Q : Can you remember meeting Peter Green ?
A : He came to audition for a band called The Peter B's Looners - Dave Ambrose on bass, Peter Bardens on keyboards and myself. He fitted with us. We were a very simple instrumental band, a lot of Booker T, Mose Allison. He had a great 'sound' as they say, but me and Dave didn't think he knew enough about the guitar. He only played a couple of licks, variations on a theme, Freddie King. And to Peter Bardens' credit, he pulled me aside and said, “You're wrong, this guy is special".
Q : Your backgrounds were very different ?
A : Oh, we used to joke about it. He was the Jewish kid who was beaten up in the East End of London a lot of the time and he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder, which I used to give him a hard time about : “It's time to move on, Peter !” But as young men we had an incredible friendship. I was basically ... “in love” with him. We roomed together. When it was cold we slept together. I knew this man. It's the most terrible loss. I mean I still listen to him all the time. I never go on the road without taking his music with me. When I still drank - I haven't for two years - and we were on the road, I used to feel I had this mission, this quest, to get people to realise how great he was. I would get drunk and I'd have my cassettes and CDs laid out and, come that magic moment when I felt everyone was primed sufficiently, I'd say “Now listen to this !” And, invariably, I would end up in tears. Every time “Man Of The World” destroys me. It's just so sad - "… and how I wished I was in love." Everyone thinks I'm the cat's whiskers and I'm just a normal guy. He was crying out back then, which basically led to part of his illness.
Q : Did you see that coming?
A : No, I didn't. We were all too young.
Q : “The Green Manalishi” ? You must have had some idea something catastrophic was going on ?
A : Not really, no. We were just playing music. Now I do ! My God, yes. And it makes me shiver.
Q : So when he went off the rails, you felt you could have helped him if you'd seen it coming ?
A : Peter ‘going off the rails’ was not an immediate thing. It was relatively subtle. In those days people did things like he did. People did see God and drift off and go to the mountain tops and wear striped T-shirts. I'm not making light of it but there was a lot of that shit going on. He left Fleetwood Mac under the most controlled circumstances. We talked about it. He knew it was coming for the better part of a year. He didn't leave us in the shit, he was completely and utterly responsible. But behind all that was this seething emotional disturbance that he was about to go into, and was already going into. He seemingly knew what he was doing which is why it was so frustrating, when we would talk, and me and John would say “We don't want to give all that money away. Let's just give some of it away!"
Q : But when he left ...
A : We were in shock. We were lost babes in the wood. We'd lost our mentor. He was The Great White Hope. He was our leader.
Q : When did you last talk to him?
A : A couple of Christmases ago we had a long talk on the phone. He was great. We talked about what he was doing and what the music scene was like. I said “Do you ever pick up the guitar ?” He said “Yeah, sometimes, but I just like to go for my walks”. He lives with his mother now. You take pot luck when you ring him up : you can be saddened or you can be quietly amazed. He has this dreaminess, you think he's not really interested in talking to you, and sometimes he does phase people out. But there was this glimmer ...
(Mark Ellen ; “Mojo”, May 1994)
~ part 1 of 2 ~
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