Video will appear as you scroll through the story
Fleetwood Mac · S1 E7
The Departure
LSD, a breakdown at a commune in Munich, and the founder walks away from everything. The band carries on without him
Munich, early 1970. Peter Green visits a commune on the outskirts of the city during a European tour, someone hands him a tab of LSD, and he is never the same again.
Fleetwood Mac, Rattlesnake Shake (1969). This is what the band is about to lose. Peter Green at full power, driving a riff built on pure swagger and menace. Within months of this recording, the man playing this guitar will walk away and never sound like this again.
The Highfisch Commune, Munich, Germany
The commune where Peter Green took the acid trip widely believed to have triggered his mental health crisis. The exact address has been lost to history, but the night has not.
“Something happened to Peter in Munich. He went in one person and came out another. It was like someone had reached in and switched off a light.”
— Mick Fleetwood, "Fleetwood: My Life and Adventures in Fleetwood Mac," 1990
Rattlesnake Shake, Fleetwood Mac (1969)
A strutting, funky blues workout that Green wrote as a self-aware joke about loneliness and desire. The riff is deceptively simple, just a few notes repeating over a Fleetwood-McVie groove so tight it sounds like one instrument. Listen to what Green does on top: his guitar dances, stabs, retreats, and returns with a confidence that borders on arrogance. Compare this to the strained vocal on "The Green Manalishi" recorded just months later, and you can hear how far a mind can travel in a very short time.
TAP TO REVEAL: What happened to Peter Green after he left Fleetwood Mac?
How old was Peter Green when he left Fleetwood Mac?
Show-Biz Blues, Fleetwood Mac (1969)
From Then Play On (1969). Peter Green sings "I'm sick and tired of this road, don't want to play no more show-biz blues." A year before he actually quit, he was already telling everyone exactly what was coming. Nobody listened. The lyrics read like a resignation letter set to a twelve-bar shuffle.
Show-Biz Blues, Fleetwood Mac (1969)
Read the lyrics while you listen. A resignation letter disguised as a blues shuffle. Every line is Green telling the world exactly what was coming.
The founder is gone and the best guitarist in Britain has disappeared into silence. Next season: chaos, cult disappearances, three more guitarists, and a demo tape from California that will change everything.
0 XP earned this session