Just one more post to further illuminate the story of Peter Green and the gun. It happened in late 1976 - I have a couple of books from 1978 that mention it, so they're roughly contemporary. One book ("Fleetwood Mac- The Authorized History" by Samuel Graham) states that Green and manager Clifford Davis had a fight on the telephone and that Green "threatened to shoot him". Davis reported that to the police, and when questioned, Green admitted he owned a gun and had used it once for hunting. Another book ("Fleetwood Mac - Rumours n' Fax" by Roy Carr and Steve Clarke) reproduces part of a newspaper or magazine clipping (the source of that is not stated, but it appears to have been from very shortly after the incident) which states that Green had demanded that his manager stop royalty payments, admitted to having a pump-action rifle without a firearms certificate, but denied threatening to damage his manager's office windows (presumably with the gun, but that's not stated explicitly).
A more recent account of the incident from Martin Celmins' book seems to rely mainly on Green's own memory of the events many years later. This account has Green asking Clifford Davis for money rather than trying to have royalty payments stopped, but Green admits that during the telephone conversation with Davis, he said "I'll shoot you." When told that an accountant - David Simmons - had the money, Green admits he said "well, I'll shoot his windows down too." From the account in this book, Green actually owned two guns, the one described as a .22 fairground rifle, and an older single-barrel shotgun. Green says in the book that although he owned the guns (and he does mention buying cartridges when he purchased the .22 rifle), he did not actually have either in his actual possession at the time of the phone call to Clifford Davis - they were at a different location or locations.
Both Celmins and Graham books state that Green was arrested later at his home; the article reproduced in the other book does not make the place of the actual arrest clear, but the somewhat sloppy wording could be taken to mean that he was arrested at Davis' offices, which could be where that part of later stories originated.
So while some of the exact details are still open to question, there seems no doubt that Green threatened his manager and accountant over the phone, but never fired a gun at either of them. What he did was bad enough, and it's a shame that the story was then distorted and sensationalized by others to make his actions sound much worse than they really were. Thanks again to vivfox for posting that most recent article to "set the record straight" here on the Ledge.
|