RALPH, ALBERT & SYDNEY
Morning Tea with
Ralph McTell
from the Donovan Fanzine
July 2006
 

Your humble editors got to do some serious hero-worship in the conservatory of the Richmond Hotel in Boness, where Ralph talked to us about not only his own long and varied career but also Big Bill Broonzy, Joseph Spence, Woody Guthrie, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Bert Jansch, Davy Graham…..oh yes - and Donovan!

GTB: This is completely surreal for us Ralph - it's like YOU meeting Woody Guthrie!

RALPH: I tried to buy an autograph of Woody's off Ebay last week - but it turned out to be a scam. My son compared it to actual signatures of Woody's and there were really obvious discrepancies - I'm so gullible - but I just wanted to own something of his, because I used to write to him when I was a kid and he was still alive - and his wife, Marjorie sent me a photograph which she signed 'From Woody - Love Marjorie' - because he couldn't write by then.

GTB: Well you've always been one of our greatest heroes - so it's a big day for us today . The reason we got in touch with you was because our friend Andrew Morris was at Don's 59th birthday party - which you were also at - and he got a hold of a contact e-mail for Stevie, your publicist - and thanks to her, here we are. How did you end up at Don's Birthday bash?

RALPH: Well, I'll just go back to the start I think. The first time Don and I got hiked up together was at a charity concert. Every year at Christmas I would do a big concert for children's charities in London - I only stopped doing it because the bloody theatres took so much money - anyway, one year I had a series of guests lined up when someone said, 'You've never asked Donovan' - and I realised that I'd never thought to ask him. Billy Connolly was one of the guests again that year - Billy is a huge Donovan fan - so I got the two of them and we did the London Palladium together. And I thought then, Don is such a sweet guy, he's such a nice man - but nothing happened for a few years after that until one day a German promoter thought it would be fun to twin us up on a tour, so he called it 'Donovan meets Ralph McTell' or something like that and we toured all over Germany.

GTB: Was that in 1991?

RALPH: It must have been………is it that long ago????

GTB: We've got a recording of the Don part of the show from Berlin - and you join him to play Colours at the end of it.

RALPH: That's right.

GTB: Did you share the same management at any time?

RALPH: No, not at all. One of the great charms about Don is this great openness , and this belief - and you might even say this trust that he puts in people…….that don't merit it quite often. He's such a kind man - he really is. He knows his worth and he knows his talent and he knows his value - but he's very trusting.

GTB: We sometimes think he knows his own worth a bit too well. He's been doing a lot of name dropping over the past few years…..mostly The Beatles.

RALPH: Yes - I think he's a bit insecure you know.

GTB: And yet his last album Beat Café was excellent.

RALPH: Really? I haven't heard it.

GTB: It's superb - but you'd expect that of course with Danny Thompson and Jim Keltner on bass and drums.

RALPH: I'm seeing Danny at the end of this week so I'll ask him about it. I'm sure he's got an album for me….but you were asking about Don's Birthday Party…..well - I was on the point of getting angry because there were so many hangers on there - there were very few people from Don's period I thought.

GTB: Yes - seems Hazel O'Connor was there - for whatever reason!

RALPH: Well she might have been - I can't remember seeing her - but Dave Dee, Dozy and all the rest of those guys were there and they were the only faces I really recognised. There was a kind of 'This Is Your Life' thing, and whilst Don was being interviewed there was a buzz which started at the back of the room until it was a bubble of noise and no one was paying attention to what was going on onstage. I felt like giving them a smack - but then the girl who was doing the interview asked me if I'd present Don with his award from the record companies - so I did that and it was a pleasure, and we had a few words together , but it was his night and he was seeing friends and so on so I left it at that.

GTB: Gypsy Dave was there.

RALPH: Yes - I noticed him there - now maybe you guys can tell me something - maybe I'm confusing documentaries. I know that Derroll and Don were both in Don't Look Back, but was there a separate documentary where Don was travelling with Gypsy Dave?

GTB: Yes - that's A Boy Called Donovan.

RALPH: That's the one - and that's still how I see Don really - the belief in the music and all those strange Celtic myths that still permeate his work - and that's where his time is I think, and he has to constantly try and force that belief through all the modern hurly-burly and the reality thing - and that's a hard road to hoe.

GTB: There is an incredible charm about A Boy Called Donovan.

RALPH: Yes - absolutely - it was a fine thing.

GTB: One of reasons that yourself and Donovan are among our favourite artists is because you both seem to be able to write songs that can capture a moment in time perfectly - like Maginot Waltz.

RALPH: That's one of the quickest songs I ever wrote - I think sometimes I ponder too much over things, but that really came very quickly - and it's perennial, people are always asking for it. I'm always in love with the last thing I've done, but you get more complicated as you get older I think. Even though you might be striving to be profound there's an innocence - and more directness - when you write when you're younger.

GTB: Like yourself, Donovan has a boxed set coming out shortly - but there's going to be a DVD with it as well. Have you any thoughts of doing something similar?

RALPH: Well I've not had anything like the media attention visually that Don's had - and I've shied away from it - but we did film my 60th birthday concert in London recently - and that's going to be my DVD. We filmed the whole show and we hope that'll be out before Christmas. (N.B. It IS out - and Tom's got a copy!)

GTB: You had a video out previously of course - Live at Town Hall. Were you happy with the way that turned out?

RALPH: Well - I felt I needed to have something out. You know that way you think, 'Oh God my whole career's going away and there's nothing out there that shows what I do' - but we had some problems with the video as halfway through the sound engineer failed to notice that the battery was fading on the guitar and we had to cobble things together a bit…..but I'm pretty pleased with it - I think it's OK.

GTB: What about the old BBC TV show from the 70's - The Camera and the Song?

RALPH: Well I never actually appeared in it - they only had the music.

GTB: Do you own a copy of that? It's completely different versions of the songs than those which appeared on the albums.

RALPH: Yes - that's right - and I don't think I do have a copy.

GTB: It was a great series.

RALPH: Yes - Alex Glasgow was one - and Jake Thackery……

GTB: ….Dory Previn - Buffy St. Marie….it was an astonishing series - but yours was superb, it really captured that period in your career.

RALPH: Did we do Make It Go Round at the end?

GTB: Yes - and that didn't appear anywhere else. That would maybe be a good one to put on your boxset.

RALPH: That's a good thought. I'd forgotten all about it - I'll mention that one.

GTB: We've got a pristine copy of the whole show - we'll send it down to you on a DVD.

RALPH: That would be great. I remember thinking the idea was great, but at that time my manager wasn't thrilled - he said 'You're not going to be in it' - but they actually did put a picture of me in it right at the end.

GTB: It's like a series of early song videos. The sequence for Barges is particularly magnificent.

RALPH: That's right - and I was terribly nervous about how this was going to work out, but it did go very well - and I'm glad it exists. I've got tons and tons of stuff and I just haven't the patience to weed through all the video clips. There are some fantastic outtakes from Tickle On The Tum when I had Billy Connolly and all of the guests - sadly I can't find them - my system isn't very good.

GTB: You need an archivist - even Donovan has an archivist!

RALPH: There's a lot of alternate takes and stuff like that for the boxset - but it's always very sobering, daunting even, to hear your whole career concertinad into 4 CD's.

GTB: You once made an album of cover versions that didn't see the light of day.

RALPH: I did! They were mixed up with some of my own - and two of them are going to be on this boxset. One of them is Marie by Randy Newman, which I think is one of the most exquisite love songs, and the other one's called Ladies Love Outlaws - which is not in my opinion a great song, but we had James Burton playing guitar on it - so we got to have Elvis's guitar player on the boxset! I was only one link away from Elvis through James. But I didn't have many musical experiments - Don's always been prepared to have a go with other musicians and use brass and stuff. I've always been a bit more conservative I think and stayed with the guitar, picking wise - and felt that the guitar, at it's best, has everything I need for my songs - I've even had to use a flat pick occasionally just to pick the rhythm up.

GTB: Yes - we noticed you were using the flat pick a lot during last night's concert.

RALPH: More than I have for years - it's to inject more rhythmic pace into the set, otherwise everything is like a classical tempo - and you need a bit more energy - which I used to get from the rags and stuff.

GTB: You're just so natural on the stage.

RALPH: I try not to be effected because to coin a phrase, you do 'cease to be promising' after a certain age

GTB: And the two new songs were excellent.

RALPH: Thanks - I thought I'd do a 'top and a tail' - and one of the ways I sign off on my letters is 'I'll see you somewhere down the road', because I'm on the road so much - and I thought that was a nice line for a song, so I worked it in and I'm going to play it a la Jesse Fuller - I've got a hi hat cymbal and a bass drum and a 12 string guitar and a rack and a kazoo and I'm going to try and work that in at the end of the show. I never got to see Jesse Fuller but I just love his music - I had already recorded one of his more obscure tracks, Fables Ain't Nothin' But Doggone Lies,.

GTB: We were just saying that you had never recorded an album of traditional music.

RALPH: Well I'm going to. I love the traditional music of all our islands - Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales , but I suppose I'm viewed pretty much as an English songwriter and I'm going to try and do an English album, and I wouldn't be ashamed or embarrassed to do Scarborough Fair and Spencer the Rover and stuff like that.

GTB: Well you've just brought it mind that you actually already did Scarborough Fair…….on the album that we won't mention.

RALPH: (laughs) Yes I did.

GTB: And you've even sung Flower of Scotland - on Billy Connolly's Musical Tour of Scotland - although that's not strictly a traditional song as it was written by Roy Williamson of The Corries.

RALPH: Yes - I did that too - I sang 'Flower' instead of 'Flo'er' - got it all wrong….

GTB: Bloody Sassenach!

RALPH: (laughs) But I did enjoy doing that, and we tried a technique in the studio which I've gone back to. We sang a track called The Tangle of the Isles and we put the mic in the control box and fed the voice back to me with a little bit of reverb on it and it was so much better than working with cans - I can't work with cans - I mean Don's got great pitch, whenever he sings he's always right on the money, but I sing a bit sharp with headphones on - working with speakers was a bit of a breakthrough - and that happened on that album with Billy………….but we're talking about ME too much - we're supposed to be talking about Don!

GTB: Not at all! This is exactly how we thought things might go!

RALPH: I'll tell you something you might not know. In 1965 I had been playing in a bluegrass band called The Hickory Nuts. I was just a kid and we had great fun - and there is a tape of them somewhere - but I had just split up with my girlfriend of that time and so I drifted off and went to Paris; and while I was in Paris I was playing on the streets with this other guy - just one or two numbers, because I'm not that outgoing and I didn't really enjoy it - but it fed me and I started to come through the miasma that I was in - and we started to play Donovan's Catch The Wind - it must have been a hit that year…..

GTB: That's right.

RALPH:……well I'll be honest - me and my mate used to take the mickey a bit, because Don was foisted on us by the media and many of us would much rather have seen Bert Jansch in that position - but he'd never have been able to do it because he wasn't able to get involved in media and publicity. He was the purest, most natural talent - and in my opinion the most gifted and important of all the musicians of my generation. Bert IS The Man.

GTB: Bert's another of our absolute heroes.

RALPH: He's absolutely The Man for me - and the apocryphal story is that that Jo Lustig, who was looking after Bert at the time, was approached to see if Bert would go down the more commercial route - but I know Bert wouldn't have had anything to do with that. So when Don came on with his little hat and his roll neck sweater he was a kind of amalgam of The Clancy Brothers and Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie with his This Guitar Kills instead of This Guitar Kills Fascists - and I have to be honest, there was a lot of resentment from those of us who had already been playing that music for some years. But when I heard that song I could hear it was a man desperately struggling to make poetry….'Catch the Wind', like 'Blowin in the Wind' - Don has a lot of those threads; if you look close you'll see that he's been influenced by someone else - and there's a sort of unguarded naivety and purity about the man………

GTB: Yes - that's what draws you in.

RALPH: ……and yet it's probably the thing that Don would least like to be known for; he would like to be windswept and interesting and dark and mysterious - he's not any of those things - but he has that purity. Anyway, we started singing this song - 'In the chilly hours and minutes of uncertainly…' on the street and natural harmonies developed between us - and we were wicked! We had it nailed! It was really good - and the crowd really liked it and it really worked for us. And I also think it was a beautifully produced record. Was it Mickey Most?

GTB: Terry Eden and Geoff Stephens.

RALPH: I think they recorded one of Clive Palmer's albums. I'm going to be appearing on an album of people doing cover versions of Clive's songs - that's coming out soon too - I recorded it with John Renbourn in 1981.

GTB: And Davy Graham's making a comeback as well.

RALPH: Dear Davy!

GTB: We saw him in concert with Bert in Edinburgh two weeks ago.

RALPH: And how was he?

GTB: ….nervous. He played 6 tracks. He was a bit ring rusty - but it was still there - it was still Davy.

RALPH: I think the world of Davy. - I've got to write something about him at some point. My experience of Davy goes way back to Riff Mountain. I was in 'The Olive Tree' in 1963 or 1964 when he first played that DADGAD tuning. He came down to Croyden and he played a little club we had on Sunday afternoons - and he had it all then, he had this style and grace……there would be none of us without Davy. And have you heard that wonderful 'After Hours at Hull University' CD. There's an extraordinary version of Broonzy's Hey Hey on there.

GTB: And an astonishing 10 minute version of She Moved Through The Bizarre.

At this point Ralph's road manager, Donard, came in to say 'time's up'.

RALPH: Well it's been a real pleasure talking to you guys. I do hope it's been of interest to you. I'm absolutely delighted to have met you, because your knowledge is so deep.

GTB: Ralph, we can't thank you enough - it's been the highlight of our decade!


Ralph with legendary 60's icon Davy Graham (from Davy's personal collection )

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