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RALPH, ALBERT & SYDNEY
Record Mirror
Articles
1972-1976
Record
Mirror
Ralph
Mctell & Mary Hopkin at the Royal Festival Hall, London
May 20th 1972
Paul Smith
Record Mirror
An
almost full house on Saturday night was testimony to the drawing power of Ralph
McTell. Despite the fact that he has yet to hit the big time as regards selling
records he never has any problems attracting large audiences to his
comparatively frequent London Concerts.
It
may have seemed ironic for Mary Hopkin to be second on the bill. After all, she
has had two well recieved albums and and several singel released and even topped
the singles charts. But in the quieter world of contemorary folk music such
considerations don't count for much and despite the fact that Miss Hopkin
doubtless won many new fans at rhe Royal Festival Hall in the end McTell
asserted his superiority in both terms of artistry and audience appreciation.
Mary
Hopkin in her first major concert, was a little cold in terms of audience
communication. But her purity of voice and delivery earned her forgivness for this fault. Husband Tony Visconti was on stage and together they sang Lennon/McCartney's 'If I Fell'.
Then
Visconti conducted the small backing ensemble which consisted of strings,
upright bass and acoustic guitar. Those were the days, Sparrow, Earth Song and
Silver Dagger were included in a safe programme which never the less
demonstrated that in the interim period between the hits and now Miss Hopkin has
really learned how to use that beautiful voice which was originally employed as
just another instrument in McCartneys overall production ambitions.
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The
jungle telegraph, that most efficient organ of the music business, gave out that
Ralph McTell, having never played the Albert Hall before, was viewing the
prospect with frayed nerve ends, particularly as there were to be no empty
seats.
There
was no evidence of nerves at all though, as he played an ultra-relaxed
three-quarter hour set, interspersing his songs with easy-going humour. At the end he was rewarded for his efforts with two encores
and a standing ovation, all of which he richly merited, though never have I seen
so low-key a performer gain such a reaction.
Only
last week he told me that he would never sing Streets of London again, but the
audience would just not let him go home without doing so.
It was a moving experience to hear five thousand people, unprompted,
singing along quietly, tunefully, almost in reverence . . . but that’s racing
ahead a little.
Earlier
we were treated to quite a lot of material from his new album “Easy”,
including the delightful comic-tragic Maginot Waltz, the haunting Let Me Down
Easy, to my mind his best song since Streets of London, and in complete
contrast, the hungover lament Stuff No More.
First
Song he introduced with the explanation “You’re allowed to write songs about
your songs when you run out of ideas”, Zig Zag Line with “One day my son and
I climbed a hill. He thought it was
a mountain. Halfway up I discovered
he was right”. Perfect humour for
the mood of the concert.
For
the first half of the concert Ralph accompanied himself on guitar alone.
Later he was joined by Danny Thompson on bass. It’s heartening to see such a modest array of equipment and
personnel able to evoke such a response in these decibel dominated times.
Whether
or not Ralph ever has a hit, I’m sure his following will stay with him as long
as he wants to play, but it would be nice to see him enjoying chart success. I think Let Me Down Easy could, with a fuller arrangement,
just do the trick.
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Mirror
McTELLING IT HOW IT IS
By Martin Thorpe
Record
Mirror
21st
December 1974
The fingernails on his right
hand are womanly long, he can’t read music and his voice has dropped a
tone and a half.
Over the last eight years Ralph
McTell has built up a steady reputation as one of the country’s top
singer songwriters, notching up healthy album sales on the way, but now at
the age of 29, he finds himself with a hit single on his hands, which
means appearances on Top Of The Pops and a flood of interview requests
where six months ago there would have been none, and the song that’s
changed his life so drastically is one he originally wrote and recorded
back in 1966, “Streets of London”, a failed album track.
“It was originally written to
go on my first album,” McTell explained, “but I didn’t think it was
strong enough. We weren’t going
to put it on the second album either until Gus Dudgeon, who produced my
first two albums, persuaded me because we were a track short.
“I even offered it to a friend
for his album, but he thought it was too sad, and after that I lost
confidence in it altogether.”
So on the first track of the
first side on the “Spiral Staircase” album you will find it, a number
that still today remains a vital ingredient of his live act.
“For a brief period I decided
not to play it live again, but as I’m there to entertain people, and if
they want to hear it, I play it. It’s a very simple song I enjoy playing
and it’s one the audience can join in on, a very underrated aspect.”
The single is not the original
recording. To capture the live feel McTell re-recorded the track with
backing vocals, something he wouldn’t have done he pointed out, if it
hadn’t been chosen as the single. That’s something he further
emphasises when he says that the song is no longer his – it belongs to
the audience.
The influence behind the song
came from McTell’s school days when he and his mates used to wander
around Tower Hill chatting to the down and outs.
“I’m a Londoner and
you have to be blind not to see these people.
When I was living in Paris in 1965 that really brought it home to
me because the situation is far worse there, it crystalised what I saw in
London.”
Weird
Various contracts and deals
forbade McTell releasing the track as a single before, though it is by far
his best-known track. You
could go as far as to say that in a lot of people’s minds “Streets of
London” is McTell.
“It’s a weird thing because
the song is often being used in schools, either teachers sing it or they
use it to illustrate points, and over the last few years it must be one of
the most frequently played album tracks on radio.”
McTell began learning the guitar
when he was about 17, swapping chords with his friends.
“Someone would always know a
chord you didn’t. I even
used to play in a band where the other guitarist would turn away to stop
you seeing a chord. In the
end we started swapping, like ‘I’ll show you an A7 if you show me an
Eminor’.”
For the last eight years since
he turned professional McTell reckons he’s just been trucking around,
increasing his reputation over the years, until the last two or three
tours have been completely sold out and the next will probably mean two
gigs per town.
“There must be a whole section
of pop fans who have never heard or seen me before, so the single is an
introduction to them, but if the new single’s audience comes along to
gigs it will be interesting to see what happens.”
Ralph McTell, the pop star, has
made few concessions to his new image.
Ralph Moonlight or Ralph Hurricane McTell will never be seen.
His only acknowledgement to the new status has been a new pair of
trousers for Top Of The Pops.
“Usually my stage gear is what
I wear normally. Even when
the costume rehearsal came for Top Of The Pops they reminded me it was a
costume rehearsal.”
Keeping his cool McTell informed
them through gritted teeth that this was his costume gear.
“I was wearing the shirt I
bought in Leeds two years ago, though I did buy some new strides and put a
new blade in my razor. But
it’s easy to watch Top Of The Pops at home, though it’s more difficult
in reality even though it was quite amusing and I enjoyed it very much.”
McTell has been playing in much
the same style over the last eight years.
His voice has dropped a tone and a half because of his drinking and
smoking habits, but basically the man and his guitar have stood the test
of time and he isn’t about to change it for Top Of The Pops.
“I mean, on the last tour, I
told the audience I was going to liven the set up a bit, so I stood up and
played, what else can I do? So
though I’ve never used a backing band on stage, I intend to on the next
tour because it’ll let me lean back a bit, take the pressure off.”
Different
“I haven’t played electric
guitar either, but I might have to soon, though I’m very much in love
with the sound of the acoustic guitar.
It’s a totally different style.
I’ll probably have to get a Fender Telecaster.
“But the song comes first,
then the guitar. I mean,
I’ve never thought of myself as a singer, singing is only one step up on
talking.
“But even though I’ve got a
hit single, I wouldn’t say I’m a singles artist.
If it encourages people to buy my albums that’s ok.
I’d prefer it, but I don’t regret one day of the last seven
years..”
They call it the icing on the
cake.
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Mirror
NOT
A ONE-HIT WONDER ANY MORE
By Ray Fox-Cumming
Record Mirror & Disc 24 January 1976
Eight years ago Ralph McTell wrote a song called Streets of London.
About one year ago it finally got released as a single and became a hit.
He always said he thought the song was a potential top ten
hit and was duly chuffed to be proved right, but its success brought him one
hell of a bundle of problems.
About the time that the single broke, Ralph went out on
tour . . . “The single and the
tour weren’t planned to coincide – it just happened that way” . . . and he
worried that his usual audiences who had always been happy to see him – hits
or no hits – would be joined by a new element, drawn to him just by Streets.
“I decided that if people were just going to come and see
me just to hear that one song, then I wasn’t going to do it” – and he
didn’t.
On that tour Ralph took a group with him for the very first
time and was both alarmed and embarrassed at the results.
“People had got used to me on my own and they made it quite clear that
that was how they liked things best. The
band were all great musicians, but they could go onstage and play their hearts
out and still get no response. It
was very depressing.” And that
wasn’t all.
Folkie
Maybe overwork had something to do with it, but Ralph began to have self-doubts
about his song-writing and was also finding himself stuck in the bag of being a
socially conscious folkie because of Streets when he’d been working for years
trying to get out of it.
“At the time I wrote Streets of London, everybody was
writing songs like that. I have
written a few other songs that could be termed socially conscious, but most of
them aren’t. I certainly don’t
set out to use the stage as a platform for my political views.”
The upshot of all these troubles was that, once the tour
was over, Ralph announced that he was quitting – at least for the time being.
“I never intended to stop working – writing songs and making records
– but I did think that I’d had enough of touring probably for good.”
First of all though, he had a commitment to fulfil touring
in Germany. “Over there I
wasn’t known at all except for the one single so it was much more relaxing.
After a couple of weeks I was beginning to feel better already.”
After Germany he went to America for three months and spent
a Summer going to four or five gigs a week, playing on a few sessions and
generally enjoying himself.
Planning
Then he returned to Britain, did a concert in Belfast, “the most emotionally
charged of my whole career”, and then, armed with some tapes of a handful of
new songs he’d written, went back to California with the notion of making a
new album.
Sadly though, he found himself embroiled in problems with
his US record company, decided that there was no point in making the album while
they were still going on and came home.
He returned in time of Christmas and since the festive
season he’s been taking stock of himself and planning his year ahead.
First of all, in the coming weeks, he’ll be playing some
British dates. “I don’t call it
a tour, because with one exception, all the venues are little ones holding a
thousand people at most. I shall
get home almost every night and . . . well, they’re just dates.
Career
“I don’t want anyone to think that this is Ralph McTell making a come-back,
because it isn’t. I’ve got no
new material to offer, I’m just going out and playing and seeing at the end of
it how I feel about doing another full-scale tour.
If I do eventually do one, that’ll be the come-back.
“After these dates I want to make another album and
I’ve two intentions, (a) I shall work with a producer instead of doing it
myself and (b) I shall not be doing all my own songs.”
Why don’t you want to produce yourself?
“Because I’ve come to realise that I’ve held myself
back in my career. I know that if
I’d listened to other people more I could have had commercial success far
earlier than I did. The trouble was
that I was always so bloody ethnic in the old days.
I suppose it was because of all that folk training.
“In future, if my songs need boxing-ring treatments,
they’ll get them.”
Why are you going to include other people’s songs this
time?
“Well, for a start, I haven’t got enough new songs of
my own of sufficiently high standard to fill a whole album. My output is very unprolific these days.
“Also, I always used to swear that there would be
absolutely no songs on my albums put in just as passing, but now in retrospect I
think there were a few. I’ve come
to the conclusion that a lot of people, including myself, have recorded songs
that they thought were valid statements when really they’d have been better of
f doing other people’s songs – simply because they were better songs.”
Surprisingly, Ralph says that he’s never thought about
himself mainly as a singer. “I
was always first and foremost a guitarist and then a songwriter, but then people
in America seemed to think of me as a singer and I suppose people must do so in
Britain as well, now”, he grins, “I’m going to do some singing.”
Hit
One of the songs he’d like to do is a John Martyn number, an old Lonnie
Donegan / Kingston Trio hit called San Mithuel, “ I don’t think I’ll tell
you any of the others. That’s
enough to be going on with.
“I’m very excited about the prospect of doing this
album . . . and d’you know, I bet it’ll be my best seller ever.”
Talking of best-sellers, we nearly forgot to mention Dreams
of You, the song which has been giving Ralph a second hit single over the past
few weeks. The tune is Bach’s
Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring with McTell words and counter melody and with very
little promotional push, the record’s done very nicely thank you.
Are you pleased about it Ralph?
“But of course,” he shouts with a grin
spreading from ear to ear, “It means that I’m not a one-hit wonder
anymore!”
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