Mick Fleetwood on the musician he didn’t think was “good enough” for Fleetwood Mac
Rock and roll isn’t meant to be perfect. If there is any band that claims to be the greatest rock act in the world and has pristine records that no one else can touch, then they’ve lost the essence of what makes a group untouchable in the first place. All rock and roll should have a few rough edges, but even Mick Fleetwood thought that the earliest version of Fleetwood Mac could have used some work with Peter Green behind the fretboard.
At the same time, Fleetwood has always had a weird selection regarding the musicians playing with him. He was more than happy to bring Stevie Nicks into the group when Lindsey Buckingham insisted that she come with him, and when she left, including Bekka Bramlett was done specifically to capture the spirit of Nicks without having to copy her directly.
Before any of the pop hits started rolling in, though, anyone getting into Fleetwood Mac needed to know the language of the blues, and even then, Green was a little bit of an outlier. He had a passing knowledge of how to play those lowdown and dirty licks. Still, his approach was a lot more scattershot than a lot of other blues guitarists, usually sculpting guitar parts rather than just annihilating the frets.
Still, playing with the likes of John Mayall was bound to boost anyone’s goodwill in a group, and that caught the eye of one John McVie. Once he decided to show off his latest discovery to Fleetwood, though, the drummer was less than impressed by what he saw the first time around.
Discussing his decision to take him on, Fleetwood remembered hesitating, telling Louder, “He plugged in, and I remember saying to Peter Bardens: ‘I don’t think he’s good enough.’ I said: ‘He keeps playing the same thing.’ And, of course, what I was hearing was the simplicity of Peter’s playing. But I got flustered, thinking: ‘Is he going to be able to learn all these songs in three days?’”
Every guitarist has a bag of tricks when it comes to guitar licks, but that kind of repetitious form of playing worked to Green’s advantage. By sticking to his off-the-wall playing style, Green allowed Fleetwood Mac to branch out beyond the traditional rock and roll format, whether that meant dipping their toes into jazz on ‘Albatross’ or ‘Black Magic Woman’.
Then again, Fleetwood may have had the right to be slightly worried, given how Green ended up exiting the fold. His experimentation with LSD would get the better of him, and much like fellow psychedelic acolytes like Syd Barrett, he would end up doing damage to his mental health, which led to him leaving the group for a while.
By the time Green did return to the fold, though, it was a completely different animal, having shown up to a few rehearsals for Tusk to see how the rest of the group was doing with Lindsey Buckingham’s style of playing. Green’s style may have been too weird even by Fleetwood Mac’s eclectic standards, but his influence on the guitar community is still prevalent in everyone from Mike Campbell to Kirk Hammett today.
