Secret son of Fleetwood Mac legend Peter Green forced into DNA fight to prove it

The secret son of Fleetwood Mac legend Peter Green today tells how the troubled star’s refusal to acknowledge him drove him to a DNA court battle.

Liam Firlej, 34, grew up believing the world-renowned blues guitarist was his father – and had abandoned him as a baby after dumping his mum.

In childhood he hero worshipped the rock idol from afar, playing air guitar to his songs such as Black Magic Woman and Need Your Love So Bad – and yearning in vain for him to come back into his life.

But when Liam finally met him face-to-face in his late 20s, he was left heartbroken.

Ailing Green, whose mental health had been wrecked by LSD, fobbed off his plea to admit he was his dad.

Now, a month after the Sixties icon’s death at 73, Liam reveals he finally found out the truth in 2017 in a High Court DNA case.

But he says that has still not made up for the years of psychological anguish he went through. And he feels his runaway father’s music will haunt him forever.

“I feel upset that he’s dead – but also so angry that I was never given the opportunity to have a father in my life,” he says.

“I feel like I was swept under the rug. I used to try to forget about him and the whole situation.

“It would work for about six months, then I would keep on hearing the music and think ‘I just can’t escape this.’ It still drives me insane.”

The dad he never knew founded the original Fleetwood Mac with drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist Bob Brunning and fellow guitarist Jeremy Spencer in 1967.

The blues band topped the singles charts the following year with Albatross, followed by top 10 hits Man Of The World and Oh Well.

Green quit the group after just three years following heavy use of LSD – and after several line-up changes Fleetwood Mac went on to become mainstream musical giants.

By the time the guitarist met Liam’s mum in Richmond, South West London, around 1980, he had undergone electroconvulsive therapy for drug-induced schizophrenia, spending time in and out of psychiatric hospitals.

Green was in his 30s and Janina was just 18. They were together for several years before she fell pregnant.

“They were on a love rollercoaster together,” says Liam. “It seems he didn’t treat mum very well. He used to kick her out of the house. The relationship was rocky.”

She was apart from him when Liam was born. And Liam was told when she went to his home to show him his son he slammed the door in her face.

Struggling Janina then signed parental control of her son to her mother Maureen Firlej who became Liam’s legal guardian. Green rarely tried to see his son.

But Liam recalls being told the star once turned up at his nursery school with wild hair and long nails. Staff told him he was scaring the children.

“I was told who my dad was at a very young age,” says Liam. “When I was about seven I’d imagine he would come and be my father again and him disappearing was just a mistake.

“I thought maybe he didn’t know I existed, but that obviously wasn’t the case. I used to dance around to his tracks in the living room and play air guitar and stuff like that.

“But obviously my father was never going to come. It was a whole letdown.

“It was almost psychologically abusive to me as I used to hear him everywhere. Every time I’d hear a song it would bring up bad memories.

“One of the major things that made me need to prove who my father was the fact I couldn’t escape the music.

“And it’s still upsetting to this day that I didn’t really have parents and I don’t feel part of any family.

His gran Maureen, now 83, tried in vain to persuade Green – who was worth around £12million when he died in July – to accept responsibility for his son.

“She told me she wanted him to pay child maintenance. She’d say ‘why don’t you look after your son?’, and he’d say ‘you can’t prove it.’

Liam became a support worker for vulnerable adults while the calling to have his father acknowledge him remained strong.

He met up with original band member Bob Brunning, who died in 2011, to discuss his dad. And he wrote to the star’s solicitors, and messaged family members on Facebook.

In his early 20s, Liam was given an address thought to be Green’s and he wrote him several letters, including his phone number.

One day, Green rang out of the blue and they chatted about life.

Several calls followed, but Liam lost his phone and further letters went unanswered. He even turned up at one of his dad’s blues gigs in 2010 but was banned from speaking to him.

Then in January 2015, desperate for an answer, he decided to turn up at Green’s house in Canvey Island, Essex, to ask for a DNA test, saying: “Do you know who I am? I’m your son.”

The reaction wasn’t promising. “He hid behind the door a bit and seemed fearful of what was going on,” said Liam.

“He told me about his health, but any conversation about me he’d go ‘oh well I don’t know about that’.

“He remembered my mum and tried to get her on the phone but I don’t think he’d have even believed it was her anyway.

“He said he wasn’t doing too great. I felt p****d off. I thought I’d never get recognition from him. It was like hitting my head against a brick wall.” Two years later, Liam went to High Court in a final bid for proof.

He said it was “the happiest day of my life” when he was finally vindicated – and he now has a family relationship with one of Green’s US daughters, Rosebud, from his first marriage to Jane Samuels in 1978

“But I still feel it’s like I’m the black sheep – even though I feel very close to my gran.”

Now he believes his dad’s mental state – and his fame – also helped keep them apart. He thinks the shock treatment Green was given in the Seventies for his mental ill health probably damaged the musician’s brain for good and robbed him of a father.

And he believes the drug-fuelled music industry and solicitors around Green stopped the star seeing him.

“He was taken on a rollercoaster of fame,” said Liam. “The band made it big very quickly and my father received a lot of peer pressure to dabble in drugs. The three years he was in that band ruined his life.”

The positive paternity test now means Liam may be entitled to a portion of Green’s estate – but details of the will are yet to be disclosed.

Liam is now working on a documentary about his dad’s time in Munich where he took doses of LSD at a party that were later seen as a crucial point in his mental health decline.

Liam said he hopes his story gives hope to others searching for fathers, adding: “I wish to dedicate my achievement to all those going through the same psychological struggle I went through.”