When you think of Fleetwood Mac, you think of turbulent relationships, sweet little lies and rumours. But this is only half the story. Before the meteoric rise in the mid-1970s, they were a blues-rock band. A hugely successful blues-rock band. Led by guitarist Peter Green, they dominated the end of the 1960s, outselling both the Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Only lasting three years this journey was short-lived as experimentation with drugs and mental illness brought an end to the first version of Fleetwood Mac and almost brought an end to the band. This week the Beat Marches On to 26th January 1977 when Peter Green was arrested and committed to a mental asylum for threatening his accountant.
Peter Green is one of rock music’s greatest tragedies. Widely considered to be one of Britain’s greatest guitarists he is a huge influence in the blues-rock genre. He had a way of giving the blues a chilling aspect to it. He is the only guitarist to give legendary blues player BB King a cold sweat.
He started playing the guitar at age 10 given to him by his older brother, he took to playing like a duck to water. At 18 he auditioned for the hardest job in music at the time: replacing the ‘god’ Eric Clapton in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers left and formed the supergroup Cream.
Green won the audition and played in the Bluesbreakers for two years. His time in the band is significant because this is where he meets his future Fleetwood Mac bandmates, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood. Also, this was the first time he recorded music in the studio and started to write some of his own songs. After winning over the Clapton loyalist fans, he decided to form a band.
For Peter Green’s birthday, John Mayall gave him some studio time as a present. Taking McVie and Fleetwood with him the trio jammed in the studio and gave us the beginning of Fleetwood Mac. Not too long after Green left the Bluesbreakers to form the band with Fleetwood who had already been fired by Mayall. McVie would join them but after completing the Bluesbreakers tour.
In 1968 Fleetwood Mac would release their first album. Adding Jeremy Spencer as a second guitar player the album mainly consisted of blues covers with a few originals sprinkled in. Although there were not any hit singles, the album peaked at number four on the album chart.
The hit singles would soon arrive for the band though. The band decided not to put them on the early albums and original compositions released such as Black Magic Woman and Need Your Love So Bad broke into the top 40. The momentum was growing for the band. The next year, Black Magic Woman would be covered by Santana who performed it at the Woodstock Festival making the song renowned throughout the world.
They added a third guitarist, Danny Kirwin, in late 1968 and recorded another album. This album called Mr. Wonderful wasn’t as successful as their first and was often criticized for using the same Elmore James riff too many times.
Around this time, they started to tour America. On the West Coast, they become friends with the ultimate stoner band The Grateful Dead. For those who do not know the Dead they liked to experiment with hallucinogens particularly LSD and led the way into the hippie culture.
Fleetwood Mac met chemist Augustus Owsley Stanley who mass-produced LSD for the Dead. He introduced it to Green and the rest of his band. This would change Greens’ life forever.
The impact of taking the drug at first seemed positive. The band were more creative over the next 18 months and the band would get a UK number-one single (their only one) Albatross. They released a third album Then Play On which was their most successful to date. The band was starting to progress from the standard blues riffs and started to create their guitar riffs. More poignant lyrics were coming from this period too. Singles like Man of the World and Oh Well were hitting the mainstream and were charting well. The band thought it would be the start of something.
In this period the cracks were starting to show in Peter Green. Bandmates often recalled while in the studio, Green would just be staring into space trying to process everything and then snap out of it. The pressures of fame were starting to get to him as the band’s star was rising worldwide. He kept trying to convince the band to donate their earnings to starving children. Not that is a crazy thing to do but to hand-deliver the food to the starving children when he had not mentioned it before. John McVie was all in. And then came Munich.
In 1970 with their third album hot off the presses Fleetwood Mac had embarked on a massive European tour. They arrived in Munich, Germany and were greeted at the airport by Reiner Langhans and his partner Usher Obermaier. They were leaders of a commune which was located outside of the city. They invited Green to the commune to party with them and he accepted.
This is where the details get a bit foggy. What we do know about the incident is that Green went to the party. Who he went with is still up for debate some accounts say it was Danny Kirwin who has suffered mental illness and addiction problems, post-Fleetwood Mac, and others say that it was a road manager. What we do know is that the party was heavily influenced by LSD. The band say it was a very strong version of LSD.
Green has said since the incident occurred that he enjoyed the experience and felt free. He enjoyed it so much that he didn’t want to leave. Eventually, the band had to come and get him. He played back some of the music he made to some of the band and they didn’t rate it whatsoever.
The band eventually took him out of the commune, and they went back to the hotel and carried on with their tour. The band had started to notice some more changes to Green as the tour went on and eventually mid-tour, he left the band.
Trying to recreate the music that he had been making at the commune Green started taking more LSD in the studio. He released one more album in 1970 The End of the Game which was a jam session with a few friends under the influence of Champagne laced with the drug.
A reunited appearance with John Mayall and a couple of appearances with Fleetwood Mac on stage between 1971-72 were the last appearances for Green before his mental illness got the better of him. In 1974 he was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. He had to go for electroconvulsive therapy sessions throughout the mid-1970s. Whether this is due to the excessive drug use will never be known.
Green was committed to a mental asylum after threatening his accountant, David Simmons. After a recent trip to Canada, he was talking to Simmons on the phone and told him that he smuggled a gun back home. Green told the accountant if he came over to his house, he would shoot him. Simmons called the police and they soon surrounded Green’s house. They placed him under arrest and then sent him to the asylum. Green was in and out of mental institutions for most of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Green tried to start a band again in 1979 and released an album but due to therapy sessions, it muted the creativity. He would stay a recluse for much of the 1980s only to come out and play with his old bandmates on rare occasions.
Green came back to the scene in the 1990s forming the Peter Green Splinter Group and as a blues trio, they recorded nine albums and abruptly ended in 2004 when Green decided to move to Sweden. He returned to the UK towards the end of his life and lived in Essex.
The tragic story of Greens’ career is too similar. The excessive use of drugs to expand your mind can also melt your mind and do things that cannot be undone. Too much of a good thing can be disastrous. His band blames the Munich commune as the tipping point for Green, but certain members did notice there were times when his mind started to wander before they ever went there. It could be just the band uses the commune as a scapegoat because they wanted to go in different directions. The truth is we will never know what the true cause was.
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for six years specialising in Sports (especially American Football). If you want to follow Jimmy on Twitter: @Jimmy_W1987
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There is a video on YouTube where the son of Peter Green interviews the leader of the commune in Munich the link:
Peter Green – The Munich Incident (Peter’s son interviews Rainer Langhans) – YouTube
A Documentary on the life of Peter Green is available on BBC iPlayer called Peter Green: Man of the World which was used for the research of this article. Other sites used were:
The Sad Reason Peter Green Left Fleetwood Mac (grunge.com)
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