Dear John, Peter Green and I share the same birthday and so I'm compelled to feature him on this day. Another reason is he is one of the all-time greatest Blues guitar players ever. I discovered him long after most but he's in the Clapton stratosphere to me.
Cros is having a nice little gathering on Friday night at the RR to raise some scratch to help defray expenses for their upcoming trip to Memphis in January. Some powerful hitters are stepping to the plate to help out. Come see for yourself.
Looks like Amanda Fish and her band will headline Blues Blast '20 in March. Amanda won a BMA this year as best new rising star. And a star she it. You'll see.
Lots of stuff going on out and about. Get out and get in on it.
Hug somebody this week and we'll see you next week.
Sincerely,
Jim Crawford - PBS
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Mr. Green
by Martin Clemins
THERE are words or phrases that you mention to Peter Green at your peril. Say "guitar hero" and you're really asking for it. But then other potential flashpoints - "LSD freak", "mental hospitals" and "prison life", for instance - prompt wry observations and much self-deprecating laughter. Now approaching 50 and back performing high-profile concerts after a gap of 26 years, Green is, as they say, a very nice bunch of guys.In 1970, six months before Jimi Hendrix's fatal overdose, Green quit his band, Fleetwood Mac, and left the music business "for my freedom". Since then the myths around Peter Green have steadily multiplied - he gave all his money away, he worked as a gravedigger, he tried to shoot his manager . . . At the heart of them lay the sad story of a genius apparently wasted by drug abuse.Green freely admits that LSD has left a permanent impression on him - "I'm still there . . . I never did come back down off the trip," he says in his raspy East Enders voice. "I guess I took one trip too many" - but the past year or so has seen a crucial shift in attitude, ever since he took up the guitar again: the disjointed voices in his head are fading, and instead he is thinking more and more about "the messages I'm getting".One clear message was that he should return to his studies of the fingerboard, and of band arrangements. His mentors are still blues greats such as Robert Johnson, Elmore James and Sleepy John Estes; but Green also reveres jazz band musicians - citing Acker Bilk, Kenny Ball and Alex Welsh - for different reasons."I'm learning the fingerboard from scratch and we're studying the balance of sound in the band," he says, portly frame reclined on a sofa in a spacious plant-filled room in leafy Surrey. "We're not a guitar-crazy band - we've only just started learning how to achieve an overall sound with no single instrument sticking out too much and letting down the others. Trad jazz players and jazz bands are marvelous at that . . . Acker Bilk's perfected it."For years he didn't even own a guitar. "I stopped playing guitar," he explains, "partly because I had long fingernails." Just why did he have those famous dagger nails? "Because I wanted to find out what it was like not to cut my fingernails or my toenails." And what was it like?"Marvellus . . . wonderful," he says drily. In fact, his hands - feminine, white and without a protruding vein in sight - are eerily beautiful.Yet this is the man who was once reported to have stormed into his accountant's office holding a shotgun and demanding that he take back a royalty cheque for £30,000, which Green regarded as unclean money. Then in the 1970s and '80s, after rock stardom, he wished to be known as Peter Greenbaum (his father's real surname) and was said to be happier working as a gravedigger or petrol-pump attendant than he had ever been writing and recording four of the most innovative singles to emerge from the late 1960s, Albatross, Man of the World, Oh Well and Green Manalishi.The truth behind the headlines was somewhat different. In the so-called "shotgun incident" Green was actually requesting money, not fending it off menacingly; plus he never went near the offices in question. "I phoned my manager," Green says emphatically, "who said my accountant had all my money. And when I rang him, he said my manager had my money. I lost my temper and may have said something like, 'If you don't give me some money I'll come round and shoot your windows.' I never meant it, and anyway it wasn't a shotgun, it was a pump-action rifle - more like a toy - that I'd left at my parents' house . . . So if I had shot at their windows the bullet would have probably got lodged in the glass."When Green was just 21, black blues giants twice his age such as B. B. King hailed him as their equal.Even so, the next thing he knew, the police were around and Green appeared before the magistrate Sir Ivor Rigby who sectioned him in Brixton prison to undergo psychiatric tests. He now says that he found his time in prison - chatting to rapists and murderers, amongst other inmates - instructive. "Being a blues student, it felt comfortable for me to be with the African-orientated guys that I've always been interested in and I met in there. I saw one or two fights and you did have to be careful - if you called them negroes then you wouldn't get their attention," he says with the fraught look that sometimes momentarily punctuates his conversation.Blues music and skin color nevertheless remain touchy points for Green. "I like blues even though it can be a bit taboo," he says. "If I used my wits I probably would steer clear of it - but then what else would I play? The blues is everyone - it's a kind of universal thing . . . everyone can feel the blues."When Green was just 21, black blues giants twice his age such as B. B. King hailed him as their equal. Instead of being flattered, the young guitarist dismissed this and other gushing plaudits as hollow praise. The guitar-hero tag gradually unhinged him to the point where he felt like an impostor when playing blues music."If I was a guitar hero," he remarks snappily, "then what does that make my masters and teachers? Those people who called me a guitar hero were just testing my intelligence. There were always these funny blokes who would come up after a gig and go 'Eeeeeeee'."Back in the early 1970s, Peter Green met more "funny" types than was good for his health. They plied him with mescaline and acid and undermined his confidence. A hippie whom he met in America persuaded Green that he was ripping off brown-skinned culture by playing the blues. So when he returned to Britain he promptly offloaded every single album in what must have been one of the most rarefied blues collections ever, at an Oxfam shop in Hammersmith. "Drugs turn you into a meek and mild softie," he says pensively.Amid all the acid and the weirdos his mental health deteriorated. In the mid-1970s he underwent treatment in various mental institutions around Epsom where his condition was diagnosed as drug-induced schizophrenia. "The trouble with those places," he points out, "is that no one ever tells you why you're in there. No one came up to me and said 'You're here because you're an LSD freak' - I had to work that out for myself."His personal life became more and more confused. In 1978 Green got married, he now says jokingly, "because I was sick of catching VD". Green is Jewish; his Los Angelean wife was a Messianic "Jews for Jesus" Christian. They had a daughter named Rosebud, but the marriage didn't last.Just over a year ago Green went to stay with his close friend Michelle Reynolds - who runs the Fleetwood Mobile Studio and is now his co-manager - at her Surrey home. Through her he got back in touch with musicians and former colleagues, and in this way his new band, The Splinter Group, slowly began to take shape."It was my friend Nigel Watson [co-guitarist in The Splinter Group, Reynolds's brother, and an old friend from the days immediately after he left Fleetwood Mac] who encouraged me to play, and when I eventually did I began to really enjoy it again. But this is only the very start, and I'm not in any hurry," stressed Green. There is mention of a possible album deal with Mick Fleetwood's own company, but that is not the priority. "The sound of the band has to be right first and then it could be . . . a walk-over," he says, quietly smiling at the prospect.It's one hour before showtime at last weekend's Guildford Folk and Blues Festival where The Splinter Group are headlining. In the hospitality tent there are whispers that Eric Clapton - Green's mentor and the guitarist he replaced in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers back in 1966 - is popping in to say hello. On learning this, Green's mood visibly lifts ("Tell him to pay at the gate . . ."). The two guitarists haven't seen each other in years but when Clapton sweeps in they exchange warm smiles and handshakes.On stage The Splinter Group - also featuring Cozy Powell on drums, Neil Murray, bass, and Spike Edney on keyboards - get tighter and tighter as a set comprising several new numbers in addition to crisp re-workings of old hits such as "Albatross" and "Black Magic Woman" soon takes off.Green - with black jazz guitar and bandana - was greeted on stage with a hero's welcome, and an hour later, as the band encore with Freddie King's "Goin' Down," he is quite obviously having a ball, and soloing with some of the old flair. "I hope you've enjoyed this entertainment - which is our freedom," he says to the crowd before leaving the stage.Afterwards Eric Clapton returns and the pair is left alone to talk about times old and new. As Clapton leaves he comments that Green's playing was "better than I had expected".The final question was irresistible. Can Clapton - or, for that matter, anyone with a fleet of Ferraris parked in his stables - really have the blues? "Yeah, of course he can," replies Green, quick as a flash. "He can't drive them all at once."Peter Green LIVE!!
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Out & About
Tuesday, October 29 Wednesday, October 30 Sammy Eubanks, 8 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix Hans Olson, 7 p.m., Time Out Lounge, Tempe Chuck Hall, 6 p.m., Corrado's, Carefree Carvin Jones, 7:30 p.m., Dos Gringos, Tempe Thursday, October 31 Carvin Jones, 9 p.m., Sage & Sand, Glendale Sugar Thieves Duo, 6 p.m., Culinary Dropout, Gilbert Eric Ramsey Hosts OPEN MIC, 6 p.m., Fatso's Pizza, Phoenix Hans Olson EVERY THURSDAY, 6 p.m., Handlebar, Apache Junction Arizona Blues Project, 8 p.m., Harold's, Cave Creek Friday, November 1 Cros Fundraiser (See Poster), 7:30 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix Innocent Joe & The Hostile Witnesses, 8 p.m., TC's Pub, Queen Creek Eric Ramsey, 6 p.m., Duck & Decanter, Phoenix Sugar Thieves, 7:30 p.m., Janey's, Cave Creek Mike Eldred, 7 p.m., Bone Haus Brewery, Fountain Hills Blues Review Band, 8 p.m., All American, Fountain Hills Paris James, 6:30 p.m., August Ranch, Mesa Tommy Dukes/Roger Smith, 6 p.m., Charly's, Flagstaff Saturday, November 2 Riley/Corritore & Juke Joint Blues Band, 9 p.m., Rhythm Room, Phoenix Rocket 88s, 6 p.m., Rip's, Phoenix Cold Shott & The Hurricane Horns, 9 p.m., The Grand, Phoenix Innocent Joe & The Hostile Witnesses, 7 p.m., Rags, Youngtown Big Daddy D & The Dynamites, 2 p.m., Bacon, Blues & Brews Festival, Founders Park, Queen Creek Sugar Thieves, 4:15 p.m., Bacon, Blues & Brews Festival, Founders Park, Queen Creek Big Daddy D & The Dynamites, 8:30 p.m., El Dorado, Scottsdale Blues Review Band, 3 p.m., Jerome Roundup, Jerome BluZone, 4:30 p.m., Pearl Park, Casa Grande Sunday, November 3 Eric Ramsey, 9 a.m., The Roastery, Tempe Hoodoo Casters, 2 p.m., Spirit Room, Phoenix Blues Review Band, NOON, Litchfield Park Arts & Wine Fest, Litchfield Park True Flavor Blues, NOON , Copper Star, Phoenix Monday, November 4
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Jams
Sunday
Rocket 88s JAM, 4 p.m., Chopper John's, Phoenix
Bourbon Jack's JAM w/Kody Herring, 6 p.m., Chandler
The Scott O'Neal Band JAM every other Sunday, The Windsock, Prescott MONDAY
Bam Bam & Badness Open JAM, 9 p.m., Char's, Phoenix
Weatherford Hotel JAM, 6:30 p.m., Flagstaff
TUESDAY OPEN JAM Hosted by Jilly Bean & The Flipside Blues Band, 7 p.m., Steel Horse Saloon, Phoenix
JAM Sir Harrison, 9 p.m., Char's, Phoenix
Gypsy's Bluesday Night JAM, 7 p.m. Pho Cao, Tempe
Tailgaters JAM, 7 p.m., Glendale
WEDNESDAY Rocket 88s, JAM, 6 p.m., The Last Stop (Old Hideaway West), Phoenix
Tool Shed JAM Party, 6 p.m. Gabby's, Mesa
JAM @ The Bench, Hosted by BluZone, 7 p.m., The Bench, Tempe
THURSDAY Tool Shed JAM Party, 7 p.m., Steel Horse Saloon, Phoenix Jolie's Place JAM w/Adrenaline, 9 p.m., Chandler
Friday
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GOT BLUES? If you are a Blues musician, a group, or a club that features Blues music, and would like to be listed, please send your info to info@phoenixblues.org and we'll be happy to list your event in our weekly Out & About section of the newsletter
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| Moved? Changed email addresses? Please let us know of any changes in your address, email, or phone number so we can keep you informed about the Blues community in Arizona. Email us at: info@phoenixblues.org or write to: Phoenix Blues Society P.O. Box 36874 Phoenix, Arizona 85067 |
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