Here are some facts that may help you to better read this interesting article with Peter Green. £700 is worth almost £11,000 in 2020. And the £18,000 from his record company? The neat sum of £280,000 these days. Oh, how I wish there were advances like that involved in my writing of this blog. Even £18,000 would be fine! Oh, well – as they say in Fleetwood Mac…! 😉
Read on!
Why Peter Green wants to give his money away
By Nick Logan
“You don’t think it’s too expensive do you?” asked Peter Green earnestly as he reversed his £700 white Jaguar out of a car park in Richmond Park. “If you look around, most of the other cars here… that one and even that one… would cost more than £700, and Mick and John’s cost a lot more than that.”
Looking, every day more like a character out of the massive bound Bible that sits on a shelf in the middle of his extensive stereo collection, the heavily hairy Fleetwood Mac leader is home after the group’s three month stretch in America wanting to give his money away. Not all of it, but all that he feels is in excess of his share.
His passing obsession with the price of his car — he would have liked an AC Cobra but that would have cost at least twice as much — comes from attitudes that have grown to fruition during his spell in the States.
Peter wants to help — financially the starving and those that fail to get a good education and opportunities, and had been explaining, earlier: “My parents and I have got our house. I’ve got my car, which isn’t really expensive, and I’m happy with that. I’ve also got my stereo and most of the records I want.
“All in all it’s a very good helping, if you can look at it in terms of each person’s share, so I am satisfied with what I’ve got.
“And there are so many people who haven’t got anything at all I feel the least I can do is give away my excess.
“Not that I have millions and millions but there are going to be some big chunks coming in compared to what the average man earns. I haven’t had any of my songwriting money yet and there’s all that to give.
“Then there’s my share of the advance from Reprise Records, £18,000. That’s money to give. I’ve had these ideas for a long time; now I’m going to act on them.
“There must be no starvation. Just because somebody is born on the other side of the world that is no reason why they should be starving for it.
“I am not going into poverty with them, although I did think of doing that. It would perhaps have made me feel better. This way the more money I earn the more I can give away. Doing that is easy; maybe one day I will put myself to work as well but at the moment I think by going round and playing to and meeting people I can do much in that way.
“What other people do with their money is really none of my business but I know what it is like to earn £5 a week and have a good laugh and to earn £500. I can be just as happy… like when I was a butcher earning a fiver a week.
“I do feel guilty about squandering money on myself but I am now going to be careful. I have felt that a lot… even when I eat sometimes. The very least I can do is give away that money I don’t need, and anyone who thinks money is going to make them happy is so wrong.
I would love to go yachting; I love cars. I would like to buy an AC Cobra but the thing is that before I do that I would like to know that everyone is getting their bowlful of rice every day.”
Peter also hopes to do charity shows with the group – “That would be better because then I won’t have to touch the money” and the first is a Fleetwood Mac performance at the London Lyceum on April 12, in aid of Jewish old people.
There will of course be sceptics who question the reasons behind his benevolence, but they get a typical Green retort: “It’s my business what I do. Anyone who’s sceptical can go and get….!”
We’d driven out from Peter’s New Malden home with Jane, the group’s fan club secretary, and were sitting next to the window in some terribly, terribly English tea rooms watching the squirrels hop around the park.
It was a far cry from the Holiday Inn, turnpike, airport and hamburger trail that had been the group’s lot for the past three months.
“What’s John Lennon been doing while we’ve been away?” asked Peter and, after he’d been regaled with up-to-date Lennonisms, professed a deep admiration for the Beatle’s work for peace.
” I really enjoyed the tour,” he said later. “Our American agent who books lots of British bands, like Jethro Tull, Ten Years After etcetera, said that in terms of a group leaping up in status it was one of the most successful he’d been associated with. We felt we’d made an important foothold.
“Of course there were lots of ups and downs and times when we got under each other’s feet but the feeling on the plane coming home was so good that if we’d been asked to turn round and go back again I think we all would.”
Like most of our group visitors, he finds the American situation depressing but sees the good side even in areas like the Deep South if there is at least one “nice” person to meet. “In some places it is just a talkative taxi driver, like the fellow in Maryland who knew England. But we did make a lot of new friends there.”
Was there anything in rumours of Danny Kirwan planning to leave the group? — “I would say no, but obviously you would have to ask Danny that because I’ve walked off stage before thinking I’ve had enough. And obviously there are going to be times like that with all groups on tour.
“I’d say that like the last time we came back from America the band is closer than it has ever been and Danny and I are now working and playing together, which we haven’t done before.”
Peter went on to disclose that he and Danny are planning an album together based round their two lead guitars and that he is to record a solo album for release at Christmas. “One of the songs on it I wrote in Chicago when it was snowing… it’s a sort of poem set to music… and I’d like it to be heard in that sort of atmosphere.”
The group also brought back tapes of three shows they did at the Boston Tea Party and those will be edited for a live album “when we get the time. We’ve got about 20 new numbers as well and we should really be recording now. But we’ve got so much touring to do.”
Contrary to reports, “The Green Manerlishi” has not been chosen as their next single. It is, says Peter, just one of a batch of tracks they’ll record and then pick from.
Skinheads
We got back to our earlier subject and through that on to the need for opportunity, Peter’s peace of mind and skinheads. “I come from that kind of background (from Bethnal Green) and I know the skinhead feeling of trying to prove yourself because you have nothing else. You just want to be someone. Now I feel myself to be more or less someone I can look at it from both sides.
“I had the feelings I have now when I was a kid in the East End but I couldn’t walk up to people there and be friendly because they would beat your brains out.
“I think of life as a long pipe that you are looking into. When you’re born the pipe is open and the inside smooth. Things like a bad family foundation, poverty and lack of opportunity start to corrode the inside until it begins to close up.
“I came from a working class home and had a good family background, but things around me started to rust the pipe up. That’s what happens for lots of people.
“For me it has now opened up to like it was when I was a little kid. I feel a great brotherliness towards people and I’m’ not ashamed to feel it.”
My Things - Music history for those who are able to read. 