Peter Green - "A Mind To Give Up Living" - The Blues of Despair and Salvation

Peter Green, Chicago Blues Recording Sessions
Photo © Jeff Lowenthal

Peter Green is the most outstanding British blues guitar player to come out of the 1960s blues boom.

Clapton, Page, McLaughlin... yeah they were brilliant too but for me the art is in the soul and Peter Green had soul. Loads of it. Maybe even too much. BB King said "He has the sweetest tone I ever heard; he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats" and Green’s stunning solo on Fleetwood Mac’s officially unreleased live rendition of BB King's "I've Got A Mind To Give Up Living" (recorded live at The Warehouse, in New Orleans on 31st January 1970 - see clip below) demonstrates how really spot on the mark BB was.

But this is really not just a case of the cold sweats. This is the blues and if something can be described as "achingly beautiful" this is it. The 4 minute solo is an agonizingly moving, heart-aching, bare knuckled exploration of the despair the song’s stark lyrics only hint at.


I've got a good mind to give up living, and go shopping instead.
I say, I've got a good mind to give up living, and go shopping instead.
To pick up me a tombstone, and be pronounced dead.

When I read your letter this morning that was in your place in bed.
I read your letter this morning that was in your place in bed.
And that's when I decided, that I would be better off dead.

It read, there is no use you looking, or ever hoping to get me back.
Oh, there's no use you looking, or ever hoping to get me back.
Yes, because it's all over now, and baby you can bet on that.

(Songwriter: Carl B. Adams)


It’s bleak. The first line comes complete with a punchline that might bring a smile to your face but it's then forcibly removed by the following line which comes almost as a slap. It seems humour has no place here. There is only loss and despair and the final line is a killer. We’ve all been there, fleetingly if we are lucky, but this is a dark place and no one would want to stay for too long. Anyone who has experienced depression or the pain of loss knows that words are often inadequate yet the musicality, tone and development of Green’s solo seems to evoke and communicate that despair in a way that forces us to empathize and be moved by it. Around the 4:30 mark the solo becomes almost so unbearably intense, with notes scattering like firecrackers, that the listener is left stunned by the emotion it lays bare. Truly breathtaking. Take a listen.

And yet where does this ability to transform a situation so dark and painful into something we can all relate to and be moved by come from?

Peter Green had soul but it came at a price. He was a man who must have profoundly understood the song's despair. He was, by the time of this recording, a man beset by his own personal demons. In 1970 Fleetwood Mac were the most successful band to come out of the second British Blues boom of the late 1960s. They had even crossed over into mainstream success in the UK with hit singles like Albatross, Black magic Woman and Oh Well. They had put out three very successful albums and were building a strong reputation touring the USA. The Live in Boston box set (recorded in February 1970) and other unofficial recordings from this time show them to be a live band to be reckoned with. The Fleetwood / McVie rhythm section were rock solid and Green and second guitarist Danny Kirwin’s fiery duel leads on songs like Rattlesnake Shake and The Green Manalishi turned them into mammoth jamathons that, not only maintained intensity, pace and structure but also rocked liked merry hell. For me, Fleetwood Mac's Live in Boston ranks alongside The Who Live At Leeds and The Grateful Dead's Two From The Vault as one of the best live sets of the rock era. Hard rock with power, precision, and passion.

They looked like a band who were about to be one of the most successful international rock bands of the 70s. Another Zeppelin, Who or Stones. Yet five months after this New Orleans performance Peter gave it all up and Fleetwood Mac would have to wait until the end of the decade and with a very different line-up to achieve the success that seemed so close in 1970.

The first signs of Green's alienation from fame and success can be heard in the lyrics of 1969’s "Man of the World" single. "I guess I've got everything I need. I wouldn't ask for more. And there's no one I'd rather be but I just wish that I'd never been born."  Green was also consuming large quantities of LSD, had started to wear robes and appeared almost messianic on stage. He also wanted to give away all the band’s earnings. The monster in the 1970 single The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown) was money.

In late March 1970, a few weeks after the New Orleans Warehouse show, Green had some kind of LSD freak-out at a commune in Munich and according to Fleetwood Mac manager Clifford Davis his mental decline became far more pronounced from there on.

Green left Fleetwood Mac after a final performance at a festival in Bath on 23rd May 1970 where one audience member described him as looking lonely and dejected. There were a few live appearances after that. He appeared at the June Bath Festival with John Mayall, and also recorded a solo album which was pretty much just a long jam session (The End of the Game). There was also a brief temporary reunion with Fleetwood Mac in 1971 when Green helped the band to complete a US tour after guitarist Jeremy Spencer quit but nothing more came of it..

Green then became a recluse, was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and faded into obscurity for the rest of the decade.

He returned to recording in the late 70s and, as his health improved in the 90s, he even toured with his new Splinter Group but for me, those recordings, good as they are, come nowhere near what he achieved with Fleetwood Mac. As far as I know he has now retired from performing. The BBC made a documentary of his life called "Man of the World" in 2009 (see below).


The Blues of Despair.
That someone can create music of such delicacy and feeling from so dark a place does, I suppose, beg the perennial question - Is great art dependent on pain? Pfff... Maybe. Sometimes. If that is what drives the art but I'd like to think that is not always the case. There must be other forces at work. Imagination, a need for personal exploration, a desire to communicate....

And the salvation?
Depression is cruel and bleak and it can affect all of us to varying degrees. It’s a disease that one suffers alone in a kind of mental solitary confinement. "A Mind To Give Up Living" may be a just a song and a guitar solo but if the artist moves us and helps us to empathize with that suffering then he or she also helps us to understand it. It unifies us.
And that is a start...



Man of the World
2009 BBC documentary on the life of Peter Green directed by Steve Graham. It features archive performances and interviews with Carlos Santana, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Jeremy Spencer and Peter Green.

More from stranger than known

Cream live at the Spalding Bar-B-Que 1967

Freddie King live on POP2

The Rolling Stones' finest hour - Get Yer Leeds Lungs Out!

Ten Years After Swing-In 1969

Los Brincos - Glorious 60s Garage Beat Psych Pop In Excelsis

I’ve always had a love for mid 60s summertime pop / rock: The Beach Boys, The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Mama and Papas, The Turtles…. The harmonies and the Rickenbacker guitars seem to evoke the warmth, sunshine and good vibes which, if you were brought up in the rainswept UK, could  occasionally be somewhat lacking.

When I first came across Spanish band Los Brincos (The Jumps or The Skips) I heard the same bright harmonies and perfect pop craftsmanship that can be heard in any of the bands mentioned above. For me Los Brincos deserve a place in the great 60s pop pantheon and should be more widely known outside Spain.


Los Brincos - "Nobody wants you now". (1968).

In the 1960s Spain was a corrupt fascist dictatorship morally propped up by a Catholic church with an obvious antipathy towards the new "liberal" rock / pop culture emerging from the US and the UK. Spain was cut off and the climate was conservative and claustrophobic. Many Spaniards emigrated for reasons that were not just economic (anyone who has seen Spanish director Antonio Mercero's short metaphorical horror film "La Cabina" (The Telephone Box) will have an idea of what the atmosphere in Spain must have been like at the time). Such was this moral rigidity that even the Beatles were not  warmly welcomed by the Spanish authorities when they played Madrid in the summer of 1965. Ringo Starr's abiding memory of playing in Spain (in the Beatles Anthology documentary) was of policemen beating up their young fans. However, despite all this, and rather amazingly, Spain actually had a thriving beat group scene in the 60s.

Outside of Spain the best-known Spanish band was probably Los Bravos who had a one-off international hit with Black is Black in 1966. However, Los Brincos, who were known in Spain as the “Spanish Beatles” (they even had their own version of Beatlemania called Brincosis) were probably the most successful Spanish band of the decade. Over the 6 years they recorded (1964 – 1970) they had string of hits and  left behind a body of work which, although varied, and, on occasion, a little too saccharine coated for me, is very much worthy of investigation and does contain some rather glorious 60s powerpop highlights.

The group, formed in 1964, were Fernando Arbex (drums), Manuel González (bass), Juan Pardo (guitar) and Antonio ‘Junior’ Morales (guitar). Their first album (and their best), Los Brincos  comes over as a kind of 60s garage rock classic. It mixes influences as varied as R’n’B, Doo-wop, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Surf and even proto punk and around half the songs are sung in English. One or two sound like they would even fit well in a Tarantino movie.


Flamenco (1964) was their first hit in Spain. Like the great 60s UK bands they took something essentially American and merged it with their local culture to create something fresh.

The band continued to have a whole series of self-penned hits which lasted all the way through until the end of the decade - "Flamenco" (1965), "Sola" (1965), "Tú me dijiste adiós" (You said goodbye - 1965). "Mejor" (Better - 1966) and “Nadie te quiere ya” (Nobody wants you now - 1968) are some of the best known and still get a lot of airplay in Spain.

The band's second LP Brincos II came out in 1966. However it displayed a band that seemed to have developed a kind of split personality with jangling Beatlesque rockers alongside rather syrupy string-laden ballads.

Sola (1965).

 

Mejor ("Better" - 1966). From Brincos II

In late 1966 Juan Pardo and Junior Morales left the group and went off to have a career as middle of the road ballad-singing duo Juan and Junior. This seemed to resolve the musical division in the band and Fernando Arbex and Manuel González recruited Vicente Ramírez and Miguel Morales and went in search of a wider rock audience. In 1968 they even went to London to record their third album “Contrabando” at Abbey Road with engineer Geoff Emerick and Larry Page of Troggs fame as producer. The results were varied but it does contain the psych punk classic Nadie Te Quiere Ya ("Nobody wants you now" - see above) and the very Who influenced The Train which overtly pinched the riff from Substitute. Apparently Pete Townshend was not best pleased when he heard their appropriation of his riff and sued. Nowadays though Pete seems to have become a little more easy-going about these things


The Train (1968).

The last album, “Mundo, Demonio y Carne” (1970)  was recorded in both English and Spanish and saw them heading off into prog-rock territory. It was a strange mix of latin inspired rock and straight pop. A kind of cross between Santana and the Moody Blues. With the exception of "Carmen" most of it didn't sound like the old Brincos at all and the 7 minute raga rock guitar instrumental Kama Sutra was a strange way to round off an album and career (see below). The band evidently had great designs for the album but it failed to make much headway in a Spain whose government and media were now openly hostile to hippies and the new rock culture. The band broke up shortly after. The other members all had successful solo careers in Spain and Fernando Arbex went on to form the funk rock band Barrabás and also produced albums by José Feliciano, Harry Belafonte, Nana Mouskouri amongst others.


If I were you (1969)

In 2000 Fernando Arbex and Manuel González reformed and even put out an album, Eterna juventud (Eternal Youth), but Fernando Arbex, pretty much the leader, composer and “soul” of the band died in 2003 which ruled out any further reunions.

With their catchy good day sunshine feel + evident sense of humour (eg Borracho - a song about a clumsy drunk) they come over more like a kind of Spanish Lovin' Spoonful than the Beatles.  However, like the fabs, their music manages to conjure up a more innocent and optimistic era. Which is not bad when you consider that for many Spaniards "the swinging 60s" completely passed them by. Many rock records, films and books were censored or banned and there was no freedom of speech or official opposition to the government. Any form of protest could get you locked up, beaten up or even killed. Spain would have to wait until the late 70s and the death of Franco to regain democracy. So, the Spanish tend not to look back nostalgically on the 60s as a golden era of change and musical / artistic development because, for them, it wasn't.

This seems to make Los Brincos' achievement all the greater. Despite having to work in a very conservative culture that had deliberately been isolated from the rest of Europe, the band were able to maintain some degree of independence and artistic control and produce some classic 60s pop.. Moreover the band showed a willingness to dispense with musical formulas and keep moving forward. They had an enormous influence on Spanish rock and pop and are responsible for some great catchy 3 minute singles, the best of which, in my opinion anyway, deserve a place alongside anything the UK beat / RnB scene came up with. A classic band.


Discography
    Los Brincos (1964)
    Brincos II (1966)
    Contrabando (1968)
    Mundo, Demonio y Carne (1970).
    World, Evil & Body (1970) — English version of Mundo, Demonio y Carne
    Eterna juventud (2000) — Reunion album.






Side 2 (Bonus tracks)


Shag it (1964). Tongue in cheek?  I hope so. Anyway, how on earth did they get this past the censor? This is 1964. Can you even imagine this on the BBC in 1964? Great punchy performance on this track from their 1st album complete with Lennonesque lead vocal and Beatle style "Ooohs" on the backing vocals. Are they singing "Shag on by"? Is this Punk Rock? All very odd...

Tú me dijiste adiós. (1966 - You told me goodbye). The "Spanish Beatles". Comparisons with the fab four are not altogether wide of the mark here but in 1966 who wasn't influenced by the Beatles?

Tu en mi. (1966 - You in me). They've heard the Kinks and the Who and they like what they hear. They take the Can't Explain riff off into another direction and that's OK.

Kama-Sutra (1970). The last track on their last album Mundo, Demonio y Carne. The band ride off into a raga-rock psychedelic sunset...

More Spanish rock on stranger than known

20 years of the Xixon Sound

The Return of the Manta Ray

Horizonte Eléctrico 2 - 10 Flamenco Rock Classics

Horizonte Eléctrico - 10 Great contemporary Spanish bands that should be better know outside Spain