Shown as a tribute following his recent death, this 11-year-old documentary on the former leader of Fleetwood Mac, guitarist Peter Green was at times a sad and painful watch, charting as it does his long slow demise when at the very peak of his talent. But at least musically, concentrating as it does on his, pardon the pun, green period with the band between 1968 and 1970, when he left the band reportedly after getting involved with a German hippie commune who gave him bad acid and fried his mind in the process, there are some great vintage photos, audios and videos which are more than convincing evidence of a rare but major talent.
It was good to see his three main former-colleagues in the band at the time, namely Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Jeremy Spencer speaking so well of him, but it is difficult to see the man himself as we do here, in such relatively poor physical and mental shape, struggling to lucidly recall traumatic events in his life including infamous electric shock treatment. Certainly his music, after he slowly returned to the music scene following years of psychiatric treatment, never achieved the same artistic or commercial heights again which is made abundantly clear with his post-Mac life and work shoehorned into a 10 minute roundup at the end.
Best then to concentrate on his younger years with the likes of Carlos Santana and John Mayall eulogising his playing although to my mind it's his singing and writing for which I have the utmost respect. I've got to say he looked great too at that period in his life, tall, dark-haired, bearded, he just looked as if he had an aura about him. The range and quality of the singles he mostly wrote for the band from 1968-1970 are amazing. Four of them reached the top ten, in fact two of them got to number 2 and one to number 1 amidst other great singles like "Need Your Love So Bad," and his signature tune "Black Magic Woman" quickly covered by Santana, plus three hit albums too.
There's a definite and admittedly unavoidable pall hanging over this conventionally made documentary, the more so with his recent passing. But there's no question that truly great songs like "Oh Well" Parts 1 and 2, with Green seen misguidedly but modestly dismissing the thunderous part 1, epically sad "Man Of The World" and near cataclysmic "Green Manalishi" are as good as any you'll hear and evidence in themselves of a rare but ultimately broken talent, in that, rather like Brian Wilson and Syd Barrett. Some band there, you put those three together
I once read about an old music magazine poll listing the 10 or 20 greatest rock albums of all time and they were all performed by artists on drugs during the recording process. Think of the best of the Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Bowie, Hendrix etc if you don't believe me. But there is a darker flip-side to that claim and what happened to Green and other casualties like him is all too convincingly shown here.
Rest in peace, Mr Green.
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