A Peter Green Primer

 As a guitarist and avid blues fan, I like to use Peter Green as my litmus test for how well other musicians really know the blues. Everyone has heard of B. B. King, and the man is undoubtedly a god in his own right. But only one man, he once said, can send shivers down his spine while playing the guitar, and that man is Peter Green. An unfortunate life plagued with mental illness quickly snuffed him from the public sphere, just as he was beginning to make a name for himself. As a result, he’s become largely forgotten. I’d like to offer a Peter Green primer for anyone interested in this post today.

Green’s story begins with the departure of another great, and much better known, guitarist from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, a band famous for discovering talent. In the mid 60s, Eric Clapton left the band, and John Mayall held auditions for his replacement. The young Peter Green stood out above the rest—so much so that Mayall proclaimed him to be “someone better” than Clapton himself. At first, nobody believed it was possible; Clapton was the guitar god everyone was talking about in England. But as soon as anyone heard him play, they agreed he was indeed an uncommon craftsman.

With the Bluesbreakers, Green recorded only one album, A Hard Road, but it secured his success as a guitarist. He especially shined with such tracks as “The Stumble” and “The Super-Natural,” both of which were instrumental powerhouses foreshadowing Green’s future.

He became friends with the band’s rhythm section of Mick Fleetwood on drums and John McVie on bass, ultimately leading to their spending some time together in the studio working on a short instrumental piece as a trio. This song Peter titled “Fleetwood Mac” as a humble nod to his two friends. Before long, the three broke away and added guitarist and song-writer Jeremy Spencer to their ensemble to form one of rock and roll’s most famous bands. When it came time to name the band, Green famously insisted his name not be a part of it, as he knew he’d eventually leave. Instead, he wanted the rhythm section to have a name to carry with it. Sure enough, through four decades of personnel changes, Fleetwood Mac’s rhythm section of Fleetwood and McVie has been the only constant.

With Fleetwood Mac, Peter Green recorded a mere four studio albums in just over two years: Fleetwood Mac (often referred to as the “Dog and Dustbin” album), Mr. Wonderful, The Pious Bird of Good Omen (released as English Rose in the US with a slightly different track listing), and Then Play On. Growing increasingly disillusioned with his fame and fortune while simultaneously experimenting with heavy drug use, Peter Green was already becoming a controversial member of the band, which had expanded its lineup to five members with the addition of brilliant young guitarist Danny Kirwan. He began wearing his hair and beard long and donning long, loose robes, striking an unmistakable resemblance to Jesus. When he began demanding the band give away all its money to charity and embark on relief missions to help starving children, the band suspected he was losing interest in music all together.

In a now infamous incident in Munich in 1970, Fleetwood Mac went to a bizarre party at an enormous, secluded home. Multiple witnesses have suspected it was the home base for a cult of some fashion, although it remains shrouded in mystery. What is certain is that Peter Green and Danny Kirwan were both given a powerful, LSD-based drug. When the band’s manager found Peter playing bizarre music in the basement in a disturbing mindset, he insisted on getting the band out of the scene as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, it was already too late. Within months, Green would announce his departure from the band he made famous.

Eventually, Green formed a new band and released his first solo album, the controversial End of the Game album released under his own name. The entire work is an unstructured jam session, heavily percussive, and lacking the masterful feeling once present in Green’s guitar playing. He was losing touch with reality, it was later discovered, due to the onset of schizophrenia.

Over the next decade, Green moved back in with his parents and went in and out of mental hospitals, regularly receiving electro-shock therapy. During one particularly famous bout of instability, he threatened to kill his accountant, supposedly because he did not want to receive royalty checks any longer. He grew his nails out, let his hair and beard turn into a wild, unkempt mane, and apparently would at times get on all fours and howl like a dog.

Today, Peter Green is somewhat more mentally stable, but still clearly fragile and a bit difficult to follow at times in conversations. He plays with his long-time friend Nigel Watson in the Splinter Group, a prolific blues band. But his medication saps his energy and makes it difficult to concentrate, leaving him with little interest in playing guitar at times.

Peter Green’s fame rests almost entirely with his output with Fleetwood Mac. From the very beginning, his songs demonstrated a tormented mind wrought with anxiety, evident in his solo number, “The World Keep on Turning,” from their first album. His clear, saturated voice and explosive guitar playing combine to make the song a haunting listen.

 

 "The World Keep on Turning" would be the precursor to other, similar songs of mental anguish, such as the beautiful “Man of the World,” in which he proclaims “There’s no one I’d rather be; I just wish I had never been born.” The gentle guitar playing of this piece and the powerful melodic structure paired with some of his finest lyrics produce a piece not easily forgotten. 

The final song he recorded with Fleetwood Mac, “The Green Manalishi,” finishes the evolution from straight-forward blues guitarist to poignant, experimental genius. The song documents his hatred of money and greed, which he felt haunted his every move. It is a clear precursor of the punk rock and heavy metal that would begin developing throughout the decade and is often cited as his masterpiece.

For straightforward blues, too, Green was able to deliver a powerful punch. His “I Loved Another Woman” is a brilliant example of economical use of notes and thoughtful bending, offering a unique sound to a standard chord progression. 

“Stop Messin’ Round,” meanwhile, is a standard, feel-good blues-rock number with his unmistakable sound infusing the genre with unprecedented life. 

Today, the three songs he is best known for are Fleetwood Mac’s biggest hit ever, the instrumental “Albatross;” a song Santana would make famous, “Black Magic Woman;” and arguably one of the greatest blues-rock songs ever recorded, “Oh Well.” All three capture the essence of the blues without sticking to the typical blues sound. “Albatross” is one of the most gentle, simple songs ever recorded, yet it is a complex listening experience that communicates between the notes at an almost primal level. 

“Black Magic Woman” adds a supernatural feeling to a standard blues sound with shrill tone and a thumping rhythm, producing a piece of surprising sophistication.

And “Oh Well” is a sort of spiritual Bildungsroman in song, contrasting the starkness of Green’s voice with the sharp edge of his guitar.

If you like what you've heard here, I strongly recommend getting your hands on some early Fleetwood Mac recordings to see the full spectrum of what Peter Green had to offer. His fall from fame is a tragic story, a sort of musical cautionary tale, as there is little question that he was in 1970 just starting to demonstrate his genius.

The Problem with Faith

           I spend a lot of time arguing with religious people. As I live in North America and am a United States citizen, that typically means I argue with Christians. And I love it. Really. Every time I plant even the smallest seed of doubt, every time I deconstruct a worldview based on tradition and faith rather than reflection and reason, I get an indescribable feeling of satisfaction. It isn’t because I’m sadistic or even because I simply believe that life should be about enlightenment, constant improvement, and discovery of the truth. It isn’t because I have a vendetta against religion. It’s because, and I say the following without reservation, I have never met a religious person whose religion actually improved his or her life. I have always found the precise opposite to be true.

            The facts are painfully straightforward. Religion essentially is the imposition of a given worldview upon an individual. One’s conception of morality becomes rules, dogma, law. As such, it is unshakable, unerring, and unavoidable. Even in cases of doubt. I don’t need to get into the ways religion has spawned fanaticism, bigotry, and violence. The events of September 11 in New York City, the murders of doctors who perform abortions, and the oppression of homosexuals, among other crimes against humanity, are well known catastrophes religion has engendered. Discussing these issues all over again would be redundant (although I cannot stress enough the value of restating the truth again and again; the more places it is in print or in the air, the more places people will become exposed to it).

            Instead, I want to discuss some of the crimes against humanity religion yields against its own followers, and then I want to discuss the major roadblock in making these believers see their oppression—faith. Again, this subject is a mammoth one, and it has been well documented. Catholic priests molesting little boys and the unparalleled cover-up from the Vatican down to the President of the United States is no secret. If you don’t know the facts, you’ve never used Google properly. Or the recent spread of fundamentalist Christianity, predominantly in the southern United States (the dreaded “Bible Belt”), which encourages a literal reading of the Bible and an outright rejection of virtually all scientific studies, is another fairly mainstream issue. Evolution isn’t real—an “intelligent designer” made everything and everyone in six days somewhere around five thousand years ago. Dinosaur fossils were either put here to test peoples’ faith, or dinosaurs coexisted with humans not too long ago and current scientific methods for dating fossils are incredible inaccurate. Or my favorite: The Grand Canyon was formed, not over centuries of natural erosion, but during the Great Flood. Yes, the Grand Canyon is frequently cited as proof that Noah actually produced an ark in the not-too-distant past and saved the future of all life from God’s wrath during the deluge.

            Let’s talk about the more personal issues that we may encounter with religious people in daily life. For me, the most destructive aspect of the religious worldview on the worshipper is how it corrupts the natural order of love, relationships, and sexuality. Imagine for a moment a perfect human being, of either gender. Well-rounded, intelligent, affluent, physically attractive, athletic, charming, artistically talented. The ideal mate, many would say. Now couple within this Übermensch the Christian religious tradition toward relationships. I’m no expert, but I’m at least informed. So here’s more or less how our sex drive works within the framework of God’s divine plan.

            When we see fellow humans, we almost immediately determine whether they are physically attractive or unattractive, based on our preferences. This phenomenon is one we have all experienced on a daily basis since a young age. A normal, rational person will then either determine to pursue this individual for the sake of mating and perhaps long-term courtship, or they will instead decide they are not interested and will move on (granted, plenty of grey area exists within this process, but more or less, that is how it works). In the former scenario, they will be subjected to the same scrutiny as already applied to the other member of this relationship; if selected, the common social practice of dating will ensue. If rejected, then the individual will have to deal with rejection and perhaps learn to alter their approach. In the latter scenario, the individual simply moves on from the very start.

            Unfortunately, Christianity (and most of the world’s other religions, especially the religions of Abraham) teaches that objectification is a terrible sin. God wants us always to see people for who they are under the flesh. Purely determining interest in relationships based on physical attraction, especially at the start, is wrong and must be avoided. The logic is that the relationship would develop out of lust from the start, not love. But this system is inherently flawed; aside from the rules of nature, which insist that we absolutely need attractive mates, it leads to a paradox. In order to avoid entering a relationship based on lust, the good Christian should presumably only woo people he or she finds, believe it or not, unattractive. After all, how else can lust ever be written out of the equation? Based on the logic of Christianity, we should all be going after the people we have no interest in physically. But isn’t this just a form of objectification, in and of itself? The person is being reduced to an object suitably distasteful to one’s sex drive, so much so that sex becomes entirely not an issue. Which leads to the next problem, of course. Hypothetically speaking, if somehow this damp green wood is properly kindled into the flames of a romance, what will the effects of these sidestepped laws of attraction be on mating? If the end of relationships is procreation (at least Biblically), shouldn’t we all really be going after the most attractive people we can find, as a way to entice us to, well, procreate?

            But the fun doesn’t stop there. The whole sex thing is an issue in and of itself. Two major forms of sexual release are forbidden under Catholic tradition: masturbation and premarital sex (we won’t even talk about sodomy . . . ). That may be all good and fine for some people, but frankly, you show me a man who is not sexually active, and I’ll present you with a habitual masturbator. Plain and simple, it is healthy. Our bodies inevitably need release. What happens, unfortunately, is that men and women alike are taught that auto-eroticism, as some would call it, is sinful, abhorrent in God’s eyes, and just plain wrong. Can it really be healthy to attach such a perverted stigma to a perfectly natural, universal sexual practice? What happens to a person’s self-image when he or she is constantly fearing God’s judgment for the sin of self-pleasure? Especially in a pre-marital world where no alternative exists! Because God wants us all to save our chastity for marriage. He wants purity, he wants cleanliness, and he wants the act of devirginization to be a holy event. Maybe he’ll even be spiritually present somehow to celebrate that big moment.

            To summarize, religion promotes hasty marriages by sex-starved young people who find each other unattractive. Any union but one of that nature will presumably be sinful, or at least inferior. Which really doesn’t leave much room for love, does it? After all, isn’t a big part of love the physical side? You don’t have to be dating a supermodel to find your partner indescribably attractive, and you should look for the person who fits that protocol. If they catch your eye the first time you ever see them enter a room, their presence will undoubtedly ravish you every time from then on. Furthermore, having time to develop one’s sexuality with a partner, ideally a few partners even, before settling down is immensely important. Taking it on faith that you and your partner will have a fulfilling sex life without ever giving it a practice run, so to speak, is as foolish as buying an expensive house in an undisclosed location that you’ve never seen or even gotten a description of, but agreeing to live in it for the rest of your life, for better or for worse. But I suppose if that were in the Bible, it would be a virtuous practice also.

            Sex and love are far from the only aspects of one’s life religion disrupts and corrupts. Indeed, the ego is perhaps the worst-hit part of the devout one’s being. What I’m talking about now are pride and righteousness. Having a precise list of certain rules one is supposed to follow in life always leads to a “holier than thou” attitude. Without exception. If you don’t believe me, talk to a Christian someday about the value of being Christian, and I guarantee you’ll hear the word “perfect” an awful lot. I always do. Granted, it takes an especially deluded person to claim perfection outright, but many will proclaim a devotion to perfection. They’ll explain how they ask God forgiveness for their mistakes and work hard to get back on track when they are led astray by their worldly desires. Overall, the idea is that God has this perfect spotlight of morality shining down upon the world, and those lucky enough to have read his word can see it and follow it into perfection. But wait . . . isn’t this entity the same one that teaches humility, that has even punished angels for the worst sin of all, that of pride? Religion discourages the objectification of others for personal pleasure, plus the rejection of any worldly possessions, really, while essentially encouraging an objectification of the self. No greater foppery exists than religion.

            The end result of all this corruption of human nature is a life that feels shallow, unfulfilling, and even somewhat dead. Which is, of course, the goal: we all want basically to live good lives, but hurry up and die so we can be blissfully at one with God in Heaven. In Christianity, at least. Well, that rather takes the joy out of life—not all of the joy, but a huge range of enjoyable experiences. Experiences that go deeper than mere masturbation, for all its incontrovertible charm. I mean the experiences of discovering right and wrong for oneself, which can be difficult, but are truly essential to the human condition.

            So, to the main point, at last, of this little piece: the problem with faith. Although it is impossible to say for certain whence religion originally sprung, many unbiased anthropologists and theologians concur that it began during the earliest days of human civilization as a byproduct of the development of the human brain. At some point during the evolution of human consciousness, we became self-aware. This self-awareness led to an awareness of opposition—mainly, humans realized that they were different from the animals. Humans carried the bleak awareness of death and were incredibly preoccupied with understanding why they alone stood out from the rest of the animal kingdom. Not surprisingly, certain stories began to spring forward. Two that have carried on through various incarnations are the Genesis creation accounts in the Old Testament. The second account, when read allegorically, is truly a masterpiece of world literature and a touching portrait of the early human psyche attempting to find its place in what must have been a frightening, hostile world. They reasoned that they were created by the same being that created the animals and that they once lived harmoniously with them. However, upon choosing to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, humankind became enlightened and was thus rejected from Paradise (Eden) by the creator (God). In many ways, this story is actually true—what separates humanity from animals is, in a sense, knowledge. Rational powers. Reason. But it isn’t literally true; it is true in the sense that a great work of literature can express universal ideas, sometimes ideas that cannot even be readily summarized in words, but still be, at the end of the day, a work of fiction. Which is precisely what every creation account from every religion or mythology ever to exist has been: fiction.

            So the next time you argue with a person of faith and come to that most dastardly roadblock of faith, so frequently used as justification for any far-fetched notion or simply as a cop-out to avoid an uninformed discussion, offer this idea. Humans are unique in our ability to reason; it is the one power that truly separates us from the animals, and we are indeed such weak, pathetic creatures, that without that power, we’d really have no chance of keeping separate from the bigger, hungrier animals. Evolution at work. So if reason is our highest faculty, our greatest gift, we should cherish it, especially if it came from God, if we must use that silly idea as a starting point. Faith, on the other hand, is the opposite of reason. It’s essentially instinct, taking an idea as the truth based solely on a gut feeling, not on any real evidence or observations. Animals use their instincts, but humans use their reason. So we must never be content to use faith as our justification for anything, for faith alone can be used to legitimize the greatest of evils. If you can convince a Christian that faith is truly inferior to reason, and that reason was actually God’s greatest, defining gift to humankind, if we are to look to Genesis allegorically, then you have done enough. The rest of the argument will logically take hold in his or her brain with further careful consideration.

            After all, it’s the very train of thought that initially led me to atheism. I know it works.

Give me liberty, or give me . . .

            I am so radically conservative that I make many right-wing nut cases feel uncomfortable. I am so radically conservative that I bounce around to the other end of the spectrum, pick up a few liberal ideas, then move all the way back to the ultra-conservative region all over again. It’s like I’m playing political Pac Man. Go far enough to the right and you’ll end up on the left, heading right all over again. I am so conservative, I think the Constitution, for all its merit, may even have been a slight mistake. I ascribe myself more to the attitude set out in the second sentence of the United States Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Minus the whole wishy-washy part about this Creator character people have been obsessing over for thousands of years, I pretty much agree with that entire statement as being all we need to fairly govern the land.

            After all, who would argue against the notion that the three rights they hold most dear are those of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”? The problem is, somewhere along the line we forgot about these essential truths of human nature. We’ve made some progress remembering the value of the first part of that sentence—“that all men are created equal”—in the last hundred years or so and still have a long way to come. And nobody can deny that the US government allows us the right to life. If nothing else, in fact, we are forced to live; consider the official stance on euthanasia, for example. You don’t have the right to give up your own life. Yeah, good luck enforcing that.

            But what of liberty and the pursuit of happiness? To me, these are really two sides of the same coin. How, after all, do they at all differ? Liberty is freedom to live one’s life as one chooses. I’m no lawyer, but that pretty much sounds to me like how I’ll pursue my personal version of happiness: By living my life however I choose.

            So this brings me to my overall point of discussion for this piece. I am so radically conservative that the one entity in this world, in government, and in my life that I hold most sacred or of any worth whatsoever is my liberty. Without liberty, friends, family, loved ones, hobbies, passions, and education have no value. They may even become a curse. Now, our founding fathers eventually realized that pure liberty is essentially pure anarchy, so certain rules needed to be instated to explain precisely what liberty means for Americans. It cannot be equated with impunity, for example. I do not have the right to kill another person merely because it is the way I wish to live my life. So they drafted the next big piece of legislature, another famous document called the Constitution.

            The point of the Constitution, at least at first, was essentially to define what liberty would mean under the US banner. In the end, the general consensus was that liberty is the freedom to live one’s life however one chooses, so long as one does not interfere with anyone else’s liberty. Simple enough, only a slight addendum to the previous definition of liberty, and a good one at that. So, the rights to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to bear arms, and other textbook Bill of Rights bits were set into writing and made the law of the land.

            Since then, however, most of our liberties have gotten horribly screwed up. The old saying for American politics was “majority rule, minority right,” meaning that what the majority wants, the majority gets, so long as it does not affect the minority’s liberty. But this notion has long since been forgotten. Today, most laws are set by special interest groups hoping to push their worldviews on the rest of the country. They aren’t trying to protect their own liberty so much as preventing other peoples’ liberties from making them uncomfortable. Worse, many laws are influenced by powerful corporations and lobbyists whose sole goals are profit. They’ll restrict your liberties if your liberties restrict their cash flow. The list is endless, but here is a brief sample of some suspensions of minority liberty in this country as imposed by the “majority”:

-          The definition of marriage is one man, one woman . . . because the majority says so. Nevertheless, there are plenty of people who disagree, but they are the minority and are not heard, even though their marrying would have no impact on the liberty of the majority. If two women wish to marry and raise a family, let them—it isn’t hurting your lemming-like suburbia, heterosexual lifestyle one bit. If multiple people all want to marry each other, so what? Defining marriage is like trying to define love, and I don’t know of a single philosopher who has successfully pulled that one off yet. So don’t kid yourself—you don’t know what I’m feeling anymore than I know what you’re feeling.

-          Many drugs, most of which are less harmful than alcohol and tobacco, are illegal . . . because the majority say so. If I choose to smoke marijuana from the comfort of my own home and contemplate the meaning of life, that’s my prerogative. But because some closed-minded, brainwashed, paranoid idiots who have never even tried it believe marijuana is the devil’s weed, I am not allowed to enjoy the liberty of doing so, even though it will never harm them.

-          Bars and restaurants that used to allow smoking are being forced to become non-smoking establishments . . . because the majority do not like second-hand smoke. Weren’t plenty of other eateries that were non-smoking already available to choose from? If you don’t want to be around smoke, then don’t hang out with smokers! But don’t tell a business it has no right to promote smokers to enjoy their perfectly legal drug of choice within their doors. If Joe Shmoe wants to smoke a butt while enjoying his Budweiser while out with his pals, let him . . . he’s not hurting anybody but people who are aware of the risk of being around it. Besides, if there weren’t a demand for smoking in these types of places, then why do most businesses after the switch report a drop in business? Now we’re hitting the economy hard, too.

-          Prostitution is illegal . . . because the majority are against it. But if a person decides to offer a service for money, degrading and tasteless though some may find it, it is entirely that person’s decision. Making it illegal only puts these workers at risk for further health, safety, and financial issues. They aren’t committing violent crimes, they aren’t imposing on your liberty, so don’t impose on their liberty or the liberty of their clients.

-          Evolution is being taught as if it were somehow in doubt in numerous school systems now throughout the country . . . because the majority believe in a book written (largely through startling acts of plagiarism and reworking of polytheistic myths) thousands of years ago saying an invisible man created the earth and all of its inhabitants in six days. Oh, and because they have no idea what the word “theory” actually means in a scientific context. Teaching creationism side-by-side with evolution in schools is just a sneaky way of cramming religious idiocy down young peoples’ throats, hoping to brainwash them in order to combat the current country-wide slump in Church attendance. Freedom of religion also entails freedom from religion if it is truly a liberty. Nobody has the right to skew scientific fact in favor of a religious agenda if liberty exists in its pure form.

The list is really endless. These are actually merely some of the biggest issues of concern to contemporary libertarians. It is a growing movement, predominantly young people, and it sends the signal to the government that we want our liberty and we want it now. The PATRIOT ACT especially revoked many key liberties once taken for granted in this country, and it did so in such a sneaky, clever, revolting way that only a politician could have figured out how to make it happen. We’re searching for “sophisticated, dangerous terrorists” in a desert halfway across the globe, but we don’t even notice the very real terrorists slowly stripping away the very aspect of life our founding fathers found most dear: our liberty.

            The best way to combat the problem of loss of liberty, should you feel the way I do, is to talk to people about their liberties. Make these laws seem ridiculous. Ask your parents, your friends, your coworkers, how they would feel if a law were passed banning oranges because a great many people have suddenly decided they find oranges strangely offensive. Such a law would seem farcical, no? Well, that’s how anyone engaging in non-violent behavior that is currently illegal feels every minute of every day. We must force people to think about freedom in order for them to realize that it is disappearing and at risk. If we can band together to fight such hazy, widely misunderstood issues as climate change, then why can’t we tackle as simple a problem as the loss of liberty if we simply stick to our guns?