| MELODY
MAKER
Melody Maker 29 August 1970 Melody Maker Melody Maker |
MELODY
MAKER An
apprenticeship on the streets of Paris, a spell in the Army, days at college –
and finally Ralph McTell has emerged as a talent of national importance.
With a spot in the Isle of Wight Festival on Sunday, it can only be a
matter of time before his name spreads even further afield. Ralph’s
songs are a familiar property of many folk clubs. Much in the way that Bob Dylan’s songs came to be accepted
as almost traditional, so Ralph McTell’s are now embraced as emotionally
relevant to everyone. They unite
contemporary folk-freaks and Irish rebel songsters in a common regard for what
makes us all human. His simple,
direct lyrics and variously-influenced tunes form a penetrating combination
without any need to resort to volume. On
the eve of the festival Ralph was haunted by the nervousness that accompanies
him through increasingly more splendid avenues of fame. “Quite
frankly it’s a pretty terrifying prospect,” he confessed.
“It will be wonderful to play to that many people, but I’m very
nervous about it. “Actually
I really don’t think people would mind very much if I feel flat on my face.
They’ve gone to see the big names.
All the same I think it will be the most important gig I have ever sung. “I
really enjoy festivals. There are
so many different types of music. Sometimes
it can be a hassle though. You are
never sure whether people want to hear you anyway. “I
am just playing a gig. I don’t
give a monkey about international stardom.
I am really looking forward to seeing the big names there – Cohen,
Hendrix, Miles Davis and Joan Baez. In
fact there’s no one I don’t want to hear.” Ralph
was halfway through a tour of Cornwall, disappointed with the weather, but still
seemed to be attracting the crowds. “I
am always surprised to see so many people at gigs, I can never quite adjust
myself to it. Nothing has changed
basically, and yet something’s changed because there are all these people.
Actually I’m not working very much this year so that I can have a
rest.” LYRICS Songs
like “Streets of London” have brought to public attention just how much
thought goes into Ralph’s lyrics. “You
wouldn’t believe how long I spend on the lyrics of songs,” he said.
“I sometimes take ages trying to decide between two incredibly simple
words. I am really pleased if
people listen to my words because the tunes are really a vehicle for the lyrics. “I
don’t have a message as such. I
didn’t start writing songs because I had an idea of how to change the world or
knew the answer to Man’s problems. The
most rewarding thing is when people come up after hearing me play and say that
they feel the same way as my songs. Really
our emotional responses are the same. I
am beginning to write songs about how I am actually feeling right now, but most
of them are still about how we all feel.” Did
he believe that this collectivism would result in radical changes within
society? “I’d
love to have that optimism. All
people must realise what is happening in the world today. The way it is dealt with is the result of a terrific right
wing backlash. People get angrier
and angrier. They still become more
violent and this produces a reaction. I
was very upset by what I read about Edgar Broughton the other day.
I always thought he wanted to change things for the better, but just to
destroy what already exists and not put anything in its place is no good.
I am against complete revolution. I
would just like to see more enlightened politicians running the world.
I think most musicians are left-wing.
But groups wouldn’t be getting the money they are now if we were under
the political system some of them would like us to see. “I
wouldn’t put money into a fascist system now.
Once I went to Spain for a holiday, but I wouldn’t go again.
For that matter I wouldn’t go to Greece although I love the country.
“I
don’t think of myself as a folk singer. I
couldn’t care less what I’m called. I
started getting involved in playing guitar after listening to Woody Guthrie.
I then went onto country music, so I suppose you could say my roots are
in folk. It really puts me off when
traditionalists condemn more contemporary people.
But there is this snobbishness in every sort of music. I think folk music must have a moral definition somewhere.
As long as it’s not all love and mountains.
It’s got to be about people. “The
trouble is with dear old England is that it’s so middle-of-the-road, and yet
we try to imitate America and what’s happening over there.
Can you imagine calling an English policeman a pig?
It’s a different sitution over here.” Ralph
changed the subject with a theory as to why Bob Dylan changed his style.
He gave the impression he had experienced the same reactions as the
American, in his own past. “When
you begin as a rebel and a spokesman you find that people make so much money out
of you that you no longer reached the people you did,” said Ralph, explaining
that you finish by rebelling against being a rebel. “My
motives are still the same as they always have been. But I find it harder to sing now, if anything, because I feel
so much responsibility. I think
this position is abused by a lot of people.
At one time I found that my audiences were mainly young people from
middle class families. Now it has
really changed and I see different types of people in the audiences.
I think that it is largely due to the general breakdown of musical
barriers.” Ralph
has yet to begin on his next album, but he obviously has many ideas about
material. ELECTRIC “As I lost my prejudices, so have my albums,” he said. “I’ve bought an electric guitar just to see what happened. You don’t have to be very good to fool people. You have to change your whole attitude to play it though. I might use drums and electric guitar on the next album, but if I do, I will probably bring in someone else to play the electric guitar. “I’m also learning the piano, in the same way as I did the guitar – no bogging myself down with theory. I just transfer chords from the guitar to piano. It’s slower but should be more exciting. I have always wanted to do an album of stuff that I used to do – Blake, ragtime and Guthrie, but I don’t think the recording company is too keen. They want an album out soon though. All the same I don’t think I shall be ready for a while. I want it to be a good LP, so I can’t rush it. For the company it’s a question of a product, but for me it’s a question of waiting until the right things come into my head. I don’t think I write best under pressure.”
MELODY
MAKER THEY'RE on sale in hotel lobbies all over New York, 3-D-postcards of the Manhattan skyline lurching around as if in an earthquake, with the legend: We're Shaking Up the City. When I suggested to Ralph McTell he should send one home to his folks, he declined with a modest smile, and yet if anyone can be said to have shaken this wicked old tough city to its heart of gold it is Ralph. Oh, it wasn't the sort of razzamatazz overkill you get from a Beatles or a Twiggy arrival, with massive media coverage, girls fainting in the streets with autograph books in hand, that sort of thing. Ralph kind of snuk up on New York, and zapped it very, very quietly so that it hardly felt a thing. As anyone might expect who is familiar with Ralph's completely unhypable approach to his music, there was very little hype involved. Paramount Records did a little of it with modest spaces in mid-ground media like the Village Voice: " There is something very real and timeless about Ralph McTell. It comes from rubbing shoulders with humanity. He spends his life singing to folks like you and me on London sidewalks; Paris streets; in tiny folk clubs, and finally in huge concert halls all over Europe." Pretty irrelevant stuff, but inoffensive. It probably had no effect, either way, on the fact that as soon as his new album went into the shops it marched straight out again. Something was happening which cut right through all the accepted canons of folk biz, and all the Mr Joneses couldn't understand what it was. Even the Philistines' daily paper, the Daily News immortalised in Tom Paxton's savage song, had to notice what was going on. On two successive days the paper gave Ralph star treatment. Interviewer Sidney Fields spoke of Ralph's " unique talent for reaching any audience without shouting about his persona; hang-ups," putting his finger on the very thing that distinguishes Ralph from so many self-indulgent " crisis of identity " performers. Writing on his opening night the next day, the same paper's reviewer amplified this judgment: " Ralph McTell, a 24-year-old folk singer from London, opened at the Bitter End Wednesday night and to the delight of everyone did not afflict his audience with esoteric soul-searching passed off as entertainment. " McTell's music and lyrics, mostly his own, never ask ' Who am I? ' He takes an honest, sensitive look at what he sees in his world and shares it with his listeners. His unique gift is that it touches all of us." The remarkable thing about Ralph's reception on his opening night is that he was not on his top form, still a little anxious about what his reception would be. He sang brilliantly, but his nervousness betrayed itself in rather over-long raps between songs, introductions that sometimes went on so long they wandered around and met themselves coming in the opposite direction. The audience couldn't have cared less, and if they shuffled in their seats during the chat, it was merely because they were restlessly anticipating the beauty of the next song. Ralph never disappointed them. During the longer songs, notably " Ferryman " and " Birdman," his superb tribute to George Jackson, you could have heard a pin drop, that's if anyone had been rude enough to make such a clatter. The pretty no-bra waitresses stopped bustling around to sell their quotas of non-alcoholic cider, near-beer and enormous ice cream sundaes and hung on to his every word. Most of the leaders of New York's hip community had turned out to hear him, and though they must be one of the toughest bunches of people to please in the world, almost as difficult, shall we say, as the average Cousins audience, they rose to him like old friends. It was the same wherever he went. I appeared on two radio shows with Ralph
and both interviews responded to his obvious genuineness. Underground talkshow
man Alex Bennett, in particular, reacted very strongly to Ralph's song, "
Pick Up A Gun," and spent a full quarter of an hour probing into the
differences between the British and American military systems, obviously
fascinated to discover a songwriter whose experimental subject-matter lay
outside the confines of his own head.
MELODY It was a feat of sheer professionalism, and the audience paid tribute in the warmth of their applause. The failure of the sound system came during "Zimmerman Blues," his sympathetic view of Dylan. But in the event, it did not spoil the overall enjoyment of McTell's Finsbury Park evening. A handsome, open-faced man he sings and plays in a style that is totally lacking in pretention or false image. In fact any singer with less image, in the showbusiness sense, would be hard to find. He talks casually, but with sturdy conviction about each song, gradually increasing the ringing strength of each performance until he reaches a climax on 'Michael' the song of a child's view of his world. His guitar playing is cool, lucid and particularly effective on rags and blues. He has a hell of a good acoustic technique, finger-style and plectrum, and it's as enjoyable as his voice, which is expressive, without becoming merely mannered. He opened with a cheerful rag, "She's A Truckin' Little Baby," and then moved into pastoral poetry of "Nettle Wine." "Barges," followed, maintaining the mood of pleasant nostalgia. It was just as he was introducing a more incisive message with "Zimmerman Blues," when there came a brutal crunch over the PA speakers and Ralph was left to sing unaided. "Streets Of London" was the obvious encore to the wildly acclaimed
"Michael" and he left us with a feeling that while he may not be a
record executive's idea of a superstar, he is a real artist who can blow the
cobwebs of doubt and confusion from the mind, with his projection of strength
and conviction.
MELODY There’s an old dear round our
way who knows nothing about music. She’s
never heard of Bryan Ferry or David Bowie or Gary Glitter.
But mention Ralph McTell and she’ll smile broadly and croak rather
woefully “Streets of London”. McTell and “Streets of
London” are synonymous. It must
have been sung in every folk club in the country.
It’s earned him the respect of musicians in all fields. It’s acknowledged as one of the greatest social
commentaries of the day. Dammit,
it’s the song that made him. But here’s McTell in 1974,
sprawled across an armchair, glass in hand, saying the most outrageous things
about it. He’s never going to
sing it again for one. “I’ve written better songs
than “Streets of London”. It
must be six years old if it’s a day and I’ve stopped singing it now.
I’m fed up with everyone waiting for me to sing it all the time. “It was just a little song I
dashed off for a pal of mine and it established me in the folk club circuit for
which I am very grateful. The guy I
wrote it for was killed last year and that wrapped it up for me.” His desire to wash his hands of
“Streets of London” is understandable when you listen to some of the
diabolical versions of it. In a less liberal country
certain people might be charged with murder.
Ralph doesn’t like to be uncharitable to anyone and without naming
names he says, “Some of the versions of it make me want to run to the
bathroom,” and we leave it at that. So this is the reason you
won’t hear THAT song on his new British tour which starts this week.
It coincides with the release of his new album “Easy”, which is a
gigantic step back to simplicity – again, partly as a reaction to the
“Streets of London” syndrome. “I’m delighted with the
album. It’s very simple with
sparse arrangements. Everything’s
stripped down to the bare essentials. It’s
quiet and restrained, and more light-hearted than my previous albums.
I should have been doing this sort of stuff years ago.” He admits to making serious
mistakes with previous albums – the ruinous over-arrangement of “You Well
Meaning Brought Me Here”, for example, but is completely happy with the way
the new one has turned out. This is partly due to the fact
that everyone that played with him on it he counts as personal friends.
People like Danny Thompson, Bert Jansch, Wizz Jones, Dave Mattacks and
Lindsey Scott. “I don’t work well in a
studio. I need an audience.
There was really a compromise with this one, because we had a small
studio, a sympathetic producer and friends playing on it.”
The production was shared between Tony Visconti, Danny Thompson and Ralph
himself. It seems an awful long time
since the last McTell album, the superb “Not Till Tomorrow” and many people
must have been getting worried, like me, about what had happened to Britain’s
leading contemporary folk singer. The alarm increases as he says
quietly that he’s been on the verge of giving it all up. “I’ve been dangerously near
a point where I felt I did not want to play any more. I’ve been very close to wanting to throw it up because I
feel I’ve been trapped by songs. I
want to get real joy about playing, like I used to. “Usually about halfway through
a long tour you get down. You are
under pressure the whole time. In a
group you can take it out on each other but when you’re on your own you take
it out on your roadies, and it gets a bit niggly.” Despite this, he thinks he’s
going to enjoy this tour, mainly because Danny Thompson is with him on it. “A tour is a gutty job but
these are good gigs and we are going to travel in a limousine.
Danny Thompson is not only the best bass player in the country, he’s
also an amazing geezer. He keeps you feeling good when you are down.” The one gig he’s not too sure
about is the Royal Albert Hall – the first time he’s played there.
“It’s somewhere to play that would make your granny proud of you,”
he says, but admits to feelings of trepidation.
He still gets nervous at the best of times which is why he always sits
down when he’s playing. He’s also doing a concert at
Belfast. “The situation there
saddens me very much but what can you do? The
audiences there are the best in the country. “I’d like to say that if
anyone gets invited to play over there, please do, you’ll get such a welcome.
The audiences are wonderful, and it’s a shame they are ostracised by
some musicians.” Ralph is now in his late
twenties. He’s mellowed.
He’s not so concerned now with righting the wrongs in society.
Times have changed. When he was learning his stuff
Woodie Guthrie was the hero. “I am very conscious of the
fact that I’m in my late twenties. I’m
not an adolescent now. I think that
when you write songs you are crystallising something for your age group, and now
I have an understanding of society. “At one time I felt I had to
write songs which were philosophical and questioning, but now I am very into
melody and chords. I think my
rag-time training has stood me in good stead.” He doesn’t think a single will
be released from the new album unless there is a spectacular demand for one.
He considers the records in the charts and doesn’t really want to be
associated with that lot, but then he remembers Leo Sayer’s record and changes
his mind. One direction McTell’s career
might take is in production. He
intends to produce his own albums in future, and would also like to handle it
for other people, somebody like the JSD Band. As most people know, Ralph
McTell, who can now usually sell out a concert anywhere in the country, is a
product of the folk clubs. It is
refreshing to find that unlike some who make it to the concert halls, he is
proud of his association with the folk club circuit. In fact, he still visits clubs as regularly as possible.
His next comment is as revealing of his character as anything I can think
of. “I don’t like to play when I
call in at folk clubs because I feel I’m depriving somebody of a floor
spot.” I don’t think many floor
singers would be too upset about giving way to Ralph McTell
MELODY Hiya kids, welcome to fave rave land. Let’s see who’s topping and popping this jolly Christmas week – there’re Mud and Gary Glitter, and the Wombles, and Rod Stewart, and . . . . Ralph McTell? At Top Of The Pops they’re all getting dolled up for the dress rehearsal. “Streets of London” is, incredibly, soaring higher and higher, so naturally the man of the moment is invited to be on it. McTell is slightly wary, after all it’s different to going out on a solo concert gently playing your own songs to an audience that’s come to see and hear Ralph McTell and nobody else. They called him out for the costume rehearsal and seeing as it was telly he made a concession to being a pop star by wearing shirt and trousers (tee shirt and jeans is his normal stage attire). When he went out they asked when he was going to put his stage gear on. So much for selling out. “It was an interesting experience”, says McTell, with the air of a child having his first glimpse of a foreign country and unable to take it all in. He enjoyed going on Top Of The Pops and became sufficiently involved to ask the man from Warner Brothers rather anxiously how The Faces’ single was doing. It was being annihilated by the sales of a record by a guy called Ralph McTell, and McTell looked quite apologetic about it. He’s been caught slightly on the hop by the astonishing rapidity of the record’s rise, and in a short time a whole, massive new audience has opened before him. The invitations have poured in . . . Will you appear on the Russell Harty show? . . . . Will you come on Open House? It’s all fascinating and ion its own way good fun but McTell’s been around long enough not to look upon it as anything much more than an unexpected and welcome side-attraction. Singles, images and the pop star have little to do with him and he’s much more concerned with his forthcoming album. He’s pleased the single took off because it’s good for the ego and it’ll help the album considerably, and he’d like to make the charts again, but he won’t be going out of his way to the recording studio to cut a follow-up. “Streets of London” is of course an old song, written eight years ago in Ralph’s folk club days. It was on his second album “Spiral Staircase” on Transatlantic and did more than anything to establish him as a top folk club act, helping him to graduate to the concert halls. It’s been covered by numerous people over the years, many of the versions bad enough to negate all meaning the song ever had. And yet . . . . when McTell inevitably sang it in concerts, it always managed to regain self-respect. So if it was going to be a hit, it had to be by him, even though contractual ties had prevented its release until now. “They’ve had a lot of demand for it over the years. I believe there were plans to release the original anyway. We looked at the contract and we judged that we were out and could do it again so we did it. We went in and recorded it and were out in a couple of hours.” “It was Bruce’s idea. I think he wanted a single round the tour time but we didn’t have anything then so it was the natural choice just after the tour. I’ve got a new album coming out in January but I didn’t really want to take anything off that. I’m not really a singles person, that’s what I used to think anyway.” “I’m not totally shocked by the way it went because so many people asked me to do it. I’m pleasantly surprised it’s done as well as it has. The most exiting part for me is that I’m getting through to a whole new load of people who’ll presumably now hear my album.” Nothing is planned for the follow-up. They’ll wait and see if there’s a particularly strong reaction to any track on the new album and take it from there. “Streets of London” wasn’t scheduled to be on the new album but a place has been found for it at the expense of another track, a necessity that Ralph isn’t too delighted about. “I’ve no wish to go in and create a commercial single. To all intents and purposes the way this is presented it’s not a commercial single, yet it is. There’s no drums on it, just an acoustic guitar, it was done absolutely straight as I always sing it anyway. It was just one take. It ought to be didn’t it, after eight years?” It was only a year ago Ralph was saying he wouldn’t do the song any more. It was written for a friend, he said, and the friend had died, so he thought the time had come to drop it. After all he’d been singing it at virtually every performance in his career since first recording it. “Through one tour I missed it out but there were so many people that seemed genuinely disappointed. I’m an entertainer, I’m not a preacher. I’m not trying to tell anybody anything, so when I get on stage I’m there to entertain. I play my songs for people who want to hear them, and it that’s one of the songs they want to hear every time I get on stage, then it’s up to me to play it. “I’m knocked out they want me to do it each time. I think it’s still a very strong song, an important song for me. This confirms it really, it doesn’t detract from it. I could never write it again. If I was to sit down and conceive the idea of “Streets of London” it wouldn’t be like that, because you develop in terms of how you put things down. “The motives of the songs are always misunderstood. It’s not a song about lonely old destitutes, it’s a song about a very good friend of mine. It’s written for a particular guy and I use the people in the song to illustrate – like get out of it man, get fighting, get on the road again. Suddenly the song took off, but not for the chorus reason but for the verse reason. “People have seen those images and they’ve related to them, and I suppose they think they’re helping by liking the song. I’ll continue singing it. It’s a sign of a song’s strength if you don’t get sick of it. I only got sick of it because I thought people weren’t listening to my other songs, they only wanted that one. But I’ve been proved wrong over that.” Ideally he’d like the success of the single to make serious straight songs more acceptable as a commercial proposition in general terms. The fact that people are prepared to listen to a song of such disturbing lyrics and buy it in large numbers is, he thinks, indicative that the direction may be away from the clap hands-crash bang sound. “I was never on a social crusade. The song was just taken that way. Because of the song I bet I get more calls for charity concerts than even Elton John.” He’s pleased with the new album which features people like Dave Pegg on bass, Danny Thompson on double bass, Gerry Donaghue on lead guitar, Sammy Mitchell on slide guitar, Danny Lane on drums, Prelude on backing vocals (who also sing on “Streets of London”), Rabbit on keyboards and Andrew Cronshaw on electric zither. “It’s different to all the
other albums. They’ve all been
different from each other really. It’s
more confident, a much more confident album.
It’s harder. Still warm,
but there’s a harder edge to it than on the last two albums.”
MELODY Ralph
McTell: “Streets” Track Listing: Streets of
London; You Make Me Feel Good; Grande Affaire; Seeds of Heaven; El Progresso;
Red Apple Juice; Heron Song; Pity The Boy; Interest on the Loan; Jenny Taylor/Je
n’etais la; Lunar Lullaby (Warner Bros K56105). Ralph McTell (acoustic guitar,
marimba, piano accordian) Sixty-one year old Great Aunt
Mildred, who ventured into a record shop for the first time in several years
after hearing that nice Ralph McTell on the radio, may be tempted to spend some
more of her precious pennies on this long player.
Did you hear about the time they barracked Ralph
McTell for singing with a rock ‘n’ roll band? Naturally he came back and sang them ‘Zimmerman
Blues’ for his encore. Actually,
to be fair, though it was a nice, pointed response, I’m not sure it was all
that appropriate. Quite apart from
the somewhat non-question of whether our Ralph is ‘Britain’s Bob Dylan’
the situations aren’t entirely comparable. For a start, the band in question isn’t the
hard-driving blues band such as the one that got the folkies so uptight with
Dylan at Newport. With
Lindisfarne’s old bass player, Rod Clements, Ian Matthews’ old drummer Danny
Lane, a rather nice violin player called Mike Piggott, Steeleye’s Maddy Prior,
Halcyon’s Sian Daniels and another girl called Joy Askew on back-up vocals,
there are enough people who know the difference between hard and soft rock to
help Ralph make the transition. And to be fair in turn to Ralph’s audiences, the
hostility was far from unanimous. “It was one person,” recalled Ralph, as we opened
the old wound. “He shouted ‘On
yer own, Ralph’ and then a few more people said ‘Yes’ and started to
applaud. In fact, that’s what
really threw me, I was just so choked I didn’t know what to say and I just
ploughed on through the rest of the set, bloody angry actually. “And although the people who shouted were in a
definite minority, the thing was that the other people didn’t shout them down
and tell them to shut up. I would
have liked that to have happened, but they just sat there as if they didn’t
know what to do. “But in all fairness, we were having mixing
problems, the band was coming over far too loud. I had to put my foot down and say ‘this is not a rock and
roll band, I’ve got to be able to hear the acoustic guitar and my voice, and
then comes everything else.’ So we’ve cracked it now and the last three or
four gigs have been great. “Mind you we had another disastrous evening at
Ipswich which turned out absolutely great in the end. Every bloody thing that could go wrong with an electric band
went wrong. The monitors went off
and my guitar wouldn’t come on. There
was humming and zooming and everything, but the audience were absolutely
fantastic. I even got a letter
saying how much people enjoyed it, so there you go.” The question needs to be asked of Ralph, who is quite
a tasty guitarist in his own right and has quite enough personality to come over
effectively without any sort of backing group, why he feels he needs one.
No doubt some of his audience felt the same way. “I’m sure a lot of people originally thought I
was doing it just because I had a hit record and that it was just the formula
everybody does when they get a hit, but that wasn’t the case at all.
It’s something I’ve wanted to do for ages.
In fact, I was rehearsing the band for a long time before we went out on
the road and had actually started working with them when the single started
happening. “I thought that a lot of my songs weren’t
exploited properly and that, as a result, I was neglecting songs on albums which
I would have like to have played but couldn’t do without a band.
Also it’s a way of freeing myself for something else. “Then apart from the performing part of it, which
is nearly always OK, I got bored with travelling on my own.” And, as I have said, there is also the fact that this
isn’t just any old group of back-up musicians, but a collection of sensitive
folk who can really get into what Ralph’s songs are about, and not get in the
way. They’d have to be, to go
back on the road like Danny Lane, after five years devoted exclusively to
session work road the L.A. studios. Coming to the West Coast out of Texas by way of
Nashville, a former Bob Wills drummer, who has played with Ike and Tina Turner,
Mike Nesmith and Johnny Rivers, as well as Ian Matthews and Bert Jansch –
he’s going to produce Bert’s next album – it’s obvious that Danny Lane
is a man who knows his music, and especially the softer kinds of acoustic rock. And when he went into the studio to work on Ralph’s
last album he probably sowed the seeds of this current band by insisting that
they do it live. “Ralph’s plan was to have him record the tracks
and the bass and drums and everything would be built on top of it,” said
Danny, “and I thought, ‘Man, we’ll lose a lot of excitement that
way’.” “I wanted to do it that way from all my bad
experience of drummers who weren’t tuned into acoustic music,” Ralph
explained. “And I was just not
going to run that risk again. But
though Danny played beautifully, it wasn’t happening, so we scrapped
everything we had done except ‘Pity the Boy’ and ‘El Progresso’ and
started again, working with bass, drums and rhythm guitar.
And it worked. I was
delighted. That gave me the extra
confidence to go with a band.” Ralph has known Rod Clements for several years, since
he first played a gig at the Rex Folk Club in Whitley Bay, which was the club
out of which came Alan Hull and the Brethren, later to be known as Lindisfarne. I asked Rod if he didn’t feel it was a bit of a
let-down, just being a backing musician, after having been in a regular band. “Oh,” he said, “it’s great, it’s the way I
feel I function best at the moment, in a supporting role. I’ve become very disenchanted with the creative
possibilities of being in a full-time group, not to mention the business
hassles. “I want to carry on writing and I like performing
and some day I’m going to get something together to perform my own songs but
I’m not ready for that yet. I’m
just sort of running my own business as a bass player, playing with anyone who
wants me.” The interesting thing about this tour is that, having
just topped the charts with it, how few times Ralph has actually sung ‘Streets
of London’. “People have been singing the song for ages and
it’s been known for ages,” he said, “I don’t think the single has made
any difference to the audience, I must say that first of all.
I think people still want to hear it in a concert but I haven’t been
playing it. “I feel a bit like a naughty boy.
I played it at the beginning of the tour and then I thought f*** it.
They must be sick of it, having it rammed down their throats and if they
are only coming to hear that, now, then it’s wrong.
I’d sooner not bother. I’m
not a cabaret act. I’ve got all
these other songs. It’s great, I
feel, like ‘I got away without doing it’.
At Coventry I had to do it because they were going so mad, stamping,
everything, even after they put the lights on.
I said I couldn’t do it because I hadn’t got a capo and one came
flying out of the audience. So I
did it, just three verses and went, and then they were happy and went home. "Sometimes I wish I hadn’t written it.
It’s starting to be a hit in Germany now, in fact it’s made history
because two separate recordings, the new one and an old one I did years ago,
have both been in the German charts at the same time.
I’ve already been over to promote it once already. “I suppose I could go round the world promoting
that song and earning a lot of money out of it but in so doing tie myself to a
song which I’ve been trying to get away from for seven years, so that I can
get other songs through to people.”
MELODY “I’m supposed to go out in a blaze of glory with
dancing girls and everything…and all I’m getting is raspberries from the
PA.” Ralph McTell himself summed up the anticlimax of his
final concert at St Albans City Hall last Friday before his indefinite
retirement and retreat into oblivion. It
was an anticlimax, for although he performed capably enough and the audience
responded in the correct way at the end, the atmosphere throughout was weird. No more weird than when he sang “Zimmerman Blues” as his parting shot, a song about the dangers
and problems of keeping your feet on the ground and contact with reality in the
face of superficial glory; ironically related to his own disillusionment with
fame. It was all a bit much for the
basically family audience who were seemingly there on the strength of “Streets
of London” and were confused by the tenseness coming from the stage.
Consequently the rapport between McTell and audience was strained,
especially as the artist was visibly despairing of the popping and crackling
from the PA. McTell played without the controversial band that
have been with him for most of the tour. Rod
Clements and Mike Piggott on bass and violin respectively joined him towards the
end and Piggott in particular contributed much to “El
Progresso”, and “When I Was A Cowboy”. But
for the rest of the time it was McTell alone playing for himself with just a
tinge of nostalgia as he went through some of the strongest material from the
past: “Michael In The Garden”, “First
And Last Man”, “Nettle Wine”
and a couple of superb guitar pieces from his earliest folk club days. The entrance of Clements and Piggott certainly helped
him and produced the best music of the evening, while the lighting men had their
fun with flashing multi-coloured lights as if Ralph was one of a
guitar-thrashing rock band. The
rest, however, fell a bit flat and the mums must have left wondering what they
were doing there for he didn’t even sing “Streets
of London”. It was good to see Gay and Terry Woods on stage again
playing the support set even if they were lacking a lot in presentation and
confidence. They produced some
reasonable, contemporary material embroidered by mandolin, guitar, dulcimer and
autoharp in attractive style.
“You can pick up a press release at the box
office,” he went on urgently. I
nodded a few appropriate monosyllables, yawned, and turned over to go to sleep. Dust I was a singer-songwriter once, so perhaps I may be
allowed to comment upon the phenomenon. Like everyone since, I suppose, my first inspiration
was Woody Guthrie. From him I got
the idea of combining words I thought were meaningful with tunes I hoped were
singable to get into people’s heads a few new ideas they mightn’t have come
across before. From where we sit now, of course, the ideas may not
seem much, but then they were pretty revolutionary: peace and love, hang
together so well we don’t all hang separately, if you see something wrong with
the world why not try and change it, a bit like adolescent sex, things like
that. But the other thing about Woody was his determination
to use whatever media came to his hand to put across his words and music.
He made records, had radio programmes, wrote columns in newspapers.
He might have been a minority interest back in those days before the war
when he was labelled “prematurely anti-fascist”. He wouldn’t stand for just anything that the media
asked him to do, of course. He
walked away from a big, high-paid job on the New York radio because they wanted
him to dress up funny and act like a hick and that wasn’t his style.
He’d use old scraps of tunes so his melodies were half familiar already
to get his songs across to people he wanted to reach, but he wouldn’t
compromise anything that really mattered. Up until Woody, the only singer-songwriters we knew
about were blues singers, the calypso singers of Trinidad had a few approaches
that were worth trying. After
Woody, there was Pete Seeger and Ewan MacColl and Bob Dylan – and then
suddenly singer-songwriters were hot properties in show business terms.
Which is funny, because it was because of the old show business that
we’d got into singing and writing in the first place. Woody summed it up pretty well when he wrote: “I
could hire out to the other side, the big-money side, and get several dollars
every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs to sing the kind that knock
you down still further and the ones that make fun of you even more, and the ones
that make you think that you’ve not got any sense at all.
But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d
sing any such songs as that.” Image A lot of good songs got made and sung and learnt, a
lot of rubbish got in by default because it sounded significant, there was a lot
of honesty and a lot of self-indulgence, a lot of verbal masturbation, a lot of
genuine sentiment, and a lot of young poets who would have starved in garrets a
decade earlier got quite rich. Of course, their lifestyles had to change somewhat,
and we got deluged with songs about what a hard life it was on the road, how all
these riches weren’t making them any happier, the perils of leading a jet-set
life commuting between Laurel Canyon and the Greek Islands, the angst of
affluence. To be fair to Ralph, none of them came from him.
Even Ralph’s weakest song, the chart-topping “Streets of London”,
has a ring of genuine concern about it, and as the statistics of the homeless
and the knots of meths drinkers in the public spaces get larger and lay-offs and
redundancies multiply, perhaps the song has become more relevant than ever
before. And he’s kept fairly close to his roots: the Half
Moon at Putney of a Friday night isn’t as far from the folk clubs that gave
him his start in life as the night clubs of L.A. and the Village that are
frequented by some of his more “successful” colleagues – some of whom have
never got within sniffing distance of the charts, as a matter of fact. On the other hand, from where I sit, he hasn’t been
given the same run around by the business that some others have had to suffer.
True, for a time he was managed by the man who has a pretty tough
reputation here in England, Jo Lustig, but after he left, interestingly, he went
on to conquer even greater heights. He has had a number one in the charts and has had to
appear on Top Of The Pops, which is not exactly his natural habitat, but did
they try to dress him up in sequins or ask him to change the words of his song
to make them more commercial? Well, as a matter of fact, I believe they did ask
Ralph to put on his stage gear when he was already wearing a new outfit
specially bought for the purpose, but perhaps that was his mistake.
His customary faded denims are probably more in keeping with his
“image” than the flash Kings Road shirt he wore on “In Concert” last
weekend. He does appear to be a victim of the “two albums a
year” syndrome, by which record companies continually pressure their artists
for what is known, with refreshing refusal to discuss music in anything other
than commodity terms, as more “product” which can become something of a
nightmare for a writer who hasn’t had much inspiration lately. Spare He did recently go out on tour with a band, which is
sometimes evidence of a deeper business pressure to conform to the norm of what
is commercial. This is funny,
because actually since the overheads of touring a single acoustic guitarist are
lower than the road crew and members of an electric band, there is more profit
in a solo tour for all concerned, including the management.
But in Ralph’s case this doesn’t appear to have been the motivation. In his case, if it is the pressure of touring with a
band that’s done his head in – and he seemed quite happy about the way
things were even after that last London gig, band wise – then he only has
himself to blame. There remains the fact that he has a perfect right to
take a few months off when he likes, even a couple of years if the “Streets of
London” royalties allow him to. But
if he thinks lying about on a beach in California is going to get him the
necessary experience to produce a new crop of meaningful songs from his pen,
then I am afraid he is sadly mistaken in his illusions about the way the
creative process works. What really seems to have upset Ralph, though, is
success itself. Strange as it may seem, success can be pretty hard to
take. D. H. Lawrence called it the
bitch-goddess. The success of “Tubular Bells” caused Mike
Oldfield more anguish than the hard-up bedsitter days which gave it birth.
Art Garfunkel once told me his ambition for the coming year was to make
less money, simply because the constant pressure to live at a higher and higher
standard can be, ultimately, soul-destroying. (I don’t think he realised the
ambition, though he tried hard.) Message Imagine Shakespeare in the charts, Byron on Top Of
The Pops, Milton packing them into the Albert Hall, T. S. Eliot signing
autographs outside the BBC Television Theatre. Ralph may be too modest to stack himself up against
the literary giants of the past, but he’s in the same business, nevertheless. In my angry young man days as a singer-songwriter,
someone asked me why I was always against the establishment.
I answered “I want to be the establishment.” That was the chance that Ralph McTell has just passed
up. Or, to change the metaphor, he
couldn’t stand the heat, so he got out of the kitchen. A pity, because he baked some rather tasty cakes.
MELODY All the trimmings of success. Not stardom Ralph'll tell you, because he does not consider himself one of "those people." McTell has fought tooth and nail against what he quaintly terms the "star machine", to such a degree that it completely messed him up around the middle of last year, when symptoms of withdrawal and disillusionment with the music business set in. He'd just had a hit single with the age-old "Streets of London", had just completed a tour with his own band, but was greeted by cries of "on yer own" at many of the concerts. That upset him. A little later he aborted an album because "it just wasn't me". It was all a far cry from the naive McTell who had entered the world of folk eight years earlier and had led an uncomplicated but fulfilling life playing the folk clubs of Britain. He had three well-received albums on Transatlantic under his belt - "Eight Frames A Second", "Spiral Staircase" and "My Side Of Your Window" - by the time he'd switched from clubs to concerts in 1970. Miraculously, that company has performed a loaves and fishes feat since then by turning those three albums into six. A new company, Reprise, pushed him to greater heights the following year with the release of his first album for them, "Your Well Meaning Brought Me Here", and McTell looked like carrying along that successful path until he got himself stuck in the show-business mud last year. First that ditched album, which was to have been the one to bridge the two-year gap between "Streets" and the recently released "Right Side Up". It was around last Christmas, and McTell hadn't written very much material so he came up with the idea of recording songs by other writers that he'd always wanted to cover. Songs that he felt he could contribute, too. When it boiled down to it, there weren't as many around as he thought. In particular, he was keen to interpret a John Martyn song called "May You Never" and a Randy Newman composition titled "Marie". He was put in touch with respected American producer, Shel Talmy, and they got on well together. They spent about a month in the studios recording the album, and McTell announced his satisfaction, until it was completed and he took the tapes home. Then he wasn't happy with it. Back into the studios for a re-mix and he still didn't want it to be released. The tapes now lie dormant and dust-gathering on the shelf of some office. McTell states his reasons clearly, and they're easily understood when you learn that he has always been a sensitive, creative artist, and very strong-willed. "There's no blame attributable to anyone except me, because I should have been more confident. You see, you don't suddenly get a blinding flash like Paul on the Damascus road. What happens when you go through a crisis is that you gradually build up your strength, you gradually get better, you gradually work things out. Shel worked hard and we produced a fine album, I suppose, for anybody but me. "I didn't think it was me. That's all. I got it home and played it and I didn't like it. I just said 'Shel, I'm really sorry. I know how heart-broken you must be for all the work you've put into it and it's the same for me, but I truthfully can't live with that album'. I couldn't stand by it. "Most people would let their producer get on with it, but I can't do that. I gotta be involved to such a degree that I probably make the thing uncommercial. I probably do. I like the voice up-front because I want the words to be heard, things like that. "As far as commercial success goes, I'm probably my own worst enemy. Man, I could have exploited myself so much more. I've frustrated Jo Lustig, who was my old manager, and I'm sure that Bruce (May his brother and manager) gets frustrated at times, but I have not been what you would call very co-operative with people, not out of obtuseness but I've misunderstood things and, of course, there's the anti-star sort of thing." All's well now - and he's emerged from the crisis unscathed and wiser. A concert in Belfast last November made him realise just what he'd been missing since his retirement announcement six months before. He followed that with a "foot in the water" British tour, slowly weaning himself back into the fold. A full British tour is planned for next February. We reflect on the tour immediately before the shock statement that McTell was retiring from live performance. That was the tour when he took a band out on the road with him, as opposed to the solo artist concert his fans had become accustomed to. The band was a good one - Rod Clements (bass), Danny Lane (drums), Mike Piggott (fiddle), Maddy Prior, Sian Daniels and Jay Askew (vocals), but it was given a rough ride by partisan McTell supporters. The tour lasted from January of '75 through till April, and at the end of it, the band split up, and McTell returned to the solo performances his audiences demanded. He doesn't regret forming his own combo. It was something he had to experience, realising afterwards that being a singer-songwriter was complete in itself. There was also a danger which he foresaw, that he could blow the reputation he'd been building for years if he kept on working with a band. He put it down to a worthy experiment which failed. It was a great relief to get out on his own again? "It was, for sure. I started having all kinds of doubts about myself and what I was doing and the fact that I had been so long on the scene without ever trying with a hit record. Sure, the record companies put out singles from the albums, but it never bothered me when they didn't get anywhere. I had no illusions about them being that kind of song. "You turn on the radio and hear what makes the hit parade and so on. When I did get a hit ("Streets Of London") it was with a song that I'd been singing for, well, eight years at least so it wasn't like a new thing. I mean, we sold out the Royal Albert Hall well before I had a hit record and we sold out the Festival Hall four times. Halls everywhere. Manchester Free Trade Hall, Newcastle City Hall, Glasgow Apollo, all those places before there was a hit record. "And after the hit? You have to understand, I think that a lot of people regard somebody that is underground like that as their own personal discovery and therefore their own property, and when you get out to the mass public with a hit record, they switch allegiances to something else. Know what I mean? And I'm sure that happened to me after doing Top Of The Pops, the Lulu show and things like that." In that case, did he regret doing those shows? "No, I made a lot of money out of it, didn't I? I'm being cynical now, of course, but there's more in it than that. I mean, I don't regret doing them, not really. It helped the record and, through it, a lot of other people got to hear the music. I only regret the act that some people think I might have sold out by doing it, you know, which is being small-minded on their part, because the only compromise I made was that I bought a pair of trousers for the Lulu Show, and nobody noticed them anyway. They only showed it from 'ere (the head) up so they're still hanging up there. I only wore them for the once." So he was pretty disillusioned at that time, with people claiming he'd sold out and the band being poorly received on the tour? "It's hard to remember what my feelings were exactly. For a start, the band hadn't gone down as well as I had anticipated and they'd worked their nuts off. All of 'em. They're good players, good musicians, so I was disappointed for them. I don't know what happened." Maybe he was put in a bag as solo singer and people wouldn't accept anything else? "Well, I can tell you that there were a couple of concerts where the audience were quite open about what they wanted. Oxford, I remember in particular. They were shouting 'on yer own' while the band were on stage with me, and I'd never encountered anything like that before. "I tried opening up on my own and then bringing the band on. Then I tried bringing the band on first and playing a section on my own and then doing two spots, one with the band and one on my own, and then Danny said to me 'It doesn't matter how well we play, they just want to see you on your own.' It was upsetting me and upsetting them." So, McTell was bagged as such? "I am bagged, as far as this country goes. Definitely. I don't know what to think about it. I kinda like playing on my own here. In fact, I think that I play better on my own in the main anyway. It's only a bit of self-indulgence to play with a band." So when the tour ended in April, a tired Ralph McTell headed to the States with drummer Danny Lane. It was a refreshing experience for him, and he says that that was when he rediscovered music. It was just after he'd made the statement to the Press about retiring. "I said that I was going to retire from live gigs for about a year. It got variously blown up to 'Ralph McTell Quits'. It even made the national news, would you believe? I didn't bother to say no. You can go around retracting things, but if you do, people don't want to print them. They like the headlines, so I just let it go. "I hope that's why we're doing this interview, to make it very clear to people that may still be under the impression that I've retired that I'm back and that I never really went away because I've been working. I retired in July and was working again in November in Belfast and it was marvellous. It's always good there. The story that did the rounds was that his "retirement " was a reaction to the star syndrome? "Well, obviously that's true, man. I'm not a star. I really am not. I'm like a part-time star, if you like. That's the expression Bruce uses for me. If I'm a star at all, it's that I'm professional about it when I'm on stage and when I've got gigs to do. I've never not turned up for a gig, not broken a contract. If that makes me a star, yes I am but as far as the mentality of impressing people, going out, getting into the Speak-easy syndrome, being photographed with far-out people and all that, that's not my scene. "I do make it hard for my manager and record company by refusing to do interviews, for example. I'm not one to court publicity in some respects. Of course, ' I need it, but for years, I misunderstood the media. I always felt they were out to rip me to pieces and I've always felt very vulnerable to criticism. I take it really hard because I think there must be some truth in whatever is said about me, even if I know better. The end result would be that I take it so bad that I just dry up and don't want to carry on. Then I realise that all they're doing is being critical and giving their own opinion, except that I felt that they have an unfair advantage because somebody that writes for a paper can influence the opinions. "I now realise that without people like me, there would be no newspapers. They go hand in hand. I understand it better now and I understand the need to make people aware of what you're doing. I happen to believe in what I do now, more than ever before, probably because I know that it works, that it gives people enjoyment and pleasure. "At one stage, I even started to get paranoid when I went on stage. 'Are they coming to criticise, are they coming to tear my work apart or are they coming to have a good time?' I know now that it's for sure that they expect to be able to enjoy it. When you. pay a pound or two it's awful hard to say it's crap. That's why I think it's a mistake when people paper a house in order to make it look good. I can tell because you don't get the comeback from the audience because they haven't had to pay for the ticket, 'Entertain me. I got in for free.'" "What I would like very much is for another song of mine to become a hit so that I wasn't simply hung up with that one title. That's important to me because I'm sure that those people have never come to a gig, don't even know what I look like or anything, I would like them to have another record of mine in their collection, because I don't want to be a one-hit wonder. Nothing was further from my mind when I wrote that song ("Streets of London "). But its success was instrumental in his decision to quit the business for a while, wasn't it? "It was, yes. I had been playing the bloody thing for seven years and suddenly it goes. We re-recorded it so I could have said that it was a new recording of an old song. Lots of people don't know that I did write it. In the States, I'm getting a lot of work out of 'Streets Of London' now, which is wonderful." So he doesn't mind trading on the song, I inquire? He doesn't feel that he does, Ralph replies. I counter by suggesting that titling his album "Streets" traded on its success. "I fought tooth and nail to have no mention of 'Streets' on that album whatsoever. I said 'I don't want it'. The only reason that track went on the album was because it was a hit. I fought that. I said that I didn't want it on it. I took a song off it called 'Country Boys' to get it on. "The album was going to be called 'Cuts And Bruises' or 'Off The Ropes', because there was a boxing theme on the album. It's a sport I like very much and we even went to the Albert Hall for the sleeve pictures and everything. So we had the title and the concept worked out, and I thought it would be really good. "Then I said 'Alright, put "Streets" on' and Warners said, 'let's call it 'Streets of London' and I said that I couldn't live with that, so in the end, it was 'Streets' " "What happens? Transatlantic stick out an album called 'Streets Of London' and cream all the sales. The Warners' album should have gone gold, instead of which it went silver and Nat Joseph (head of Transatlantic) probably sold 50,000 albums out of all his albums that had "Streets Of London" on them. I did three albums for them and now they've made six out of them, so that's what I call maximum exploitation. "Warners are always saying 'Is this the next single?' and I'm always saying 'Don't keep asking me for a single. No, it's not a single, it's a song,' I don't write singles, I write songs. They might have to wait another nine years for a single. "Streets of London" came off the walls as far as I'm concerned and there's never been a song like it in the charts since, has there? "The trouble with me now is that when somebody says that a song is a possible single, I think 'Right, we'll have to put bass and drums on it.' I've done that with a song called "Weather The Storm", off the new album. I went in and put bass drums and steel guitar on it. "Why? Because it's the common denominator. It's a bad scene when you
have to go for the lowest common denominators, and I'm just as guilty as anybody
else."
MELODY
MELODY Ralph McTell
remains, despite the flood of success that surprisingly hit him a couple of
years ago, one of the more down-to-earth members of the music fraternity.
He has no time for poseurs or the glamorous excesses of the business,
living in Putney with his wife and kids, spending many of his evenings supping
ale with his mates (invariably including Bert Jansch) at the Half Moon in
Putney, the well-known folk pub. He has been
described with some accuracy as the ultimate anti-hero – a prime example of
his attitude being when “Streets of London”, one of his earliest and least
impressive works, made number one in the singles chart.
His reaction was one of total distaste for the spotlight suddenly thrust
upon him, and he announced his retirement, going to live in California. When he came
back and started working again over a year ago it was on a low-key level,
reflecting the way he prefers to spend his life, away from the limelight,
drinking with friends or going to boxing matches.
Record an interview with Perth University Radio.
Yet another English DJ. Seems
like they’ve got all ours and we’ve got all theirs.
This time it’s a nice bloke called Richard, that I’ve known for
years, who comes from Halifax. The other funny thing about this place, it seems that
every other person has either got a microphone to stick in your face or a camera
to trigger off. The Concert Hall in Perth is a delight – so is the
hotel manager, an unexpected fan, who throws a party for us after the show.
It’s much nicer that way than have the hotel manager trying to barge
into my parties – usually far too late and when everybody’s about ready to
pack it in anyway. SATURDAY My voice vanishes four songs into the set.
“Medicine” (brandy and milk) brought on stage and got through. Go back to the student bar with Ian Oshlack (Australian
promoter). Ian loses a quick $40 at
cards to the Union secretary – good lad, should go far. Invited to visit a TV Telethon, by Channel 7
director, which is a strange Australian show that involves lots of people
performing their songs for charity. Have
hassles with a ‘jobsworth’ backstage, but mellow at the bar. SUNDAY Fly to Melbourne in time for Passover Feast with
Ian’s mum, Pearl (“You look more like his sister than his mum”).
Colin Richardson (International Manager and my travelling companion)
looks distinctly self-conscious in his yarmulke. Last time I was invited to a Passover Feast was about
four years ago in New York. On that
occasion I didn’t go. On this
occasion I’m glad I do. Ceremonial
is very moving and Uncle Hiram (ex-vaudeville act) explains it all, and,
incidentally, is very amusing. Bit of a panic to get back to the hotel.
Town Hall okay but preferred Dallas Brooks Concert Hall, where last week
we saw Kevin Coyne laying them in the aisles.
Another Young’s bitter man; me and Kevin have promised each other a
piss-up in Putney when we get back. Meet two great guys from Warner Bros. – Steve Hands
and Phil Coulson. Party at Ian’s
place after the show. MONDAY Name-dropping time.
Meet Douglas Fairbanks, Stanley Holloway (still at it), Stephane Grapelli
(still at it) Diz Disney and the Dubliners (still at it). Really enjoyable concert. Must have been a new programme; the audience were choosing
the songs. A farewell party
afterwards at Journey’s End. Where
did all our record company friends from Warner Bros get to? TUESDAY Fourteen hours into the journey I fall asleep
(nearly). Promptly land in Hawaii.
Take a photograph. Narrowly avoid hassle with immigration thanks to Colin’s
dogged and determined demeanour. Get
back on the ‘plane for the US mainland. LOS ANGELES – Tuesday April 5: Land in L.A. in
theory two hours after we take off. What
a way to spend a day. Twenty-two
hours in an airborne cigar tube. Met by Bruce (faithful brother and expert damager).
Check in at the most agreeable hotel yet, Chateau Marmout.
Colin made-up at having a conversation with Donald Pleasance at the
reception desk. Hotel reunion with Danny Lane (Texan drummer and one
time producer of Bert Jansch) who introduced me to Philip Donnelly (ex-patriate
Irishman and one time guitarist for Donovan). Pleasant afternoon spent getting gently wasted before
going on to see Trashy Teddy at Barney’s Beanery.
Eat chilli and get extremely mellow; can’t remember anything at all
after 2:00am. I’m told that I got
everyone turned on to Old Holborn. WEDNESDAY Friends call by in the afternoon and take me to Red
Rhodes Guitar Shop. Talk guitars
for hours. Find and buy a great old
Fender Stratocaster with special pick-ups. Meeting up in the evening with some of Colin’s
friends from Charisma Records and Genesis.
We go to the Palamino Country Club.
A nice evening, lots of Tequila. Almost screwed up by a maniac in the car park who
laid into six or seven cars with a pick-axe.
Compensated by Danny’s truly creative and really original driving down
through Laurel Canyon. Back to the
hotel – finish beers – bed 4:30am. THURSDAY Colin totally wrecked this morning.
Missing the kids – call home for the first time in four days.
Split the bill tonight at the University of California with Byron
Berline’s new band, Sundance. Meet with Margo (representative of American agent)
and discuss the dates in Chicago. Go
on to Roxy and see Peter Gabriel’s late show – amazing band.
Home and bed around 4:00am. FRIDAY Ian Matthews’ new band (heading the show) very
different from when I last saw him, but altogether excellent.
Finish the second show in time to make Barney’s.
The most beguiling Phil amazed everyone by taking a pool hustler at his
own game. Back at Phil’s for a burn and a bottle to the
accompaniment of some beautiful Irish music, in particular the Bothy Band. Phil says he wants to get back home – right now so
do I – and I will be in two weeks’ time . . . . . ___________________________________ |
