Quote:
|
Originally Posted by SteveMacD
Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac really only required Peter Green. People would have easily accepted the band without Jeremy or Danny. Sure, those two were great on stage, but people would have gone to see Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac if it were Peter, Mick, John, and Stan Webb, Christine Perfect, Kim Simmonds, or any other combination of British blues musicians. Also, look at what happened right after Peter Green quit. People just stopped caring. Even the addition of Christine Perfect, herself a huge star on the British blues scene, couldn't put the band back on top.
|
Fleetwood Mac did require Peter Green, of course. But Peter Green required Fleetwood Mac. Without them, particularly Danny, I don't think he would have been particularly successful once the brief initial blues-only period was over and Peter was tired of it. He said himself that 'Albatross' wouldn't have happened without Danny, although I accept that the crowds and record-buying public would not have realised that. I am as certain as I can be that Peter required first Jeremy and later Danny in order to achieve what he wanted with the band. I don't believe any of the other musicians you mentioned, talented as they were / are, could have inspired Peter like Danny did. People may well have gone to see Mac with those musicians involved, but I really don't think songs like 'Albatross' and 'Green Manalishi' would have happened, in which case you have to wonder how long the band would have lasted anyway. If you think about what would have happened after 'Mr Wonderful' had Danny not joined, how do you imagine it?
As much as Mac went under without Peter, he went under without them. That is to say, once he had outgrown the inspiration offered to him by Danny and had started moving in a new musical direction (the free form stuff and the improvisational jamming etc) he found himself on his own musically. I think this contributed to his obvious problems in other areas and is often overlooked. Without the musical support of anyone else, he sank like a stone and disappeared for 6 years. Maybe with a new muse to bounce off, maybe things could have been different.
I suppose what I mean by all this is that the composition of the band surrounding Peter was a lot more important than is often realised. They helped him to be who we all saw as Peter Green. It's hypothetical, but I don't believe anyone else could have done that.
In that way I think the early line-up is similar to how you viewed the later line-ups, i.e. the band is bigger than the constituent members, but with Peter's line-up it looked on the surface like he was standing up more or less on his own.