0:00:25 > 0:00:28He seemed to me the kind of folk-guitar-playing equivalent
0:00:28 > 0:00:32of sort of William Burroughs or Bukowski, Charles Bukowski,
0:00:32 > 0:00:36do you know what I mean? He had that really powerful thing
0:00:36 > 0:00:39that we look for in American artists or writers
0:00:49 > 0:00:54He created a new language, modally speaking, harmonically speaking,
0:00:54 > 0:00:59and if that that's not an iconoclast, I don't know what is, really.
0:01:01 > 0:01:05Independent label owner, like, maybe the first, record collector,
0:01:05 > 0:01:09musicologist, alcoholic,
0:01:09 > 0:01:11hobo...
0:01:11 > 0:01:13Thrift store master,
0:01:13 > 0:01:19guitar, don't-give-a-shit- about-the-brand-name guitar owner.
0:01:19 > 0:01:21HE LAUGHS
0:01:21 > 0:01:24It's not about what you own, it's just about what you play,
0:01:24 > 0:01:29you know, the voice of the turtle's like, in here, not in this thing,
0:01:29 > 0:01:31so to speak. It's awesome.
0:01:31 > 0:01:36It's been said of John Fahey that his style is American primitive,
0:01:36 > 0:01:38whatever that means. What does that mean, John?
0:01:38 > 0:01:41Well, somebody else said that. Oh, I know you didn't say it.
0:01:41 > 0:01:45I didn't say it. This is like a Rousseau painting, or like Rousseau.
0:01:45 > 0:01:49Primitive means untaught. I didn't have any teachers.
0:01:49 > 0:01:53Oh. I taught myself. And American means American.
0:01:53 > 0:01:56And what would you call your style, if you had to call it something?
0:01:56 > 0:01:58That's the closest thing, if I had to call it anything,
0:01:58 > 0:02:00I wouldn't worry about calling it anything.
0:02:00 > 0:02:04OK, we won't call it anything. But it is unusual and it's your own.
0:02:04 > 0:02:07There are a lot of people who haven't been actually literally taught
0:02:07 > 0:02:10but who all sound alike, but I don't think that you sound like anybody.
0:02:10 > 0:02:13Good. You sound like... "Good! Great."
0:02:13 > 0:02:17So that everybody can join us in either agreeing or disagreeing,
0:02:17 > 0:02:19why don't you start playing?
0:03:12 > 0:03:15There is something about guitars,
0:03:15 > 0:03:18maybe something magical when played right,
0:03:18 > 0:03:22which evokes past, mysterious, barely conscious sentiments,
0:03:22 > 0:03:25both individual and universal.
0:03:26 > 0:03:28The road to the unconscious past.
0:03:30 > 0:03:32Guitar is a caller.
0:03:32 > 0:03:35It brings forth emotions you didn't know you had.
0:03:37 > 0:03:39It is a very personal instrument.
0:03:41 > 0:03:45He seemed to be trying to create poetry, and divide...
0:03:45 > 0:03:49if music is simply dividing time, dividing time in some new way.
0:03:55 > 0:03:58He took everything in the world and personalised it,
0:03:58 > 0:04:02made it into part of him. He was a spiritual detective.
0:04:13 > 0:04:15It's difficult to say what characterised him
0:04:15 > 0:04:17because he went through so many phases.
0:04:17 > 0:04:20I suppose what characterised him that was attractive to me
0:04:20 > 0:04:23was simply the repetitive cycling rhythms. It was very pop,
0:04:23 > 0:04:27it was very rock 'n' roll, it was very R It was cyclic.
0:04:29 > 0:04:31I think it was his tunings.
0:04:33 > 0:04:38His sense of collage, his sense of soundscape,
0:04:38 > 0:04:40his sense of dissonance
0:04:40 > 0:04:45that influenced people like Pete Townshend, Thurston Moore and Beck.
0:04:45 > 0:04:50He's using the guitar as almost like a antenna,
0:04:50 > 0:04:53and he's not sure of what it's going to do or where it'll take him.
0:05:00 > 0:05:05My family and I moved to the Washington, DC suburbs in 1945,
0:05:05 > 0:05:08right after we dropped the big ones on Japan.
0:05:10 > 0:05:14I remember the night we moved into the new house in the suburbs.
0:05:14 > 0:05:16I was sleepy, and didn't like what was going on.
0:05:18 > 0:05:22I remember the following morning feeling afraid and shy,
0:05:22 > 0:05:25but preparing myself to go across the street
0:05:25 > 0:05:27where I saw the local kids hanging out.
0:05:29 > 0:05:33My mother was encouraging me. She gave me a lot of support.
0:05:34 > 0:05:38That day, for some reason, I thought I should dress up
0:05:38 > 0:05:41in some kind of costume, so I wore a pith helmet.
0:05:45 > 0:05:48Where John Fahey grew up was one of those neighbourhoods where
0:05:48 > 0:05:51he would've had a lot of access to woods, basically.
0:05:51 > 0:05:56Places to wander, places to look under rocks and logs
0:05:56 > 0:05:58and crawl over...you know, as a kid,
0:05:58 > 0:06:01crawl over creeks and things like that.
0:06:01 > 0:06:04A kind of wonderful environment in a lot of ways.
0:06:04 > 0:06:06FINGER STYLE GUITAR MUSIC PLAYS
0:06:06 > 0:06:10There's a certain a lot of the acoustic guitar work of water,
0:06:10 > 0:06:13of that kind of movement, of that kind of rippling and...motion.
0:06:23 > 0:06:27The very soil was sacred.
0:06:27 > 0:06:31The water in the creeks and springs was holy water.
0:06:31 > 0:06:34The oak trees were the highest in the world.
0:06:34 > 0:06:38And these oak trees weren't like regular oak trees,
0:06:38 > 0:06:40they were sacred oak trees
0:06:40 > 0:06:43planted by The Great Koonaklaster himself
0:06:43 > 0:06:45while he was creating the world
0:06:48 > 0:06:50Turtles were sacred to The Big K.
0:06:50 > 0:06:55The common box turtle was Big K's totem.
0:06:55 > 0:06:58How did you start playing guitar? How come and how and...
0:06:58 > 0:07:00Um, well, there were a lot of kids around where I lived
0:07:00 > 0:07:04who played country west, so I got a Sears Roebuck guitar.
0:07:04 > 0:07:06But I started to compose as soon as I got one.
0:07:06 > 0:07:08As soon as I knew where the chords...
0:07:08 > 0:07:11BEFORE I knew where the chords were, or anything.
0:07:11 > 0:07:13Had you taken any other music lessons of any kind?
0:07:13 > 0:07:16Yeah, I played clarinet in junior high school band.
0:07:16 > 0:07:18SHE LAUGHS I didn't like it much.
0:07:18 > 0:07:22I used to improvise. Were you good? No, I kept improvising.
0:07:22 > 0:07:24Band teacher got pretty mad about it.
0:07:27 > 0:07:31I met John, it must have been in 1957, or '58.
0:07:31 > 0:07:34We were both involved with some other usual suspects
0:07:34 > 0:07:37at St Michael and All Angels.
0:07:37 > 0:07:40That community was more than a religious community,
0:07:40 > 0:07:44it was a community of like-minded people who were welcoming to
0:07:44 > 0:07:46a great diversity of people.
0:07:47 > 0:07:50John was an outlaw, from start to finish.
0:07:50 > 0:07:54A very gentlemanly outlaw but outside
0:07:54 > 0:07:57the strictures of the...of his background.
0:07:59 > 0:08:02We had dated, we were sort of still dating
0:08:02 > 0:08:03when I was finishing up high school.
0:08:03 > 0:08:08Then there was a little event at church and he...
0:08:08 > 0:08:10I guess he had been really drinking seriously that night
0:08:10 > 0:08:12and he was just very rude to me
0:08:12 > 0:08:16First time. So I got up and walked out in a huff.
0:08:16 > 0:08:19Then he approached me, must have been a year later,
0:08:19 > 0:08:22to do a session at Joe Bussard's in Frederick.
0:08:22 > 0:08:24And it was not... We didn't really...
0:08:24 > 0:08:27We may have played one song together but he was just asking me
0:08:27 > 0:08:29to please, play these lines.
0:08:29 > 0:08:31HE PLAYS SLIDE GUITAR
0:08:31 > 0:08:33# Girl, you set your dogs on
0:08:33 > 0:08:36# Set your dogs on him. #
0:08:52 > 0:08:55HE FINISHES PLAYING
0:08:55 > 0:08:57HE CHUCKLES
0:08:57 > 0:09:00I haven't played this thing in a long, long time.
0:09:09 > 0:09:11# Doo-doo-doo... #
0:09:11 > 0:09:15Yep, the best music has already been recorded, my friend.
0:09:17 > 0:09:18And as far as I'm concerned,
0:09:18 > 0:09:21what they've got today is zero everything.
0:09:21 > 0:09:23Look at this.
0:09:23 > 0:09:24HE LAUGHS
0:09:26 > 0:09:27Look at the condition.
0:09:27 > 0:09:29Fahey came by and listened to records
0:09:29 > 0:09:34and one day he brought his guitar up and I liked the way he played,
0:09:34 > 0:09:38he experimented around. This was in November of 1959.
0:09:38 > 0:09:40I said, "Let's make a couple of records."
0:09:40 > 0:09:42It was at four o'clock in the morning,
0:09:42 > 0:09:44that's about the time he got loosened up.
0:09:46 > 0:09:51He spent a lot of time up here A lot of time, a lot of time playing.
0:09:51 > 0:09:52He'd sit over for hours and play.
0:09:52 > 0:09:55This does not... MUSIC PLAYS
0:09:55 > 0:09:57Oh, this is where he's playing a sitar.
0:09:58 > 0:10:01We were playing... That's the only tricky thing we ever did.
0:10:01 > 0:10:03I wrote a record backwards.
0:10:05 > 0:10:06Yeah, man. I like it.
0:10:06 > 0:10:08MUSIC PLAYS BACKWARDS
0:10:08 > 0:10:10We rolled the tape backwards. Hear?
0:10:21 > 0:10:22What do you think of that?
0:10:22 > 0:10:27You've never heard anything like that, ha-ha-ha-ha!
0:10:27 > 0:10:31I used to go up to Frederick, Maryland
0:10:31 > 0:10:35and there was crazy guy who lived there named Joe Bussard.
0:10:35 > 0:10:40He used to get me up there and get me just as smashed as he could
0:10:40 > 0:10:43and get me screaming and yelling and playing the guitar
0:10:43 > 0:10:48and trying to make out I was a drunk Negro blues singer from Mississippi.
0:10:48 > 0:10:52He did the bulk? No, I did some, he did some.
0:10:52 > 0:10:53No, and you hear a lot of...
0:10:53 > 0:10:55HE GROWLS HOARSELY
0:10:55 > 0:10:58You know, it's usually me.
0:10:58 > 0:11:02# Where you going?
0:11:02 > 0:11:05# I'm going down to get us some wine
0:11:05 > 0:11:07# You're going to eat crabs tonight
0:11:07 > 0:11:10# What kind of crabs you going to eat, man?
0:11:10 > 0:11:14# We're gonna eat them kind of crabs live in water, what kind IS that?
0:11:16 > 0:11:18# That's crab crabs, man
0:11:18 > 0:11:21# Yeah, them old crabs good, mmm! #
0:11:23 > 0:11:25It reminded me of the old black blues guys.
0:11:25 > 0:11:31Nice style, very interesting, and he'd get a big charge.
0:11:39 > 0:11:44John started Takoma in 1959 on 8s, actually.
0:11:44 > 0:11:47I think the reason was simply it was the only way you could
0:11:47 > 0:11:51get your own music onto a record was to start your own label.
0:11:51 > 0:11:53That's how he saw it.
0:11:53 > 0:11:55It would've been hopeless for him to try
0:11:55 > 0:11:59and approach a record company with his music.
0:11:59 > 0:12:03It was just too strange to what was being issued by record
0:12:03 > 0:12:06companies at the time. John Fahey and Ed Denson
0:12:06 > 0:12:11managed Takoma Records and put out mostly John Fahey albums,
0:12:11 > 0:12:15but also Robbie Basho and a few other blues artists.
0:12:17 > 0:12:22Takoma became an icon of independent, artist-owned,
0:12:22 > 0:12:27artist-started record labels within the independent label
0:12:27 > 0:12:31world, but it was John's vision really,
0:12:31 > 0:12:34that started that whole genre.
0:12:37 > 0:12:42Well, when I made my first...record,
0:12:42 > 0:12:45um...
0:12:45 > 0:12:49I thought it would be a good joke
0:12:49 > 0:12:53to have me on one side, have the label say
0:12:53 > 0:12:59John Fahey on one side and this guy Blind Joe Death on the other side.
0:12:59 > 0:13:03The reason it says "blind" is because a lot of people I learned
0:13:03 > 0:13:08from were on old 78rpm records and a lot of them were blind.
0:13:10 > 0:13:14Their names were Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Boy Fuller,
0:13:14 > 0:13:18Blind Joe Taggart. A whole bunch of them were blind.
0:13:18 > 0:13:21I think he thought the sort of earnestness with which many
0:13:21 > 0:13:26people of his background approached it needed a bit of sending up,
0:13:26 > 0:13:28so I think some of that comes
0:13:28 > 0:13:32from that wanting to kind of, you know, um, give something
0:13:32 > 0:13:39a little bit of a poke. And...kind of mess with people's minds, too.
0:13:39 > 0:13:41Also I was thinking,
0:13:41 > 0:13:44whenever you print the word death, people look at it.
0:13:44 > 0:13:48I was thinking of record sales already.
0:13:48 > 0:13:53Even though I was only going to have 100 copies pressed.
0:14:00 > 0:14:05John is a guitarist and composer, he's both. You can't separate them.
0:14:05 > 0:14:08Very early in his career, before he ever recorded anything,
0:14:08 > 0:14:13he started making up his own pieces. The first pieces were
0:14:13 > 0:14:16pretty much just things that could have
0:14:16 > 0:14:20been traditional, but as time went on, he began putting
0:14:20 > 0:14:24the harmonies that he would come up with into these pieces.
0:14:24 > 0:14:28He was inspired, certainly, to some extent by classical music.
0:14:28 > 0:14:33Certain composers, especially. Bartok, Charles Ives.
0:14:37 > 0:14:40I met John Fahey in 1964 when we were both
0:14:40 > 0:14:42part of the Folk Music Studies
0:14:42 > 0:14:45masters degree programme that UCLA had.
0:14:56 > 0:14:57He does his MA on Charley Patton.
0:14:57 > 0:15:01It is still a definitive work on Charley Patton if you want to learn
0:15:01 > 0:15:04about who the heck Patton was and learn about his life and so on
0:15:04 > 0:15:08MUSIC: "Stone Pony Blues" by Charley Patton
0:15:08 > 0:15:15# I got me a stone pony and I don't ride Shetlands no more... #
0:15:18 > 0:15:21There was something about Charley Patton in particular that
0:15:21 > 0:15:24really moved him deeply, but also the techniques.
0:15:24 > 0:15:29He would build his own music around the fingerpicking
0:15:29 > 0:15:32and playing techniques, the slightest techniques,
0:15:32 > 0:15:33the slide techniques that were
0:15:33 > 0:15:38originally developed by Charley Patton and other Delta blues people.
0:15:38 > 0:15:40It was all grist for his mill.
0:15:40 > 0:15:45# Vicksburg's my pony Greenville is my grey mare
0:15:45 > 0:15:51# Vicksburg's my pony Greenville is my grey mare... #
0:15:54 > 0:15:58Patton was an entertainer, not a social prophet in any sense.
0:15:58 > 0:16:00He had no profound message.
0:16:00 > 0:16:04He was probably not very observant of the troubles of his own people.
0:16:04 > 0:16:07He was not a noble savage.
0:16:12 > 0:16:17The music, it is part of the pulse, the heartbeat of this place.
0:16:17 > 0:16:20Maybe it is linked to the Mississippi River.
0:16:20 > 0:16:24If you think about it, there is a steady, giant,
0:16:24 > 0:16:28volume of matter moving at 9mph
0:16:28 > 0:16:32which almost has a, perhaps, magnetic pull.
0:16:52 > 0:16:58It's hard to imagine what contemporary music would be like
0:16:58 > 0:17:03if people like John Fahey had not been obsessively
0:17:03 > 0:17:07fascinated with roots American music from the '20s and '30s.
0:17:07 > 0:17:10# Praise God, I'm satisfied
0:17:10 > 0:17:14# For me he bled and died
0:17:14 > 0:17:18# Well, I'm glad to know that he loved me so
0:17:18 > 0:17:20# For me he was crucified... #
0:17:20 > 0:17:24The tune kept going through my head, something about it kept going through my head.
0:17:24 > 0:17:27And within ten minutes, I had to hear it again.
0:17:27 > 0:17:29I would have killed to hear it again.
0:17:29 > 0:17:32So they played it again and I thought it was the most
0:17:32 > 0:17:36beautiful thing I ever heard in my life. I started crying.
0:17:36 > 0:17:39It was like a conversion experience, you know.
0:17:40 > 0:17:44There is the oft told story of him
0:17:44 > 0:17:49weeping after hearing Blind Willie Johnson's Praise God, I'm Satisfied.
0:17:49 > 0:17:52Although, initially, he was sort of sickened by it.
0:17:52 > 0:17:56He didn't know what to make of it. It was so alien to him.
0:17:56 > 0:17:58He grew up in the suburbs in Maryland.
0:17:58 > 0:18:01He was he was a fan of bluegrass and country stars of the day.
0:18:01 > 0:18:04He hadn't had exposure to black artists.
0:18:04 > 0:18:07He didn't have an instant affinity for this music.
0:18:07 > 0:18:12This was, if you like, a transition from Mars to him.
0:18:12 > 0:18:16John was always fascinated with other cultures,
0:18:16 > 0:18:21so I am sure the southern black culture was fascinating to him
0:18:21 > 0:18:25Any culture that isn't your own culture teaches you something
0:18:25 > 0:18:30new and expands you, and I think John was always into expansion.
0:18:33 > 0:18:37I spent every summer in the deep South, looking for old blues singers
0:18:37 > 0:18:40and collecting records, old records and so on.
0:18:42 > 0:18:47We would go door-to-door in the black sections of these little towns
0:18:47 > 0:18:49along the way. We'd knock on the door,
0:18:49 > 0:18:51knock, knock, knock.
0:18:51 > 0:18:55People would answer and he'd say, "You have any old phonograph records?
0:18:55 > 0:18:57"We're buying up old phonograph records.
0:18:57 > 0:19:01"Give you a quarter a piece for the good ones." That was John's spiel.
0:19:01 > 0:19:04He kind of trained me how to do it.
0:19:04 > 0:19:06So John had been making a living doing this,
0:19:06 > 0:19:09or at least part of his living since the early '60s.
0:19:10 > 0:19:13There were some other college kids coming into this
0:19:13 > 0:19:16neck of the woods, but they weren't doing a voters
0:19:16 > 0:19:19registration drive, and it cost them their lives.
0:19:20 > 0:19:25And people were not really aware of the courage or foolhardiness it
0:19:25 > 0:19:30took to go into that same neck of the woods.
0:19:30 > 0:19:32Being young white guys talking to black people,
0:19:32 > 0:19:37they could have very easily been misinterpreted or misidentified.
0:19:39 > 0:19:42'How do you do that, by the way I'm just curious.
0:19:42 > 0:19:44'How do you find somebody?
0:19:44 > 0:19:47'Or do you have them in mind and then go looking for them?
0:19:47 > 0:19:49'Well, I might be looking for somebody
0:19:49 > 0:19:52'specific like Bukka White or Skip James.
0:19:52 > 0:19:57'Bukka White, you know, he made these old 78s. Right.
0:19:57 > 0:20:00'And I thought he was very good
0:20:00 > 0:20:05So I said, well, maybe Bukka White is still alive.
0:20:05 > 0:20:09So he'd made a record called Aberdeen Mississippi Blues.
0:20:09 > 0:20:12So I wrote him a little postcard.
0:20:12 > 0:20:17I knew his real Christian name or whatever you call it.
0:20:17 > 0:20:21It was Booker T Washington White.
0:20:21 > 0:20:24Then I wrote in caps...
0:20:33 > 0:20:34I wrote...
0:20:36 > 0:20:37On the back, I wrote...
0:21:04 > 0:21:09So we did that. And about three months later, a letter came back,
0:21:09 > 0:21:10and we left the next day.
0:21:39 > 0:21:43Booker knew all about trains. Booker taught me how to ride freight cars.
0:21:43 > 0:21:46And we had a lot of adventures all over the South.
0:21:49 > 0:21:53Bill Barth, John Fahey and I believe Henry Vestine was with them
0:21:53 > 0:21:59when they found Skip James, and that was in a hospital, I believe,
0:21:59 > 0:22:02in Tunica, Mississippi, just down the road from Memphis.
0:22:02 > 0:22:06MUSIC: "Devil Got My Woman" By Skip James
0:22:06 > 0:22:10# I'd rather be the devil
0:22:10 > 0:22:15# To be that woman man... #
0:22:15 > 0:22:20But why was I so interested in Skip James?
0:22:20 > 0:22:24What was so distinctive and wonderful about his records?
0:22:24 > 0:22:28# ..To be that woman man. #
0:22:30 > 0:22:34James' style was so aggressively melancholy,
0:22:34 > 0:22:38so desperate and wretched, and full of gloom,
0:22:38 > 0:22:41that we reasoned that James' life must have been unbearable.
0:22:45 > 0:22:50Just underneath the great sadness in James' music, we hear anger,
0:22:50 > 0:22:52disguised and hardly noticeable
0:22:54 > 0:22:57# Nothing but the devil... #
0:22:57 > 0:23:00John hated phoney emotionalism.
0:23:00 > 0:23:04But he did think his work channelled often the very darkest
0:23:04 > 0:23:07emotions that he could dredge up,
0:23:07 > 0:23:12and it happened that some of them may have sounded pretty...
0:23:12 > 0:23:18or something akin to a Skip James tune or something like that, but...
0:23:18 > 0:23:21For him it was catharsis, you know?
0:23:21 > 0:23:28And he was, you know, venting his spleen there in the recording.
0:23:28 > 0:23:30Would you play something on this for us?
0:23:30 > 0:23:33Yeah, I'll try to play The Death Of The Clayton Peacock,
0:23:33 > 0:23:35which is another song I wrote.
0:23:35 > 0:23:38I used to live out on Mount Diablo,
0:23:38 > 0:23:41and I'd ride into school every morning,
0:23:41 > 0:23:44and there was a lady out there who raised peacocks,
0:23:44 > 0:23:47and she had one peacock left, and it got run over one morning
0:23:49 > 0:23:51And it laid in the street for two or three days
0:23:51 > 0:23:53and then somebody cut his tail off.
0:23:53 > 0:23:58Oh. But... I was very upset. And so you wrote a song about it?
0:24:00 > 0:24:03Well, no, but it made a good title, you know? Want me to hold that for you?
0:24:03 > 0:24:05I'll mind it till you're ready
0:24:05 > 0:24:08HE STRUMS GUITAR
0:24:09 > 0:24:12Open G tuning? Yeah. Famous open G...
0:24:12 > 0:24:14Not regular Dobro tuning, because that's...
0:24:14 > 0:24:16Then you have that...
0:24:16 > 0:24:19But...
0:24:19 > 0:24:23MUSIC: "Death of the Clayton Peacock"
0:24:34 > 0:24:39One night, Fahey was playing at the Jabberwocky Coffee Club in Berkeley,
0:24:39 > 0:24:44and he was on stage performing, and in his own wonderful style
0:24:44 > 0:24:47he said, GRUFF VOICE: "I gotta pee."
0:24:47 > 0:24:50And so he just walked off stage to pee.
0:24:50 > 0:24:52And I met him and said, "Hey, John, I'm Stefan."
0:24:52 > 0:24:55And he took me, and just grabbed me,
0:24:55 > 0:24:58and went into the bathroom, holding me.
0:24:58 > 0:25:02Took down his underpants, and we were talking about
0:25:02 > 0:25:07Willie Brown's guitar style while John was farting his brains out.
0:25:07 > 0:25:10And then we finally, thank God, got out the bathroom,
0:25:10 > 0:25:14and he went back up on stage. That was my first meeting with John.
0:25:14 > 0:25:16I hear Stefan Grossman was here
0:25:18 > 0:25:22Uh, I heard that Stefan Grossman played here, that true?
0:25:22 > 0:25:24He said he didn't like it here
0:25:24 > 0:25:28Did anybody here like him? AUDIENCE LAUGHS
0:25:28 > 0:25:31Yeah? I hate his guts, but...
0:25:31 > 0:25:34LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
0:25:34 > 0:25:37I also hate his guitar playing
0:25:37 > 0:25:41HIGH VOICE: He plays like a little old lady,
0:25:41 > 0:25:44HIGH VOICE: with real long little fingers. Very dainty.
0:25:53 > 0:25:56John had a sick sense of humour There's different levels.
0:25:56 > 0:26:01One was his writing talents in the sense of titling tunes.
0:26:01 > 0:26:04I don't remember what year, but I was living in London,
0:26:04 > 0:26:08and a student came by with and album he had just recorded,
0:26:08 > 0:26:11and on it was a tune called The Assassination Of Stephane Grossman.
0:26:11 > 0:26:15I thought, "what cheek!" I got really pissed off at that
0:26:15 > 0:26:19so I then recorded a tune called The Assassination Of John Fahey
0:26:19 > 0:26:22and then HE got really pissed off about it!
0:26:22 > 0:26:26And then I don't know whether it was John or Manny Greenhill,
0:26:26 > 0:26:30his manager, said, "what would be great for America,
0:26:30 > 0:26:32"let's do an assassination tour "
0:26:33 > 0:26:37And it was a great idea. Unfortunately my back gave out with herniated discs,
0:26:37 > 0:26:40so I had to cancel the tour. He did a couple of dates,
0:26:40 > 0:26:44and apparently told people that the only reason I wasn't there was cos he had killed me.
0:26:45 > 0:26:49That is called a - what? A Hawaiian guitar? Yeah.
0:26:49 > 0:26:53Is it called a Hawaiian? Is that what a Hawaiian guitar is, right?
0:26:53 > 0:26:55It was made in Hawaii.
0:26:56 > 0:26:58It's an ashtray, it's not a guitar. You're kidding me.
0:26:58 > 0:27:00It's a real cheap guitar, it's. .
0:27:00 > 0:27:04He could be a very strange person to work with.
0:27:04 > 0:27:07There was a period where we just hadn't heard from John in weeks,
0:27:07 > 0:27:10and I think even months at that point,
0:27:10 > 0:27:13and we were starting to get seriously worried about him.
0:27:13 > 0:27:18Finally we got a phone call from Tasmania
0:27:18 > 0:27:20that a recording studio
0:27:20 > 0:27:25was calling to ask for authorisation to record a concert of John.
0:27:25 > 0:27:27John wanted to do a live album
0:27:27 > 0:27:30we authorised the money
0:27:30 > 0:27:34and he recorded the album which came out, Tasmania.
0:27:34 > 0:27:38MUSIC: "Waltzing Matilda" by John Fahey
0:27:44 > 0:27:46He was self-destructive,
0:27:46 > 0:27:50in a way that didn't allow him commercial success.
0:27:50 > 0:27:52He really had no sense of business.
0:27:52 > 0:27:55He didn't keep track of his money that well.
0:27:55 > 0:27:58That first time I went on the road with him,
0:27:58 > 0:28:01he was facing divorce with his first wife, Jan,
0:28:01 > 0:28:05so he demanded to be paid in cash at all his gigs,
0:28:05 > 0:28:12and I wound up having to stuff these bundles of cash in my boots and my luggage...
0:28:12 > 0:28:16It was just crazy, I was carrying, like, 15, $20,000 in cash.
0:28:16 > 0:28:20You know, he had a real edge to him. I think that's why I liked him
0:28:20 > 0:28:24SONG: "Amazing Journey" by The Who
0:28:26 > 0:28:30In 1968, I released Tommy with The Who,
0:28:30 > 0:28:34and Robbie Basho sent a copy of it to John Fahey,
0:28:34 > 0:28:38who listened to it, and sent me the most delightful note.
0:28:38 > 0:28:40And he said quite simply, "I listened to it,
0:28:40 > 0:28:42not quite sure what to make of it."
0:28:42 > 0:28:45But he said something like, it was a...
0:28:45 > 0:28:47You know, "an admirable endeavour."
0:28:47 > 0:28:49I think that's what he said.
0:28:49 > 0:28:51It was very touching.
0:28:51 > 0:28:55Cos I suppose, you know, I'd thought of him as kind of a...
0:28:55 > 0:28:59You know, living up a mountain or something.
0:28:59 > 0:29:02Unreachable, you know, guy... And there he was.
0:29:02 > 0:29:06And the letter that he sent me was incredibly kind,
0:29:06 > 0:29:10but also quite, you know... He didn't... There was no gushing.
0:29:10 > 0:29:15He obviously didn't like Tommy but he begrudgingly and kindly
0:29:15 > 0:29:19and with a twist of humour gave me... He gave me something.
0:29:34 > 0:29:38John Fahey's music didn't fit into a club, it was his own thing.
0:29:38 > 0:29:41And then you get into his personality, and you're like...
0:29:41 > 0:29:44This certainly did not fit into
0:29:44 > 0:29:47any sort of genre or specific behavioural patterns
0:29:47 > 0:29:50to impress people. He was just on his own trip.
0:29:50 > 0:29:53And that's when I realised the guy was truly punk rock,
0:29:53 > 0:29:56or whatever you want to call it His own artist.
0:29:56 > 0:29:58I think that's really the core of it.
0:29:58 > 0:30:01Art for art's sake, on so many levels.
0:30:01 > 0:30:06And when you first set out and start listening to Fahey,
0:30:06 > 0:30:09it strikes you in a way that you .. that you recognise something.
0:30:09 > 0:30:13You're familiar with it instantly, with the sound of the guitar,
0:30:13 > 0:30:17the acoustic steel string guitar. so there is that familiarity,
0:30:17 > 0:30:20and yet, when you start listening to where he goes melodically
0:30:20 > 0:30:25and harmonically, you can tell that he's not about playing it safe.
0:30:25 > 0:30:28The way he treated the guitar,
0:30:28 > 0:30:31as though the guitar was certainly not by any means limited to
0:30:31 > 0:30:34accompanying the voice, as though it was an orchestra, almost.
0:30:34 > 0:30:37You know, he used it like, the guitar as a band.
0:30:37 > 0:30:41He was really one of the first people to do solo concerts
0:30:41 > 0:30:45on a steel string guitar and not be singing.
0:31:28 > 0:31:32MUSIC: "A Raga Called Pat - Part One" by John Fahey
0:32:03 > 0:32:08He is sampling, in effect, before that term is being used.
0:32:08 > 0:32:12He's got to be drawing on influences from musique concrete,
0:32:12 > 0:32:16which is tape composition coming out of Western European art music, where people are using found sound.
0:32:16 > 0:32:22MUSIC: "A Raga Called Pat - Part One" by John Fahey
0:32:22 > 0:32:26Raga For Pat actually has him using two different records,
0:32:26 > 0:32:29a Folkways album, songs from a tropical rainforest,
0:32:29 > 0:32:33and another record of steam engines that he's playing backwards and forwards.
0:32:33 > 0:32:34Turntablism!
0:32:34 > 0:32:38John Fahey was one of the early turntablists in American vernacular music.
0:32:45 > 0:32:49John's music evolved greatly through his career,
0:32:49 > 0:32:52but it was not a straight path from point A to point B.
0:32:54 > 0:32:58We used to sit around and listen to records for hours and hours and hours,
0:32:58 > 0:33:01and it would always be all kinds of stuff,
0:33:01 > 0:33:02from Charlie Patton to
0:33:02 > 0:33:06Charles Ives, to Roy Acuff
0:33:06 > 0:33:10to Booker T The MGs, to Rod Stewart.
0:33:10 > 0:33:13I mean, he loved Rod Stewart!
0:33:13 > 0:33:18Like those great classical composers like Bartok and Stravinsky,
0:33:18 > 0:33:22he would take, you know, this approach of listening to different
0:33:22 > 0:33:25kinds of music and incorporating it into what he played.
0:33:27 > 0:33:30NEW ORLEANS JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS
0:33:33 > 0:33:34Then came a little phase
0:33:34 > 0:33:38where he got interested in playing music that was informed
0:33:38 > 0:33:43by New Orleans jazz, old-fashioned love of rivers and religion.
0:33:55 > 0:33:57I think of myself as a classical guitar player,
0:33:57 > 0:34:00but, you know, that's the way it turned out.
0:34:03 > 0:34:07I'm categorised as a folk musician.
0:34:07 > 0:34:11"Dear Stephan, just got off the road, very tired, must be brief.
0:34:11 > 0:34:13"I am moving to Salem, Oregon end of this month.
0:34:13 > 0:34:15"Just bought a house up there.
0:34:15 > 0:34:18"I'll no longer be working for Takoma Records. No loss.
0:34:18 > 0:34:23"Well, I suppose we might stop fighting, but I must retain the right
0:34:23 > 0:34:27"to call you with news, and you must stop staying "Peace, brother" to me.
0:34:27 > 0:34:29"How nauseating!"
0:34:47 > 0:34:52John was looking to get away from the big city,
0:34:52 > 0:34:55and he wanted a quieter place.
0:34:57 > 0:35:03John had this idea that a state capital like Salem would
0:35:03 > 0:35:07always have jobs because there'd always be government,
0:35:07 > 0:35:09and so if the economy went really bad,
0:35:09 > 0:35:12your house would never become worth absolutely nothing.
0:35:15 > 0:35:17So he just moved to Salem,
0:35:17 > 0:35:20and we started talking a lot on the phone and kind of hanging out, and
0:35:20 > 0:35:23one day he said, "I just got a deal. I want you to produce our records."
0:35:23 > 0:35:25And we started working together
0:35:25 > 0:35:29and he was into, kind of, concept things at that point.
0:35:29 > 0:35:31And how he produced was great.
0:35:31 > 0:35:34He would call me up and say, "I got this idea for a record,
0:35:34 > 0:35:36"think about this and call me back in two weeks."
0:35:36 > 0:35:40I'd think about it and he had thought about some stuff. "Thinking about some tunes."
0:35:40 > 0:35:43We'd either get together his place or my place
0:35:43 > 0:35:44and we'd start putting it together.
0:35:44 > 0:35:47And it was very well planned out ahead of time,
0:35:47 > 0:35:48preproduction was important.
0:35:48 > 0:35:51We never went into the studio and just messed around.
0:35:51 > 0:35:56I think the last time I did a record with him was probably '90, '91.
0:35:56 > 0:35:59And that's when he wasn't really playing that well.
0:35:59 > 0:36:02He wasn't doing that kind of music any more.
0:36:02 > 0:36:04I have taken a vow of silence.
0:36:08 > 0:36:11For the next 30 years, unless..
0:36:11 > 0:36:16the occasion arises in which I need to talk.
0:36:16 > 0:36:19Obviously, this is not one of those occasions...
0:36:24 > 0:36:28So I will continue to play my guitar and transform the universe.
0:36:30 > 0:36:31HE PLAYS GUITAR
0:36:31 > 0:36:34I guess he had had some problems with
0:36:34 > 0:36:38managing his sleeping for a long time.
0:36:38 > 0:36:41When you are on the road and you have...
0:36:41 > 0:36:44You're flying here and there, that sort of thing,
0:36:44 > 0:36:47you are in different places all the time, that's one of the reasons
0:36:47 > 0:36:51people get into sleeping pills which is what he was into a lot
0:36:51 > 0:36:53was chloral hydrate,
0:36:53 > 0:36:58which, um...was a prescription drug and he had it from a doctor.
0:36:58 > 0:37:02So when he was taking the sleeping pills, I think
0:37:02 > 0:37:05it did have an effect on his personality.
0:37:05 > 0:37:09He wasn't able to drink at all when he was on chloral hydrate
0:37:09 > 0:37:12so he'd drink tonnes of Coca-Cola, which I think is probably what
0:37:12 > 0:37:15killed him, finally, was diabetes and heart disease.
0:37:15 > 0:37:19When he wasn't on chloral hydrate, he did drink quite a lot, alcohol.
0:37:19 > 0:37:23He wasn't a street drug person at all, he wasn't...
0:37:23 > 0:37:27get illegal drugs and get high, type of thing.
0:37:27 > 0:37:29First of all, he didn't need that, his mind was
0:37:29 > 0:37:35so imaginative that he didn't need to be...high.
0:37:37 > 0:37:39HE PLAYS GUITAR
0:37:43 > 0:37:48You have to realise that the entertainer's life is...
0:37:50 > 0:37:54has built into it a bipolar...
0:37:58 > 0:38:00..ingredient that you cannot escape from.
0:38:00 > 0:38:03When you are on stage and when you're on the road, um ..
0:38:05 > 0:38:08..you are on top of the world.
0:38:08 > 0:38:10When the tour is over, even if you are exhausted,
0:38:10 > 0:38:12you are at the bottom.
0:38:12 > 0:38:15You don't notice it, but you are really down.
0:38:16 > 0:38:18I've only began to notice this lately.
0:38:20 > 0:38:22Or begun to pay any attention to it.
0:38:22 > 0:38:28My solution to it is possibly a woman,
0:38:28 > 0:38:31but it's a kind of sickness, being an entertainer.
0:38:31 > 0:38:33You have to be an entertainer.
0:38:33 > 0:38:35That is, anybody who's an entertainer
0:38:35 > 0:38:36is not an entertainer by choice
0:38:36 > 0:38:39He's an entertainer because he has to be.
0:38:51 > 0:38:53He had a lot of pain.
0:38:56 > 0:38:59Usually, everything would be prescribed by a doctor,
0:38:59 > 0:39:04but he did have this habit of having run out
0:39:04 > 0:39:09and being in a different town and giving the guy his prescription,
0:39:09 > 0:39:10so he'd have multiple doctors
0:39:10 > 0:39:15and maybe lots more pills than you normally should be taking.
0:39:17 > 0:39:20SLOW BLUES MUSIC
0:39:31 > 0:39:37But I think at that point, he sort of got a little apathetic
0:39:37 > 0:39:40to what was happening, cos people thought he was a big drug-head
0:39:40 > 0:39:41and he wasn't.
0:39:41 > 0:39:45He was very laconic and when he would communicate with people,
0:39:45 > 0:39:46he would be very...
0:39:46 > 0:39:51Laid-back isn't even the word.
0:39:51 > 0:39:56Laid-back would make it seems like he was really doing something fast
0:39:56 > 0:39:57and he was really...
0:39:57 > 0:40:01It would seem like he was on elephant tranquilisers sometimes,
0:40:01 > 0:40:04as well as he had a drink problem,
0:40:04 > 0:40:06so a lot of times his stage performance would be...
0:40:07 > 0:40:11..to be nice, would be idiosyncratic, him on stage,
0:40:11 > 0:40:16cos he would be doing some nutty things or he wasn't playing well.
0:40:16 > 0:40:18But it all kept building up into this mystique,
0:40:18 > 0:40:22so you got a real John Fahey mystique,
0:40:22 > 0:40:27whereas behind that mystique there was a real human being with problems
0:40:27 > 0:40:29with what everyone else has,
0:40:29 > 0:40:33and he was involved in trying to understand those problems
0:40:33 > 0:40:35with analysis, et cetera.
0:40:37 > 0:40:41It was mostly memories of my father that came out in psychoanalysis
0:40:43 > 0:40:46Mostly anger, frustration,
0:40:46 > 0:40:50which on the surface looks like depression, usually.
0:40:50 > 0:40:53My father was a paedophile.
0:40:59 > 0:41:02And then you get scared of people.
0:41:02 > 0:41:04You know, here's your father, your family,
0:41:04 > 0:41:06you're scared of your family..
0:41:07 > 0:41:11..and it transmits into being afraid of everybody, really.
0:41:15 > 0:41:20Then you compensate for fear with drugs and booze and stuff and, uh...
0:41:23 > 0:41:25..then you get troubles.
0:41:25 > 0:41:27But...
0:41:29 > 0:41:30..that's the way it goes.
0:41:40 > 0:41:42All the things he experienced,
0:41:42 > 0:41:46particularly this trauma of childhood sexual abuse,
0:41:46 > 0:41:52those things clearly had a profound influence on his thinking,
0:41:52 > 0:41:55maybe his relationships with people and certainly his art.
0:41:57 > 0:42:01Um, playing the guitar helped keeping me from going nuts...
0:42:03 > 0:42:07..when I was 14, 15, 16...
0:42:08 > 0:42:11..17, 18, 19.
0:42:13 > 0:42:17You know, I could sit around and bang on the guitar
0:42:17 > 0:42:19instead of banging on somebody else.
0:42:24 > 0:42:26All of a sudden, he kind of fell apart, as you know,
0:42:26 > 0:42:30and he stopped playing and he didn't want to play how he played before.
0:42:30 > 0:42:32He never really liked to repeat himself,
0:42:32 > 0:42:35cos I used to say to him, "Why don't you play Requiem For John Hurt
0:42:35 > 0:42:37"the way you used to?" and he would get mad.
0:42:37 > 0:42:41"I already did that!" It was kind of like Miles Davis in that sense.
0:42:41 > 0:42:44Anyway, I was thinking, "He's going to find something.
0:42:44 > 0:42:47"He'll do something. This just isn't it any more for him."
0:42:52 > 0:42:54'People other than myself do not understand
0:42:54 > 0:42:56'that I do not have a career.
0:42:58 > 0:43:00'I've never had a career.
0:43:00 > 0:43:05'I do not want a career, so I probably never will have a career.
0:43:07 > 0:43:09'Fine.
0:43:09 > 0:43:11'That's the way I want it.
0:43:13 > 0:43:16'What I have is this,
0:43:16 > 0:43:18'and it is very important -
0:43:18 > 0:43:20'I have a small, little niche carved out here
0:43:20 > 0:43:24'where I play guitar for people every once in a great while.
0:43:25 > 0:43:28'I make just enough money to get by and have a little left over
0:43:28 > 0:43:31'and that's all I want to do.'
0:43:37 > 0:43:40THROAT SINGING
0:43:48 > 0:43:51Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth took this great interest in him
0:43:51 > 0:43:55so he met Thurston and they made music together
0:43:55 > 0:43:59and John wound up making this electric music towards the end
0:43:59 > 0:44:02of his career that was very different from anything he'd done before
0:44:04 > 0:44:07All of a sudden, Fahey was big, it was this whole new crowd
0:44:07 > 0:44:09that hadn't really heard of his earlier stuff and everything
0:44:09 > 0:44:10and I thought it was great
0:44:10 > 0:44:13and I knew he was going to come through with something
0:44:15 > 0:44:17LO-FI DRONE
0:44:17 > 0:44:20We did a lot of travelling together when we were trying to bring him
0:44:20 > 0:44:24back into circulation, cos it was clear
0:44:24 > 0:44:29that his work had been embraced
0:44:29 > 0:44:33by everybody from the avant-garde to the underground.
0:44:36 > 0:44:39Dropping his name frankly carried a lot of weight
0:44:39 > 0:44:41with a lot of the communities I ran in,
0:44:41 > 0:44:43so I didn't have to do a whole lot.
0:44:43 > 0:44:47John was sent to New York.
0:44:47 > 0:44:49I went to the airport,
0:44:49 > 0:44:52I went to the gate, waiting around
0:44:52 > 0:44:57and, unmistakeably, from the gate emerges this guy
0:44:57 > 0:45:01and he's wearing sort of cut-off jean shorts,
0:45:01 > 0:45:05not what you would expect from someone getting off of an aeroplane.
0:45:05 > 0:45:07He looked more like he was getting off of a boat.
0:45:07 > 0:45:09Then he walked straight up to me and he said,
0:45:09 > 0:45:14"Well, I'd like to thank your employers for sending you here.
0:45:14 > 0:45:16"They always do really great work for me."
0:45:18 > 0:45:20I don't really have any employers.
0:45:20 > 0:45:26This was his way of saying, "OK, you're here to take me to the gig."
0:45:26 > 0:45:30AMBIENT DRONE
0:45:34 > 0:45:36You can definitely hear a man
0:45:36 > 0:45:40in transition, certainly moving away,
0:45:40 > 0:45:42maybe even writing off
0:45:42 > 0:45:44the previous person that he was
0:45:44 > 0:45:45crawling out of that skin altogether.
0:45:45 > 0:45:48I think he was trying to take it further and further out
0:45:48 > 0:45:51and he was trying to give you blocks of sound.
0:45:51 > 0:45:53He was trying to make you uncomfortable.
0:45:53 > 0:45:55He was trying to put you through all of the things
0:45:55 > 0:45:57that he probably was going through.
0:46:05 > 0:46:09A lot of stuff I've been doing for the last two years,
0:46:09 > 0:46:12including Tuvan singing
0:46:12 > 0:46:15and tuning all the strings on the guitar to the same note
0:46:15 > 0:46:18and playing steel...
0:46:18 > 0:46:23I didn't know what I was doing so I recorded a lot of it.
0:46:23 > 0:46:29AMBIENT DRONE # Yes, yes, yes, yes... #
0:46:36 > 0:46:39I took it round to various record stores
0:46:39 > 0:46:42and two or three people at least told me
0:46:42 > 0:46:46what I was doing already existed and it's called
0:46:46 > 0:46:49gothic industrial ambient.
0:46:53 > 0:46:58And it's a lot of fun, cos you get to scream and make noise.
0:46:58 > 0:47:04LO-FI GUITAR
0:47:12 > 0:47:14I think a lot of casual observation
0:47:14 > 0:47:17of what he was doing in his later years was that,
0:47:17 > 0:47:19"Oh, he was just kind of burnt out
0:47:19 > 0:47:22"and upset with everyone and difficult to deal with
0:47:22 > 0:47:25"and he played this kind of strange, abstract music
0:47:25 > 0:47:28"as opposed to doing what he really could do."
0:47:28 > 0:47:30That wasn't my experience with him.
0:47:30 > 0:47:34My experience was that he was doing what he thought he should be doing,
0:47:34 > 0:47:38because he perceived that the times were indicative
0:47:38 > 0:47:41of this kind of presentation.
0:47:41 > 0:47:44BLUES
0:47:53 > 0:47:57This was another chapter of his creative life
0:47:57 > 0:48:00that we wanted to bring to the forefront.
0:48:00 > 0:48:04I've heard stories that he put paint on his feet, he'd spin on them
0:48:04 > 0:48:07he'd take his shoes off and spin around on these works.
0:48:07 > 0:48:10Antifreeze, all these crazy materials.
0:48:10 > 0:48:18I even heard one story that he would just drop trowel and spin around
0:48:18 > 0:48:22with a naked backside and he called them ass paintings.
0:48:24 > 0:48:26There you go, 45-H.
0:48:29 > 0:48:31This one's signed twice.
0:48:35 > 0:48:39This one says, "Tart" or "Jart 3".
0:48:39 > 0:48:43There were just random little bits that he himself put on them
0:48:43 > 0:48:46and when he was asked, "John, what are you doing?",
0:48:46 > 0:48:48He's like, "This is what real artists do.
0:48:48 > 0:48:51"They put things like this on the backs of their works,
0:48:51 > 0:48:53"so that's what I'm doing."
0:48:53 > 0:48:57Getting to know him, he was quite a complicated figure.
0:48:57 > 0:49:02I don't think of him any longer in terms of being a musician per se.
0:49:02 > 0:49:05I think of him more
0:49:05 > 0:49:12as something of a sort of journeyman kind of thinker,
0:49:12 > 0:49:15provocateur in the romantic mould.
0:49:27 > 0:49:29SPOKEN WORD TO MUSIC: ..In life
0:49:29 > 0:49:31and in death.
0:49:33 > 0:49:36The Oregon capital...
0:49:39 > 0:49:45He invited me out to Oregon where he was living - Woodburn, Oregon.
0:49:45 > 0:49:50John Fahey living in the middle of nowhere in a one-room motel
0:49:50 > 0:49:53Just the most vague stretch of highway,
0:49:53 > 0:49:56the vaguest motel one could imagine.
0:49:56 > 0:49:58One would never think that THE John Fahey
0:49:58 > 0:50:00was living in that particular place.
0:50:06 > 0:50:08His daily routine consisted of
0:50:08 > 0:50:10looking for rare records in thrift stores
0:50:10 > 0:50:14and anything else he could find with an interesting catalogue number
0:50:14 > 0:50:18and bringing it back to his place, which was a bit of a dump,
0:50:18 > 0:50:22and sort of leaving it in the corner and allowing it to gather dust
0:50:22 > 0:50:25until some collector would call him up and say,
0:50:25 > 0:50:28"Hey, have you got this catalogue number?"
0:50:28 > 0:50:30Fahey would miraculously say, "Yeah, I've got it."
0:50:40 > 0:50:43We had arranged for the pick-up time.
0:50:43 > 0:50:45He comes to the door and he's completely naked
0:50:45 > 0:50:51and he's just standing there at the door and my brother tells me later,
0:50:51 > 0:50:56I was trying to look away but I look inside and I see him
0:50:56 > 0:50:59walking away from us,
0:50:59 > 0:51:04his bare behind facing us and I see all these small, round,
0:51:04 > 0:51:08brown tattoos on his back, and little by little the tattoos
0:51:08 > 0:51:13dropped off and it was all the pennies and change.
0:51:13 > 0:51:16He had rolled around on the bed in his nakedness
0:51:16 > 0:51:18and everything stuck to him.
0:51:20 > 0:51:22That just sort of summed up the guy.
0:51:33 > 0:51:35He died at 61,
0:51:35 > 0:51:39largely because he hadn't taken very good care of himself over the years,
0:51:39 > 0:51:42but I think if you had put the equation to him,
0:51:42 > 0:51:45"Hey, this is the trade you're making.
0:51:45 > 0:51:46"You live the life you want...
0:51:48 > 0:51:51"..but you're going to die at 6 ",
0:51:51 > 0:51:54I think he would still have made the same choices.
0:51:57 > 0:52:00SLIDE GUITAR MUSIC
0:52:10 > 0:52:13For, lo, the winter is past,
0:52:13 > 0:52:15the rain is over and gone...
0:52:17 > 0:52:20..the flowers appear on the Earth,
0:52:20 > 0:52:22the time of the singing of birds is come...
0:52:24 > 0:52:28..and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
0:52:36 > 0:52:40You can't get any more American than John Fahey in the sense that
0:52:40 > 0:52:44he just took something that existed in our lineage
0:52:44 > 0:52:46as Americans and American music
0:52:46 > 0:52:49and tripped out somewhere along the line.
0:52:49 > 0:52:50Went to outer space.
0:52:50 > 0:52:52He's in his own bubble.
0:52:52 > 0:52:55He claimed his space...
0:52:59 > 0:53:02..and it feels as though he's not quite going to let it go.
0:53:25 > 0:53:28Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd