LEADER OF THE MAC

Among the many stars of London’s mid-Sixties blues scene, one guitarist outshone and outplayed them all — PETER GREEN. Here, in interviews with John Mayall, Mike Vernon, Green’s former bandmates and the “Man of the World” himself, WE TELL THE STORY OF HOW FLEETWOOD MAC WERE BORN

- Johnny Black

PETER GREEN IS, ARGUABLY, THE MOST UNDER-RATED guitarist of the British mid-Sixties blues boom, consistently relegated to a position somewhere below the holy triumvirate of Clapton, Beck, and Page. He deserves better. He would write some of the most memorable blues-based songs of the Sixties, create some of the genre’s most imaginative guitar licks and establish a band that, by the end of the decade, was out-selling the Beatles and the Stones.

Born in London’s East End to a poor Jewish family, he had been turned onto the possibilities of guitar at age 11, in the skiffle era of the mid-Fifties. His brother Len acquired a cheap Spanish guitar and showed young Peter a few chords. Before long, it was Peter’s guitar.

This is the story of how it all began for Peter Green, his first recordings, and the creation of Fleetwood Mac.

AUGUST 11, 1965: John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, featuring Eric Clapton, play at Putney Pontiac Club in south-west London. Shortly after this gig, Clapton unexpectedly disappears to Greece for a two-week holiday.

JOHN MAYALL: I guess Eric just became bored with it. So he decided to get some friends together and go off to Greece. For me, it was panic stations because we’d come to rely on him so much and there were so few people to choose from as a replacement. I got a lot of replies to an ad I put in the Melody Maker, so I was auditioning different players every night, letting them sit in to see how they worked out. Then Peter came up to me during a gig at The Flamingo in Wardour Street and was fairly forceful, very insistent that he was better than the guy I had on stage that night, so I gave him a shot and he was quite right, of course.