This day in 1970 – Peter Green, who along with Mick Fleetwood & John McVie founded Fleetwood Mac, quit the band while on tour in Germany. To avoid breach of contract he agreed to finish the current tour.
Peter Allen Greenbaum was born in Bethnal Green, London on October 29, 1946. Green was a major figure in the “second great epoch” of the British blues movement. B.B. King commented, “He has the sweetest tone I ever heard; he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.” Eric Clapton has praised his guitar playing and Green is noted for his use of string bending, vibrato, and economy of style.
Rolling Stone ranked Green at number 58 in its list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”.
After leaving Fleetwood Mac, Green was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent time in psychiatric hospitals undergoing electroconvulsive therapy during the mid-1970s. In 1977, Green was arrested for threatening his accountant David Simmons with a shotgun. The exact circumstances are the subject of much speculation, the most famous being that Green wanted Simmons to stop sending money to him.
In 1979, Green began to re-emerge professionally. With the help of his brother Michael, he was signed to the PVK label, and produced a string of solo albums starting with 1979’s In the Skies. He also made an uncredited appearance on Fleetwood Mac’s double album Tusk, on the song “Brown Eyes”, released the same year.
Green formed the Peter Green Splinter Group in the late 1990s, with the assistance of Nigel Watson and Cozy Powell. The Splinter Group released nine albums between 1997 and 2004.
Early in 2004, a tour was cancelled and the recording of a new studio album stopped when Green left the band and moved to Sweden. Shortly afterwards he signed on to a tour with The British Blues All Stars scheduled for the following year. The tour was cancelled, however, after the death of saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith. At the time, Green stated that the medication he was taking to treat his psychological problems was making it hard for him to concentrate and sapped his desire to play guitar.
In February 2009, Green began playing and touring again, this time as Peter Green and Friends. In May 2009 he was the subject of the BBC Four documentary “Peter Green: Man of the World”, produced by Henry Hadaway. Green and the band subsequently played a tour of Ireland, Germany and England. They went on to play several dates in Australia during March 2010, including the Byron Bay Bluesfest.
