"I was always a sad person. I don't know why": The Peter Green albums you should definitely listen to

John Mayall And The Bluesbreakers - A Hard Road, (Decca, 1967)

The album that introduced Green to the world is a work of brooding intensity with an everlasting blues lustre. It boasts two instrumental tracks on which Green’s brilliance shines through: The Stumble, a sprightly shuffle written by Freddie King, and Green’s own The Supernatural, a sonic masterpiece, harnessing a series of controlled, one-note feedback loops to conjure a fabulous sense of melody and mood. 

Green also sings lead on The Same Way and You Don’t Love Me. Subsequent expanded editions of the album include many rare and sublime recordings from the period.

Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac (Blue Horizon, 1968)

The release of Fleetwood Mac’s debut was a defining moment in the story of the British blues boom. While singer and slide guitarist Jeremy Spencer throws himself into almost parodic versions of old Elmore James riffs, Green presents a deep and meticulous understanding of the blues form on Howlin’ Wolf’s No Place To Go and his own compositions including I Loved Another Woman and Looking For Somebody. 

Singing and soloing with perfectly articulated feeling throughout, and also playing harmonica on Long Grey Mare and a resonator guitar The World Keep On Turning, this is Green in his blues-wailing pomp.

Fleetwood Mac - Mr. Wonderful (Blue Horizon, 1968)

This prompt follow-up to Fleetwood Mac’s debut is fine as far as it goes, although Jeremy Spencer’s endless recycling of Elmore James’s Dust My Broom riff is wearing a bit thin by this point. 

A horn section beefs up the good-time shuffle of Stop Messin’ Round and the loose Latin syncopation of Rollin’ Man, while new addition Christine Perfect adds piano to the haunting refrain of Love That Burns, which ends with the line ’Please leave me in my room to cry’. Another exquisitely mournful song, Trying So Hard To Forget, goes as deep into Green’s troubled soul as a song can get.

John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers - Live In 1967 (Forty Below, 2015)

The latter-day discovery of a cache of live bootlegs featuring the otherwise unrecorded Bluesbreakers line-up of Mayall and Green together with John McVie (bass) and Mick Fleetwood (drums) prompted much excitement among aficionados. With good reason. 

This is the first of three volumes which offer a spellbinding glimpse of the full, elemental magnificence of this historic lineup playing live and unfiltered. The sound quality is patchy at times, the audiences raucous, but the performances are out of this world, and a six-minute version of The Stumble is simply incredible.

Fleetwood Mac - Then Play On (Reprise, 1969) 

With new addition Danny Kirwan taking half the singing, songwriting and guitar duties, and four tracks given over to jams and other instrumental oddities, Then Play On is an album of mixed delights. 

The hard-core blues template has given way to a mellower psych-rock vibe, but it is Green’s more traditional songs – Rattlesnake Shake, Show-Biz Blues and the melancholy Before The Beginning – that dominate. ‘Is there nobody listening to my song?’ he sings disconsolately. The 2013 remastered edition of the album was expanded to include the hits Oh Well (Pts 1 & 2) and The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Prong Crown).

Peter Green - The End Of The Game (Reprise, 1970) 

Dense, complex and wildly experimental, Green’s debut as a solo act is an exercise in improvised musical schizophrenia. Recorded swiftly after his troubled departure from Fleetwood Mac, with a line-up including Zoot Money on keyboards, it is a voyage through a landscape of strange sounds and oddly ravaged instrumental shapes. 

The album has been likened to Miles Davis’s avant-garde fusion classic In A Silent Way by Larry Love of Alabama 3, and dismissed as “drivel” by allmusic.com. “I made it as an experiment because I felt restricted,” Green said.

Fleetwood Mac And Various Artists Blues Jam At Chess, Volumes 1 & 2 (Blue Horizon, 1969)

“I played too forcefully – too much and too loud,” Green said reflecting on the somewhat chaotic jam/recording session that took place on January 4, 1969 at Chess studios in Chicago. 

In fact, Green more than holds his own in the company of original blues greats including Willie Dixon, Walter ‘Shakey’ Horton, Otis Spann and Buddy Guy. Playing and singing with tremendous skill and feeling, Green leads the scratch ensemble through his own song Watch Out, Howlin’ Wolf’s Ooh Baby and Little Walter’s Last Night, among others. Historic.

Peter Green - In The Skies (PVK, 1979)

Green’s comeback album after the wilderness years of the 70s is a collection of understated melodic charm. Joined by guitarist Snowy White, who plays lead on some tracks, and a rhythm section of Pete Bardens (bass) and Reg Isidore (drums), Green turns in capable performances on several stylish instrumentals, notably Slabo Day, and tackles the religious/spiritual theme of the title track with a warm vocal, set to a lilting bossa nova beat. 

A new version of his Mac-era song A Fool No More provides the one truly spine-tingling moment on the album as he channels once again the deep, existential sadness of his life.

Peter Green Splinter Group - Destiny Road (Snapper Music, 1999)

Rescued from artistic oblivion once again in the 1990s, this time by the singer and guitarist Nigel Watson, Green settled into a role as nominal leader of the Splinter Group, where he played and sang mostly other people’s songs. 

This, the group’s fourth album, is a typical collection and features one of Watson’s best songs Burglar, and a lovely reworking of Green’s pulsating instrumental Tribal Dance. Green sings Madison Blues with a spectacular lack of engagement, and doesn’t sing anything at all on a version of Man Of The World hidden away at the end – a sweet but distant echo of past glories.

Peter Green - Kolors (Creole, 1983)

It was great that Green rallied sufficiently to resume gigging and recording in 1979. But he was simply not the same performer after his tragic mental breakdown. This last album as a ‘solo’ act is a shabby ragbag of out-takes and rejects from previous albums, most of them written by his brother Michael. 

The blues-funk boilerplate of Bad Bad Feeling, the awkward lyric of Black Woman and the cabaret croon of Liquor And You are clunky enough. But worst of all is Funky Jam, a rambling, one-chord rumble that bangs on artlessly and aimlessly for eight minutes, daring you to leave the track playing until the end.