RALPH, ALBERT & SYDNEY
Interview with Ralph McTell
May 2003
by Michael Cohen

I was thrilled when Ralph suggested I do another interview with him for his website to discuss the second part of his autobiography Summer Lightning. I have been a big fan of Ralph, his words, and music since I first saw him in concert at Imperial College London in 1973. I was 18 at the time and can never forget the impact that his singing and playing had on me that September evening. I had just started playing the guitar and was working through a Bob Dylan songbook. Through Ralph I discovered a wonderful world of music and songs and will always be eternally grateful to him for that. I imagine many people know only know Ralph McTell as a singer/songwriter and would be unaware of his extraordinary talent as a writer of wonderful poems and imaginative prose. He also has an amazing sense of humour and is a natural story teller. This all emerges in the two volumes of his autobiography.
This interview took place in May 2003. We mainly spoke about Summer Lightning but also got diverted along the way and ended up chatting about all sorts of things.
Mike Cohen, Bristol September 2003

It seems a while since the launch of the book at The Queen Elizabeth Hall last December. I remember you saying at the time it had been quite tough writing the book from the emotional point of view. You also thought that prospective readers needed to view it with some care. How do you feel about the book now and what has the feedback been like?

" The first thing that needs to be said is that my publishing company, Heartland, have decided to wind up their publishing ideas. I think Jeff, one partner, is thinking of publishing a music magazine which is the equivalent of jumping off Brighton Pier with a millstone round your leg-there is no room for Nick in that.

In terms of publicity the book has had very little however the book from its own sake has had some incredible reviews which is lovely. I have had three really great reviews.

None of the majors because getting a book reviewed by a major newspaper is about who you know apparently so there is not much chance of that happening. The BBC however have given it a wonderful and so have a Welsh arts magazine. Apparently the local Croydon paper has given it a great review so that is all very well!

You know when you write about such an intense period in your past you are bound to stir up ghosts and stir up old emotions. The emotions do not get numb with age.

Writing about exactly what happened when you think back to a time you kind of get a nice feeling or a sad feeling, but when you write and try to faithfully get down what was going on you are a bit sore at the end of it you know. But again I was like that writing about when my Dad went you know. I just felt it was necessary to fill in some of the gaps as I said to you before with my childhood memories that a lot of people would think that someone who writes what were described as "pleasant songs"-there was a great deal of pain that I went through to get to that point when I wrote those poems. I was very hurt when people didn't get the extra meanings to them or what was underneath it all.

Thankfully some of those early songs are still revealing themselves to new listeners. I am glad they stand the test of time and I can't be bothered writing anything that I don't think is worth writing down. I don't write for the sake of it- I don't have that need and the book was very much like that. I felt these are the details that remain with me in clarity so they must mean something to the whole picture."

Both books describe several traumatic events such as the ending of relationships and your father walking out on the family. It strikes me that at times of great emotional trauma we alerted to feelings that stay with us forever. Were these emotions at the forefront of your mind as you wrote the book?

" Well I think you are absolutely right that trauma sharpens your memory but there are two ways of dealing with that. I saw a very moving account from two men who had experienced the horrors of the holocaust. One had successfully blotted it out of his mind and lived a happy life. The other lived it nightly and was a nervous wreck.

So yes trauma does sharpen your memory and the moment that things that happened around you-for example I'm quite wary about glass that is unprotected for obvious reasons of course when I look back. But the things like textures, feel, sound and smell are…..I didn't think there was anything special about "je recherchais de temps perdue" as an idea, as it happens to me on a daily basis. Smell, scent, taste, texture-I can remember the feel of my old army blanket on my bed, the feel of the dressing gown on my Mum's eiderdown, all those sort of things. The feel of the wallpaper, the taste of the mould on the wall. Millions of things-I always assumed everyone else did but I don't thinks so now"

Did it take a while to settle on the title Summer Lightning?

" A very long time and it wasn't my idea. It was actually Nick who came up with Angel Laughter. Apparently there are six books called Summer Lightning. One of them is by PG Wodhouse and then he was told there were four books called Summer Lightning and he said he wanted his to be the best of the four so I'm in good company! In the end I gave into it because it was two words like Angel Laughter and the lighter parts of the book do reflect on teenage summers anyway when we were incredibly active and busy and travelling and it's all over in a flash and it's a reference to a song. So there did seem to be some poetry and I managed to squeeze the title into the last paragraph of the book- I don't know if you spotted it- I called it Summer Lightening"

I enjoyed reading about your college life and I was aware of some discomfort you had with the kids who came from perhaps more privileged backgrounds than yourself? I also wonder how you felt about this when you toured the university concert circuit and must have been reintroduced to similar folk

" Reading the book I am the most class conscious writer I have read in years! I mean I was upper working class rather than middle class. I do see British society grouped into six distinct groups rather than three-there is working class, upper working class, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class, and upper class, and we were upper working class. In other words my Mum was literate and she read to us. As children we were encouraged to look at books, we had a sense of manners and propriety. We had a sense of decency and there were morals involved. There was a bit of Sunday School which made us different to the working class people and I was aware that we were slightly different. We were bereft of money and the things that that brought me and I was terribly –well put it this way- I nursed a swelling resentment to children who had pennies to spend when I had none because I knew there was no one I could ask- I certainly never asked my mother for a penny because I knew she would not have been able to and it would have been upsetting. So when I went to college and saw what I perceived as pretty middle class idiots with loads of dosh and cars to drive, you know, and also being brash enough to ask the prettiest girls out I was resentful of them too. It was only later that I realised that I would probably be better off identifying with the working classes.

I can go on from that by saying that people who were in a different station from me and above me were far broader in their acceptance of me and the other classes. They were not patronising and I have a great regard for the kindness I was shown now. It was just a silly prejudicial thing-and I'm still aware of it. I'm much more broader in my understanding now but I am still aware of what social grouping people come from- I can't help it."

Ralph, you spent time doing various jobs before heading out on the road and in many ways that was your further education in life. Would you recommend this course of action to youngsters now embarking on their adult lives?

" It depends on the youngster. The thing is for me there was no one to turn to and a shiver used to run through me on many occasions. I had no money-I had no means of getting money unless I played out on the street. And looking back that took an enormous amount of courage although I didn't perceive it that way-in fact on the contrary-I felt quite chicken most of the time-I was scared most of the time. One of the girls wrote to me and said I cannot believe how much deprivation you put yourself through and I think that is part of needing to see that side life. I had that deprivation thrust upon me as a child but did not feel particularly deprived as I think I made clear in the first book. I was deprived of a Dad and I felt that but did not feel we were hungry-we just did not have an appetite. I didn't think we were cold-we just used to run about a lot. I didn't think we missed out on anything much. Our lives were fully and busy. The deprivation of going without food and feeling I was heading on a road that would give me a greater understanding- I honestly believed that was in my mind. And when I'd meet someone on the road who'd just go up to people and say "I have no money-please give me some money for a cup of tea"-they used to call it conning- and say "I've conned a tanner or I conned a couple of bob from a geezer"-I'd think you are missing the spirit of the thing-that is not what you are supposed to do-you are supposed to get a job as a washer-upper or paint a house or tidy the garden or play the guitar or do something. The currency meant-there was some Calvinist/Protestant thing about having to work for it as well. That was important-that was part of the Woody Guthrie thing-my leftward leanings."

Would you call this beatnik lifestyle a reaction to some of your army experience?

" Well to come out of the army and realise that there was another way but that sooner or later you would not be able to make your parents happy. You could please them occasionally but they would never accept that this was the way to go. It was sort of cutting the chord in one way although I scurried home every now and then as I could go to bed in my own old bed and that sort of thing until I finally cut loose at around the age of twenty.

Almost before I joined the army I had this romance of the road and my father was unable to settle. He slept rough in the woods and stuff like that. He had a dog and he had a gun. He bought the dog once to my mother once with a snake bite from an adder for my Mum to fix up and I used to think oh I'm like him. He joined the army at fifteen too, and I wasn't aware of joining the army at fifteen because my Dad did, he just wanted to get away. I was ten years old when a teacher read us a poem which I had not seen again until last week. It begins " Whilst perched high up upon my office stool I watched a cool and lucky carter…" This guy is perched on his office stool somewhere in Victorian or Edwardian London-a man hauling a block of ice off the back of a cart and all of a sudden he is transported to a pool and is swimming with the fishes and he is escaping from this dreadful job. A shiver ran through me at that point and I knew aged ten years old that I could never ever be working in an office. I could never be going into the same place every day and it was one of those influential things. The army promised to be a life of adventure. It would make me a braver boy than I was, it would make me courageous which I never felt I was. Leaving it and discovering music and jazz and a belief that hidden beneath the face of Van Gogh's paintings, beneath Toulouse Lautrec, beneath Manet and beneath Ornette Coleman and Art Blakey and all the jazz players was the meaning of real human life. The secret of it all was in the art rather than in religion or political dogma. The real secret of life perceived as the real reason is humanity. These were the artists that had found it and it presented an alternative and I didn't know how to get into it but by wearing the clothes and strumming the guitar must be the beginning of an entrée into it."

These days a lot of youngsters are going for further education and leaving university with considerable debt due to the government's policy regarding grants. Do you have a view on that?

" Appalling. I must say that in the sixties when I went round to universities for the first time I was just a little older than most of the students but I did a lot of university work and was appalled at some of the layabouts and people who were taking advantage of the system, getting grants and dropping out. But actually it was preferable to what is happening now. University isn't just about streaming for academia and qualifications, it is a microcosm of human life where you intermingle in a fairly controlled environment and learn how to get on with life. It is a place to meet girls, meet boys, let off steam, to find out about arts and meet other people. I think that society ought to be able to afford to write this into a basic human right. My policy is: a safe passage into the world: education as a right: dignity at the point of exit. It is a basic socialist thing. I think any civilised society ought to be able to offer that it shouldn't be refused on the grounds of budget. People should be prepared to pay for that, especially for those less fortunate."

You have written frankly about your experiences with dope and other illicit substances. Reading the book I'd imagine some fans would have identified with those experiences but many would have not. You wrote about Tubs who succumbed as a result of heroin abuse. What do you think about the escalation theory regarding drug misuse? Secondly as a parent how did you handle your children with respect to drug experimentation as they grew up?

" First of all I do not subscribe to the progression theory regarding drugs. I do subscribe to the theory that some people-and Tubs was one of them- would have done anything to get out of his brain. And it was not that he was in pain-he was seeker of thrills. Strangely, with Tubs in particular, and the reason I went into him in detail was that he was the closest to me but it got a lot worse before it got better before he died eventually-and that wasn't directly due to drugs. But everything that happens to someone that has been using smack is related to smack. I don't know anyone that has fully recovered from it. Something happens to your perception or your mindset or something. Tubs would be one of those kids who would bubble coal gas through milk on the gas stove or he would have tried cooking banana skins or take poison berries to see how high he could have got, or mushrooms or anything else. He had a kind of wish to control his emotions and the needle was the perfect way for him so he could play with it. It was a nightmare watching him and it used to really piss me off and I couldn't get anywhere because I cared for him.

99% of everyone I have known who has smoked has only ever smoked and my little flirtation with dope-it made my free ranging thoughts so cosmic that they scared the shit out of me! Billy's (Connolly) the same-if we have a draw and smoke a little dope the cosmic possibilities are so vast I just get terrified and it has got worse for me not better. So my perfect drug is alcohol and I probably overuse that but I'm not interested in anything else.

And with my own children- I said to them: "I suppose there is no point in me telling you not to because I dare say you will but I hope if things get out of hand you will let me know." I've said to them do you smoke-they say they don't. They don't smoke cigarettes either but I had made a deal with them. If they didn't smoke until they were seventeen I would buy them their first car! The first thing my youngest said is what kind of car?! I said anything that's got four wheels so we bought them a £250 mini and they learnt how to change a clutch and kept it on the road. Sam took up smoking cigarettes later. They've all smoked dope and rejected it."

I believe you have recorded 'As Far As I can Tel'? Does the poem close a door on the past and move onto "what we are coming to" Is that how you view it?

" I think I do because this is going to be the only autobiographical work I intend to do. I call the poem time, distance, and memory- which are the three elements in it. The first line becomes the last line-it shifts one line up in each verse, I don't know if you've noticed it? I set myself a discipline because I think that really sharpens your focus to make a discipline in the line scheme. Now you've got to make sense to it all-As Far As I Can Tell-because it will rhyme first with line two, then line three-you know what I mean? It is the way time and distance can affect memory-honesty is another element in it as well. It took sometime to do until it was right-I had a hard time with the last couple of lines. The mark of the sun moving round and the sound of this bell and the rest of it. It got a bit Dylan Thomas- a bit garbled there, but I believe anyone who would have read the book and knew it was by me would understand it."

 The other major work in the book is 'Aramanthus Caudatus'. I am fascinated by your interest in the sea and water because they feature a lot in your poems and songs. The ebb and flow of the tide and your relationship with Gill. The 'No Grown Man's Land' also comes to mind. Can you expand on this?

" I think it goes right back to Genesis 1:20 doesn't it? Without water there is no life. I don't know why, I am not ware of this but now that you've asked me when old Reverend Bustin said read chapter 1 verse 20 you will see that the bible does accurately state that life began in the water as an amoeba or virtually that. I am fascinated by the cycles of the moon and a woman's menstrual cycle-the time and tide-the position of the moon. The fact that lunatics were believed to be affected by the moon which affects the tide. Metaphysically there is some sort of rhythm we have lost touch with that may have been there in the past. Just like a seed knows when it is time to open the human body would have been more in tune to elemental things.

That sounds very hippy and I'm not a hippy but there is a fascination. I stand and watch the energy of the sea coming in and I watch my sons ride on the waves and my boys surf and I know how terrifying that is and I know that sea represents distance between people. I know that Dylan's adventure on the boating lake in the park became the estuary that led to the open sea and the Atlantic which took him away from his little pond where he could have been a big frog instead of a big dead star poet. Water is awesome. I used it again in my Mum's poem about water and it frightens me. Yeah- I've never really written a song just about the water but water creeps in a lot."

 One of the focal points in the book was the earth shattering discovery of your smashed guitar on the way to Greece. Heron Song arose form that and birds too feature a lot in your writing. Where does that come from?

" I was down in Mevagissey recently watching the seagulls flying overhead and I said who was it who said these are really the souls of the departed-you know the white shapes whirling about and I thought of Chagal and one of those paintings. Lots of people are fascinated by birds-they have flight-flight from something-massive migration in time again with an elemental magnetism. How they know north from south, east and west-that effortless floating on the wings, I don't know, they just fascinate me. "Like a bird set free from the chains of the night"-I just realised that-this is probably a reference to the way they used to catch pheasants by blinding one and letting it call to attract others-a dreadful thing."

 I have loved listening to A Feather Fell which you dedicated to the late Derrol Adams. The event has been engraved on your memory for ever as you sing in the song and beautifully recount in the book. Has anything like that happened since and if you could meet another hero, dead or alive, who would it be and what would you like to tell them?

" What a question. I'd like to say hello to Bob and I'd like to say "Bob, thank you"

Does Bob know you?

" Nah"

Has Bob heard 'Zimmerman Blues'?

"Nah-I doubt it. Someone told me he had but I also heard that Springsteen sung Streets Of London but no one has ever come up with a copy although somebody heard it in New Zealand.

I am so grateful to Bob for all sorts of things and that fabulous book you gave me Down the Highway is the best book about Bob I've ever read.

Were you disappointed by him at all when reading the parts about stealing other peoples records and so on?

"Oh he's a despicable horrible person but he has feet of clay. There are things in there about him which reveal his ordinary human failings. I loved that about Dylan Thomas and I love that about Bob. I think there is probably quite a hard side to him which is disappointing perhaps but there must be mitigating circumstances-the man is such a genius. I was fascinated by the fact he didn't always keep himself clean- the other thing that I love is that the mystery of music which first attracted me to him still alludes him. You may think what are you talking about Ralph-you wonder when Bob says something-no the mystery of what music is still alludes Bob. He does albums in styles hoping that what it is all about will be revealed to him. It is not the way it works Bob! I keep wanting to tell him. He keeps wanting to play lead guitar-he'll never be a lead guitarist-he doesn't think that way, and he keeps on trying.

I love his adventure. I'm sorry he still seems to be deeply unhappy after it all. But you read the book and think perhaps there is some Karma in all this perhaps-I don't know. I'm grateful for all the things he brought to us and the freedom to write and express yourself in a more meaningful way. It is all down to him."

You seemed to be enjoying yourself with the lads at The Half Moon recently singing 'Zimmerman Blues' and 'Like a Rolling Stone'

" The thing is if I was a strummer I'd have a band. But when my guitar parts get buried in a band-when you get up there and no one can hear-I hate that. I hate bashing out my tunes and I when I do people say that's too complicated and the band have to learn them and then it doesn't go right and recording sessions always sound to me like…. I had a few that flowed on Red Sky-we got somewhere near it with the ensemble work. It is difficult to explain-with guitar tunes-if you don't just strum the chords and give the guys something to do, people like Dave Pegg say "well you're playing the bass line what do you want me to do?" Sam kept saying to me "you don't need a bass on that dad you are playing it" So Zimmerman Blues is the nearest I get to a strum along song in my entire repertoire so I think it works quite well with a band and oh man it's great to feel a drummer and a bass player behind you!"

It must be great. I guess the camaraderie of being in a band can be supportive but also destructive?

" Oh yeah-I don't think I'd be the man I was if I was in a band. I am glad I've done it my way."

I detected ambivalent feelings towards Olaf in the book with respect to his static guitar playing and some frustration concerning his lack of music development. Did that influence in your choice to become a solo artist?

" Well you are very perceptive. When you go down well as a solo artist you have done it yourself. When you lose and you go down hopelessly badly by yourself you take it on the chin man. You have to. You take the highs and the lows. If there is something there that is holding you down or pulling you back and you are splitting the take 50:50 especially on the road…….he wasn't trying and he wasn't musically very gifted and he'd be the first to admit that. But I needed him as my comfort blanket because I didn't have enough bottle to do it on my own.

I have been lucky, even as a busker- I've always swung as Wizz said to me one time, and I think Wizz Jones is the best swinging guitar player in the world. Wizz plays guitar and it rocks, just one guitar, and I have always tried to swing. I think that's from the love of Blind Boy Fuller and jazz and stuff like that. If it doesn't swing it doesn't mean a thing. There are some lovely guitar players about, particularly American ragtime guitar players who don't swing and it drives me up the pole!

Go and treat yourself to Tommy Emmanuel-have you seen him? He says if you are not banging your foot and smiling when you are playing then there is something wrong. He's an Aussie-a one man total guitarist-extraordinary."

I was reading about the Harmony Sovereign guitar you bought at Ivor Mairant's in Soho and later in the book the Martin you bought in Poole. Tell me about that.

"Well God poked his finger through the clouds and tapped me on the shoulder and said Ralph this for you. It was a sensational moment and it is a treasured possession and I have it still, I play it occasionally on records and I've never played it in public except once on TV with John Williams because I thought I ought to have something classy to make up for the lack of technique! Well I thought someone would notice this is a 00028 Martin but I don't know if anyone did. But let me tell you just recently something has happened-the thing is a guitar is either for you or it is not-it depends on the sound. I don't know if I told you this but I have acquired a J45 a 1963 sunburst J45 imported from America and it is the guitar. For me everything is right. I could play it in a room with no microphones and the bass would be as loud as I wanted it as would be the top. It has got this sweet sound that only a J45 can. It sounded right despite the strings-they were 125 years old-it sounded right-there is a sound which says you love me Ralph and you want to take me home! You probably won't see it on stage though-I'd be terrified."

Reading the book there seems tremendous potential for someone to write a screenplay. Would you like that?

" I'd love it and I'll tell you why. It is not because of anything it would reflect on me. Nanna said to me when she read the Paris chapter this is like a film-there is a film here. And why it would be a film because it is as if the Beatles did not exist. This is a group of people whose whole lives revolved around music and being away from home. She said she could see them all coming together in Paris. Robin coming out of prison, Bunny coming from the building site, us coming from the coffee bar-we all meet up in Paris-interrelate-we drift apart at the end and that would be it. I thought Christ, no one has ever done that have they? No one has ever written about anything that isn't hooked up to Carnaby Street or the Beatles or Stones. This happened as an adjunct to all that-it was wonderful it really was. I'd be happy to offer it to somebody who could take it and make of it what they would. Some Irish friends think it would make a story because it is about post war London. One thing is for sure I will put it out as a paperback when this print has expired. Put the two books together and call it Angel Lightning!"

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