The SUPER NATURAL

WHEN THE GUITARIST known as the King of the Blues says, “He has the sweetest tone I ever heard. He was the only one who gave me cold sweats,” you know it’s high praise. And that’s exactly what B.B. King said about the late Peter Green, who passed away on July 25.

A major figure in the late-1960s British blues boom, Green was considered by many to be the best electric blues guitarist of his time. “Peter in his prime in the ’60s was just without equal,” said John Mayall, who hired him as the Bluesbreakers’ guitarist when Eric Clapton left to form Cream. For a few years it seemed Green would be among a small group of guitarists to shape the direction of blues-rock. He formed Fleetwood Mac in ’67, but their success was short-lived for the young guitarist. By 1970, his mental health had begun to deteriorate, fueled by excessive drug use. By the decade’s end, he was a casualty of the rock era. “I was very critically ill for a while there, you might say,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1998. “I’m not really back yet.”

He was born Peter Allen Greenbaum on October 29, 1946, in Bethnal Green, North London. When he was 10, an older brother brought home a guitar, and Green had found his calling. He developed quickly on the instrument, becoming a formidable player. He was just 19 in 1966, when Mayall hired him. Despite Clapton’s legendary status, Green proved a very worthy successor both onstage and on record, contributing stellar guitar work with his iconic 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard fed through a Marshall amp on Mayall’s revolutionary album. (The guitar, dubbed Greeny, was purchased by Metallica’s Kirk Hammett in 2014 for an undisclosed sum.) Green made his vocal debut on