Will the Real Fleetwood Mac Stand Up?

Can a Blue Man Play the Whites?

The recent death of Danny Kirwan had me thinking about Fleetwood Mac, or more specifically the problem certain people such as I have with Fleetwood Mac. We are speaking about two bands, and it can get sexist; diehards such as myself make statements such as, 'You know, the GOOD Fleetwood Mac, before women joined the band'. In all fairness, the latter version of the band was fine in its own way, and certainly turned into a commercial and tabloid juggernaut. It's just that the latter, vastly more successful version of the band had absolutely nothing to do with the earlier group except the same bass player and drummer, and those two were always the least talented member of any version of the group.

I don't want to get bogged down in history or comparisons. What I really want to get to is a real Rashomon moment in rock history, the Munich Trauma Night. This was a point in history when supermodels, the Red Army Faction, and bad (or good, depends on who you talk to) drugs combined to change the history of Fleetwood Mac forever. But there does need to be some context before we get there.

Fleetwood Mac was a direct outgrowth of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, the same group that had previously propelled Eric Clapton to superstardom. Peter Green, the leader, was Clapton's replacement in the Bluesbreakers. Green's replacement, Mick Taylor, wound up doing great work for the Rolling Stones for over fiver years. The Bluesbreakers tie the Yardbirds for the most important guitarists to emerge from one band, with three each. 

There was a Blues Boom happening in England, incubated by Cyril Davies, Alexis Korner and John Mayall. The Rolling Stones were the first out of the gate; listen to their first few albums, before they started writing their own songs, and you'll see just how much they came from the blues, including getting the first blues song, 'Little Red Rooster', onto the top of the British charts. The floodgates opened, and a steady stream of earthy companion bands to the more mainstream Mersey sound emerged.

The Blues Boom peaked around 1966, as Mod culture started importing tons of soul and R & B into England as well. It was directly responsible for both Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and it is easy to see in how quickly those two groups morphed into something else entirely to see how fast the Blues Boom similarly changed. In 1967 it was all about psychedelia, and Britain left the blues behind.

That is, except Peter Green, who chose the direct aftermath of the Summer of Love to start the one pure blues band in Britain during the 1960s. A lot of people, including Eric Clapton, talked about it. Peter did it, and he sold it to the British public. Despite what seems like a limited repertoire, Fleetwood Mac sold very well in England.

The three core members from the Bluesbreakers added Jeremy Spencer, who only seemed to do very accurate Elmore James imitations, and produced five albums in two years. In the middle of that period, Danny Kirwan, who was eighteen and living at home (still living at home when he was fired from the group five years later) was added by Peter Green over the objection of the other members. Green needed a second guitar; Jeremy couldn't handle the parts. Both Mick Fleetwood and John McVie thought Danny was a spoiled 'prat'.

Fleetwood Mac managed to have three (!!!) guitarist by the end of the 1960s. The band did start branching out from straight blues into more mainstream rock and had a series of hits; 'Albatross', 'Man of the World', 'Oh Well' (covered by Tom Petty) 'Rattlesnake Shake' (covered by Aerosmith), and 'Black Magic Woman' (covered by Santana, helping make that band a world-wide success). But Peter Green seemed to turn into a strange acid casualty, as you can gather from this trailer to the excellent documentary, 'Man of the World';

In all fairness, Peter Green always had a slightly spooky and very spiritual side to his music. When he replaced Clapton in the Bluesbreakers, Eric was at the height of his popularity. On the 'So Many Roads' album, not only does Green do a Freddie King instrumental just like Clapton did on the previous album and do it better ('The Stumble' versus 'Hideaway'), he came up with this song, which is unlike anything else ever done on a John Mayall album:

That is some seriously good but creepy stuff, experimental and with one foot out the blues door. Fleetwood Mac, after three albums that established Green as the premier white blues talent in England, started to branch out. Peter had charisma, was a natural leader, and could sing and play better than anyone during that time. They started having giant hits in Europe, such as 'Albatross'.

The inevitable huge American tours had already started, and they started toughening up their sound with rock standards to please audiences. A popular live attraction, they even went to Chess records in January 1969 to record a double blues album.

They were a successful working band, but cracks started to appear in Peter Green's fragile mind. Another huge hit in Europe, 'Man of the World' is almost painfully oversensitive. There is still that incredible playing and singing, and it is a world class song, but it too convincing a tale of a troubled man.

Still, they kept playing, touring and recording. The next album, 'Then Play On', is the real classic of this period in Fleetwood Mac's history. The song 'Oh Well' was a hard rock rave up that still managed to be confessional. It has one of those riffs that every guitarist of a certain age has tried to play. 

Also of note from that album, just to show that Peter Green hadn't lost his sense of humor, is the greatest song ever written or performed about male masturbation, 'Rattlesnake Shake'. These guys were turning quickly into a world-class rock band, and the touring never ceased. Here they are on 'Playboy After Dark'.

Now we come to the infamous Munich Trauma Night that ended Green's period in the band. Accounts differ wildly, but a few facts are certain; the band went to Munich, met Uschi Obermaier and some other hippies, were invited to a party at the High-Fish Commune in a Bavarian Castle, and a drug-fueled jam ensued. Uschi was a supermodel and also the unofficial mascot of the Red Army Faction during it's earliest, pre-murderous days.

Her boyfriend, Rainer Langhans, mentions in his autobiography that he and Uschi Obermaier met Peter Green and others of Fleetwood Mac in 1970 in Munich, where they invited them to their High-Fish-Commune. Here the drinks were laced with LSD, which particularly affected Green. The communards were not really interested in Peter Green. They just wanted to get in contact with the Rolling Stones’ guitarist, Mick Taylor: Langhans and Obermaier wished to organize a 'Bavarian Woodstock'. They wanted Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones to be the leading acts of their Bavarian open air festival. They needed Green in order to get in contact with The Rolling Stones via Mick Taylor.

After that, you're on your own. The jam was taped but I've never heard it. Green to this day insists that he had a great time and it was a 'good jam'. He wanted to stick around and have some more fun, and Danny Kirwan also did. The rest of the band insist that Green was poisoned and infer that some devious mind control was at work. The result was that Green left the band after a few months and yet another American tour, trying to give his profits away. That was the last straw; he may have been fired as much as he quit. He managed one more hit, the near heavy metal 'Green Manalishi'.

If you listen to the song above, you might detect what the real problem was; Green noticed how huge Santana's version of his 'Black Magic Woman' had become and wanted the group to go in that direction. But Mick Fleetwood and John McVie were simply not able to jam fluidly enough to follow their leader. Was the Munich incident just an excuse by the more conservative members of the group to blame someone else the fracturing of the band? Even they admit that Green was already getting prepared to leave the band before this incident.

After Green's departure, things got a lot worse. The next album, 'Kiln House', fueled by Spencer and Kirwan, was dreadful except on one cut, 'Tell Me All the Things You Do'. It was sung by Christie McVie and it literally the only thing on the album worth listening to.

Soon after, while on tour in San Francisco, Jeremy Spencer left the hotel to get a paper and disappeared, joining a cult. To further muddy the water, Peter Green came back to finish the tour as a replacement, and it went so well that Fleetwood and McVie tried to get him to rejoin, casting doubt on just how permanently damaged he was at the time. The band shuffled along, finding a replacement, and tossed Danny Kirwan out a year latter. They didn't have hits but the albums sold well enough, and they cruised along on their reputation. Then they met up with two Americans, Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, and superstardom followed.

It should also be mentioned that Uschi Obermaier was also a member of Amon Duul II, a very loosely organized Krautrock band. If you listen to any of their early albums, or many other German rock band productions from the time, it sounds like a bunch of very stoned people gathered around a tape recorder and making it up as they went along. That also sounds like the events of the Munich Trauma Night. Who knows?

I don't hate that version of Fleetwood Mac; they made nice enough elevator music for the Cocaine California Culture, successful enough to warrant everything from being played at Bill Clinton's inauguration to generating 'Sit On My Face, Stevie Nicks' tee shirts. What I hate is keeping the name, besmirching the reputation of a vibrant but short lived group that had virtually nothing in common but an accident of personnel. I especially hate the fact that the later groups' superstardom diminished the legacy of Peter Green.

Truth be spoken, Peter Green never was the same once he left Fleetwood Mac. Rock fans like to call him another 'acid casualty', along with Syd Barrett, Skip Spence, Roky Ericson, and Sky Saxon. I'm not so sure. He was diagnosed with mental illness and spent years as a homeless day laborer. The good news is that he was able to resurrect a career. The bad news is that the spark that made him so special in the early days is gone forever.

Today, what I am really sorry about is the passing of Danny Kirwan. He was a mild talent in Fleetwood Mac, not terrible, not great either. His life after the band didn't turn out particularly successful; he wound up a street person despite being inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. What I really am sad over is that, to the best of my knowledge, no one ever asked him about that night in Munich. I wonder what he would have said?