REVIEW: Peter Green/Splinter Group, The Robert Johnson
Songbook
- Tim Kennedy
This album held much promise. The current touring Peter Green and Splinter Group show features a two or three song segment of Robert Johnson material which is one of the highlights, the songs rendered in rootsy delta blues style.
The obvious highlight of the live Peter Green show is his wonderful blues guitar playing and evocative voice which often ascend the heights of his heyday of the late 60s UK blues boom - heights that made no lesser a figure than BB King a Peter Green fan.
Peter sank to unimaginable depths of drug-fuelled insanity and depression at the end of the 60s which led to him dropping out of the music business for more than 25 years whilst the band he formed, Fleetwood Mac, became a byword for AAA, music that neither offends nor inspires.
The Robert Johnson Songbook is the work of more than Peter Green. His self-proclaimed rescuer Nigel Watson looms large, not least on the sleeve artwork. According to a member of PG's entourage that I spoke to a couple of years ago, the real inspiration behind Peter's comeback is his (then) new wife - so perhaps the praise heaped on Nigel by himself in the sleevenotes for rescuing Peter from the doldrums are a little exaggerated. Peter had a similar tribute album made in his honour some years ago by Gary Moore.
The style of most of this music stems from much later in the history of the blues than the period in the mid thirties when Johnson briefly flowered, chiefly Chicago in the 50s. The blues that came after the war was very much the same blues but with more modern technology. Elmore James and Muddy Waters retrod the same path, yet enervated by electric guitars.
Therefore the idea of updating these songs seems not to have much value. It has already been done. Johnson himself borrowed most of his tunes and lyrics from singers he himself had seen. The reason why people listen to Johnson's few surviving works today is his incredible mastery of the acoustic guitar, which to Keith Richards, a huge fan from the dawn of the Stones, sounded like TWO guitarists. Also noteworthy is his ability to convey elemental feelings in his voice such as dread, lust, resignation and loss with such accuracy.
The Stones covered these songs memorably, lending their peculiar arrogance to them with great effect. Led Zeppelin made their name by taking the delta blues into unfeasibly heavy territory. It is true to say that these bands fashioned the songs into something very different indeed. On this album the intent appears to be to stay true to traditional blues values as one might expect.
One song here which approaches the greatness of the original is Peter's version of "Love In Vain", which displays fine playing and sensitive vocals. "Ramblin' On My Mind" also displays some of the emotion of Robert Johnson. With his friend Nigel he turns in a good Delta blues represenation of "Stones In My Passway".
The jazzed up, gospelised versions of "When You Got A Good Friend", "32-20 Blues", "Phonograph Blues", "Last Fair Deal Going Down", "Stop Breaking Down", "Honeymoon Blues" and "Sweet Home Chicago" are disappointing to say the least. These jolly romps bear little relation to the intent behind Robert Johnson's work. The use of a piano especially doesn't help. "Me And The Devil" is rendered in the Delta style but sounds again rather too jolly, as if Satan was not such a bad chap after all to meet strolling down to the crossroads on a summer evening.
Nigel sings "Dust My Broom"like a young rockabilly to a production that could be by an updated Sun Studios. "If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day" displays similar rockabilly tendencies. It is impossible to tell if Peter is involved in these two efforts.
Peter Green knows only too well of the horrors that haunted Robert Johnson's music, and it is a shame that this record only rarely allows us that insight. It is a wonderful thing that a living blues legend like Peter Green can return to performing after such a long and tragic period, and he is clearly enjoying life once again. However this album doesn't reflect the glory of the delta blues, and neither is it a great Peter Green album.
