Fleetwood Mac blues guitarist Peter Green dies at 73

LONDON — Peter Green, the dexterous blues guitarist who led the first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac in a career shortened by psychedelic drugs and mental illness, has died at 73. Indeed, Green was so fundamental to the band that in its early days it was called Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac. The three departed the next year, forming the core of the band initially billed as “Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac featuring Jeremy Spencer.” Fleetwood Mac made its debut at the British Blues and Jazz festival in the summer of 1967, which led to a recording contract, then an eponymous first album in February 1968. On a tour in California, Green became acquainted with Augustus Owsley Stanley III, notorious supplier of powerful LSD to the The Grateful Dead and Ken Kesey, the anti-hero of Tom Wolfe’s book “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” “He was taking a lot of acid and mescaline around the same time his illness began manifesting itself more and more,” Fleetwood said in 2015.