Tempests, Tea Cups and Fleetwood Mac's Peter Green

01/26/2012
. (Gibson) On this day in 1977, Former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green was committed to a mental hospital following an incident when he threatened his accountant Clifford Adams with an air rifle when he was trying to deliver a �30,000 ($51,000) royalty check to him. Gibson takes a look back:

Peter Green, 40 years on from his pioneering work with the original Fleetwood Mac, remains a rock and roll enigma. Columns, articles, theses and books have been written about this English guitar great who refused to conform to anybody's rules and regulations.

Fired by the legendary British blues godfather John Mayall, the maverick Green was, many said, a better player than Eric Clapton back in the swinging blues days of '60s southern England. He took a blues instrumental to the top of the charts with Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross," a truly remarkable achievement, and then left the band as they were poised for world domination.

Health problems, including a nervous breakdown or two, at different times over the past thirty years have only made Green all the more fascinating to rock and roll mythmakers. That he eschews the limelight has only added to the mystique. Funny thing is, when given the chance to talk about his version some of the great "Peter Green" stories, he is remarkably down-to-earth, matter-of-fact and he explains how everything, invariably, gets blown up by the press.

The story goes that on this day in 1977, Green was arrested for possessing a gun without a license and using threatening behavior. He supposedly tried to shoot his ex-manager Clifford Davis when he delivered his royalty check. The police came and arrested Green and he was put in prison. But Green, while not denying the story's basic facts to Q magazine in 1997, does have a somewhat less dramatic memory of events 20 years previous. For one thing, he says, the gun in question was a .22 rifle, the kind you'll find at a fairground, and he didn't even own any bullets. As for actually threatening to shoot his ex-manager, Green explains that while a threat was made, it was made on the phone. But, as he told Q, the media always like a good story. more on this story

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