5 Greatest Songs Peter Green Wrote For Fleetwood Mac

Of course Fleetwood Mac is one of the best bands in rock history, but the band wouldn’t be in our music playlist today if it wasn’t for the founder Peter Green. Although, Green left the band to sort out personal issues, he contributed a lot of great songs to Fleetwood Mac, and now we’ll look back to top 5 greatest songs Green wrote.

5. “The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown)”
From: 1970 Single

This was one of the last songs Green wrote for Fleetwood Mac. Some say that the song is about LSD, but Green said it was about the messages he got from his nightmare involving money. Green explained in a 1996 interview with Mojo:

“I had a dream where I woke up and I couldn’t move, literally immobile on the bed. I had to fight to get back into my body. I had this message that came to me while I was like this, saying that I was separate from people like shop assistants, and I saw a picture of a female shop assistant and a wad of pound notes, and there was this other message saying, ‘You’re not what you used to be. You think you’re better than them. You used to be an everyday person like a shop assistant, just a regular working person.’ I had been separated from it because I had too much money. So I thought, How can I change that?”

4. “Man of the World”
From: 1968 Single

This song peaked at No. 2 on the U.K. charts in a 1969, but was never released in the U.S. In 1996 interview with Mojo magazine, Green recalls about this song:

“The lyrics are corny, hammy. Shall I tell you about my life?… My life! That’s Jewish for a start, isn’t it?!”

While in 2015, Mick Fleetwood told Mojo about this song:

“It’s a sad song. Had we known what Peter was saying… What’s that line? ‘How I wish that I’d never been born.’ You know, whoa. It’s pregnant with passion, it’s a prayer, it’s a crying out.”

3. “Albatross”
From: ‘English Rose’ (1968)

As a child, Green read the poem The Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge, which has the line “An albatross around your neck” and gave him the idea to write this song that went to be the biggest-selling rock instrumental of all time in the UK.

2. “Oh Well”
From: 1969 Single

Green proved himself as one of the greatest guitarists and songwriters of the time with this song, which is was one of his last contributions to Fleetwood Mac. Before Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined the band in 1974 and changed their sound, “Oh Well” was the only Fleetwood Mac song that made the Hot 100 in America.

1. “Black Magic Woman”
From: ‘English Rose’ (1968)

Green of course wrote this song and Fleetwood Mac recorded “Black Magic Woman” which became a hit #37 in the UK, two years before Santana covered it and was also a hit. Mick Fleetwood once said about this song:

“Three minutes of sustain/reverb guitar with two exquisite solos from Peter.”