Story of the song: The Green Manalishi by Fleetwood Mac

From The Independent archive: Robert Webb relates the dark beginnings of a classic song from the group’s R&B years

Fleetwood Mac, 1969: (L-R) Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, Jeremy Spencer (Getty)

Before Fleetwood Mac evolved into a slick west coast supergroup, they helped to spearhead the British Sixties R&B boom. Their main guitarist, Peter Green, bent the blues on hits such as “Albatross” and “Man of the World”.

After a bad acid trip in 1970, his playing became eclipsed by a darkness culminating in his last recording with the band, “The Green Manalishi (with the Two-prong Crown)”, inspired by a nightmare in which a green dog was barking at him. “I knew the dog had been dead a long time,” he said. “I was dead and had to fight to get back into my body.”

For the singer, the dog represented the colour of money, and money was evil. “The Devil is green and he was after me,” he said. The lyrics came during a walk in Richmond Park: “When the day goes to sleep and the full moon looks/The night is so black that the darkness cooks/You come creeping around, making me do things I don’t wanna do.”

He wrote the music on his Ferrograph tape recorder. A repetitive strum on the lowest strings of his Gibson Les Paul was prompted by his love of the cello and African drums. Green threw in the lot: “All kinds of things... Six-string basses, Danny Kirwan and me playing those shrieking guitars together,” he said.

It was recorded at Warner’s Hollywood studios and mixed in London. A more experimental 1970 live version was released on the 2001 album Show Biz Blues. The song marked the end of Sixties Mac: “It took me at least two years to recover from it,” Green said.