Calling himself Peter Green by age 15, he played bass before being invited in 1966 by keyboardist Peter Bardens to play lead in the Peter B's whose drummer was a lanky chap named Mick Fleetwood. The 19-year-old Green was with Bardens just three months before joining John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, whose rapidly shifting personnel included bassist John McVie and drummer Aynsley Dunbar (who now plays with Eric Burdon and the new animals) . A keen fan of Clapton, Green badgered Mayall to give him a chance when the Bluesbreakers' guitarist split for an indefinite vacation in Greece.

Green sounded great and, as Mayall recalls, was not amused when Clapton returned after a handful of gigs, and Green was out. When Clapton left the band for good six months later to form Cream, Mayall cajoled Green back. Fans were openly hostile because Green was not God, although they appreciated his replacement in time.

Producer Mike Vernon was aghast when the Bluesbreakers showed up without Clapton to record the album A Hard Road in late 1966, but was won over by Green's playing. On many tracks you'd be hard-pressed to tell it wasn't Clapton playing. With an eerie Green instrumental called "The Supernatural" he demonstrated the beginning of his trademark fluid, haunting style so reminiscent of B.B. King.

When Green left Mayall in 1967, he took McVie (who took some convincing to leave the steady paypacket of the Bluesbreakers!) and Fleetwood to found Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. Jeremy Spencer and Danny Kirwan shortly afterward gave Fleetwood Mac an unusual three-guitar front line. The new band debuted at the Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival on Aug. 13, 1967, minus its Mac, as McVie was still debating and Bob Brunning had to fill in.

After a bitter, rambling solo album called 'The End of the Game', 1970, Green saddened when he hung up his guitar except for helping the Mac to complete a tour when Spencer
went for a walk and never returned.

Spencer went for a walk and disappeared. After a few days he was located, head shaven and locked in a garage, guarded by the 'Children of God' in Los Angeles. Spencer was never to return! Green's chaotic odyssey of almost a decade included rumors that he was working as a gravedigger, a bartender in Cornwall, a hospital orderly and a member of an Israeli commune. When an accountant sent him an unwanted royalty check, Green confronted his tormentor with a gun, although it was unloaded. Green went to jail briefly before being transferred to an asylum, where rumors of electric shock treatment prevailed.

Green emerged in the late 1970s and early '80s with albums In the Skies, Little Dreamer, White Sky and Kolors. He reprised the Then Play On Mac standard "Rattlesnake Shake" on Fleetwood's solo 1981 album The Visitor. British author Martin Celmins wrote Green's biography in 1995.

Psychologically troubled, on medication and hardly playing the guitar for most of the '90s, the reclusive Green resumed sporadic recording in the second half of the decade. But three years ago, Green ceased taking all medication and began slowly but surely to find his way back. Michelle Reynolds, former wife of original Fleetwood Mac manager Clifford Davis, and musician Nigel Watson took him in and began to reintroduce him to normal life. Watson, who played with Green in the 1970s, also helped him begin again on guitar.

This along with renewed interest in the the Early Fleetwood Macs music , such as the Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac's BBC's recorded sessions, complete Blue Horizon Recordings have become available.

By 1996, Green and Watson had put together a loose band, the Splinter Group, and began testing the waters with occasional dates. As Green has become more assured, the band has turned into a permanent entity.

Peter showed he was coming back to form most prominently on Jan. 12, 1998 when Fleetwood Mac was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In a rare, perfect moment Green jammed with fellow inductee Santana on "Black Magic Woman."

Peter in Flying Form at the Rosin Dubh.