Tributes as Fleetwood Mac star Peter Green dies at 73
TRIBUTES were paid last night to Fleetwood Mac co-founder Peter Green, who has died at the age of 73.
The London-born guitarist set up the blues band with Mick Fleetwood in 1967 and was behind a string of global hits including Black Magic Woman.
His family said the music legend died ‘peacefully in his sleep’.
Green, regarded as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, wrote some of the band’s biggest hits including Albatross and Oh Well, but struggled with mental health issues and was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Whitesnake’s David Coverdale said that Green was an artist he ‘truly loved’, adding: ‘I supported the original Fleetwood Mac at Redcar Jazz Club when I was in a local band. He was a breathtaking singer, guitarist and composer.’
Green and Fleetwood started out playing blues but the band evolved a more pop-rock sound when American singers Lindsey
Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined. The group’s manager, Clifford Davis, blamed Green’s mental health issues on psychedelic drugs and said that the guitarist’s ‘sharp decline’ began after taking LSD at a party in a commune in Germany.
Green, who was arrested in 1977 after threatening his accountant with a shotgun, later said he needed money.
Born Peter Greenbaum in Bethnal Green, London, he returned to work in the 1990s and toured for the final time in 2009. He married in 1978 and had a daughter, Rosebud, but divorced shortly afterwards.
‘He was a breathtaking singer, guitarist and composer’