The Munich accident

[SteveMacD]

Originally Posted by sharksfan2000

I think a big problem to unraveling the reality of the Munich story is that many of the people who were involved, either directly or indirectly, seem to have their own agenda to push. Mick Fleetwood, Rainer Langhans, and Peter himself have reasons to spin the tale in ways that benefit them. And even if they don't have a personal agenda to push, it's natural that each person will have seen things through their individual experiences and how it affected them personally, plus many of those who have talked or written of the incident were not present during the entire time so they can only guess what else may have happened. Add to that the fact that pretty much everyone involved was using one or more substances that night so memories of the event are sure to be affected by that too.

The only thing I see as being somewhat universally true, though, is that people who had been close to Peter noticed an almost immediate change afterwards. Not JUST Mick, but John, Christine, Jenny Fleetwood, and others have commented over the years that there was a stark change in Peter's personality. Given what is known about schizophrenia, he met all of the high risks (i.e. a somewhat introverted, uncertain male with life-long religious issues under the age of 25 suddenly in the spotlight, not exactly sure how to cope with it, who was using hard drugs). It wouldn't really take a lot to get somebody like Peter, or Danny, to that point.

Whether or not he was going to leave Fleetwood Mac is almost irrelevant, the fact that he was digging graves by 1972 says a lot. (I'd argue that there were fixations on death and money.) People leave bands all the time and go on with careers at the same time as their old band. Hell, people have left FLEETWOOD MAC and still gone on with careers (i.e. everybody who joined after Danny Kirwan). Bob Welch wasn't digging graves two years after quitting Fleetwood Mac. There was never a point where Bob was this guy on Monday, but was this other guy by Friday, which WAS the case with Peter.