[michelej1]

[This is a 1994 interview with Mick that I had not seen uploaded online yet, which covers the reissue of "Fleetwood Mac in Chicago 1969" but also gets into a discussion of the current FM line up]

Daily News (Los Angeles, CA), May 2, 1994

Section: L.A. LIFE

THE MAC IS BACK 'Chicago' reissue recalls guitarist Green's greatness

Fred Shuster Daily News Music Writer


Years before Fleetwood Mac became a purveyor of soporific West Coast pop, it was a pretty credible blues outfit featuring one of Britain's most revered lost lead guitarists, Peter Green.

At the time, in the mid-to-late-'60s, the British blues boom was in full swing and London's clubs were full of groups formed by musicians who had splintered from John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, from whose ranks Fleetwood Mac emerged in the summer of 1967.

Inspired by Chicago bluesmen Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin' Wolf and especially Elmore James, Fleetwood Mac played endless 12-bar boogies, shuffles, slow blues and instrumentals. But the element that set the group apart back then was Green, a musician's musician who played evocative solos as if he were cutting diamonds.

Green suffered emotional problems and quit Fleetwood Mac in 1970, after composing the group's early hits, "Black Magic Woman," "Albatross," "Oh Well" and the sorrowful "Man of the World," but he left a mark that remains to this day.

One of the band's earliest and most beloved albums with Green, "Fleetwood Mac in Chicago 1969" (Blue Horizon/Sire), was issued Tuesday on compact disc and Mick Fleetwood was available to talk about Green's influence on the group.

The Chicago sessions came about when Mac - Green, slide guitarist Jeremy Spencer, rhythm guitarist Danny Kirwan, Fleetwood and Christine McVie - flew to the Windy City to open a show for Waters and cut an album at the legendary Chess Studios. The members of Mac were in their late teens and early 20s, and the blues elders that awaited them under the direction of Dixon were at first puzzled at these young Englishmen.

"They wondered what these English punks were doing there," Fleetwood, 51, recalled during a recent interview at a Beverly Hills hotel. "The vibe was a little strange at first. Then Peter Green got up and played at Willie Dixon's club on the South Side and that's when everything changed."

Green's playing on the Chicago sessions is classy and restrained. A master of tone and attack, his solos are both sharp and melodic, particularly on the double album's opening tracks, "Watch Out" and "Ooh Baby."

"This album enables you to hear Green for the finesse player he was," Fleetwood said. "This guy had the goods."

Mike Vernon, producer of albums by Mayall and early Fleetwood Mac - including the Chicago disc - agrees. In a recent issue of the British music magazine Mojo, Vernon is quoted saying Green was "just the very best blues guitarist this country has ever produced, and if anybody wants any proof of that, all they have to do is listen to the Otis Spann album I did with Fleetwood Mac, 'The Biggest Thing Since Colossus' (soon to be reissued on CD)."

Fleetwood said Green was "one of those guys who shouldn't have gone near drugs. The guy was tormented. There was something in his eyes. He flipped himself out. It's tragic not to have him in my life. I miss his playing."

Toward the end of his three years with Fleetwood Mac, Green began turning up on stage in long messianic white robes. He wrote "The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Prong Crown)," which Fleetwood said was about "the battle between God and the devil. Peter really saw those things."

"And he saw the only way out for him was to pull out entirely. And he got out by the skin of his teeth. He opened himself up to everything and that was dangerous. He was a wonderfully sensitive man. For the relatively short time he was functioning within Fleetwood Mac, the mark he left was extraordinary."

Today, Green lives with his mother and brother in the South End section of London and spends his days at a day-care center or watching TV. He could not be reached for comment.

"He chose the Brian Wilson route," Fleetwood said. "He knows his mental condition and chooses not to put himself in stressful positions."

Now 25 years later, McVie and Fleetwood are the only founding members left in Fleetwood Mac. Kirwan, Green and Spencer walked out long ago, the latter guitarist having dropped out in 1971 in the midst of a U.S. tour, after telling his comrades he was dashing out of their Los Angeles hotel to buy newspapers.

Instead, he joined a religious cult and his fellow musicians didn't see him again for two years.

Green returned briefly to take Spencer's place that time, but only on the condition the band not play songs - only jam, Fleetwood recalled.

"So, we got him a wah-wah pedal and a Fender Super Reverb amp and played things like 'Black Magic Woman' - the only song he would play - for 20 minutes at a time," the drummer said. "It was plug in and go. Each song lasted a half-hour. We would find a rhythm and that was it. He would never run out of juice."

New Mac ready to record, tour

The latest edition of Fleetwood Mac is in the studio recording a follow-up to 1990's "Behind the Mask."

The band has two new members - vocalist Bekka Bramlett (daughter of Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett) and guitarist-songwriter Dave Mason, formerly of Traffic who has a long solo career.

Mick Fleetwood said the band will tour shortly after the fall release of the as-yet untitled disc.

"We're going to be a working band," he said.

In addition, Fleetwood has his own blues combo, Blue Whale, which plays clubs around the country. The drummer is in the process of moving from Los Angeles to Virginia, where he plans to open a nightclub.

"I want to live somewhere where there's some serenity," he said.