Peter Green
In the Skies

The second solo work of Peter Green is released almost a decade after the masterpiece "The End of the Game," considered by many as the swan song of the great London guitarist due to his long absence from the music scene caused by the mental illness that afflicted him for years. This forced him, among other things, to a long stay in a psychiatric hospital from which he appeared to come out recovered, only to be arrested in '77 for threatening his manager with a gun... In the same year, however, he began composing again, and the result would be this "In the Skies" which, however, was only released in '79 with the collaboration of experienced musicians including Snowy White as supporting guitarist, his friend Peter Bardens already in the early Fleetwood Mac and then with Camel on keyboards, and the late Reg Isidore on drums.

The album, although not revolutionary or at the level of his first work, was well-received by critics and presents lights and shadows at least for a great Green admirer like the writer, but let me proceed in order. The opening is left to the title track "In the Skies," a theme heavily emphasized by the cover, almost as if to "push" its commercial success, of which the track indeed has all the ingredients, except for the fact that it is too similar to another Green song, that "Black Magic Woman," which however was brought to worldwide success by Santana and thus no longer a sharp weapon in the strings of our hero, even if of excellent craftsmanship, on par with the following "Slabo Day," a riff from which Green's undeniable quality emerges. As proof of this, Snowy himself would include these two tracks in a collection of his great hits released several years later.

After the pleasantries, we finally get to the heart with "A Fool No More," a very intimate blues, as already suggested by the title: "Non (sarò) più Pazzo" (for you), which revives Green's best psychedelic qualities with his restless guitar in the background as in the times of "And then Play on" and the subsequent Boston Concert, a piece worth the price of the album! You will listen to it again.

Breaking Peter's melancholic voice is then the fast "Tribal Dance," also an evident reminiscence of the fabulous "Rattlesnake Shake" played in the mentioned Fleetwood Mac concert in Boston, always with the interspersing of Green's guitar in the background dictating the main theme. Decidedly more commercial is "Seven Stars," written with his wife Jane and reflecting Claptonian influences, of which Green was a tutelary deity since that fateful concert ten years earlier when he wanted to include him in a well-executed small part... "Funky Chunk" needs no great introductions, which are already in the title, except that they begin the descent into the duller part of "In the Skies," indeed "Just for You" is an honest blues, but not one to give you goosebumps... that drags (wearily) towards "Proud Pinto" and "Apostle," a classic from the west coast the first with Green's guitar prominently featured, capable of garnering respect for technique but unlikely to stir with the proposed topics. Conversely, very romantic and passionate is the closing track, emblematic of Green's brilliance and his confidant Snowy; placed here just to leave us with a melancholic memory not only of this work but of the splendor that Green's genius was.