02 Academy Review

[michelej1]

The Star
http://www.thestar.co.uk/music/REVIE...And.6283574.jp

REVIEW - Peter Green And Friends, 02 Academy
Published Date: 10 May 2010
By Andrew Foley

LEGEND has it that on a good night in the 1960s there was no one to touch Peter Green.

As leader of the first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac, he forged a reputation as one of the greatest guitarists to hail from these shores.

Then it all went horribly wrong. Drug-fuelled trauma pushed him into a creative wilderness and left him confroADVERTISEMENTnting personal demons for the best part of three decades.

He returned in the mid 1990s with the Splinter Group and now fronts a new band simply billed as his Friends.

Their leader is perched on a stool, portly with bandana and beard, like a Buddha of the blues. He resembles the world-weary Delta icons who inspired him as a youngster.

For anyone doubting how good Green was, listen to Love That Burns off the second Mac album. It is aching musicianship that he now carries forward into Bobby Parker's Blues Get Off My Shoulder.

The playing is brittle, delicate and restrained but still displays the qualities that made him great.

Indeed, Green was streets ahead of his contemporaries in working out that less is regularly more. He understood space and when not to play, avoiding the pitfall of excess that often engulfed Clapton, Beck and Page.

The show is no greatest hits package and there are big tunes missing from the set.

But there are surprises, most notably a rare outing for Oh Well, the killer riff that provokes a roar from the crowd and a little smile from its author.
It segues into Albatross, Green's soaring work of genius that saw him shake off the 12-bar shackles.

Acknowledgement of his groundbreaking work with John Mayall is followed by a fragile version of Black Magic Woman to end the night.

Green shuffles off the stage with a little wave, leaving an appreciative audience to be thankful he is still with us.