Australian Articles
Good Times
Canberra Times Supplement
29th January 1987

The Canberra Times, 10th February 1987

Sydney Morning Herald, 7th February 1987

Sydney Morning Herald, 6th February 1987

Western Australian Newspaper
February 1987

The Age, 19th July 1992 

Sydney Morning Herald, 28th September 1994

The Age, 14th March 2001

Illawarra Mercury, 16th March 2001

The Age, 20th March 2001

RALPH, ALBERT & SYDNEY
Australian Articles

Australian Articles
New album 'most positive statement yet'
McTell: writing it his way
The Good Times
[Canberra Times Supplement]
Thursday January 29th, 1987
By ROBERT HEFNER
"I WRITE what I want to write about," Ralph McTell said. "I'll hope for another song (to be a hit) but I doubt if any will eclipse The Streets of London."
McTell was speaking from Sydney, where he arrived last week to begin his Australian tour which brings him to Canberra for a February 7 performance at the School of Music.
The British singer/songwriter, 42, has written about 300 songs, including 100 for children, and has recorded 14 albums. His latest. The Bridge of Sighs, was released in England early this year, and has been well received.
"It picked up play on big national stations as well as provincial stations," McTell said.
Musically, it is a mixture of material. "The themes follow the Ralph McTell thread," he said. "It's a little bit oflbeat, and I don't think there are so many songs about alienation. There are stronger links throughout the album than on my earlier albums, which tended to be diverse." 
McTell, who was born Ralph May in Farborough, Kent, was christened McTell by fellow musicians, an allusion to his style of playing which resembled that of blind Willie McTell. He began writing songs more than 20 years ago, and gained international recognition with The Streets of London. It was not, however, an overnight hit.
"I actually wrote The Streets of London in 1965," he said, "and I recorded it at least three times for different labels. In 1965 or 1966 I offered it to a couple of blokes who were doing more work than I was.  One liked it, the other didn't.
"When I recorded my first album in 1966 I left it off. It wasn't until 1968, when I did my second album, that the producer persuaded me to put it on. I told him I'd sing it once in the studio, and we used the first take on the album.
"The song travelled as far as Australia with other musicians who started to include it in their performances more and more. 
"Now there are well over a hundred cover versions of the song. Away it went. But it had the benefit of 10 years of promotion. It was a hit in England in 1974-75, which coincided with my first tour of Australia." .
McTell is not particularly disturbed that none of his other songs has had the impact of The Streets of London.
"The latest song you've written is always the favourite," he said. "But I can still get into The Streets of London when I play it."
At his performance on February 7 McTell will sing a mix of old songs and new ones from The Bridge of Sighs, which was describe d by Britain's New Musical Express as his "most positive statement yet, portraying the man's natural genius".
McTell said, "When I come to Australia I like to meet people as well as play for them. After the show I try to meet as many people as I can, and sign albums for them if they want.
"It's great to be back, and I'm looking very much forward to seeing my friends in Canberra."
Ralph McTell will perform at the School of Music on February 7 at 8pm.
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Australian Articles
McTelling it with a magical spirit
The Canberra Times
Thursday February 10th, 1987
By ROBERT HEFNER
THERE was magic in the air at the School of Music on Saturday evening, as the man who gave the world The Streets of London gave about 400 fortunate Canberra fans a rare glimpse into the soul of one who is at peace with himself and the world.
Ralph McTell immediately created a warm and intimate ambience, his voice, his guitar and, at times, his piano emanating a quiet strength that raised entertainment to the echelons of enchantment.
Clearly, McTell knows the pathways to the heart, and with a generosity engendered by a profound calmness of spirit, he took us by the hand and led us there. As with all magical spells, we emerged different, a bit more confident in our capacity to love. 
McTell's performance had the feeling of an act of love. No ego-tripping here, nothing to prove; just a man and a guitar, singing, at times sadly, at times sweetly, at times amusingly, about the pains and pleasures, the people and places, of a lifetime.
McTell has the poet's ability to isolate moments and infuse them with an enduring significance. He is comfortable with his own experiences and emotions, and can empathise with those of others.
The Girl from the Hiring Fair (from his latest album, Bridge of Sighs) is a powerful love song with unforced lyrics. "... all our senses reeled, as the moon rose over the the field.-.I thank my stars for the harvest moon and the girl from the hiring fair."
From Clare to Here is a moving tribute to Irish builders' labourers in England, thinking of their home across the sea: "Sometimes I hear a fiddle play, or maybe it's the ocean..."
We hear that fiddle, and the sighing of the sea.
McTell confessed "a strong affection for Ireland".
"I think that possibly the first male voice I remember clearly belonged to an Irishman that lived upstairs when I was a little boy," he said. From that memory came Mr Connaughton, also off the Bridge of Sighs album. McTell proved not only a magical singer/songwriter, but guitarist as well, particularly on West Coast Blues, recorded in 1929 by Blind Blake. McTell's hands and arms and tapping feet seemed mere extensions of the guitar. He played another solo, There'll Be a Happy Meeting in Glory-land, at the end of a song, The Hands of Joseph, inspired by Joseph Spence, a guitar player from the Bahamas.
With a few exceptions (Little Actress was not that memorable), each song was a gem. Accompanying himself on the piano, he played two songs about "dignity in age". The Old Brown Dog and Growing Old With Naomi. And his rendition of The Ferryman, based on the Herman Hesse novel Siddhartha, had an Eastern dreamlike calming effect which seemed to pervade the hall.
McTell introduced The Streets of London with gentle self-deprecating humour. "It's time for the big finale now," he said. "I'd like to do a medley of the greatest hits, but that's not possible, so here's the medley of greatest hit."
McTell is obviously not disturbed that none of his other songs has achieved such an international-hit status. (More than 100 cover versions of The Streets of London have been recorded.) The feeling in that song suffuses his other songs. That, for him and for me, seems a bountiful blessing.
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Australian Articles
STREETS AHEAD ... WITH JUST ONE HIT
Author: BRUCE ELDER
Date: 07 Feb 1987
Words: 591
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Section: Saturday Review
Page: 47
GOD bless the mystique of the hit single! Thirteen years after his solitary hit, Streets of London, Ralph McTell can still nearly fill the Sydney Town Hall with an enthusiastic, if somewhat aging, audience.
To be durable in the folk world, one hit is enough. Think of Arlo Guthrie with Alice's Restaurant, Eric Bogle with And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda and Ralph McTell's Streets of London. That solitary hit seems to broaden the bass and raise the profile (albeit briefly) so that a solid, committed, lifetime support is established. So, here's Ralph McTell four years since his last album, Water of Dreams, four years since his last tour, and he can still pack them into the Town Hall. Get yourself a hit - have a job for life.
It is no small irony that McTell can fill the hall and the true greats of the English folk scene - Martin Carthy, Dick Gaughan, June Tabor, Leon Rosselton - don't even get to tour this country.
In the English folk music scene, McTell is basically a second-division performer. He is an admired guitarist. His infrequent albums are reviewed favourably; he once had a contract with a major record company, but he is deemed to be an interesting rather than an inspirational performer.
McTell lacks that hard edge, that level of political commitment, which separates truly great folk musicians from their peers. His voice, with its deliciously warm timbre, soothes rather than confronts. His clean-cut good looks make him look more like a kiddies show performer (which he is in Britain) than a man driven by deep-seated artistic passions. And his material, with its "pretty" guitar playing and its inoffensive lyrics, is just a little too bland.
In concert, these qualities are both McTell's strength and his weakness. He is a genuinely nice guy. His gentle, easy-going personality washes over the audience, making them comfortable and relaxed. His between-song patter is a series of gently humorous anecdotes about such reassuring topics as childhood, and life in England.
This "niceness" tends to be so overwhelming that after 20 minutes, the occasional yawn and drooping eyelid can be observed. The concert lacks any true dynamic, any real light and shade. The atmosphere is reverential and polite rather than impassioned. Only the up-tempo Run Johnny Run and a wonderful bluesy guitar solo rose above the solid plateau of niceness.
It is a measure of McTell's professionalism that after 13 years and probably tens of thousands of performances, he can still make an audience believe that he genuinely cares about his solitary hit. The audience sings along to Streets of London, McTell's mellifluous voice warms and soothes and calms, the elegantly memorable chords are picked out and, in spite of the themes of loneliness and despair which lie at the heart of the song, everyone leaves feeling good inside.
In one of the portals of the Queen Victoria Building, a drunk raises a bottle of cheap plonk and an awkward grin flickers across his ruddy, unshaven face. I sidestep him without a second thought. It worries me that Streets of London is too cosy and too polite to help me shape a deeper, more emotional, response to the man's suffering. But then, it's only a pop song, isn't it?
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Australian Articles
Folkies Far From Forgotten
Sydney Morning Herald
6 February 1987  
This week two singer songwriters that some would have relegated to the coffee bars of memory perform in Sydney.
Until recently few could have identified any of the records of Britain’s Ralph McTell apart from the enormous hit, Streets of London, that launched his international career 13 years ago.  But last year’s Bridge of Sighs appears to have rekindled interest, drawing accolades even in hip rock magazines like New Musical Express.  He plays tonight at the Rose, Shamrock & Thistle Hotel in Evans Street, Balmain.
American Tom Rush, who first came to prominence in the 1980s with recordings of then unknown artists like Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, has kept an equally low profile.  But he maintains sufficient reputation to sell his product direct.  As he said recently, “Recording for a major label, I would make a royalty of 20 to 30 cents.  Selling by direct mail, there is a $6 profit margin.  The good news is that you can earn enough money that way to make another record, and that’s the object of the game.”
Tom Rush performs Mike McClellan at the Opera House’s Broadwalk Studio on Thursday, and with Summerhaze at the Rose, Shamrock & Thistle, next Friday.
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Australian Articles
“Mellifluous McTell leads us through his streets of London”
A Western Australian Newspaper 
February 1987
Review of Ralph McTell – Festival of Perth – Perth Concert Hall
By Steven Amos
Ralph McTell began his singing career as a busker and he seems to have lost none of his contact with the streets.  His songs cover the human condition from extremes of happiness to the Slough of Despond. 

McTell, whom most people will remember from his huge hit, Streets of London, comes across as the nicest guy in town.  His voice can be both immensely powerful and correspondingly gently mellifluous.  McTell rarely uses his power so the concert was made for very easy listening and little effort on the part of the audience.  He has a delightful sense of humour but it seemed to be confined to his repartee with the audience rather than in his songs, all of which, by the way, are self-penned. 

The only exception to his rather serious repertoire was a whimsical number called Keeping the Night at Bay, which dealt with the machinations of his two sons in their efforts to stave off bedtime.  The song contains the marvellous line, “if we go to bed now, something is sure to happen”, a feeling that continues through to adulthood, well, for me anyway.

Many performers have covered McTell’s songs, including The Fureys and Fairport Convention, but I have always preferred McTell’s original versions.  In a poignant song about Irish navvies alone and far from home, From Clare To Here, McTell chronicles superbly the ache of distance. 

Run, Johnny Run seemed rather incongruous a song for McTell, with its theme of jailbreak and nightmare, but I imagine it was more allegorical than anything else.  Still, it proved that the man is an excellent guitar player. 

Wizardry 

His wizardry on the instrument became more apparent in an instrumental, West Coast Blues, the only cover version he did during the whole concert.  It was written by Blind Arthur Blake, who apparently changed his name from Blind Arthur Phelps.  One wonders why on earth he bothered. 

McTell is perhaps best when singing about children and childhood.  In a wonderful song about his own early life, which I failed to catch the title of, he evoked a lost era of English life with its narrow painted barges, canals and kettles full of roses, when one’s idea of fun was to jump on the black strip in the road and watch the traffic lights change.  An era that existed before the canals became blocked by prams and the Government declared England a nuclear dumping ground. 

To me, the best song of the evening occurred early in the concert, Maginot Waltz.  It dealt with the naivety of the ordinary man on the eve of the First World War and summed up a generation of young Europeans who were ground into the Belgian mud over the ensuing four years.  It is a disturbing song to say the least. 

Unfortunately, at one stage, McTell slipped over into saccharine city and delivered a series of schmaltzy songs about smelly old dogs and a dreary girl called Naomi.  The Girl From The Hiring Fair was a sort of musical Cold Comfort Farm with much seething lust in the cornfield, while The Ferryman, based on a Herman Hesse novel, was as dull and interminable as anything Hesse himself wrote.

The best for last, and the rendition of Streets of London was beautiful, the audience joined in and the superb acoustics of the concert hall made it a rather moving experience. 
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Australian Articles
Dylan Thomas strikes a chord in rock music
Author: Mike Daly
Date: 19 Jul 1992
Words: 1130
Publication: The Age
Page: 14
WHEN British singer Ralph McTell began researching the life of Dylan Thomas for a BBC radio project, after ``a fallow period" in his own songwriting, he encountered surprising parallels between the Welsh poet's brief career and the lives of many musical soloists today.
At 20, Thomas had his first ``hit", the debut publication of his book of poems. Two years later, in 1936, he married Irishwoman Caitlin MacNamara; he quickly became a celebrated literary figure, lionised especially in the US. Yet by 1953, after a roller-coaster career punctuated by episodes of chronic alcoholism, he died in New York at 39.
``I don't put myself in the same creative company as Thomas, of course," Ralph McTell said by telephone from his London house, ``but some of his professional experiences are so like those of myself and other performers I know, as a soloist being feted abroad.
``It eventually screwed him up and I would have hated him in real life. He was a terrible character _ this whingeing, moaning, conning, begging letter-writing, little cowardly man who was also such a literary giant." Mr McTell has had a love-hate relationship of a sort with his 1973 hit song, `Streets of London', the nice little earner hanging like a golden albatross around his neck. It will be included once more this week on his latest Australian tour, sharing the billing (and a song or two) with Eric Bogle.
Discerning audiences will instead anticipate hearing from his impressive body of work as a singer, songwriter and accomplished guitarist over more than 25 years. This includes a recent return to his first love, the blues, and `The Boy with the Note', the Dylan Thomas project that began as a BBC radio program of narrative and songs, and has now been released on record.
Mr McTell admits here to a certain poetic licence, having woven his narrative around Thomas's love of detective fiction, and introduced a fictitious element about the poet's childhood. But the poet's letters home to his wife Caitlin are real enough, ``where the deep, dark loneliness overtakes him in those two or three hours a day between drink and sleep".
A fear of running out of ideas haunted Thomas constantly. ``Towards the end of his life he read less and less of his own work. I could see all this coming in his letters, yet I felt if he had just made it past 40 he might still be with us today," said Mr McTell, who is 47.
When Dylan Thomas died Ralph McTell was eight. It was not until he was about 17, ``a period of my life when I was looking for alternatives", that he first encountered the Welshman's prose and poetry. ``I read Dylan's short stories first," he said. ``Up to then I had been very interested in Jack Kerouac and the Beat poets." He didn't understand Thomas's poems then, ``although I could hear the Welsh musicality in them. I guess his work has never been far away from me since." Mr McTell credits his mother with weaning him onto poetry at an early age. ``She was `in service', which meant she looked after a little lad who became the Marquis of Hertfordshire. She would recite verses to me when I was a child, and at school, where it was very `unhip' to like poetry, I used to look forward to it in class.
``What has always intrigued me about it is the compression of a much larger idea within a disciplined line strucure, conveying perhaps more than one meaning at the same time." When he started songwriting, his discipline was to make the tunes interesting by beginning with the music. ``I had no idea what I wanted to write about. I'd get the tune and then fit a lyric to it, which explains some of the more peculiar rhythms in my early songs. More recently, when I've written the lyrics first, those songs have tended to be the most accessible ones." His guitar playing was brought to the fore on another recent project, the two blues albums `Blue Skies, Black Heroes' and `Stealin' Back'.
``It was a labor of love for me," he said, ``because whenever I pick up the guitar I don't try to play my latest composition, I doodle around on those raggy, bluesy techniques. I always have.
``A lot of people who hear those old bluesmen on record can't get past the scratches on the surface," he says. ``You have to want to play the guitar like them to really appreciate their music and when I was a kid just hearing them was the most joyful experience.
``I spent hours and hours trying to approximate what they were doing and singing along. The techniques I learned then actually opened the guitar up to me for composition." I asked him whether the songwriting muse was more elusive now, compared with that period when a younger, more passionate Ralph McTell brought his `Streets of London' to life. He said this very topic had come up the other day in conversation with his friend Dave Cousins (founder of the Strawbs folk-rock group).
``Dave asked me, `Has one got to have an affair before writing songs again?' ``I said: `Look Dave, it's a question of age. You know more now and you're more aware of grey areas, so you don't see things specifically as issues the way you did when you were young. And you can't constantly write about your love life when you're 45 _ it's pretty bloody boring'.
``That's why reading about Dylan Thomas was marvellous for me. I was suddenly alight with it and I couldn't stop working _ I used to come in and sit here until 2am just going over the lyrics and letting them take me where they wanted.
``I've never done anything like this before but I was passionate about it and very excited. I can remember that indescribably good feeling from years ago, when you'd put the pencil down, sit there with the guitar and play through a song for the very first time. Every now and then you know you've written a good one and nobody has to tell you.
``That's how it was with `The Boy with a Note'. Just with the text at first, then the song started to come and it was wonderful. I might have to wait another couple of years before I experience anything like that again." He laughed. ``So, yes ... it is a damn sight harder to write as you get older." Ralph McTell and Eric Bogle perform on Wednesday at Her Majesty's Theatre, Ballarat, and on Friday in Melbourne at Dallas Brooks Hall.
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Australian Articles
SINGER TRAVELS A DIFFERENT ROAD
Author: BRUCE ELDER
Date: 28 Sep 1994
Words: 963
Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
Section: News and Features
Page: 21
IS it possible to write an article about Ralph McTell without mentioning Streets of London? It is one of the peculiarities of folk-style singer/songwriters, particularly those who have been around for years, that they are remembered for their solitary hit.
Eric Bogle equals And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda, Ewan McColl is The First Time Ever I Saw Her Face, even Joni Mitchell is Big Yellow Taxi and Leonard Cohen is Suzanne.
Those solitary hits stand tall, obscuring the landscape beyond.
In Ralph McTell's case, his most recent musical offering is a superb cycle of songs (should we dare to refer to it as a "concept album") dealing with the life of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
Written in 1992 and recorded twice - one version was produced by BBC Radio 2 and the other released on CD by Leola Music - The Boy With A Note: An Evocation of the life of Dylan Thomas in Words & Music is arguably McTell's finest work. It is far removed from Streets of London and is a reminder that McTell, like most of the other solitary hit folk singer/songwriters, is a much more complete and talented musician than his success would suggest.
It includes some superb songs, the narrative is stirring and imaginative, and it successfully captures the pain and joy of Dylan Thomas's life.
The songs depicting Thomas's early life in Wales - Summer Girls with its recurring image of "My long-limbed salt-teared summer girl and me" and The Irish Girl about Thomas's courtship and marriage to Caitlin MacNamara - were inspired by poems such as Thomas's semi-autobiographical Fern Hill which is so resonant of the joys of youth.
At other points McTell has employed such people as Bob Kingdom, who has been doing a one-man Dylan show for years, Maggie Reilly (noted for her work with Mike Oldfield) and actress Nerys Hughes to expand the vocabulary of the project.
He would create a character, a detective or gumshoe, who would go in search of the real Dylan Thomas. The detective would link a song cycle which, when completed, would start with Dylan Thomas dreaming of summer girls, move through his marriage to Caitlin, explore Thomas's arrival in London and his inclination to head for the pub rather than the pen and desk, his return to Laugharne in Wales, his infamous US lecture tours, his alcoholism and his death.
McTell recalls the writing of the songs and the creation of the detective with enthusiasm, but he began the project with scepticism, believing it wouldn't work.
"This was a bit like Topsy in that it just grew. I mean, it started off with the germ of an idea and, as I got started ... the only way I can describe it is ... I just got on a roll.
"I disciplined myself to pondering during the day and writing in the evening when the house was quiet. I really looked forward to going into that room and picking up the pen and starting to work. I would limit myself to about an hour or so and do corrections and things the next day and just sit on it and wait. It was a wonderful time in my life creatively. I just loved it."
The end result is remarkable. During the project, McTell began to realise that Dylan Thomas's sad-funny adventures in America - the drinking, the compliant women, the excesses, the guilt - were not uniquely Thomas. They were the experience of every artist who travelled to the States and was treated like a star.
In an interview he did around the time of the release of the album, McTell said: "I'd tried to take this different view, a nonacademic view, and just look at a life, a life going wrong, a life running out of control ... We had the benefit of hindsight and all these books about him to put the picture together, and I'd like to think it's a kind of contribution, not just to mythology, but to understanding the man from a sympathetic view."
There is something right and appropriate about this whole project. McTell is a gentle, sensitive person who found in Dylan Thomas's life an emblematic statement about creativity and its problems. He is acutely aware that he created the Thomas song cycle as an act of homage, and the end result is a work characterised by great warmth and compassion.
* Ralph McTell will be singing some of the songs from The Boy With A Note when he appears at the Balmain RSL tomorrow night.
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Australian Articles
Plugged, unplugged; it was a whale of a time
Author: FERGUS SHIEL
Date: 14 Mar 2001
Words: 796
Publication: The Age
Section: Today
Page: 7
LUNASA awed. Ralph McTell and Eric Bogle took it gently. The Topp Twins turned it up. The Waifs beguiled. And Michael Thomas, well, he was a sure thing.
Welcome to the 25th annual Port Fairy Folk Festival. A heavenly sample of devilish choices. Easy and bold. Devotional, bawdy, coy and disarming.
With jumper leads packed, tents and sleeping bags rolled up nice and tight, 30,000 set sail by highway and byway to the old whaling town for the fourday event. Pagans, maidens, the lovesick and the homesick, pipers, fiddlers, gout and vapors, meditators, imitators and agitators waiting for the sweet music to roll on.
From day one, 10,000 tickets sold out, 135 bands plugged and unplugged on 11 main stages. Bars, stars and wild guitars. Well, rock me, daddio.
We step out to New Zealand's yodelling Topp sisters, move into the mystic with India's Dya Singh and are stoned to our
souls by Ireland's Lunasa.
Lunasa are the real thing. Seamless. Pulsing. Transcendental. Rhythm to the marrow. Reeling, jigging and waltzing in a league of their own.
We refuel on plastictasting Guinness, bananas and Ananda Marga's mighty samosas before Michael Thomas and the Sure Thing hit the stage. Thomas tells us how he met an Aussie girl at a show in Edmonton one night; played pool and the fine Canadian game of shuffleboard; went crosstown in a big yellow taxi; kissed and promised to meet again in Europe.
Six months later at the Cardiff Working Men's Club in New South Wales, a small note in neat handwriting is passed to his band, saying R.I.P ... The girl from Edmonton, the girl from the night of pool, a fine Canadian game and that kiss in the taxi, died in most tragic circumstances days after they'd met.
Thomas sings For a Short Time. A song about all you can get across in a drunken hour or so with someone you've barely kissed. Someone whose hair color you'll always remember. Colin Hay jokes that his songs are all pretty much the same, give or take a phone call: she left me; she came back; she left me; she never came back; optional phone call.
There are 60 ways to lose a lover and six million to sing about it under a full moon in the salty Port Fairy air.
Violin and guitar duo Jodi Moore and Nicole Brophy, 20yearolds from Tamworth and Nowra respectively, do it with the freshness and ease of young dolphins; the Waves with bewitching mellowness.
Blues harpsman Chris Wilson's not in a loving mood, though. He prowls and wails, bellowing at the audience to toss their fing foldup chairs away. Wilson has a point. There should be foldup chair police. Some have backs as big as buses. Can't see a damn thing lying on the ground behind them. Rug throwers of the world unite.
Holland's Csokolom play Hungarian and Gypsy music that's pure demented. Csokolom singer and violinist Anti von Klewitz says ``Life is very short. Remember this." We will.
Rory McLeod and Aimee Leonard weave troubador tales while a baby bounces on Leonard's knee. A holy thing. Outside there is a boy, must be about 10 years old, standing on the backs of two prone friends playing the recorder through his left nostril. A star is born.
As night falls on Saturday, Ralph McTell - direct from the pantheon of folk greats - tells how he met an Irishman working on a tunnel who told him it's a long, long way from Clare to here. McTell, seemingly much more content the following night, sings the Streets of London and every rambling man, woman and child of leisure sings along with him in the big marquee.
Richard Frankland voices up in indigenous rights, while the Stiff Gins harmonise with raw beauty. Loudon Wainwright calls in sick. And, British act, Chris While and Julie Mathews, groove in his stead.
From the humblest of beginnings with a handful of acts and an audience just a few hundred strong, the Port Fairy Folk Festival has grown into a roots world, jazz, gospel, blues and country fiesta of bewildering variety.
We'd love to have seen Apodimi Compania from Greece, Gambia's Bantabe Binde and our own Blackeyed Susans, but time nobbles.
Loading up for the journey home, there are people dreaming of stories from other worlds and other times.
For a short time, it's been magical.
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Australian Articles
Loner Johnson now team player
Author: DENISE EVERTON
Date: 16 Mar 2001
Words: 305
Publication: Illawarra Mercury
Section: Applause
Page: 52
KEVIN Johnson has always been something of a loner when it comes to his music but tomorrow he will team with Ralph McTell for a Wollongong concert.
The singer/guitarist agreed to take a break from his songwriting and join McTell on the same bill for the first time in their playing histories.
The musicians, who will perform separate sets, are doing only a handful of concerts together during McTell's Australian tour.
Johnson said he would perform an acoustic set with ``a cross-section of different styles" but had not decided on anything specific.
The show will mark one of the few performances Johnson has done since his multitude of large-scale AFL centenary presentations around the country in 1996.
He has been concentrating on songwriting, a task he describes as a chore.
``I don't like songwriting at all but I like it when I've finished them," he said.
``Live performing has an instant feedback which is gratifying whereas songwriting is a long process that is more speculative.
``There's no feedback for a long time and maybe never. Then there's recording which can be an excruciatingly annoying process. There's no rule of thumb with it at all."
Johnson, a big fan of films, has written music for movies and calls it a ``simpler experience" than writing a standard song because ``generally the visuals are all done and the dialogue as well so its easier to write something that plays off what is already there".
As for his career, Johnson says he has a few regrets but if he had the chance to re-live his experiences, would make the same decisions again.
Kevin Johnson and Ralph McTell will perform tomorrow night at the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre.
For information and bookings, phone 42263366.
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Australian Articles
More than just a message from McTell
By Mike Daley
The Age
Tuesday 20 March 2001
The idea of making music is the nearest to anything spiritual that I feel," says Ralph McTell, back touring Australia almost 25 years since the English singersongwriter first arrived here hot on the heels of his Streets of London hit single.
These days, the London based troubadour's songs plumb more complex terrain with lyrics that subtly hint at deeper meanings - even while you are absorbing the poetry of their expression. His public profile is lower, too, allowing McTell to stroll unnoticed past Lygon Street's latte loiterers. Yet a sizeable crowd awaits at Readings bookstore, where he signs copies and entertains by reciting excerpts from Angel Laughter (Heartland), the first of a twopart autobiography he has just completed.
McTell also keeps global fans uptodate through an internet diary on his website (www.folkcorp.co.uk/mctell). There, in addition to book excerpts, are details of his CDs, including the new studio recording Red Sky and recent double CD Travelling Man: The Journey, The Songs - from London concerts.
Copies of Angel Laughter are yet to arrive here in quantity but Shock Records are already distributing McTell's CDs (on his Leola label).
"I've found the writing on Red Sky is my most mature yet," says McTell. "I was really pleased with the ideas and I had the confidence to address them in a different way." One of the songs, In the Dreamtime, was first heard on Billy Connolly's World Tour Of Australia, the TV series of his friend and management colleague.
"It's not a flagwaving song," says McTell. "It shows the deep affection an outsider can have for this place. I really do love coming here. For me, it's a question of recognising my own working class - people I've known and grown up with.
"If I were to define the class to which I belong it would be upper working class, because even in our abject poverty, my mum had standards. I am totally intrigued by the Aboriginal people ... and by this business of time and replenishment. People who arrived here are like the ecology of Australia - seeds that need heat to germinate."
Subject matter has always been a serious business for the songwriter. "I just don't want to make fillers," he says. "Recently we've been rereleasing the old albums; whether they connected or not with the general public is not that important to me, because I hear the intent in the song and I know it came from a good place. I've got no regrets at all.
"I was married very young (in 1966, aged 22) and therefore couldn't write the neverending song about people falling in and out of love ... all those diatribes about imaginary exotic women. I could only write about what was real. So I would go back to childhood and look for different subject matter."
Childhood also occupies his autobiography Angel Laughter, which begins in his infancy (his recall is amazing) and ends at 15, when he became a British Army boy soldier. The final instalment, already completed but as yet untitled, covers his teens and ends with his meeting with wife-to-be Nanna, in Paris, in 1965.
Ask McTell which song he regards as his best and he replies without hesitation: "The Setting (from Bridge of Sighs) in 1986. It ends up about an old guy in an Irish pub going on about emigration, but it's the subtext that's important.
"There's always something more than just the message in what I write - except for Streets of London which was 'in your face' and written from a street perspective while I was busking in Paris.
"I just couldn't go out and write something like that today. So much has changed. People are not so compassionate. They are angry that there are still people on the streets - and so am I."
Ralph McTell performs at Dallas Brooks Hall on Thursday night, supported by Doug Ashdown.
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