While the site was down we learned the sad news that Fleetwood Mac co-founder Peter Green died aged 73.
The London-born blues guitarist famously wrote one of the band’s biggest hits “Albatross”. His family said the music legend passed away peacefully in his sleep in a statement through solicitors.
The statement from Swan Turton solicitors said: “It is with great sadness that the family of Peter Green announce his death this weekend, peacefully in his sleep.
Peter was a member of Shotgun Express the short-lived British R&B band formed in London in May 1966. other notable members included Rod, Mick Fleetwood, and Peter Bardens.
The band emerged when Peter Bardens’ instrumental group, Peter B’s Looners, which included Bardens on keyboards, Peter Green on guitar, Dave Ambrose (who went on to become an A&R man, signing the Sex Pistols and Duran Duran) on bass and Mick Fleetwood on drums, decided to change styles and add vocalists. They were joined by Rod and Beryl Marsden – who had been the leading female singer on the Liverpool club scene – and took the name Shotgun Express.
The band played London clubs, and focused on performing soul classics. Green left the band in late 1966 to join John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, and was replaced by, first, John Mooreshead and then Phil Sawyer. The group released their first single, “I Could Feel The Whole World Turn Round” (Columbia DB 8025), in October 1966, but it was regarded as over-orchestrated by the band’s followers and was not successful.
Green also played with Liverpudlian Aynsley Dunbar, Dunbar had played with The Mojos, John Mayall and Jeff Beck prior to forming his own blues-based band in 1967. An early version of the band comprised Dunbar, Peter Green, Jack Bruce and Rod recording a song called “Stone Crazy” for Blue Horizon but it was not issued at the time. It appeared several years later on “History Of British Blues” along with “Cobwebs”, the flip of their first 45.