Now, when the day goes to sleep and the full moon looks
The night is so black that the darkness cooks
Don't you come creepin' around - makin' me do things I don't wanna do
~
Can't believe that you need my love so bad
Come sneakin' around tryin' to drive me mad
Bustin' in on my dreams - making me see things I don't wanna see
~
'Cause you're the Green Manalishi with the two pronged crown
All my tryin' is up-all your bringin' is down
Just takin' my love then slippin' away
Leavin' me here just tryin' to keep from following you..
~
[ooooo....ooooo...ooooo....]
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Sounds like a pretty cool poem. Actually to be specific it's a set of lyrix for a song called 'The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown)'. Now, what if I were to tell you to get into a mindset that would become one with these lyrics themselves, make them very literal and real, not just cool sounding poetry? Would you think I was crazy to tell you the Green Manalishi is very real, all these things were a true story?
What sort of a madman would believe all that? A madman named Peter Green, that's who! Why? Because it happened to him! Before more on that, let's talk a bit about Fleetwood Mac. If anyone reading this knows who they are (and there's a good chance), likely they will be thinking of a sort of classic rock/pop group that sang a lot of love songs with their fair share of pure smarm. I don't mean to outright diss the group, since they have had many a moment better than so many putrid pop stars in that never ending crystal cavalcade chasing fame and fuckuptness of various flavors. Ok, so here's the classic image of Fleetwood Mac:
Or....
Pretty fun...and campy. A lot like their music. Some music nerds of the highest order will almost bite their lip with indignation or determination to remind folks that the OLD Fleetwood Mac MUST be called 'Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac.' Because once upon a time Fleetwood Mac was a badass blues rock group in based outta Britain and really had not much to do with sticky and sugary love songs for the most part. Peter Green, you guessed it, fronted this incarnation. What made him leave? What made the group's lineup and sound change so drastically?
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| Peter Green rockin' out |
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| This was like, the older Fleetwood Mac...and stuff..and things like such |
"I thought I had too much money to be happy and normal. Thousands of pounds is just too much for a working person to handle all of a sudden, and I felt I didn't deserve it."
"I nearly died one night, in my sleep. I don't know if you've ever had the experience; I've had it a couple of times and I'm inclined to think it's an experience that people have. But I was lying in bed, I was dreaming, and this little dog jumped up at me and it scared the shit out of me because this dog had died, and had been dead for a long time. It was a stray dog that I brought to the house and just looked after. And it was strange, kind of spooky, like voodoo. And it was a strange little dog. And I was dead and I couldn't move. I couldn't say, 'I'm dead' - It wasn't available - so I just fought my way back into my body... I thought, 'It must come alive' and it did. So I woke up and looked round - the room was really black - and I found myself writing the song. It was about money. The fear I got that the reason this was happening to me was that I had earned too much money and I was separate from all the people. 'The Green Manalishi' was money; they still call it green-backs and things like that, don't they? When you haven't got any money you aren't worth anything to anybody. The line, 'Don't you come creeping around, making me do things I don't want to do', goes off on a mythological definition level, but it starts, 'You're the Green Manalishi with the two-pronged crown/All my trying is up, all you're bringing is down'. It's about money."
- Peter Green, Interview, 1983
So in short, he had this experience where a green devil dog representing Satan and the evils of money scared the living crap out of him. The next day, he went into one of London's largest parks, Richmond Park, and wrote the lyrics for the song. Soon the song filled out and was complete...and ironically became a hit single. It was reported 'ol Pete could no longer sing vocals when covering Robert Johnson's 'Hellhound On My Trail' (a song covered on Fleetwood Mac's debut album)because the connection to the green devil dog was too close and too raw in his mind. Anytime after that, someone else sang it. Which is kinda funny now that I think about it, since the Green Manalishi was about the horrible source experience, and Petey could sing that! Weird. Others would go on to sing it as well, others who dug it and covered it, including mainly metal bands like Judas Priest, Steel, The Melvins, Arthur Brown and Corrosion of Conformity. It is a great song. Once Peter Green left Fleetwood Mac, the blues left with him, and their sound started becoming more generic and pop/rock oriented. Peter would cross paths with the band again with a quick stint as a touring guitarist, but he never fully rejoined. The members who more or less were there from beginning to start of the band's entire span of career were drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie. The band's name came from a sort of a combo of parts of their last names...with the 'Mac' part somehow derived from the 'Mc' in 'McVie'. 'Mc' becomes 'Mac'. Don't ask. To this moment I still think Green Manalishi is Fleetwood Mac's best song ever, maybe because so much soul and emotion was involved and so much was at stake.
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| Perhaps the devil dog looked something like this? (derivative/modified work based on a pic by poeticalkrissie on DeviantArt) |
