Barbara, please drop it. If not I shall simply feel obliged to tell people who are still helping Pete and let them look you up and take you to task. I have nothing more to say, or write, not books about a short period of my youth or anything else but persisting with sensitive subjects that have nothing to do with anything today, especially squatting, is going well past its limit.
Brian Nostalga...lost treasures...old friends who we see no more...they need finding again.
You write...
So where is the book?
Mitchel Beezley or Harper Collins they are waiting for your story.
Maybe squatting has passed?
Barbara we were al part of a crowd. My sister married one of that crowd, a drummer whose name I'll not bother with, over the years she has been one of the people who has supported Pete financially. I have not seen Pete since his attempted comeback when he was a bit over 50. He could still play guitar but the edge he had that people said made him better than Clapton was gone and he was back to playing old blues standards, mainly acoustic. I joined in that effort to help get him back for reasons I am not sure of myself, perhaps nostalgia. I am also a friend of Bill Greensmith, the photographer who did a lot of work with Mac early on and Pete Carney, Mac's first 'head roadie' from childhood.
Anyway, this is all off squatting track. Let's leave it here. Some of it is personal history that belongs in my memory and not talked about like this.
Frankly? its a question of who has paid for the homes...and what they intend to do with them. Its not a question of acceptable quota's. If someone decides to squat...do you really think they consider who might own it before breaking and entering? I dont think so. I think they decide that no one is home and they are going in. Honestly if this happened to one of my properties...would I sit outside, contact the police and wait 6 weeks for anything to happen...? no...I would gather the people I trust and would enter the property and put outside the squatters....if that took force...so be it.....I would be in the right and they would be in no doubt about it.
Just read the Biography of Peter Green...
Perhaps you might find a moment to read it on line....ONCE again mentions substance abuse
with a quote from Peter talking about one too many LSD trips.
WHO WROTE IT?
I respected Peters music and I knew only of his presense.To explain...he was sometimes
at my flat because my best friend was his/one of his girlfriends and I prepared a party for his 21st baking him a cake...and iced it green. I knew him through my friend and some of his
friends. He was never talkertive...
So many people in London spoke about the "drug binge" and I guesse people add one and one
and they make 2....
I never dicussed any drug related matters with my friend...
Yes he seemed fragile...
So talented....
I guesse Brian I believed what everyone told me in London...
not sure what the press said...BUT when you made your attack this
afternoon. I then checked Wickipedia.
So you came to London to Shephers Bush to hear him play with Cosy Powel?
Do you see him now? He is someone dear to you and at our time of life it is so
important to spend time with such people.
For this same reason....a bond of friendship I looked for her.
Found her by tracing her brothers path...only to find that he had been
killed in the Locabby bombing....A Young Cockney Reble in every sense of the word.
The story of the Locabby has some fascinating secrets and tales.
Fortunately I was not a groupie...but managed my own band called Skye Wine.
It was an interesting experience which brought together 4 musicians who played
the blues...at the Marquee, and on one occassion with Jimi Hendrix playing bass
guitar.
I looked at Wikipedia and that is scandalous. Stella Bennet, Duster's widow, has helped look after Peter since her husband died in 1976 when because of a health problem he fell asleep at the wheel of his van and crashed it. Pete had been on and off ill since about 69 and left Mac in 70, got quite bad in the early 70s and then flipped after Tony died. Uschi whatever, the German Stones groupie included a whole lot of stories about Pete in her collection of stories about who she took to her bed in her commune, when much of that time Pete was undergoing treatment in London already. Wikipedia is a pastiche of bits and pieces people stick together and I find it rather regretable that it includes such untruths.
I was one of several people who tried to help Pete get back in shape for one of his revivals about 15 years ago. One of the things he was most explicit about was his sadness about all the people who did go down on drugs when he survived on prescriptions. If Barbara, as you say you knew Pete, you would know he was always fragile and there was good reason for not drinking or using drugs he probably saw long before he got noticeably ill.
Interesting, not sure what the faux pas is, but lol with you.
Wikipedia and reliable?
You know it is very easy to hurt a person's feelings....really easy and I HATE to hurt
other people. But.....
WHAT was going on this afternoon?
I await your reponse Brian.
Well Brian I checked with Wikepedia....
The detail there says that Peter Binged on LSD at a party in Munich...
Guesse it gives the dates...
Then....I think the illness set in.
Have a look at the details in print.
ok Jo....you explained yourself...I obviously didnt explain myself. You say how would someone who needs to squat ever buy a house....I dont understand the statement...'needs to squat'...in the same way that being hungry...and not having food..doesnt mean...'need to steal'...it means need to get work. I know jobs are not plentiful...I am about to return to the UK and try and find work...at 58 with a gammy hip...awaiting surgery in January. Last time I did this...I was 56 and got offered 3 jobs from 3 interviews. I know that the bottom line is I could find work stacking shelves in Tesco...Homebase...there are jobs out there...minimum wage but if you want to work there are jobs. I dont accept the idea of needing to squat...needing to work I understand. I cant speak for France...but I worked in disability services for years in the UK..if you are disabled you recieve disability benefits....you can afford to live in a flat. My mother receives benefits...and lives in a flat where the council pays her rent and community tax...and she says she is better off than she has ever been. Maybe I am lucky having parents who, though poor ensured we were born with a huge work ethic. I was working 3 hours after school every night and from 8 till 7pm every Saturday in a hairdressers at 13...and then I have continued working during my life....sometimes 3 jobs at 70 hours a week... When working at the homeless hostel...I would get the young folks interviews and frequently, they would take days off..to visit their children..when I remonstrated and told them they had a job..I would get this stupid speech about the importance of seeing my children as opposed to the importance of working...seemed to never occur to them they had two days off a week when they could see their kids....inevitably...they lost their jobs within the first two weeks....
Excuse me, Pete Greenbaum (to you Green) is schizophrenic. Pete didn't smoke, hardly touched alcohol and was strongly anti-drugs. After his best friend Tony 'Duster' Bennet died (not drugs either but an illness) Pete flipped and has never got straightened out to this day. Careful when you start to name people. Don't know about the rest, but check before you fire off.
We've just had the topic libel/slander on another post. As far as Pete Green goes what you imply is libellous, be careful!
I left London in 1966, but weekends with the train from Cambridge very accessible. I was one of the 'blues scene' hangers on but knew Pete and his family in Bethnal Green pretty well. 21st birthday, 1967 and the actual celebration of his birthday was at the Crawdaddy Club at Richmond Athletics Ground on the Friday, but I didn't go to the party you mention. Pete had several ladies on the go like many musicians.
Well said, bravo.
Brian when did you know Peter?
You left London in 66...did you say?
Very delicate topic....but immense sensativity...any illeness is upsetting.
Actually I knew that his birth name was Greenbaum.
Where you around for his 21st birthday?
If you were you may have been in my flat where Peter's girlfriend...
(one of) lived....
Surely we all need to take responsibility for ourselves as adults. My older boy suffered from depression...came home from uni having studied for nearly 6 years...he walked away 3 months from his finals and went to bed...fully clothes...pulled the duvet over his head and stayed there. Our GP gave him heavy duty AD.....but within 9 weeks he had worked out that no one but himself could pull himself out of this...he returned to uni and has been fine for the last 10 years.
David with the best will in the world...and having 4 friends who are alcoholics...yes...its a bad choice. I used to enjoy drinking...and smoking...and knew from my addiction to tobacco that I had an addictive personality....so stopped drinking. If I had continued...as my mother did, I too would have ended up an alcoholic, it would have been the easy option. Ditto drugs..I was born in the fifties and enjoyed fully the 60s...I tried smoking grass..and other drugs...but had one bad experience and that finished all drugs for me. No one becomes a drug addict or alcoholic from their first experience...or their second...if you continue...and you have the sense to know yourself, then becoming addicted is a bad choice...the illness bit...comes with the addiction...but we can all say no or enough. I feel the same when friends have fallen for a married man....you dont fall in love the first time you meet someone...and when you know they are married you can back off...those that dont...claim they cant help falling in love...well actually they could have...at an early point they could have walked away. I dont consider I am perilously close the idea of the underserving poor...Jeez...I was born poor within a working class family in London...my grandad and his partner and 3 of his sons...with their partners and kids lived in a 3 bedroom house...no bathroom and outside loo..so I know poor. But I also know work ethic and pride....and just because you are born poor does not mean you are born without choices.
Prescription drugs is a good point, anti-depressives outnumber heroin many times over and they are as addictive as hell. Both are poisons and both make people incurably ill.