Peter Green was the founding member of Fleetwood Mac, and having put the band together, was generous enough to name it after the drummer Mick Fleetwood, and bass player John McVie, both stalwarts of the ’60s British blues scene and John Mayall alumni.
A master of Chicago blues and also an innovator as a composer, Green was responsible for a number of imaginative hit songs, including The Green Manalishi, Black Magic Woman (also a huge hit for Santana), Albatross, and Oh Well.
What got you into the blues?
Peter Green: A guitar player, a bloke called Mick Maynard. I think he died recently. Unique player, didn’t sound like nobody. He was a good bloke. A nice bloke. A lead guitar player who used to play just chords, ordinary chords. He used to say “Come with me, I want to take you somewhere and I’ll play you a record. It’s a blues record and it’s by Muddy Waters, called ‘Honey Bee’.” I don’t know if it was Muddy Waters’ ‘Honey Bee’. I’m very familiar with ‘Honey Bee’ by Muddy Waters now. It didn’t sound like anything at all to me at the time. I don’t know why. Maybe it wasn’t ‘Honey Bee’. Anyway, he said “That’s blues. You’ve heard some now”. The bloke laid some albums on me. A John Lee Hooker album, ‘Blues Volume II’ with Otis Rush on it, Sonny Rhodes, a couple of other albums like a folk festival of the blues with Buddy Guy, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Willy Dixon and Sonny Boy Williamson on. One of the best albums you’re ever going to get hold of, if not the best. And I had them from this bloke. I listened to them but I didn’t think much of them. It was too serious for me to go crazy about it anything like I do now. I sit there, as you say, immersed in it. It’s blues to me. I feel like I know the people, it means a lot to me now. They’re familiar.
Photo: Pictorial Press Ltd
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