PETER GREEN & PAUL KOSSOFF
PETER GREEN 1946-2020
This issue is a special commemorative doublecover edition, paying tribute to the life and work of Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green, plus a detailed look at Kossoff’s historic ‘Stripped Top’ 1959 Les Paul Standard
In recent years Bernie Marsden visited Peter often.They played together and shared stories of life on the road back in the days when pop was being overtaken by rock and blues in the teenage mindset. Bernie’s memories of Peter reveal a side his fans didn’t see, a man with a wicked sense of humour and an enduring resistance to the rock ’n’ roll limelight.
What was your reaction to the news about Peter’s passing?
“It hit me hard. Now you get to that reflective part when I think of all the things I could have asked him and didn’t and all the things I should have said to him… It was a shock and a surprise, you know, because he was all right; he was okay in himself, he was in a pretty good place and so I’m glad for that. I’m just sorry that I won’t get to see him again. But then you look back and say, ‘Well, treasure all the times I’ve had over the last couple of years with him.’”
When did you last see him?
“I saw him on the day of the gig [the allstar Peter Green Tribute at The London Palladium on 25 February this year]. He gave me a piece of his artwork and he signed it to me and he dated it that day. So, of course, that takes on a huge significance now because it’s the day of the gig. I arrived at his house around lunchtime and during the afternoon we were talking about Robert Johnson or fishing or guitars and I said, ‘You know what’s on tonight, don’t you?’ and he went, ‘Yeah…’ and I told him we could go and that I’d drive him up and go with him and he just said, ‘Nah, a cup of tea with you would be just as good.’
“At the time I just grinned but when I think about it now it becomes more poignant. That day, when there’s this huge tribute going on to him in London with all these luminaries, he just wasn’t interested. If you think about it, that sort of sums up his relationship with the music business, really. Anything with a big spotlight on him, he didn’t want to know. He did say, ‘Do you think they’d let me sit in the royal box if I went?’ I said, ‘I’m sure that could be arranged, Pete…’”
Do you think there’s likely to be another tribute concert sometime in the future in view of the fact he’s no longer with us?
“Yeah, we’ll do something. The people that didn’t get involved [in the last one], maybe – and some of the people that did. I think we’ll do something when we can, something a bit more intimate.”
What was Peter’s guitar playing like when you played together at his house?
“It was fine. He was playing on an acoustic with nylon strings and the last day I was there we played some Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis and Help! by The Beatles. He said, ‘I like The Beatles…’ and he was asking me to show him part of Help! because, ‘I like those chords.’ Even then I was still 19 years old thinking that Peter Green has just asked me to show him something. Even when I went to his door that day there were butterflies in my stomach like when you were sent to the headmaster at school. He opened the door and I said, ‘Pete, how are you?’ and he looked at me and
“I last saw Peter on the day of the [Peter Green Tribute] gig… I told him I’d drive him up and go with him and he just said, ‘Nah, a cup of tea with you would be just as good’” BERNIE MARSDEN
said, ‘Better for seeing you.’ When I think about that now it kinda brings a lump to my throat.”
Did you touch on any of his old repertoire when you played together?
“Funnily enough, we did play a bit of Green Manalishi that day but he played it like it was nothing to do with him, you know? It was like, ‘Well, we’ve done that, let’s play some Eddie Cochran,’ type of thing. He liked Buddy Holly and I think we played a very early Shadows thing. When I asked him how he learned to play he said, ‘I learned to play stuff like this,’ and it was interesting because if you break down a lot of the stuff there’s a lot of Hank Marvin in his playing. Listen to Man Of The World and think, ‘What would Hank have done on the guitar solo?’ and you think, ‘Hang on, that might be Hank.’ Add a bit of reverb and echo and stuff…”
What do you think will be your enduring memories of Peter?
“He always had a twinkle in his eye. Even though he was a bloke into his 70s he made funny comments but he could be quite cutting. When my PRS came out I said to him, ‘I’ve got a signature guitar,’ and he said, ‘Signature? What’s that, then?’ I told him that it meant my name was on the guitar, on the headstock and he went, ‘Does anyone know who you are?’ I said, ‘Well, apparently the people at the guitar company do…’ and there was another guy in the room who looked at me as if to say, ‘He knows exactly why you’ve got that guitar!’”
Can you remember your first impressions when you met Peter?
“Yes, because it was a surprise. I wasn’t expecting somebody called Peter Green, I was expecting Eric Clapton. John Mayall had booked the studio at Decca to do a couple of tracks for a potential single and, well, it was a different band from the one that I worked with him on before when we did the ‘Beano’ album. I hadn’t actually met Peter before that, although I subsequently decided that maybe I had actually seen him play when he was working with [keyboard player] Peter Bardens. He was just very easy, very laidback and seemed to know exactly what he was supposed to be doing… and then he did what he was supposed to do.
“We only did two tracks that first time, Looking Back and So Many Roads, which ended up being a single. He seemed to be very in control of what he was doing and he made a very good impression and was very easy to get along with. He didn’t quite have the positiveness that Eric had and I think that’s purely because he hadn’t worked in the studio much before – I think it was only the second time he’d worked in a studio, because he
did work with Peter Bardens [in Peter B’s Looners who made a single, If You Wanna Be Happy, with Peter playing lead guitar, released in 1966]. We got on very well and subsequently, of course, I saw an enormous amount of him in the following three years.”
Clapton was well known for wanting his amp mic’d in a certain way with the Bluesbreakers. Did Peter make any similar demands?
“Peter didn’t give any orders. He took the amp, plugged it in, got the settings he wanted on the front of the amplifier and basically said, ‘Where do you want me?’ I said, ‘Wherever you want to be. If you want to be standing in front of it, or if you want to be a bit further away from it, if you don’t want to wear headphones, that’s fine and if you do we can set that up. However you want to do it.’
“I don’t remember exactly how we did it. I don’t think he did it any differently on that session than the way we did on
A Hard Road and subsequent records and later, of course, when he formed Fleetwood Mac. It was always, ‘Set the amp so I can actually see it and hear it breathing and I’m fine with it,’ which was great, you know. That’s an engineer’s dream.”
Did Peter do a lot of takes to get a solo down or did it all appear to come naturally?
“I think it really did come naturally.
I can remember in the latter days with Fleetwood Mac that, in certain circumstances, they ended up doing certain songs quite a number of times, and it was usually not Peter’s fault but we had to do it again. I won’t name names but there was one particular member of the band who sometimes didn’t seem to be quite all there and who didn’t take onboard what Peter was after. Peter was always very authoritative about what he did. He knew what he wanted to do. His solos, generally speaking, were not ‘written’, they weren’t in his head note-for-note. Sometimes he would have a theme and then he would build on that theme, then wherever his feeling and general mood took him, that’s where he went. That’s what he was: a blues musician creating something a little more original than the usual copybook stuff. That’s where it all comes from.”
It must have been exciting to see Peter develop as a musician in the studio over time…
“Absolutely. It behoved me to spend as much time as I could with him and I did do a lot of traipsing around listening, and I began to see the Bluesbreakers with Peter
change the format of what they were doing from what they were with Eric. It was all in the right direction, it was all a big plus. Peter was singing quite a bit but he didn’t play harmonica with John. That’s understandable because John’s harp playing was very much his thing.
“Peter’s harmonica playing was exceptionally good with a nice tone, very reminiscent of Walter Horton. He just was a real talent, you know, and he didn’t make things difficult. He didn’t make things complicated, he just made them work. And that’s why the band was so good at what they did, and obviously him in particular.”
Was it true that Peter didn’t like his singing voice very much?
“Yeah, it was a bit like Eric. Eric didn’t want to sing on that first album but John had to browbeat him to get him to do it. Peter was reluctant, I have to say. I suppose the first real recorded version of him singing was The Same Way, which was written for the A Hard Road album.
“[With Peter] it was always, ‘Set the amp so I can actually see it and hear it breathing and I’m fine with it,’ which was great, you know. That’s an engineer’s dream” MIKE VERNON
In the later stages of Fleetwood Mac on Show-Biz Blues and The World Keep On Turning he really nailed it. His voice really improved a lot and he didn’t lose that London accent; he never got into that mid-Atlantic school of singing.
I kind of admire that and I think it was natural. It wasn’t for him. He found it awkward to put that little bit of an extra southside twang into what he was doing. Very occasionally you hear something. On Sugar Mama that we did in the studio in Chicago I think there’s a little bit of it in there that might just be him goofing about, you know? He was a top japer.”
“It was a bit of a shock when I found out [that Peter had died] because he didn’t show any signs of debilitating health. When I saw him [in January 2020], he seemed in perfect health. Many times in the past I’ve wanted to meet people and I’ve been too late because they’ve left us for whatever reason, and I’ve always had to deal with a lot of regret after that. So meeting Peter Green and spending time with him on that afternoon really was a lot more important than I realised at the time. I felt it was important that I brought Greeny to him so that it came full circle and because he hadn’t seen the guitar since the 70s. At least I got to spend a few hours with him than no time at all.
“It was really nice to see that he was starting to get a lot more attention from a whole new generation of guitar players. It was really important for me to sit down and tell him, ‘Peter, I speak for a lot of guitar players, including myself – generations of guitar players around the world – when I say your influence is just as relevant, if not more relevant, than it was before. Your inspiration is strong to this day. Just know this, Peter.’ He looked at me, shook his head and changed the subject. Which falls in line with his reputation of not being comfortable with that kind of thing. But I knew that it meant something to him because, later on, a friend told me he really enjoyed our meeting.
“Sometimes it’s hard to have outward awareness when you’re struggling with your inner self. And I think that might have been the case with him; he might not have thought his influence and the impression he made is as huge as it really is. It’s the craziest thing when an artist of substantial influence passes away. It’s so bittersweet.
“His songwriting had a huge impact on me. Green Manalishi – that song is so dark. It reaches deep, deep down inside a person and grasps those dark shadows that are in all of us. I hope to be able to compose a song that has a 10th of that vibe. Green Manalishi sounds like it was written in the swamps of New Orleans at the stroke of midnight under a full moon. But it was probably written by Peter Green in his flat somewhere in London. Those three songs: Oh Well, Black Magic Woman and Green Manalishi influenced hard-rock and heavy metal so much. You can draw so many parallels to those three songs. They’re super-dark and I like how they’re themed. I like the subject matter. That heavy atmosphere and that heady subject matter, I believe, influenced hard-rock and heavy metal. It’s comparable to what heavy metal bands were doing at the time. You could put
Oh Well or Green Manalishi up against the first two Sabbath albums. That was the trend back then. To be heavy was
“All that vibration, Peter Green’s feel and his touch, his molecules and atoms will forever be in that guitar. It’s like a living memory of Peter Green” KIRK HAMMETT
seen as a progressive thing, you know – getting out of the light, airy, psychedelic hippy thing and going heavy. 1969, 1970 and 1971 were all about that.
“To this day, I marvel at how well thought out his guitar lines were. Even though it sounds like he’s improvising and I know it has to be spontaneous, every note falls in the right place and sounds well thought out. His sense of melody and phrasing is all there. He nailed that classic Les Paul tone and developed it further than Eric Clapton or Jeff Beck or Jimmy Page did by using that super-creamy neck pickup sound and that out-of-phase tone. It was a sound like no other. And his touch was really spot on and very accurate and controlled. He was just a very masterful player. He had all his techniques mastered in the ways that he wanted them to be mastered for an overall sound and vibe. It was amazing.
“Peter laid down a template for a lot of bands but he often doesn’t get the credit for influencing so many bands that went on to influence people like myself. I’ll give you three examples: Carlos Santana, Judas Priest and Aerosmith – if you listen to any of those bands you will find elements of Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac. To me, those first couple of Santana albums sound so much like the original Fleetwood Mac. The influence on Judas Priest is obvious as they covered Green Manalishi. And Aerosmith, when you really think about it, the format they had was similar to the format Fleetwood Mac had with two very bluesy lead guitar players and blues-based riffs that were really rocking out. I mean, those first couple of Aerosmith albums really remind me of Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac. And ZZ Top, of course.
“It’s sad now that [Greeny’s] original owner who helped it along and nourished
it and nurtured it is not around any more. All that vibration, Peter Green’s feel and his touch, his molecules and atoms will forever be in that guitar. It’s like a living memory of Peter Green. I have no plans to retire that guitar at all. As a legacy to the two people who owned that guitar before me – Peter Green and Gary Moore – I feel it’s important to keep it going and keep it playing so that people can hear it live in real-time and hear it sing.
“So many people love that guitar. I love it, too. That guitar has a lot of love and energy going to it constantly and who am I to get in the way of that? It’s all part of its reason for being and I’m just going to continue enabling that. Hopefully, it will go on to make music 100 years from now. I mean, how cool would that be if it ended up with someone else who could play it in front of hundreds of thousands of people? That would be my dream. It really is the people’s guitar.”