonted he confessed and shot off. I hadn't heard of anyone playing gigs as PG.

Really? when was that guy making the rounds?

I want to say it was around 1994/1995. What's weird is after this guy was proven to be a fraud, there were rumors about Peter Green's passing. Within a few months, not only was Pete still living, but had started performing again. It was a weird period, but then what's new?

Yeah, as I remember that's about the time he came out of his fog.

The Spencer fake is an interesting story - Brunning talks about it briefly. He says that in the early 1980s he begn to receive phone calls from his musician friends saying that Spencer had reappeared. The were were also reports to this effect in the London Evening Standard newspaper. Brunning contacted the guy and met him in a pub. He says, "I wasn't wholly convinced, but he went a long way towards persuading me that he was Spencer with his astonishingly authentic recollection of the most intimate details of early Fleetwood Mac experiences. He certainly had far more than a passing resemblance to Spencer."

Still "extremely suspicious", Brunning contacted the Evening Standard, whose reporter grilled "Jeremy" for two hours before finally assuring Brunning that this was the right guy. Brunning then organised a gig with his De Luxe Blues band and "Jeremy" in London. They played three songs, and "Jeremy" insisted on playing with his back to the stage. In the audience were Jeremy Spencer's parents, plus their solicitor, who insisted after the show that Brunning go back on to tell the audience that the guitarist was not the real Spencer. Brunning elected to get drunk instead.

The Evening Standard hauled the fake Jeremy into their offices and confronted him with an ex-girlfriend of the real Jeremy's, and she confirmed the hoax. The guy's name was Andrew Clarke, and he'd been impersonating Jeremy for over a decade :eek: jamming with Rory Gallagher at Montreux, and earning a fortune for the Children of God. He claimed that the organisation forced him to do it to capitalise on Jeremy's fame. Brunning found the whole thing very strange... unsurprisingly

Maybe if this guy was forced to do it by the Children of God, it might explain how he knew so many intimate details. Maybe Jeremy was in on it! :laugh:

Besides the size, let's be honest, Jeremy had fairly unique teeth. I wish I could have seen this guy's act.

Brunning doesn't put a date to this story, but the book was written in 1990 so it had to be before that. Green's accountant David Simmons (previously assistant to Clifford Davis I think) told the tale of a guy pretending to be Peter. It was "at a time when Peter was quite reclusive".

One of Simmons' secretaries found him in a pub and she told Simmons, who phoned him. When challenged, the man "became quite offensive and bluffed his way out of the whole thing". He doesn't exactly say that he met the guy, but he does say that he looked a lot like him, with the same kind of beard, and that he even had his picture printed in a magazine of some sort. "He didn't run up any financial credit on the name. I guess he just enjoyed being Peter Green!"

It's about time we had another impostor - who fancies being Danny or Bob Weston or something? :laugh:

Chili can be Dave Walker.

Then again BB has proven that his own recollection of "intimate details" is pretty dodgy. He may not be that hard to fool!

There was a pic posted a while back of a modern guitarist who looked a lot like Danny in the day, and even had the same sense of fashion. He wasn't claiming to be Danny (obviously, as he was way too young), but the resemblance was eerie.

EDIT: I found the thread! http://ledge.fleetwoodmac.net/showthread.php?t=16307

Don't know whether Bob Brunning's fake Peter Green is the same one as Martin Celmins describes in his book - the "Egg & Potato Man". (Anyone from the UK care to comment on this nickname? I've always been curious whether there's a particularly British dish that the name refers to.) That imposter - real name Patrick Harper - is said to have been active around 1992-4. According to Celmins, Harper conned a number of music industry people and was on "the brink of securing a respectable record deal as 'Peter Green'". The edition of Brunning's book that I have has a publication date of 1990 & 1998 - maybe that's a later edition than yours, bretonbanquet? So it's possible that the edition I have could have been updated to discuss the "Egg & Potato Man".

This is from a music paper article here on the Ledge:

"Event took on an even more bizarre twist when in 1992, an Essex farmer, Patrick Harper, nicknamed The Egg & Potato Man, began claiming to be Green on the comeback trail, dumping Queen drummer Roger Taylor amongst others into leading support.

"I saw him one day," Green claims, a touch hazily. "He looked like a Hell's Angel - a bit taller than me, looking kind of strange. I heard a rumour that he went into EMI and to call his bluff they offered him a quarter of a million pound record deal, and he said, No, I better not."