With all five members of the current line-up speaking in individual, extensive interviews in the new edition of MOJO (July 2015/ #260), out now in the UK, the drummer has given a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been.
Founding member Green, left the group in 1970, but asked by MOJO’s Jim Irvin what might have happened if the then had made a record with him as the creative force beyond album Then Play On, Fleetwood in unequivocal about what the band could have achieved.
“I think it would have been really profound,” he declares. “I have no doubt what was missed. I think we would have had a place sort of like Led Zeppelin in America. The creativity was on a par with where they took themselves. That’s what I think would have happened. I think we would have had a really, really elastic musical trip. Experimenting with sounds and styles and orchestras.”
Asked about the impact of Green’s experiences with acid, the drummer agrees that the substance played a role in his trajectory away from the rest of the group.
“To do what we’re talking about here is incredibly vulnerable, sensitive stuff, that he delivered in a very powerful way, you would never think that the deliverer could not take the world,” suggests Fleetwood. “Maybe Peter was ill anyway. I’ve heard that the type of illness he got, his schizophrenia, might have happened anyhow. I don’t believe that. Peter… he was so fine.”
Full story via Mojo Magazine