Has PG retired?
 

It was a long time ago one heard any news about Peter. Any public musical activitities in the future? Anyone out there with info?

Yeah...If anyone has any new info.
Otherwise he seems to have retired, momentarily, at least.
Hope he doesn't retire for 10-11 years, like the last time.

Hello from Italy!

Really no great news on Peter right now.... but after 10 months, I think I'm now allowed to imform all of you the his recent dispute was settled out of Courte last December 2005.

Well, we know that he lost lots of weight and seems to enjoy his life in Sweden and that he has a nice woman beside him, which is good.....

The music?.....What can I say....I really hope Peter enjoys the rest of his life, but does so outside the music businnes......

Speak to you soon...

Mario.

thanks for the news mario. very good that the case was settled. i understand that you know some of the details . now that it has been settled i guess the ledge discussion ban (Peter Green vs. Nigel Watson ... Please read. posted 7/21/05) is off?

perhaps you can fill us in on some of what happened? or does the terms of the settlement exclude that possibility?

i had hoped that once the case was settled that pete would be free to resume his career but your wish that peter stays outside the music business suggests that you think that would be a bad idea. can you explain what you mean exactly?

sorry for so many questions! what i would most like to know is that pete is well and if he still plays

zero

Yes, thanks Mario! :)
But the same thing puzzles me: Why do you wish that Peter should spend the rest of his life outside the music business?

Daniel

I don't want to speak for Mario, but I wouldn't necessarily disagree. Think of everything the man has been through. Now, think of how much of that can be attributed to the music business. It was called "Show Biz Blues" for a reason! I'd much rather the man never play a guitar again if that meant he could spend the rest of his life in peace. Sure, I'd love to have him recording and touring, just as any fan would. But there comes a time when I have to put that aside and ask what's best for Peter. If being retired, or semi-retired, is what's best for him, then so be it.

Yeah, that was also what I thought Mario meant at first...

And I think most fans would want what is best for Peter, even if that means retirement. If that was what Mario meant, then I understand. It's just that he sounded so determined:

"I really hope Peter enjoys the rest of his life, but does so outside the music businnes......"

Both the time with Fleetwood Mac and White Sky/Kolors did Peter harm.. Of course I know next to nothing about the SG split, but it seemed to me that Peter took it quite well. I don't know... After all, things sounded very well when he did those shows with Kim Simmonds and that All-Star group. Peter said something about how excited he was to continue playing on after the split.

Then there were rumours about Peter having further problems again, but Joe Green said Peter was fine.

I just wanted to know exactly what Mario meant. And if the reason was all the trouble show-biz has caused Peter, then I wouldn't necessarily disagree either.

I don't know any more details about the settlement, only that it was good for Peter and that Peter's lawyers were very happy with it.....

Please, don't get me wrong.....as a fan, of course I'm up to hear the next Peter Green's cd, but after all that evil surrounding the courte case and surrounding the last months of the Splinter Group, then I can't see Peter involved with the music businnes anymore;it happened with Fleetwood Mac, it happened with Kolors and it happened with Splinter Group; Peter's tormented soul does not need this!

Anyway it would be great to get some more and fresh news by Joe Green.

Stay happy and green!

Mario.

Yes, Mario I see what you mean and I agree.

..so anybody seen this photo? Think it's cool.

Yeah! Where's that from?

I agree with Mario, I think.
The music business is not healthy to be in..people try to take
advantage of, make money out of Green.
But if the "business side" of it could be minimized...a studio album
with an understanding producer recorded under no stress?
And he wouldn't have to play old F Mac songs...play what he wants to.

I'm not sure, but I think the picture was originally called "San Francisco 2002", so it could be from one of the US tours. It's one of my favourite pics! :D

Yes, exactly! Johnny Cash's later albums come to my mind.. that "American" series produced by Rick Rubin. (Though I am not saying that Rubin would be the best choice to produce Peter.) But that sort of easy, relaxed setting. Peter wouldn't even have to play blues..after all the man has an extremely wide musical taste (Indian, Arabic, Chinese...)

Maybe a small record label like Bluestown Records at Notodden, Norway, would work. That's the guys who produced Jeremy's "Precious Little", and it was Peter who recommended Notodden to Jeremy! ...well, I feel that I'm drifting away from the topic....:p

It seems strange to blame the "music business" completely. When I read in an above post that Fleetwood Mac did him harm it seemed a little weird to me to be honest. If Peter head never entered the music buiness at any point in his life would be have been better off? I'm just asking.
If whatever mental issues that surfaced came along anyway, and he was driving a truck for a living, what kind of help would he have gotten?

It seems to me that the people he got hooked up with did him harm, and there are unfortunately many bad ones in the "biz". By the time Elvis died it seemed like he was surrounded by yes-men, and he had no true friends. And look at Brian Wilson. He was under the influence of a real bad doctor (to put it mildly) who used his connection with Brian for personal gain. But Brian ended up getting much better once the right people were there for him.
I got the feeling in reading Mick Fleetwood's autobiography that he is someone who truly feels for Pete. What if Peter had gone ahead with the deal that Mick tried to work out for him a number of years ago?

I'm not a Greeny expert like many of you. So I may not be as well versed in all the details. But I think he's a guy with a beautiful soul that can use music in a very positive way. Given the perfect circumstanes and situation - whatever that might be - the best therapy for Peter is probably playing music. As long as it's on his terms. And if he ever feels the kind of vibe that is displayed on this board he will see that there are indeed people in the world that love the sound he makes with voice and guitar, and that these people have no desire to "milk" anything out of him.

And if it comes to pass that Peter will never set foot on a stage or in a studio, then I hope he sits with a guitar now-and-then and plays it for himself, and it puts a little smile on his face.

And I hope he hasn't become scared that every person who comes along and wants to shake his hand is looking to get something from him.

Tom, I never meant the band members themselves. I wrote the time with Fleetwood Mac (and White Sky/Kolors). By that I meant the bad show-biz people you too are referring to, plus the drugs and pressure put on his young shoulders.

That's a good question! There are evidence that mental illness may be drug induced. If that was the case with Peter is impossible to say. However, drug induced or not, I imagine that mental problems must be harder to handle surrounded by the paranoia of show-biz, than a quiet life driving a truck.

Agreed!!:nod:

I can recall Peter mentioning "I know I'm never going to stop now" in the documentary on his recovering and Nigel getting him back on his feet, practicing at home and eventually founding the Splinter Group.......:shrug:

As dansven said, he wasn't talking about the band. Just the people around the band. Many people have used Peter Green's amazing talents as their bread-and-butter throughout the years. I wouldn't include Fleetwood, McVie, or Spencer in that group, as they were all recruited by Peter himself.

Yes and no. I think Peter loved playing music and making music. I think he could have lived without being a guitar hero. The biggest reason for adding Jeremy, and agreeing to have Danny in the band, was to minimize his guitar hero status. It didn't work, but that was the intention.

It wouldn't have been any worse than the help he DID get. Some of the treatments Peter received in the late '70s were absolutely horrid. And, if he had been a truck driver, there wouldn't have been the added pressure of being this modern day folk hero. Men are most apt to develop mental illness in their late-teens to mid-twenties. The drugs didn't cause his mental illness, but they did add to the various factors/symptoms (i.e. the stress caused by the pressure of being a rock star and uncertainty about his religious ideology) that made him become mentally ill. Really, a lot of the same is true of Danny Kirwan, who had issues related to not knowing much about his father, dealing with pressures of being a rock star, and dealing with being a new husband and father. Add drugs and alcohol, and we have yet another fallen hero.

It was too late by then. He had already developed schizophrenia. He might have been able to do an album or two, but with schizophrenia, the bottom would have fallen out. Lots of peaks and valleys with schizophrenia. I will say that the treatments for mental illness today are light years ahead of where they were back in 1978. If Peter had had the types of treatments available to him back then, and had somebody who could protect him from the many bad elements in the music industry, then it might have worked.

As for the rest of your post, I agree on some level. I think music could be very comforting for Peter, it was on his terms and only for his own enjoyment. I think it's something that would have to be done outside of the typical music industry.

Back to the earlier question. can anyone fill me/us in on what happened with Peter and the SG? On the surface, he seemed to be doing well and enjpying the SG.

There are so many "what ifs", aren't there?
Peter definately didn't want the guitar hero tag after he did earn the it. Like Clapton actually did fairly often in the 70's and 80's, Peter played along side other good guitar players. Eric did eventually settle nicely (I think) into his guitar-hero role, although he remains humble about it.

I wonder when the last time Pete and Eric saw each other? Anyone?

they both played at the royal albert hall for the one generation 4 another concert in early 2004, very soon after pete left the splinter group.

zero

Yeah i was there it was a good night !!... pete played very well !... he did see eric but i,m not sure if they spoke

joe! i wish i'd seen that. and i'd like to get a recording of that concert... of course if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

great to see your post. hope all is well. our best to peter.

zero

but the reviews I read weren't so kind to Peter

Well maybe but its a presonal appinion .....and!!!! after all hes been through !! ... i just love it when i see him on a stage

They still expect him to blast away like he was 22, perhaps.
I have it on tape, and think he plays great. Simple,
jazzy, very tasteful. I don't know anything about it,
but he must have been nervous, considering what was
happening at the time.

dino - right, these reviewers had no idea what peter was doing. i recall an earlier posted discussion of pete's rah performance, maybe from you or from mario, i can't remember, which concluded that despite the media reports to the contrary that he played very well.

anyway, i'd love to get a copy of the tape, if you are willing. could you remind me again what peter played; black magic woman and one other, a non-original blues?

zero

He played "Comin' home baby" also. It's not the Elmore James
track, it's the jazz standard. Don't know who did it first,
I've only got the Herbie Mann version (he had a big hit with it).

I can't remember exactly what the reviewers said, but they weren't very excited. Does anyone remember what their problem was with the performance. Maybe they were, in fact, expecting something other than what he did. But they must have known what he did with the SG.

l- i never saw a review of this concert that included more than a sentence or two about pete. a couple are logged for posterity here: http://www.procolharum.com/004/gb_040315.htm

both are clueless; like dino said, probably they expect him to play bmw like he did in the 60's, whereas anyone who ever heard or saw the splinter group knows that's not going to happen.

it's disappointing to see stuff like this written, like pete needed additional reasons not to play these kind of high profile gigs. and even if he had played poorly (which he did not), anyone with the slightest idea what he has been through would go easy and cut the man some slack. unbelievable.

zero

Yeah, I think these were the reviews I saw. Not very complementary to Peter, were they. Wandering off, bluff his way thru BMW. I remember when I read those reviews thinking PG was lost w/o the SG around. Anybody who wasn't at the concert and read those reviews wouldn't know what PG had done. Thanks to you guys, I feel better about that performance. Personally, I think that no matter what someone has been through, it doesn't excuse poor performance. It may explain it but not excuse it. But from what I heard of PG in the SG he had, in fact, been playing well enough to justify performing. He wasn't PG of the Fleetwood Mac, he was PG of the SG.

In the words of a famous brooklynite:
 

F..k em if they can't take a joke.

Whatever else Peter is, his taste and playing are sublime.
If he were so sensitive to Newspapers would he have ever come back?
Artists paint. Performers perform. I wish I were there that night.


People , audiences and critics are built unfair by design. You never know why they were in the audience.

I'd say Peter played great for most of the Splinter gigs, maybe not the very early ones.
If you look at the videos, you can still see his natural ease with a guitar.
His attitude is probably that he doesn't want to be a flash guitar hero
and play the solos he played to death 30 years ago.
I'm not saying the Splinter era brought out the best in him, but it sure
looks like he knew what he was doing.
Music writers seldom like change...

I think Peter's playing reflects his personality.
He is a grown up man now, not a young lad like in the 60s, dammit!!
He is not supposed to play the same way as he did back then ... no one should have to do that! And the true artists never do! They change ... develope...

I see Peter's different playing styles as developement. When he started playing again in 1996, he stated that he discovered new "things" that he'd never known with Fleetwood Mac. Contrary to most other veteran players, Peter hasn't stuck to "the good ole formula".. ("That worked, let's stick to it...") At the end of his time with Kolors, he stopped bending the notes ... for more emotional impact. And in a way I follow him! I mean, with the limitation of not being "allowed" to bend the strings, you really have to think about what you're playing!!

And just listen to his playing in recent years. It is much more experimental that what he did with Fleetwood Mac!!! I listen to it again and again, and I become more and more amazed......

The same thing goes for his singing. Compare his singing on "Man Of The World" and say... "Cruel Contradictions", and tell me which of them has the more emotional singing ???

Any critic or music reporter who doesn't understand this, should get another job.

I find I can usually quite easily pick out Peter's playing in the Splinter recordings. It is elegant and tasteful, not flashy. Of course, I think he was always tasteful. He never played 2 notes when one would do. Some 60s era lead players tried to play as many notes as they could. flashy, yes. tasteful, no.
real critics have a right to express their opinions. However, they usually do so with an explanation of why they feel that way. Then the reader can decide if the premise upon which the review is based is valid. Don;t recall see that in the reviews in question.

Amen, said better than I could have.

Yeah but are we talking about a concious decision to play differently, or a style change that was just part of Peter's saga? He did say that he had to re-learn to play. I agree wholeheartedly that the man still has taste and style - but how many of us would give anything to see him come out and rip through a version of "Oh Well" circa 1969?

Clapton still does what he does best, and that works fine for me.

evolution
 

Some Performers get a "pass" just for being on stage. I do not know what critics thought of the Cream reunion. I was aghast at the ticket price for Madison Square Garden so I bought the Albert hall DVD. I preface this next comment as being a Clapton fan, but what struck me the most was the lack of enthusiasm and fire. I ended up deciding that of all people on the stage Jack Bruce might have been the only one exuding life on the stage.

Music is life. If you don't put it in your music whats the point?

To me , that is what Peter is.

Personally I'd never compare EC and Peter. Both are "guitar heros" yeah, but they are totally different kinds of performers... Clapton, great though, gives the audience what they want.

I'd rather compare Greeny to Dylan! :D Dylan is no guitar icon, but they've both developed. Are we talking about a concious decision to sing and play differently, when it comes to Dylan?? To me that question doesn't really matter...

But I don't think the reason is that Peter is not able to play like he did before... I think his Splinter Group version of "Going Down" is pretty much as fiery as what he did in the 60s... What I find is that he generally has a more "mellow" approach to the music nowadays. His guitar sound tends to be more sweet and not so harsh anymore (with a few exceptions).

When it comes to "Oh Well"... Yeah, and I'd love even more to see him finally get to perform "Oh Well" PART 2 live!!!:thumbsup: That would have been something!

fire
 

can never really compare musicians. It is unfair to them as well as the discussion. Although it is the nature of people to judge against something.

To me Peter Greens playing is "of the moment" and in context to the surrounding musical texture. The very essence of improvisation. That his style has changed over time is natural evolution. I know he will never play "Ive got a mind to give up living" like he did back in his youth. But the passion is still there. Yes, he is and icon. I do not think that he would ever want to be seen as someone else than himself in the here and now. I do not know who would really like it. (egoists not included)

I totally agree. Unfortunately nostalgia has something to do with it.
I wasn't born even in the 60's, but I would think some of the people that went to see Splinter Group wanted top hear
the old hits. Especially those who saw Mac in concert during the late 60's era.
That's difficult for any creative musician, as we have seen in many cases (Hendrix, for example).

Like Dylan - I've heard complaints from those who were around in the 60's.
They want to hear the same vocal phrasing as on the records!
So maybe they should stay at home and listen to the RECORD instead...

Being from 1951, I wasn't born in the 60's either.
On the other hand, nostalgia isn't anymore as it used to be :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
:sorry:

I wasn't trying to actually compare Peter to Eric as guitar players. I was pointing out the difference in the way they are today relative to their past.
Clapton has been through many changes over the years, but not too far from what he's always been - a blues player. And he's still humble about the whole "guitar hero" thing. He still points to the great bluemen of yesteryear as the reason he does what he does, and where he gets the playing from.

I think Peter seemed to have that feeling even deeper than Eric. Especially when EC got into Cream. I love that story about the psycadelic Eric telling the bluejeaned Peter backstage that he'll never be "big" dressed like he was.
I was just asking weather Peter's "growth" as a musician was because he simply evolved as he got older - or as a result of the demons and issues he has been through.
I'm still not as well versed in Greeny's story as many of you. I'm still a bit of a rookie. I have that Splinter concert DVD and although Peter is great to watch, and plays some fine guitar, there is no trace of that awesome fire that he displayed back in time. That's not meant as a put-down at all. As I watch that DVD I find it wonderful to see him making music and feeling the positive feedback from the audience. I can't tell though if he is really, REALLY having fun. I hope so.

I could never really understand why it becomes a burden for a performer to give the people what they want. Clapton for instance is a lead guitarist first and foremost. And people love to see him play that Strat. Fortunately, he loves to play the Strat. So it's a very happy marriage. I can see a certain song becoming a bit worn out. But to not give the fans at least a "taste" of what they bought your music for, and what they are fans of you for, then that doesn't seem right alltogether.
Can you imagine Fleetwood Mac doing a tour tomorrow and not doing anything off of "Rumors". :eek:

BTW - I thought that the Cream reunion was fantastic.