Peter Green
Looking back:
In mid 1965, Eric Clapton decided to leave Mayall, in order to join a pick up band touring Greece and playing pop covers. According To Martin Celmins in his biography of Peter Green, it was a little later that Peter answered a music press advert asking for a guitarist for a blues band. Peter made the phone call, and told the voice on the other end that he liked Graham Bond and John Mayall, and was duly informed that he was in fact talking to John Mayall. Peter got the gig, but Eric Clapton had been told before he went to Greece that his old job would still be open to him on his return. So, less than a week after he began gigging with the band, Eric came back, and Peter was out for the time being....
In 1966, Eric Clapton left Mayall again, this time for a more concrete gig, the embryonic super group, Cream. By this time, Peter and John Mayall had become friends, and were living in the same apartment block. After making John Mayall sweat for a while, peter eventually agreed to join his friend's band, completing a line up that included Aynsley Dunbar on drums, and one John McVie on bass....
From the Pengiun biographies:
It was in the Bluesbreakers that Green solidified his relationship with the rhythm section, John McVie, and Mick Fleetwood; when he left the group in 1967, Green would recruit the two in order to found his own band, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac....
[A]s the band became more and more successful, Peter Green seemed to be making a mental and emotional decline. He had been experimenting with acid while the band was on the road, and the drugs were negatively altering his personality. An incident in Munich seemed to be the last straw: "He disappeared for three days...he was getting spiked or dosed with acid," John McVie recalls, "and when he came back, that was it: everything went from there."...
Faced with the band's refusal to give away all monetary gains, Peter Green decided to leave Fleetwood Mac....'The Green God' left Fleetwood Mac in a responsible manner, and his departure shocked and saddened the music world. His last show with the band was on May 28, 1970....
It would appear that the mind-altering substances that Peter used in his days with Fleetwood Mac have left permanent marks on his psyche. Green himself admits, "I took one too many LSD trips. And that puts me in the Care and Attention category." He spends much of his time watching television and going for walks, and also attends a day center. He "hardly ever touches" the guitar-- "I'm on some medication-- I don't know what it is-- but it makes it hard to concentrate. I rarely feel like playing."
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