That was the vibe at the all-star concert organised by Mick Fleetwood to celebrate the genius of guitar great Peter Green. Classic Rock photographer Ross Halfin witnessed it all come together.
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Inside the all-star concert organised by Mick Fleetwood to celebrate the genius of guitar great Peter Green.
Everybody had been wondering whether Peter Green would turn up at the Palladium for the special event put together in his honour by his former Fleetwood Mac bandmate Mick Fleetwood, but of course he didn’t. I suspect it would have been too overwhelming for him, but it certainly didn’t ruin the evening. People would have expected him to get up and play, which he was never going to do. In a sense it was better that he wasn’t there.
I took the above photo of Billy Gibbons and Kirk Hammett during the rehearsals. They were playing The Green Manalishi (With The Two Pronged Crown). The funny part was that Kirk knew the version of that song by Judas Priest, and not Fleetwood Mac’s original. Kirk owns the ‘Greeny’ guitar [a 1959 Les
Paul Standard that used to belong to Peter Green], and his presence brought a rockier edge to things, but everyone in the room was surprised by the quality of his playing. During the show, Pete Townshend put his arm around Kirk and said into his ear: ‘That was fucking great’, which shocked and pleased him a lot.
David Gilmour was a very big part of the show, obviously. When he played Oh Well, Pt 2 – which Fleetwood Mac had never performed live – the band sounded like Pink Floyd, and his style took the song to a whole new place.
One of the best surprises of the night was guitarist Jeremy Spencer, who was in Peter Green’s original Fleetwood Mac, turning up to play with the band for the first time in 49 years. Jeremy was the only one who didn’t want to hold Peter’s guitar – he told me he wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that.
Jeremy was really nice, and when he walked on stage at the Palladium you could hear the audience gasp. And his guitar sound was phenomenal.
The unsung hero of the night was Andy Fairweather Low, who was a big part of pulling the event together. A great guitarist and a great guy.
What I really liked about the event was that people did it for the right reasons. Bill Wyman turned up on his own, Pete Townshend with his driver; there were no entourages. All of the bullshit you usually have to deal with wasn’t there. Everybody was really casual, even easy-going. It felt like a party at somebody’s house. There were no egos whatsoever in the building. The nicest thing about the rehearsals was that everybody was having their own Peter Green fan moment.
MICK FLEETWOOD AND THE COVETED ‘GREENY’ LES PAUL “I had the idea of shooting all of the guitar players with the Greeny guitar, because that was the essence of the show – all of the original versions of the songs Peter recorded were with him playing that guitar. Earlier, when we were at Mick’s place in Hawaii, he had said he didn’t feel comfortable with that, but in London he picked it up and cradled it. It’s a lovely, natural photograph. That was Mick’s tribute to Peter, I can take no credit for it.”
BELOW: “Steven Tyler didn’t know that Kirk owned Peter’s guitar, and he was shocked when he found out. So Kirk grabbed Steven’s microphone and they threw some shapes. When that photo went on social media the entire world thought they were forming some kind of supergroup, but it was just messing around.”
LEFT: “In rehearsals with David Gilmour and Rick Vito, who was a guitarist with Fleetwood Mac in the 1980s. Gilmour was playing his pedal steel on Albatross, and it sounded great.”
BELOW: “On the left is Ricky Peterson, keyboard player and musical director of the house band for the show, with Gilmour, Fleetwood and Vito.”
ABOVE: “John Mayall, who is now 86 years old, with Pete Townshend. I sent Pete one of those shots, which he put on Instagram and wrote how John was incredibly important to the early London blues scene.”
ABOVE: “The first time I tried to take this portrait of Bill Wyman, he said: ‘No, let’s do it tomorrow, I’ll dress a bit better.’ The following day he came back in the same clothes.”
ABOVE: “The all-star finale. The idea was for everybody to do Shake Your Money Maker. Truthfully, with so many people playing together it was a bit of a mess, but Mick Fleetwood wanted it to happen, so it did. And of course it’s something you’ll never see again.”
TOP: “Mick Fleetwood and Jeremy Spencer.”
ABOVE: “Pete Townshend in ‘windmilling’ mode. One of the highlights of the show was him playing Station Man, which isn’t a Peter Green song, but was on Kiln House, Fleetwood Mac’s first album after Green left. He played the riff to that song and then Won’t Get Fooled Again and they were exactly the same. Station Man had come out a year earlier… so Pete smirked a bit at that.”
LEFT:“Jeremy Spencer may not have been comfortable holding Peter Green’s Greeny guitar, but I really like this photo of him throwing shapes, Kirk laughing alongside.”
ABOVE: “I asked Christine McVie whether I could take a portrait of her. I took one shot, which she asked to see and said: ‘That’s good, we’re done’. When I said I needed a few more, she replied: ‘Why? That one’s lovely’. That’s when I realised I was dealing with Fleetwood Mac. But she was very nice.”
BELOW: “Noel Gallagher alongside a seated Mick Fleetwood. I love Noel and he was one of the best things about the night. He said to the audience: ‘I know what you lot are thinking – has he got the blues?’ And you know what? He did two or three songs and was great.”
Mick Fleetwood And Friends Celebrate The Music Of Peter Green, a film of the show, will be screened at select UK cinemas on June 2 and 7. A four-LP/two-CD/BluRay deluxe book set, the Blu-ray featuring interviews and concert and footage of the show, is released on October 19.