The Guitar Plugged · Guitarist Index
Peter Green
Fleetwood Mac / John Mayall's Bluesbreakers
1965–2020
Blues · Rock
The most restrained touch in British blues, and the most haunting tone.
Main guitar
1959 Les Paul 'Greeny' with a reversed neck pickup magnet
Signature sound
Out-of-phase Les Paul honk — nasal, hollow and unmistakable
Era
1965–2020
Influence
90 / 100
Genre
Blues / Rock
Why they matter
The most restrained touch in British blues, and the most haunting tone.
Green replaced Eric Clapton in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers at 20 and was immediately compared favourably to him by the people who had just watched Clapton leave — which tells you how good he was. His playing is defined by space and restraint, with a vibrato so controlled it barely moves.
His Les Paul had its neck pickup magnet installed backwards, giving the middle position a thin, out-of-phase quality that became his signature and later passed through Gary Moore to Kirk Hammett.
'Albatross', 'Oh Well' and 'Black Magic Woman' are all his, and 'The Green Manalishi' is one of the eeriest things in the British blues catalogue. Mental illness ended his career at 27.
The sound
Out-of-phase Les Paul honk — nasal, hollow and unmistakable
Albatross
Clean, reverb-heavy and glassy — a blues player writing an instrumental lullaby.
Oh Well
The out-of-phase middle position at full aggression, with the honk fully exposed.
The Supernatural
Sustained feedback held with total control in 1967, years before that was common.
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Style & technique
How you recognise the playing
Restrained phrasing
Fewer notes, longer rests, and a refusal to fill space that most blues players cannot resist.
Out-of-phase middle position
The reversed neck magnet producing his hollow, nasal signature colour.
Vocal vibrato
Narrow, slow and perfectly even — the opposite of the era's fashion.
Minor-key blues writing
Compositions that lean toward the melancholy rather than the celebratory.
The rig
Instruments, amplification and effects
- 1959 Les Paul Standard 'Greeny'
- Fender Stratocaster (later)
- Marshall JTM45
- Fender Twin
- Orange (early Mac)
- Essentially none
- PAF humbuckers with the neck magnet reversed
Essential listening
Where to start
- 011968
Albatross
Fleetwood Mac · The Pious Bird of Good Omen
- 021969
Oh Well
Fleetwood Mac · Then Play On
- 031968
Black Magic Woman
Fleetwood Mac · English Rose
- 041967
The Supernatural
John Mayall's Bluesbreakers · A Hard Road
Career landmarks
The moments that mattered
'Greeny'
The most storied Les Paul in existence, later owned by Gary Moore and Kirk Hammett.
Founding Fleetwood Mac
He formed and named the band that later became a pop institution without him.
The legacy
Lineage
Influenced by
Influenced
Adjacent players
More from the archive
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Session-hardened producer who built rock guitar as an architecture, not a solo.
The player who translated Chicago blues into British rock volume.
The restless technician who kept reinventing what an electric guitar could be.
The master of the long note — space, sustain and perfect note choice.