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The Peter Green Story: Man of the World
https://www.amazon.com/Green-Peter-S.../dp/B01KI263NW
Saw this last night--pretty good film, though I thought the last 20 minutes was too compressed. Maybe there wasn't much to say about his post-FM career. He certainly shone brightly before that. Very charismatic guy, and of course a very talented musician who was just starting to branch out into more abstract work when he became ill.
Mental illness is a bitch. In college I had a classmate and frat brother (freshman) who one day at breakfast started perseverating about bizarre things. We thought maybe he had taken acid or something that morning. Turns out it was an acute psychosis, and that day he threatened his roommate with a knife and was promptly sent to the hospital. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
He subsequently dropped out of Emory and enrolled in NYU film school. I talked to him once or twice after that, but have lost touch with him since then. Hope he's OK. Only a minority of people with this diagnosis are able to hold a job and function at a reasonably high level, despite being (in general) very intelligent and creative.
Back to Peter, both he and his bandmates (the living ones) have quite a degree of self-awareness, though Peter seems to have some "holes" in his judgment about his own condition. It's rather subtle but comes through when he's speaking I think. He ended up better than Danny Kirwan, who became a recluse and street person in the 70's and was never functional as far as I know. (Nice to see Jeremy Spencer interviewed at length. He comes across rather well in the doc, despite his abrupt departure from the group to join a religious group.)
What a soap opera that group was. So much talent, so many tragedies. Surprising the survivors survived as successfully as they did.
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04-01-2021 05:55 PM
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I saw this a while ago. It's a powerful film.
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Yeah, early Fleetwood Mac is just awesome. And Peter Green remains one of the names spoken with hushed reverence. Amazing tone and note choice. Played with both feeling and finesse. I'll have to watch the doc. Thanks!
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It's free on Amazon Prime.
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Love PG! To me and with all due respect to the others, he was the best Blues player that came out of the '60s.
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I am always impressed to see how hard, so very hard, successful artists worked to achieve success. It still required talent, creativity and some degree of serendipity.
His mental illness was devastating to him, the band, his friends and his family. It was a death of sorts.
The Fleetwood Mac success rose after Peter's illness took him out of the band. Then Fleetwood Mac imploded due to human frailty and intolerance.
There is no happy ever after in the world of commercial music. Maybe a few. Maybe.
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Actually they were extremely successful while Peter was with them--riding the crest of a wave. The doc says that (in England I assume) they outsold the Beatles and the Stones the last year the origiinal lineup was together.
Originally Posted by Marty Grass
If you mean they imploded right after Peter left, I agree. But they have soldiered on since then and obviously reached even higher levels of success. This is in no small part due to the tenacity of Mick Fleetwood and his very good business sense.
If you're not familiar with the episode where a concert promoter sent out an alternate group called Fleetwood Mac to tour without any of the original members and without their permission, do look it up. They had to sue to get their name back as I recall.
They have had many lives...with Bob Welch, then with Lindsay and Stevie, and most recently with Neil Finn and Mike Campbell. I saw them a couple of years ago with this configuration, and they were quite good.
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Fortune favors the brave and the tireless and those who didn't know it was going to be this hard and keep going anyway. Originally Posted by Marty Grass
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Always loved the real Peter Green, before his health challenges. Note choice, phrasing, timing, singing, all exquisite. It feels disrespectful to say it, but THAT Peter Green died back in the 70’s, with hardly a trace of the fire and talent in the survivor that the younger man possessed so completely. I hope he found peace in his later years, but I sorely miss the real thing. Almost like the “walk-ins” some folks speak about in the spirit realm, where a new soul inhabits a body with a mutually agreed upon displacement of the original soul, if such things are possible.
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Something happened on the day he died, Originally Posted by yebdox
Spirit rose a metre then stepped aside.
Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried,
I'm a blackstar, I'm a blackstar.
How many times does an angel fall?
How many people lie instead of talking tall?
He trod on sacred ground, he cried loud into the crowd:
I'm a blackstar, I'm a blackstar, I'm not a gangster.
I can't answer why (I'm a blackstar).
Just go with me (I'm not a filmstar).
I'ma take you home (I'm a blackstar).
Take your passport and shoes (I'm not a popstar).
And your sedatives, boo (I'm a blackstar).
You're a flash in the pan (I'm not a marvel star).
I'm the great I Am (I'm a blackstar).
David Bowie, Blackstar
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