Rick Fenn was like many others of his age. Picking up the electric guitar as a young lad, it was Peter Green he looked up to. Green, alongside his fellow British blues guitar trailblazers Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, were making the weather for the instrument.
Learning from the O.G. bluesmen, these players were augmenting and amplifying these techniques, the hyper-trophying tube amps of the time making blues louder, and bigger.
Fenn was watching. A keen player, he had played in bands while still at school, but got his big break when he joined 10cc in 1976. Things were on the up.
Not so for Green. The player who had written the book for blues-rock with Oh Well was struggling with mental health issues. He had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
The diagnosis was emblematic of a tragic decline. Green left the music business entirely, began working in a gas station and, apparently, as a gravedigger.
Did the music leave him? That's what his management wanted to know. Fenn was among the names they considered when trying to get Green to pick up the guitar again – and he was open to it.
“When I was a teenager he was one of my greatest heroes, along with Hendrix, Clapton and Beck,” says Fenn, speaking to Guitar World. “Peter had such a glorious touch thanks to his wonderful simplicity, but then he went off the rails and became a gravedigger.”
They set him up at a house in London and we jammed daily
A phone call came in that had the potential to be life-changing. What transpired was more complicated, an intriguing collaboration that nonetheless remains a footnote in Fenn’s storied career.
“I worked with him in 1978 when I got a call from a manager who was trying to drag him out of obscurity,” Fenn says. “They set him up at a house in London and we jammed daily.”
Fenn recalls the sessions as being largely unproductive. Green would eventally return to the stage and get himself back in the game, but he was not ready for that yet. They made some noise together. Some of which ended up being recorded – much to Fenn’s surprise.
“Peter was away with the fairies, cranking the reverb all the way up on his amp,” he says “Little came out of it, but we must have recorded something because parts ended up on an album. I was on Spotify not long ago and found this solo I played.”
In the digital economy, precious little is truly lost. Nothing is forgotten. But Fenn didn’t need Spotify to remind him of the gig. It was a chance to work with his hero. That sort of thing stays with you, though he sounds a note of regret that Green couldn’t hold onto his magic in the same way as Jeff Beck did.
“Beck was the opposite – he maintained his level of excellence through the years, if not extended it,” says Fenn. “Peter didn’t manage to hold onto that special thing he had, but it was a curious little interlude working with him.”
Guitar World's full interview with Rick Fenn will be published in the coming weeks.
