Mick Fleetwood Rediscovers His Roots

Tuesday, 5 April 2016, 3:33 pm
Article: Howard Davis

Back in the days before the British blues revival in the 1960s, it's fair to say that one man virtually pioneered the form - Alexis Korner. Korner originally worked for jazz band leader Chris Barber, who was responsible for bringing many American folk and blues performers to the UK, where they discovered they were much better known and paid. The first major artist to cross the pond was Big Bill Broonzy in the mid-50s, playing folk blues to fit in with British expectations of American blues as a form of folk music.

Mick Fleetwood

Trad jazz singer and cultural critic George Melly (who supported tours by Broonzy, Jimmy Rushing, and Sister Rosetta Tharp in the 1950s) recalled this period fondly in his memoir 'Owning-Up' - "Barber imported, for admirably altruistic reasons, a series of old and forgotten blues singers. Some of these have since achieved international stature; others, kindly old gentlemen who had been working in obscurity since the early 20s and beyond, enjoyed their temporary share of the limelight and retired again into the shadows."

To this point, British blues was played acoustically, emulating Delta and country blues styles in the emerging British folk revival. Critical in changing this attitude was Muddy Waters' 1958 visit. He initially shocked audiences by playing amplified electric blues, but was soon playing to ecstatic crowds and rave reviews. Korner quickly followed suit, plugged in, and formed Blues Incorporated, the first home-grown group to play high-octane electric blues.

Korner's band had a residency at Soho's Marquee Club and it was from there came the name of the first classic British blues album, 'R&B from the Marquee.' A phalanx of mostly proletarian superstars emerged from under Korner's aegis, as Blues Incorporated became a clearing house not only for The Rolling Stones and Cream, but also a host of other British R&B bands. The culmination of this first movement of blues came with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, which variously included Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Jack Bruce, and Eric Clapton, the latter gaining international attention with the 1966 release of 'Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton,' one of the seminal British blues recordings of the era.

Peter Green began the second great epoch of British blues when he replaced Clapton in the Bluesbreakers, but after cutting just one record with Mayall, Green and the Bluesbreakers' rhythm section of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie formed Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. Mayall gave them his blessing with a free recording session, which they used to cut five tracks, the fifth being an instrumental that Green dubbed 'Fleetwood Mac.'

Released in 1968, Fleetwood Mac's eponymous first was a no-frills approach to the blues that reached number four in the UK charts, after which they released two classic singles - 'Black Magic Woman' and 'Need Your Love So Bad.' Their second album, 'Mr. Wonderful,' was another all-blues effort, but recorded live in the studio with miked amplifiers and PA system, rather than plugged into the board. They also added a horn section and introduced keyboard player Christine Perfect (who later married McVie), providing an ideal sonic environment that lent the album an authentically vintage ambience. Shortly after 'Mr Wonderful', Fleetwood Mac added another hugely accomplished and self-taught guitarist, eighteen year-old Danny Kirwan, who's signature vibrato and unique style added yet a further dimension to the band sound. They then released their first number one single in Europe, the haunting, tropical-flavoured instrumental classic 'Albatross,' closely followed by their second US album 'English Rose' and their third European LP 'The Pious Bird of Good Omen,' a collection of singles and B-sides.

The band visited America for the first time in 1969, recording many songs at the soon-to-close Chess Records Studio with such Chicago blues legends as Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy, and Otis Spann. These were Fleetwood Mac's last all-blues recordings. Along with their change of style, the band was also going through some label changes. They had been under contract to Blue Horizon, but with Kirwan now in the band, their musical potential was too great for them to stay on a blues-only label. They signed briefly with Immediate Records and released another British and European hit single, the melancholy 'Man of the World,' but the label was in bad shape and the band shopped around for a new deal. Even though The Beatles wanted to sign them to Apple Records (Fleetwood and George Harrison were brothers-in-law), their manager Clifford Davis finally opted for Warner Brothers (through Reprise Records), the label they've stayed with ever since. In 1969, they released their first Reprise LP, the well-regarded, straight rock album 'Then Play On.'

By this time, Fleetwood Mac had garnered an international reputation, but sadly Green was no longer in good health. A bad LSD trip in Munich apparently contributed to the onset of schizophrenia. His last hit with Fleetwood Mac was 'The Green Manalishi With the Two-Prong Crown,' after which his mental stability deteriorated rapidly. He continued to ingest copious quantities of acid, grew a beard, began to wear robes and a crucifix, and his bandmates began noticing distinct changes in his state of mind. Mick Fleetwood recalls him becoming very concerned about financial issues - "I had conversations with Peter Green around that time and he was obsessive about us not making money, wanting us to give it all away. And I'd say, 'Well you can do it, I don't wanna do that, and that doesn't make me a bad person'." Green left the band in 1970 and immediately produced a stunningly innovative, visionary, and extended instrumental jam session, presciently entitled 'The End of the Game.' Tragically, his illness and drug use became entrenched and he soon faded into professional obscurity. After a brief stint working as a grave-digger, he was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and underwent electroshock therapy during mid-70s. In 1977, he was arrested for threatening Clifford Davis with a shotgun and institutionalized. After enduring extensive periods of mental illness and destitution throughout the 1980s, he eventually moved into his mother's house in Great Yarmouth, where he began a slow and painful process of recovery.

Green is revered for his idiomatic string-bending, sparse economy of style, swinging shuffle grooves, minor chord modulations, and exquisitely soulful phrasing - all of which evoked the darker implications of the blues. His unique tone derived mainly from a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard guitar, installed with a neck pick-up magnet in reverse, resulting in the kind of out-of-phase sound he achieved on an instrumental he wrote for Mayall's Bluesbreakers, 'The Super-Natural,' which demonstrates an astonishing control of harmonic feedback, characterized by a shivering vibrato, clean-cutting tones, and a series of ten-second sustained notes. B.B. King said of Green - "He has the sweetest tone I ever heard; he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats." Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page both praised his technique; he was ranked 38th in Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time;" and in 1996 Green was voted 3rd best guitarist of all time in Mojo magazine.
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Somehow surviving the self-indulgent excrescence of the Stevie Nicks/Lindsey Buckingham incarnation of Fleetwood Mac, the massive consumption of container loads of cocaine, several acrimonious divorces, and bankruptcy, Fleetwood finally sobered up. He's been touring with a reformed Fleetwood Mac and his own Blues Band ever since. Now happily ensconced on Maui (where he owns a restaurant), his original enthusiasm for vintage blues from which he launched his prolonged and storied career has never waned. And he clearly has an incisive ear for both recognizing and recruiting tremendous guitar talent. When Buckingham left, he was replaced by Rick Vito - a sublime technician who had worked with Roy Orbison, Bonnie Raitt, John Prine, John Mayall, Jackson Browne, Little Richard, Roger McGuinn, Albert Collins, Dolly Parton, and Maria Muldaur, as well as contributing the famous slide solo to Bob Seger's hit single 'Like A Rock'.

Rick Vito

The Mick Fleetwood Blues Band's recent appearance at the Wellington Opera House showcased not only Fleetwood's extraordinary stamina and personal charm, but also Vito's almost miraculous blues and slide guitar stylings. Fleetwood is a veteran survivor who obviously relishes attacking a tight set of traps, while Vito's glissando is as graceful as Green's ever was. Together, they still manage to chop out the changes with seemingly effortless precision and a pervasive sense of glee. The lineage is legendary.

ENDS

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Howard Davis

Scoop Arts Editor

Educated at Cambridge and UCLA; worked on several major Hollywood feature films and as a Kundalini Yoga instructor in Los Angeles; currently enjoying life in Wellington.

Contact Howard Davis

• Email - howard@scoop.co.nz