Music school offering guitar and bass lessons in Canary Wharf and Stratford on mastering the driving riff created by east Londoner Peter Green
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In the second in our series of regular collaborations with Canary Wharf’s guitar school, Kitchen Jam, we take a look at the history of a track with a local link and deliver some tips on how to play it
- Kitchen Jam founder Darryl Powis has created a video tutorial to help Wharfers get their fingers around the riff that drives Oh Well. Find it above or follow this link to get playing
- To play the whole track you’ll need the chords below:
looking back on the history of the track and its link to Docklands
BY ZAINAB HASSAN
Ask most people about Fleetwood Mac, and they’ll likely think of the five-piece unit behind landmark album Rumours.
But the group began in London as something else, a blues band built around Peter Green – a guitarist BB King said gave him ‘cold sweats’.
Born Peter Allen Greenbaum in 1946, the youngest of four children in a Jewish family in Bethnal Green, Green grew up miles away from the Mississippi Delta that inspired his playing.
Green’s older brother showed him a few chords and he cut his teeth playing professionally around east London as a bassist or guitarist in various bands.
In one group, Green met a young Mick Fleetwood and the pair later worked together in the influential blues-rock band John Mayall And The Bluesbreakers, then going on to form Fleetwood Mac.
Like many young British players of his generation, he learned blues licks from Muddy Waters, BB King, Freddie King and John Lee Hooker, but he channelled that inspiration in a different way to his peers.
Green played with measured restraint and a distinct, pained vocal colour, writing songs such as Black Magic Woman, Albatross and Oh Well.
At the height of the band’s early success in 1970, he walked away, but his playing remained ingrained in the band’s DNA.
the unsung hero
Green’s contributions to Fleetwood Mac don’t always get the same attention as the band’s later recordings, but his influence is undeniable.
Santana’s 1970 cover of Black Magic Woman, originally written by Green in 1968, became one of their biggest hits and a staple in their set list.
Green’s influence even reached The Beatles with George Harrison admitting that Sun King on Abbey Road was inspired by Fleetwood Mac’s reverb-soaked sound on Albatross.
a well of inspiration
Oh Well was a Green-penned hit and its heady blues-rock riff is one of our favourites to play at Kitchen Jam.
Comprising two parts it’s a mini-epic in E minor.
At just over two minutes, part one ricochets with breakneck riffs, then simmers into the melancholic E Minor and D-chord chimes that signal part two, a passage of folk and classical-inspired music in stark contrast.
Once you get the main riff under your fingers, you’ll find plenty of inspiration from Green’s fusion of American blues with east London grit to infuse into your own playing.
key details: Kitchen Jam
Kitchen Jam offers guitar lessons rooted in musical connection and community from its studios in Canary Wharf and Stratford.
Follow this link to find out how to book a free trial session
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