RALPH, ALBERT & SYDNEY
Ralph McTell and Folk
Festivals.
An Interview with Ralph McTell - August
2004
... for the Ralph, Albert &
Sydney Web Site
by Michael Cohen
This summer Ralph plays two of our best known Folk
Festivals namely Cambridge and Sidmouth. Indeed by the time this reaches you
they will have been done and dusted. He has been part of this scene for over 35
years and I was fascinated to know how he viewed the festivals knowing how much
importance he attaches to his set and sound. Does he love them or hate them?
Does he approach them with dread or anticipation?
Firstly I asked Ralph about his first appearance at
Cambridge and whether he was in at the beginning of Cambridge
"I believe I am the most booked guest or at least I was at one point- I don't know if that is still the case. My first appearance was in 1969 and it was one of the markers in my career actually. I'd made a couple of albums and so on but I was playing folk clubs at that point but I ended up doing Cambridge. It was probably the biggest audience I had ever played to and I carried my usual nerves and everything to the stage and sat down to play because I used to to have to sit down to stop my legs from shaking. And I got my way through on a probably a very moderate PA system and so on and it got to me finishing up with my latest songs from Spiral Staircase-that was the album I had out at the time- and I started to play Streets of London and of course the entire place started to sing it. Of course unbeknownst to me it had been picked up by every folk club in the country. Apparently Chris While ( of Chris While & Julie Matthews) says that at her folk club they had to take turns to sing it each week and she got to sing it about once every four weeks! It was the song. So everybody knew it and I started singing it and everybody joined in and it almost overwhelmed me, I mean I was very very moved by it and could probably hardly get through it, but I did and of course the reaction was sensational really. The fact I had got such an enormous response to it maybe helped to consolidate the opinion that maybe they had picked the right boy for the job at that time. I became friends with Ken Wollard life long really and we all miss him terribly-Fireman Ken who started it off and was instrumental in keeping it going and it had a very special sort of atmosphere while he was running it.
I think it was because he was an old lefty socialist sort of guy and he came at it from the true principals of folk music. It is more than that now but it was lovely at the time and it was very special for me."
I remember seeing you in 1994 shortly after Ken died- have you done it since?
"You know I couldn't tell you chapter and verse on that I know that the last time I did it Eddie said to me Ralph we won't book you any more just tell me when you want to come! So I thought well there are lot of new things happening and it is my 60th year this year I think I would like to do Cambridge again to put the marker on it for myself. I asked if I could play there and they said of course."
How many sets are you doing?
"I only like to do one in case they rumble me!"
So what about the whole thing about festivals with respect to sound and presentation. Do you find it a bit rough and ready?
"I loathe that aspect of it to be honest with you. I am such a stickler as you have pointed out. I hate the fact that you just virtually get a line check-a line check means they tap the end of your jack lead and tap the microphone and you are just supposed to get out there and do it. I do not like that aspect of it at all and the monitoring is always up the creek and the guitar is never loud enough oh man my hands are beginning to sweat at the thought of it cause it is always the same. (Ralph laughs)
And what people regard as the true essence of the folk scene-it really relies on less introspective performers than myself although I've got better-that's how the folk scene was-you got up with the guitar and your personality and you did it with or without a mike, with two mikes, with one mike through a dodgy speaker-it didn't make any difference-some of them didn't even change their strings. Now it has become more refined-you worry about your EQ settings, your string sound, have you got the right capo, does your hair look right have you got the right shoes are your flies done up….! I was with Bert Jansch yesterday and we were talking about it and he goes through murders as well-still does-and he doesn't like playing in daylight-and I don't either-I'd rather be in the night time when I can feel you out there rather than see you all."
As an aside I was listening to an old live Randy Newman recording and he says "Oh the lights have just gone up- I must be the ugliest person here and then he looks around and says…maybe not!"
"Oh I love that-he's brilliant isn't he? He is the best-the best!"
Do you change your material for festival concerts?
"Well I do. The first thing anyone has to remember when going to a festival most of the audience hasn't come to see you. It is quite sobering really-you make that assumption-you are out there on your mettle. You've got to please the people who know your material, impress those who think they don't like you, and win over a few who maybe a bit indifferent. It is a big challenge and I defy anyone not to be aware of that. The ones who always succeed at festivals are the ones that play the loudest, the fastest, the happiest because it brings everyone together under one umbrella. I used to think it was a cheap shot and I was slightly envious of the people with that sort of personality who could do it but I have never hankered after playing at any festival ever. I have always found it difficult and I think 90% of the singer songwriter people would find it difficult. At my own shows one is not necessarily nervous but anticipating but you know that most of the people know at least a few songs and you don't have to bellow to attract. And then there's the guy who has too much to drink and fallen asleep in the sun and wakes up disorientated and starts hooting for whatever it is……"
Do you do more ragtime pieces or flat picking or do you still do your quite finger style pieces or is that not an issue?
"No it's very much an issue. One of the things you cannot do at a festival unless you have genius of a sound man-you cannot just switch in to what you normally would do. The engineer normally won't know how to get your sound-most engineers see a guitar and think it is something you spank you know not something you pick. It may be different at folk festivals but then they are at the mercy of whatever bloody pick up system you have got inside the guitar. They might have too much gain they might not have enough gain and a lot of engineers mix them far too brightly because they think you are playing a lead. They don't realise a guitar is a full orchestra on its own if it is properly miked up. If they don't know you they will not know if you are digging in to make more volume or if it is too loud- are you ripping your nails out? Donard is coming with me and he knows what I will expect and because he has to get used to the sound desk the EQ won't be to Donard's liking, he'll have no chance to change everything because he works for at least half an hour before he calls me out on stage to begin my sound check. He tunes the PA to the room and then I go out so he won't have any chance to do that-so he will be changing the sound during my first couple of numbers. So to come back to your original question I will be playing a lot more with a flat pick because I will have to and then when I am comfortable and I know it is alright then I can try some finger picking things."
Do you remember the Isle of Wight Festival the year after Cambridge? I guess that more of a rock/pop festival than a folk festival?
"It was billed as a pop festival but if anyone was really aware at that time there may have been some pop bands but it had much stronger and heavier political overtones than that. It was an extraordinary event."
Were you aware of that at the time?
"I was aware of trouble but we just put it down to freebies-like there was a kind of hippie movement that said all music should be free and there were a lot of people who thought that was a good maxim. But there was far more going on- I mean music was viewed by some activists as the salvation of our generation and that it was much more important and much more serious than merely happy clappy music in the fields you know. I saw a documentary a little while ago and I was utterly stunned by the intellectualising and the articulate nature of the people being interviewed. Not so much the musicians but if you were there at the time you would have realised that even Hendrix was speaking a language that was part of the change. It was great rock and roll and great bluesy guitar but there was deeper pitch in there, at least Jimi I think believed it, and those of us who were lucky enough to see and hear him would have said there was. And you had people like Joni Mitchell there and the Moody Blues slightly overblown but nevertheless considered they were part of it and it was a very important festival. I went out there and did 45 minutes, I believe, it was all over quicker than the first half of a Wembley Cup Final. I remember virtually nothing and I came off stage but I had a fantastic ovation and I mean I was not aware of anyone listening to me when I was out there because it is like looking at the sea when there are that many people."
Does any footage of your set exist ?
"No I don't think I was considered worthy of camera work, and I think Jo bless him got me on because Pentangle were booked and he used that muscle to get me on. I did my set in bright sunshine and surprised everybody including myself by how well it went down because I didn't have much of a repertoire in depth. I was playing things from You Well Meaning Brought Me Here and few bits of ragtime guitar and I got a tremendous ovation and it was really good. There are lots of photographs and one of them turned up recently on a package compilation and a friend of mine said to me I'm sure this is you sitting on stage at the Isle of Wight and of course it was -but back view. The lovely thing is the red shirt I'm wearing on stage is one I swapped for a set of guitar strings in Milan in 1965! I considered it my lucky shirt-there is some good pictures of that event with me banging away on my old Gibson."
You have still got the shirt I assume?
"No- I couldn't get it on my leg now I don't think!"
You are doing Sidmouth this year Ralph- you must have done this festival a few times?
"Yes I have. I've always thought it would be better to play it with a band and I've only done a couple of solo things there and I have loved it. Sidmouth Festival is joyous because it involves the whole town, the sea and its fish and chips, Morris Dancing, ice cream, beer and lovely park and I hope you get to see one before it wraps up."
I was reading it is in some financial trouble regarding council backing?
"It is this Britishness that I detest and deplore in that the towns people don't think they need the festival because they have the holiday makers and why should they put anything into it. It is that real mean mindedness you know that just drives me up the wall. They are happy to take the money but when they asked to cough up a little bit they won't do it-and it is really that bloody little England small mindedness that drives me up the wall. Because they do benefit-there never is any trouble-just the usual-music fills the streets and I really do enjoy it. I would go even if I wasn't playing."
Do you like to go and listen to other people then?
"Oh I do yeah- I like the sessions going on in the pubs I watch the Morris Dancers and the George Formby impersonators on the sea front and the clog dancers and banjo pickers."
Would you sit and join sessions informally?
"I can't do that really because I always feel two things. First of all it looks like I'm sticking my elbows out and want people to look at me when the opposite is absolutely true. And if I do sit down to play it is only a matter of time before someone asks me to play something of mine and I just don't like that so I don't take the guitar out. It is just my way I mean there are certain people I know who drive me nuts because they are always crashing in on other people's sessions when they should sit down… there is a cue of youngsters want to play and do their stuff….I'm not good enough you know what Mike I can't even play the Beatles songbook man!"
As an aside Ralph what do you play if you are sitting down relaxing with a be and you pick up your guitar would you play a Buddy Holly number or Paul McCartney song-do you do that sort of stuff much?
"No. I play ragtime I just try to get better at finger picking."
So that's how you would spend your time chilling out with guitar?
"I do man. I sit down and I am noodling away and I am looking for two string chords that lead me some where and I am still finding them thankfully and playing little bits and saying to Nana hey what do you think about this bit and I play a little bit to her
And then sometimes I just have an idea of words and get a tune for it and even that will become dictated by whether there is a bit of finger style that can go in there. But I am trying to think that on every album from now on there has got to be at least two flat picked numbers because they are so much easier to get across than finger style numbers. They are so much easier. I mean you write one flat pick number and every reviewer mentions it. It's like painting my numbers- it is so basic. People feel the rhythm and they respond and it drives you up the wall because my best songs are nearly all finger pick songs but you know they notice the rhythmic stuff and that is all there is to it."
Maybe it is because emotionally they are harder songs?
"They tend to I mean the guitar tends to dictate that if you are beading rhythm on a guitar it gives you more of an aggressive feel so the song approach tends to me more aggressive and people say "Oh I love the passion of that song" and I have had that said to me a few times and I think Christ there is more passion in After Rain but you are using in the word in a different way you are mistaking perspiration for inspiration or something you know what I mean. It's easy to fool people.
No one has time to listen man-they hear things but they don't have time to listen that is the sad thing."
You are doing a programme on the radio about Sidmouth?
"I have done the commentary already-it was written by Nick Barraclough- it's pretty Ralph like but it is rather perfunctory. The BBC has a way of teaching their writers to get everything done in very short stabby sound bitey type sentences. The master is the John Peel school where he writes everything down and he does not wing a thing he reads every single line and it works very well. I would have preferred to have spoken my own words but Nick is very good and very articulate and I think it works okay and it sounds like a very good programme. A rather sweet family orientated programme which I suppose Sidmouth is when compared to Cambridge."
I remember hearing about Richard Thompson who overslept and had a mad dash up to Cambridge for North London and made it just on time. Tell me your worst festival experience.
"I have never been entirely happy with any of them for the reasons I have already stated. I do remember doing the Bardsley Festival in Lincolnshire with Martin Carthy, Fairport, Sandy Denny, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, James Taylor, The Byrds…it was a wonderful bill and I had rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed with my bass player Stevie Bonnett who played bass on the You Well Meaning album in fact he played all over it bless him, but his bottle went at the last minute and I had to go on my own so that was kind of unnerving but in the end it paid off and didn't really harm me. I think one of the worst must have been the Crumlin Festival in Yorkshire which had the land slip and the flood and no one got paid and the organizer wandered off into the night! It was a nightmare-there is going to be a book written about it. The promoter apparently had some sort of a brainstorm and went wandering off on the moors. He never intended to pay anyone-he wrote me a begging letter and poor Jo Lustig who was my manager stood at the gate and got my money in so he got my fee from the people coming in, and he got Fairport's fee and people kept asking him to do that but Fairport decided they would drink their way out of it and people raided the bar and got completely off their faces. And this guy wrote to me and asked me for my money back because he said he was going bankrupt so I sent my fee back-I was the only person who did and Jo went absolutely ape shit at me. That was sort of the beginning of the cracks in the beautiful dream up to then we thought we were part of something that was changing the world but then it came down to pounds shillings and pence and people were prepared to run away from their obligations."
What about festivals abroad-are they very different?
"I've played all over the place-Germany, Denmark, France, Spain…I think they are different. Festivals have been largely hijacked by the Celtic fiddle and if you are a fan you'd love it and if you are not and you don't play the fiddle there ain't a lot you can do. Cambridge used to be full of blue grass banjo players clanking away but it has also been hijacked by fiddle players and it gets to me a little at the end.
I love the spirit of the festivals and I realise the necessity of doing them. It is a great showcase to get your music out to a wider audience. But I don't find them easy and I am happier once I have played. However I can tell you when you go down well it is one of the most wonderful feelings. We all pretend we don't care but when they stand up at the end of an evening and you've reached them it makes you feel good."
Thanks Ralph for that very illuminating interview. Alas work pressures mean I cannot make any of your festival appearances this year but I am looking forward to catching you on Radio 2 and BBC 4 in the coming weeks. Of course we all know that Ralph's sound deserves the best acoustics that money can buy so that is why we shall be flocking to London's Royal Festival Hall for Ralph's 60th birthday bash on Friday 26th November 2004. Be there or be square!
Mike Cohen
Bristol. 10th August 2004.