Billy Gibbons names his favourite Peter Green moment
Since the inception of rock and roll, every guitarist can trace their roots back to the blues. Despite attempts to diverge from the traditional three chords, these blues-infused foundations have been integral to rock and roll since the early days, whether it was The Rolling Stones’ rendition or Elvis Presley’s impassioned vocals. While Billy Gibbons has never shied away from his blues style, he acknowledged that the sound of Peter Green was unmatched among British guitarists.
Alongside the British invasion, though, another bold musical movement was going on underneath the surface. While The Beatles and The Stones may have flirted with the blues here and there, they were just as willing to make songs designed to make a pop masterpiece as they were a down-and-dirty blues song.
Coming out of the London underground, the British blues boom gave birth to many of the finest guitarists the world had ever seen. Starting with acts like The Yardbirds, artists like Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck all cut their teeth playing those same blues figures before eventually branching out into their own individual styles.
The Yardbirds may have had one side of London, but Fleetwood Mac had an ace in the hole with Peter Green. Despite being named after the rhythm section of John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, Green was the one who spearheaded the band’s early career, notching up blues-soaked hits on songs like ‘Oh Well’ and the soon-to-be Satana song, ‘Black Magic Woman’.
Even though Gibbons was still making ends meet in bands like The Moving Sidewalks, he was enamoured with what Green could do behind the fretboard. When talking about his favourite bluesy licks, Gibbons pointed out that Green took things to a different level with his version of the song ‘Stop Messin Around’, which knocked him out the first time he heard it.
Speaking with Guitar World, Gibbons thought that the song was one of the best British interpolations of the blues, saying, “Stop Messin’ Round is as rock-solid a British take on down-home Chicago-style 12-bar blues as ever there was. The six-string guitar work from Señor Green dispenses with frills and reminds me somewhat of the late, great Freddie King in terms of tone and approach”.
Blues would be only a fragment of what Green wanted to do, eventually making spaced-out psychedelic-sounding rock and roll on tracks like ‘Albatross’. Taking cues from the growing counterculture, Green would also end up making darker takes on blues with songs like ‘The Green Manalishi’, which would prove instrumental for the heavy metal community when Judas Priest got ahold of it a few years later.
Even though Green only hung around for a few more years, Gibbons had learned to embrace the sounds of the blues, eventually forming ZZ Top and teaching the rest of the American South how to get the most emotion out of a guitar. Gibbons has a sound all his own, but there might be traces of Green hidden underneath that pair of shades and massive beard.
