I used to think that it was all about cotton fields and country blues – I was always fluffing around with stuff that I didn’t really understand. “I’ve only recently begun to understand what blues is really all about. The order process is protected by a secure (SSL. Your personal data cannot and will not be accessed by third parties. As registrated user of BS.Player PRO you will be eligible for e-mail technical support.Just two years after forming in the summer of 1967, the band was managing to shift more records than The Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined. Slightly portly and with only a frizz of white curls that hint at his long-haired glory days, Peter has the air of a kindly, benevolent uncle.It’s hard to reconcile this unassuming person with the legendary guitarist who led such an astonishing career with Fleetwood Mac. If you’ve met Peter over the last decade, then hearing him talking today – sharing anecdotes and confidently reminiscing about his musical life – you won’t be able to avoid help noticing a sharp contrast between this relaxed and lucid character and the noticeably introverted man you’d have encountered just over a decade ago at the time of his re-emergence in 1996 with the Splinter Group. And now, its connected to the Adobe Document Cloud making it easier than ever to work across computers and mobile devices.Peter Green is sitting quietly in the corner of a hotel bar in the shadows of Tower Bridge.Their music wasn’t that clever technically, I suppose, but for me it was a new high, a climactic thing that really seemed to be going somewhere.’At the time Peter owned a Harmony Meteor semi-acoustic that had been given to him by the guitarist in one of his early bands. They seemed to attract a college crowd sometimes they were a bit ragged, but it was a fabulous show.“I’d seen the Stones in Richmond, but the Yardbirds were very different they were all very clean, their guitars were new and their hair looked good, whereas the Rolling Stones always seemed to be dirty and dusty. I was intrigued by everything about them. And then, for Peter Green, it all went wrong.“I didn’t really want to play blues at first, but I used to go and listen to The Yardbirds at places like the Crawdaddy Club and the Marquee Club in Wardour Street, which made me want to give up the bass, and try and get that Eric Clapton style on guitar.“I used to love watching Paul Samwell Smith, the Yardbirds’ bass player he interested me because he looked a bit like a University teacher and always used to do this doubling-up thing at the end of numbers to bring them up to a climax.
![]() Legend has it that Peter would regularly grab the obliging Eric Clapton after Yardbirds gigs and absorb some playing tips.Image: George Wilkes / Hulton Archive / Getty ImagesEquipped with his trusty Harmony, Peter then joined Peter B’s Looners, an instrumental outfit led by organist Peter Bardens, and soon he was playing legendary Mod hangouts like the Flamingo club in Wardour Street and the Ram Jam Club in Brixton. Clapton was only 18 months older than Green, but musically and professionally was already on another level. At one point he’d actually converted the Harmony into a four-string bass, but inspired by Clapton’s playing he once again replaced the nut and bridge to return the guitar to six-string form. They had someone called Jeff Kribbetts playing guitar, and although I didn’t necessarily think that I could do a better job than him, I just wanted to have a go! He was doing these little blues phrases like the riff on My Babe, and I thought, ‘I can’t do that’ – but I also noticed that he had big fingers, and that encouraged me.’Green eventually buttonholed John Mayall during the interval of a Bluesbreakers gig in August 1965. “Peter B’s Looners used to support John Mayall at the Flamingo club, and when I found out Eric was going to Greece , I went along to the Zodiac Club in Putney where I lived to try and get an audition. Crucially for Green, Clapton wouldn’t stick long with the Bluesbreakers, either.“I still didn’t ever make any conscious decision to play blues guitar, but I’d seen Eric Clapton playing with John Mayall so much,” Green recalls. Some 40 years on Peter Green is understandably hazy about the precise sequence of events, but what is certain is that along with many others inspired by Clapton’s virtuoso playing, he too quickly became a Bluesbreakers fan. Disheartened by the band’s sudden commercialism, Eric Clapton abruptly left to play with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Birds of a featherIn March 1965 the Yardbirds released For Your Love. I went to his house in Lee Green and we had a little audition. “John wouldn’t let me play that day but I was persistent, and eventually I answered his advert in the Melody Maker saying that he wanted a guitarist of the Buddy Guy or Otis Rush calibre. Image: Graham Wiltshire / Hulton Archive / Getty Images“He kept on doing this, each time becoming a bit more forceful, and because I was pretty much open to hearing anyone, I gave him a shot at it.” Green recalls the meeting differently. I’m better than he is,’” he laughs.Peter Green with John Mayall. ![]() I think John already knew that Peter could play all the licks that Eric played, but he was going to do it his way – and his way was different.”The Hard Road LP turned out to be every bit as accomplished as Clapton’s Mayall debut. “I was expecting Eric,” Vernon freely admits, “But from the moment that Peter plugged in, I never had any doubts that he was going to be as good as Clapton within the Bluesbreakers framework. Soon, though, they began to accept that Clapton had a more than worthy successor.Producer Mike Vernon echoed this sentiment when the band turned up at Decca’s West Hampstead studios to begin recording the Hard Road album. Initially, the Clapton fans were angry at this new boy on the block who appeared to be usurping the man they called ‘God’. Green’s approach was far more precise, and his carefully constructed solos harked back to the time when he’d first practised Shadows tunes with his brother. It wasn’t a personality clash: by this time John McVie and Mick Fleetwood were both in the band and had become firm friends with Peter. It just came along by accident.”The reason that Peter Green decided to leave the Bluesbreakers in June 1967, only a year after joining, remains a mystery. I didn’t want to do vocals at all. “All I wanted was to be a sideman like Buddy Guy when he worked with Junior Wells. Unlike Clapton, whose singing on the previous Bluesbreakers album was diffident, Green sang with real authority and conviction.“I didn’t ever want to be a frontman, though,” Peter admits with a rueful smile. Autocad for mac quick setup wizard“We had no manager, so we did everything ourselves, got the van and equipment sorted out… Mike Vernon suggested we get Jeremy Spencer, who was playing in a Birmingham blues band called the Levi Set. Whatever the truth, by the time Peter Green left the Bluesbreakers, Mick Fleetwood had already been sacked.“He came around to see me and we got Fleetwood Mac together,” Fleetwood later reminisced. It may be that Peter was irritated by use of a brass section on Hard Road, a move that to some diehard blues traditionalists signalled a capitulation to the evil forces of jazz. But when Mayall thoughtfully awarded Green some studio time as a birthday present, he wheeled McVie and Fleetwood into the studio to record some tracks as a three-piece.
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