Page 28 - the NOISE March 2014

PETER GREEN & FLEETWOOD MAC PART 2
From the beginning, everyone knew Peter Green was special.
He exuded tremendous charisma and personal magnetism. All who met him wanted to be his friend. He was the Mac’s hand- somest member and its best dresser. He always looked like the coolest guy in the room, and he usually was. Wherever he went, the party followed. Women flocked to him. The band had all pulled their share of good-looking birds, but the classiest group- ies ended up with Peter.
He had an amazing mind. He never forgot a face or a name or a phone number or an address. His wit was quick and his tongue sharp, but most nights he was content to sit back with a bemused grin and enjoy The Jeremy Spencer Show (when you allow someone like that into your band, you can’t do much else. Spencer was another man on his own wavelength). After Jeremy’s clowning had the whole room roaring with laughter, Peter would interject an appropriate barb at exactly the right time and bring the hilarity up a notch.
Green had a strange way of recognizing hidden traits and qualities within people and persuasively drawing them out. He had a marked effect on everybody he came into contact with. He just made things ... better somehow.
You could not bullsh*t Peter Green. His bullshit detector was meticulously tuned to a cosmic hum only he could hear. He saw through people’s bullsh*t every time. EVERY time. He was unbullsh*ttable.
And then he had this ... thing he would do. Upon meeting a new acquaintance, Peter would allow them to ramble on for a few minutes and then he would make a single comment that precisely encapsulated that person’s whole trip/hangup, usually leaving them speechless. It was rarely malicious, but he could be deadly accurate. Many people did not know how to take it.
His bandmates, who spent the majority of their waking hours in each others’ company, observed Peter’s party tricks with great humor at first and then as time went by, incredulity at his unre- lenting perception. Peter could halt a dozen conversations with an off-the-cuff remark. If one of the band entered a silent room where all were staring at Green with mouths agog, they knew Peter had just “said something.” It never fazed him, though. He would usually smirk and crack a joke even filthier than one of Jeremy’s and everyone would relax.
And THEN, if your mind wasn’t sufficiently blown, he would pick up a guitar and play it. Or open his mouth to sing. Or say:
“Got a new one, fellas. It’s a little bit different ...”
The band would never have admitted it to his face, but they
all regarded their leader with a kind of quiet awe.
Fleetwood Mac’s live performances were unparalleled at the time. For one thing, they were loud. REAL loud. And real funny. And more often than not, real loaded. Fleetwood McVie and Spencer were serious drinkers. Drink-til-you-fall-down-un- conscious drinkers (Green and Kirwan had their moments, but
Peter Green, circa 1969. PHOTO BY JAN PERSSON
weren’t as dedicated as the other three). Luckily, booze made the rhythm section harder and Spencer funnier. Their shows be- came so outrageous and ribald it was like vaudeville. The English blues fans were appalled, but American audiences ate it up.
The band had borrowed the Dead’s idea of playing two sets: the first would showcase some of Peter’s and Danny’s newer songs and a few of Jeremy’s blues, then come to a close with Green and Kirwan in an acid-jam guitar duel. After tipping back several during set break, the well-lubed Mac would return as Earl Vince And The Valiants, starring a slicked-back gold lame suited Jeremy Spencer belting out his rock and roll oldies while being as oily and obscene as possible.
Jeremy/Earl would hang condoms full of milk or beer on the headstock of his guitar and whip them into the audience. At some point in the evening, Spencer would strap on Harold, a sixteen-inch dildo brought out on a fancy tray by a butler. Ac- cording to Mick, the sight of the diminutive Jeremy wearing the oversized phallus would regularly send booze buddy Janis Jop- lin into hysterics. Harold would alternately reside on Mick’s bass drum, suction-cupped into an erect position and quivering in time to the music.
Mick had begun wearing a pair of wooden balls dangling from his belt on strings (they can be seen on the cover of Ru- mours) and he would step out from behind his kit to play a talk- ing drum solo while dancing and clacking his balls together. The night would end in more blues and more jamming and more booze and more Harold until they were forced to stop or too inebriated to continue.
The first direct result of Peter Green’s consumption of LSD was another smash hit in April 1969, the introspective “Man Of The World,” which showcased another hitherto unknown side of the man: sensitive soul-searching folkie. It was another evolutionary leap for the band, although Green insisted it was all the blues.
To offset the seriousness of the A-side, the flip was “Some- body’s Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonite,” a hilarious ode to drunken mayhem sung by Jeremy in his best droog voice (and credited on the label to Earl Vince & The Valiants). Over a decade later, the song would be covered by several “Oi” punk bands whose fans would remain unaware of its origins. In one of those strange ironic twists common to rock and roll, Spencer’s comical knockoff B-side became a timeless rude boy anthem still enjoyed by soccer hooligans everywhere, many of which would be surprised to find out they were busting up the joint to a Fleetwood Mac tune.
With “Man Of The World,” Peter Green willingly shifted the fo- cus onto himself. LSD had forced the man to look inward, and he did not like what he saw. “I just wish I’d never been born,” he sings, and the effect is chilling.
It was the first sign of trouble: everyone’s having a blast, they’re creating the most incredible music any of them had ever dreamed of, the Beatles and Stones consider Fleetwood Mac peers, they have hit LPs and singles (like its predecessor, “Man Of The World” goes to #2 in England), audiences everywhere love
28 • MARCH 2014 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us