LONDON (AP) — Peter Green, the dexterous blues guitarist who led the first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac in a career shortened by psychedelic drugs and mental illness, has died at 73.

A law firm representing his family, Swan Turton, announced the death in a statement Saturday. It said he died “peacefully in his sleep″ this weekend.

A further statement will be issued in the coming days. Green, to some listeners, was the best of the British blues guitarists of the 1960s. B.B. King once said Green “has the sweetest tone I ever heard. He was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.” Green also made a mark as a composer with “Albatross,” and as a songwriter with “Oh Well” and “Black Magic Woman.” He crashed out of the band in 1971. Even so, Mick Fleetwood said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2017 that Green deserves the lion’s share of the credit for the band’s success.

“Peter was asked why he called the band Fleetwood Mac. He said, ‘Well, you know I thought maybe I’d move on at some point and I wanted Mick and John (McVie) to have a band.’ End of story, explaining how generous he was,” said Fleetwood, who described Green as a standout in an era of great guitar work. Indeed, Green was so fundamental to the band that in its early days it was called Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac.

Peter Allen Greenbaum was born on Oct. 29, 1946, in London. The gift of a cheap guitar put the 10-year-old Green on a musical path. He was barely out of his teens when he got his first big break in 1966, replacing Eric Clapton in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers — initially for just a week in 1965 after Clapton abruptly took off for a Greek holiday. Clapton quit for good soon after and Green was in. In the Bluesbreakers he was reunited with Mick Fleetwood, a former colleague in Peter B’s Looners. Mayall added bass player McVie soon after. The three departed the next year, forming the core of the band initially billed as “Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac featuring (guitarist) Jeremy Spencer.”

Fleetwood Mac made its debut at the British Blues and Jazz festival in the summer of 1967, which led to a recording contract, then an eponymous first album in February 1968. The album, which included “Long Grey Mare” and three other songs by Green, stayed on the British charts for 13 months. The band’s early albums were heavy blues-rock affairs marked by Green’s fluid, evocative guitar style and gravelly vocals. Notable singles included “Oh Well” and the Latin-flavored “Black Magic Woman,” later a hit for Carlos Santana.

But as the band flourished, Green became increasingly erratic, even paranoid. Drugs played a part in his unraveling. On a tour in California, Green became acquainted with Augustus Owsley Stanley III, notorious supplier of powerful LSD to The Grateful Dead and Ken Kesey, the anti-hero of Tom Wolfe’s book “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” “He was taking a lot of acid and mescaline around the same time his illness began manifesting itself more and more,” Fleetwood said in 2015. “We were oblivious as to what schizophrenia was back in those days, but we knew something was amiss.” “Green Manalishi,” Green’s last single for the band, reflected his distress.

In an interview with Johnny Black for Mojo magazine, Green said: “I was dreaming I was dead, and I couldn’t move, so I fought my way back into my body. I woke up and looked around. It was very dark, and I found myself writing a song. It was about money; ‘The Green Manalishi’ is money.” In some of his last appearances with the band, he wore a monk’s robe and a crucifix. Fearing that he had too much money, he tried to persuade other band members to give their earnings to charities. Green left Fleetwood Mac for good in 1971.

In his absence, the band’s new line-up, including Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks, and Lindsey Buckingham, gained enormous success with a more pop-tinged sound. “I am so sorry to hear about the passing of Peter Green,” Nicks said in a statement. “My biggest regret is that I never got to share the stage with him. I always hoped in my heart of hearts that that would happen. When I first listened to all the Fleetwood Mac records, I was very taken with his guitar playing. It was one of the reasons I was excited to join the band. His legacy will live on forever in the history books of Rock n Roll. It was in the beginning, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac and I thank you, Peter Green, for that. You changed our lives.” Green was confined in a mental hospital in 1977 after an incident with his manager. Testimony in court said Green had asked for money and then threatened to shoot out the windows of the manager’s office.

Green was released later in the year, and married Jane Samuels, a Canadian, in 1978. They had a daughter, Rosebud, and divorced the following year. Green also has a son, Liam Firlej. Green returned to performing in the 1990s with the Peter Green Splinter Group. In 1998, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with other past and present members of Fleetwood Mac.

By ROBERT BARR and DANICA KIRKA – AP News

Patty Smyth has announced her first album of new, original music in 28 years. The singer first came to prominence as the lead vocalist of Scandal, with the 1982 classic rock track, “Goodbye to You.” Two years later, the group scored with the #7 smash “The Warrior.” As a solo artist, Smyth enjoyed a #2 pop hit with Don Henley, “Sometimes Love Just Ain’t Enough.” She now returns with It’s About Time, which arrives Oct. 9 on BMG. A first single, “Drive,” was released today (July 23). Watch the video for it below.

Smyth earned Grammy and Academy Award nominations with James Ingram for their 1994 song, “Look What Love Has Done.” Her last album was her 1992 self-titled release. She’s continued to tour and write in the intervening years and she and her husband, the legendary tennis player-turned-broadcaster, John McEnroe, have also raised several children.

It’s About Time was recorded in Nashville’s Blackbird Studios and produced by Grammy-winner Dann Huff (Taylor Swift, Shania Twain, Kelly Clarkson). Smyth, who turned 63 on June 26, wrote six of the songs and recorded covers of Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe” and Tom Waits’ “Downtown Train.”

In the July 23 announcement, Patty Smyth says, “People would always ask, ‘When are you gonna give us new music?’ I kept saying, ‘I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it…’ Finally, I said, ‘F*ck it, man. I’ve just got to do it!’ I’ve been touring and playing shows with the same band for 12 years, just having a blast, and I finally went into the zone of writing these songs I felt were poignant and relevant for me. I started to realize this is a real thing that’s happening and just went with it.”

Smyth was 27 years-old when Scandal’s “The Warrior” was released. The song reached #1 on Billboard‘s rock chart and #7 on the Hot 100. The album, Warrior, peaked at #17 in the U.S. and sold over a million copies.

https://bestclassicbands.com/ - Best Classic Bands Staff

Muddy Waters’ Former Chicago Home Set To Be Converted Into A Museum

The refurbished ‘MOJO’ Museum will also include a small venue, a recording studio, and a community garden. Muddy Waters ‘former home in Chicago is set to be renovated into a museum and community center, the Hyde Park Herald reported on Tuesday.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has given a $50,000 grant to transform the six-time Grammy-winning blues musician’s brick house — situated on 4339 S. Lake Park Ave. in the North Kenwood neighborhood of the city — into the Muddy Waters MOJO Museum. The grant arrives through the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and it is expected that the museum project will be complete within two years.

Led by Waters’ great-granddaughter, Chandra Cooper, the MOJO renovation project will include a neighborhood museum attached to a community center. In addition to exhibits with a focus on Waters and the blues, the space will include a small venue, a recording studio, and a community garden.

“We want to be able to support older artists as well and as a small venue where people can go in the basement and do a little recording,” Cooper told the Hyde Park Herald, “because while it wasn’t a recording studio downstairs — it was a rehearsal studio — we’d like to incorporate that into the overall experience.”

The first house he had ever purchased, Waters bought the property in 1954 and used it for the next two decades as a rehearsal space. It soon turned into a gathering place for Waters, other blues musicians, and entertainers. They would host ‘jam out’ sessions in the basement, creating music that music fans of all persuasions enjoy to this day. The blues legend died in 1983 and in 2013, the Department of Buildings deemed the property unsafe, and the building was threatened with demolition.

“It was so significant to get this grant money from the trust because it’s really saving this house from any more deterioration,” Cooper said.

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/ - Tim Peacock

corner of rock history as the films shot at that summer’s Atlanta Pop or Love Valley festivals – had they not elected to shoot at least some of the day’s performance by the Stooges.

A camera crew from a local TV station decided to film Iggy Pop’s band even though they were far from top of the bill ... and the footage was extraordinary.

Cincinnati’s Midsummer Rock festival would probably be as forgotten as one of the dozens of post-Woodstock events that sprang up across America in the summer of 1970 – Sky River, the Cosmic Carnival, the Day of Joy, Kickapoo Creek, Rainy Daze – had a camera crew from a local TV station not been on hand to film it. It was subsequently broadcast as a 90-minute TV special, Midsummer Rock, and there’s every chance their footage would have been forgotten too – consigned to the same dusty That they did was a curious decision. The Stooges were far from top of the bill – the festival’s big draws were the reformed Traffic, or, if you preferred your music “heavy”, Mountain and Grand Funk Railroad, both riding high on the back of gold-selling debut albums. Perhaps the filmmakers were attracted by the buzz around the band in spring 1970. Their eponymous debut album had been a critical and commercial flop, but a certain media momentum was now building thanks to a new line-up featuring saxophonist Steve Mackay and the songs they had written for their second album, Fun House. Rolling Stone, Creem and even Entertainment World ran big features on the band. Perhaps they were just looking for something visually arresting and had heard the stories about what happened at Stooges shows: their frontman diving into the crowd, or swinging from the ceiling, or pouring hot wax over his chest.

If it was visually arresting, they were after, they got it. Watching Midsummer RThe entertainment world lost a giant on Saturday (July 25), as longtime talk show host Regis Philbin died at the age of 88. Philbin holds the Guinness World Record for the most hours spent on television, so it's no surprise he's crossed paths with many in the entertainment world — including Motley Crue.

Thanks to the joys of YouTube, video has surfaced of the legendary rockers making their morning television debut on Live With Regis and Kathie Lee back in 1997. The elder host played up the "fish out of water" factor of speaking with the rockers, taking a look at the band and telling them they fit their name, then adding, “You guys are probably looking at me like I’m some kind of square.”

But ever the showman and up to make some memorable TV, Philbin was so enamored with the band that he wanted to audition to be part of "the Motley Crue" at the end of the interview. Watch as Philbin attempts to show his chops playing a supposed "rock arrangement" of a popular children's song on piano as the members of the band watch on.

The clip is also an interesting time capsule of where Motley Crue was at in 1997, promoting their Generation Swine album. Philbin speaks with Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx about being married to Baywatch actresses Pamela Anderson and Donna D'Errico, the guys hawk their blue-colored Motley Brue drink and Sixx and Vince Neil display some fresh ink and tell stories about their latest tattoos. There's also discussion of a fairly new promotional "listening party tour."

CREDITS: https://loudwire.com/ - CHAD CHILDERS