In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey


In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey

Similar Content

Browse content similar to In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!

Transcript


LineFromTo

He seemed to me the kind of folk-guitar-playing equivalent

0:00:250:00:28

of sort of William Burroughs or Bukowski, Charles Bukowski,

0:00:280:00:32

do you know what I mean? He had that really powerful thing

0:00:320:00:36

that we look for in American artists or writers

0:00:360:00:39

He created a new language, modally speaking, harmonically speaking,

0:00:490:00:54

and if that that's not an iconoclast, I don't know what is, really.

0:00:540:00:59

Independent label owner, like, maybe the first, record collector,

0:01:010:01:05

musicologist, alcoholic,

0:01:050:01:09

hobo...

0:01:090:01:11

Thrift store master,

0:01:110:01:13

guitar, don't-give-a-shit- about-the-brand-name guitar owner.

0:01:130:01:19

HE LAUGHS

0:01:190:01:21

It's not about what you own, it's just about what you play,

0:01:210:01:24

you know, the voice of the turtle's like, in here, not in this thing,

0:01:240:01:29

so to speak. It's awesome.

0:01:290:01:31

It's been said of John Fahey that his style is American primitive,

0:01:310:01:36

whatever that means. What does that mean, John?

0:01:360:01:38

Well, somebody else said that. Oh, I know you didn't say it.

0:01:380:01:41

I didn't say it. This is like a Rousseau painting, or like Rousseau.

0:01:410:01:45

Primitive means untaught. I didn't have any teachers.

0:01:450:01:49

Oh. I taught myself. And American means American.

0:01:490:01:53

And what would you call your style, if you had to call it something?

0:01:530:01:56

That's the closest thing, if I had to call it anything,

0:01:560:01:58

I wouldn't worry about calling it anything.

0:01:580:02:00

OK, we won't call it anything. But it is unusual and it's your own.

0:02:000:02:04

There are a lot of people who haven't been actually literally taught

0:02:040:02:07

but who all sound alike, but I don't think that you sound like anybody.

0:02:070:02:10

Good. You sound like... "Good! Great."

0:02:100:02:13

So that everybody can join us in either agreeing or disagreeing,

0:02:130:02:17

why don't you start playing?

0:02:170:02:19

There is something about guitars,

0:03:120:03:15

maybe something magical when played right,

0:03:150:03:18

which evokes past, mysterious, barely conscious sentiments,

0:03:180:03:22

both individual and universal.

0:03:220:03:25

The road to the unconscious past.

0:03:260:03:28

Guitar is a caller.

0:03:300:03:32

It brings forth emotions you didn't know you had.

0:03:320:03:35

It is a very personal instrument.

0:03:370:03:39

He seemed to be trying to create poetry, and divide...

0:03:410:03:45

if music is simply dividing time, dividing time in some new way.

0:03:450:03:49

He took everything in the world and personalised it,

0:03:550:03:58

made it into part of him. He was a spiritual detective.

0:03:580:04:02

It's difficult to say what characterised him

0:04:130:04:15

because he went through so many phases.

0:04:150:04:17

I suppose what characterised him that was attractive to me

0:04:170:04:20

was simply the repetitive cycling rhythms. It was very pop,

0:04:200:04:23

it was very rock 'n' roll, it was very R It was cyclic.

0:04:230:04:27

I think it was his tunings.

0:04:290:04:31

His sense of collage, his sense of soundscape,

0:04:330:04:38

his sense of dissonance

0:04:380:04:40

that influenced people like Pete Townshend, Thurston Moore and Beck.

0:04:400:04:45

He's using the guitar as almost like a antenna,

0:04:450:04:50

and he's not sure of what it's going to do or where it'll take him.

0:04:500:04:53

My family and I moved to the Washington, DC suburbs in 1945,

0:05:000:05:05

right after we dropped the big ones on Japan.

0:05:050:05:08

I remember the night we moved into the new house in the suburbs.

0:05:100:05:14

I was sleepy, and didn't like what was going on.

0:05:140:05:16

I remember the following morning feeling afraid and shy,

0:05:180:05:22

but preparing myself to go across the street

0:05:220:05:25

where I saw the local kids hanging out.

0:05:250:05:27

My mother was encouraging me. She gave me a lot of support.

0:05:290:05:33

That day, for some reason, I thought I should dress up

0:05:340:05:38

in some kind of costume, so I wore a pith helmet.

0:05:380:05:41

Where John Fahey grew up was one of those neighbourhoods where

0:05:450:05:48

he would've had a lot of access to woods, basically.

0:05:480:05:51

Places to wander, places to look under rocks and logs

0:05:510:05:56

and crawl over...you know, as a kid,

0:05:560:05:58

crawl over creeks and things like that.

0:05:580:06:01

A kind of wonderful environment in a lot of ways.

0:06:010:06:04

FINGER STYLE GUITAR MUSIC PLAYS

0:06:040:06:06

There's a certain a lot of the acoustic guitar work of water,

0:06:060:06:10

of that kind of movement, of that kind of rippling and...motion.

0:06:100:06:13

The very soil was sacred.

0:06:230:06:27

The water in the creeks and springs was holy water.

0:06:270:06:31

The oak trees were the highest in the world.

0:06:310:06:34

And these oak trees weren't like regular oak trees,

0:06:340:06:38

they were sacred oak trees

0:06:380:06:40

planted by The Great Koonaklaster himself

0:06:400:06:43

while he was creating the world

0:06:430:06:45

Turtles were sacred to The Big K.

0:06:480:06:50

The common box turtle was Big K's totem.

0:06:500:06:55

How did you start playing guitar? How come and how and...

0:06:550:06:58

Um, well, there were a lot of kids around where I lived

0:06:580:07:00

who played country west, so I got a Sears Roebuck guitar.

0:07:000:07:04

But I started to compose as soon as I got one.

0:07:040:07:06

As soon as I knew where the chords...

0:07:060:07:08

BEFORE I knew where the chords were, or anything.

0:07:080:07:11

Had you taken any other music lessons of any kind?

0:07:110:07:13

Yeah, I played clarinet in junior high school band.

0:07:130:07:16

SHE LAUGHS I didn't like it much.

0:07:160:07:18

I used to improvise. Were you good? No, I kept improvising.

0:07:180:07:22

Band teacher got pretty mad about it.

0:07:220:07:24

I met John, it must have been in 1957, or '58.

0:07:270:07:31

We were both involved with some other usual suspects

0:07:310:07:34

at St Michael and All Angels.

0:07:340:07:37

That community was more than a religious community,

0:07:370:07:40

it was a community of like-minded people who were welcoming to

0:07:400:07:44

a great diversity of people.

0:07:440:07:46

John was an outlaw, from start to finish.

0:07:470:07:50

A very gentlemanly outlaw but outside

0:07:500:07:54

the strictures of the...of his background.

0:07:540:07:57

We had dated, we were sort of still dating

0:07:590:08:02

when I was finishing up high school.

0:08:020:08:03

Then there was a little event at church and he...

0:08:030:08:08

I guess he had been really drinking seriously that night

0:08:080:08:10

and he was just very rude to me

0:08:100:08:12

First time. So I got up and walked out in a huff.

0:08:120:08:16

Then he approached me, must have been a year later,

0:08:160:08:19

to do a session at Joe Bussard's in Frederick.

0:08:190:08:22

And it was not... We didn't really...

0:08:220:08:24

We may have played one song together but he was just asking me

0:08:240:08:27

to please, play these lines.

0:08:270:08:29

HE PLAYS SLIDE GUITAR

0:08:290:08:31

# Girl, you set your dogs on

0:08:310:08:33

# Set your dogs on him. #

0:08:330:08:36

HE FINISHES PLAYING

0:08:520:08:55

HE CHUCKLES

0:08:550:08:57

I haven't played this thing in a long, long time.

0:08:570:09:00

# Doo-doo-doo... #

0:09:090:09:11

Yep, the best music has already been recorded, my friend.

0:09:110:09:15

And as far as I'm concerned,

0:09:170:09:18

what they've got today is zero everything.

0:09:180:09:21

Look at this.

0:09:210:09:23

HE LAUGHS

0:09:230:09:24

Look at the condition.

0:09:260:09:27

Fahey came by and listened to records

0:09:270:09:29

and one day he brought his guitar up and I liked the way he played,

0:09:290:09:34

he experimented around. This was in November of 1959.

0:09:340:09:38

I said, "Let's make a couple of records."

0:09:380:09:40

It was at four o'clock in the morning,

0:09:400:09:42

that's about the time he got loosened up.

0:09:420:09:44

He spent a lot of time up here A lot of time, a lot of time playing.

0:09:460:09:51

He'd sit over for hours and play.

0:09:510:09:52

This does not... MUSIC PLAYS

0:09:520:09:55

Oh, this is where he's playing a sitar.

0:09:550:09:57

We were playing... That's the only tricky thing we ever did.

0:09:580:10:01

I wrote a record backwards.

0:10:010:10:03

Yeah, man. I like it.

0:10:050:10:06

MUSIC PLAYS BACKWARDS

0:10:060:10:08

We rolled the tape backwards. Hear?

0:10:080:10:10

What do you think of that?

0:10:210:10:22

You've never heard anything like that, ha-ha-ha-ha!

0:10:220:10:27

I used to go up to Frederick, Maryland

0:10:270:10:31

and there was crazy guy who lived there named Joe Bussard.

0:10:310:10:35

He used to get me up there and get me just as smashed as he could

0:10:350:10:40

and get me screaming and yelling and playing the guitar

0:10:400:10:43

and trying to make out I was a drunk Negro blues singer from Mississippi.

0:10:430:10:48

He did the bulk? No, I did some, he did some.

0:10:480:10:52

No, and you hear a lot of...

0:10:520:10:53

HE GROWLS HOARSELY

0:10:530:10:55

You know, it's usually me.

0:10:550:10:58

# Where you going?

0:10:580:11:02

# I'm going down to get us some wine

0:11:020:11:05

# You're going to eat crabs tonight

0:11:050:11:07

# What kind of crabs you going to eat, man?

0:11:070:11:10

# We're gonna eat them kind of crabs live in water, what kind IS that?

0:11:100:11:14

# That's crab crabs, man

0:11:160:11:18

# Yeah, them old crabs good, mmm! #

0:11:180:11:21

It reminded me of the old black blues guys.

0:11:230:11:25

Nice style, very interesting, and he'd get a big charge.

0:11:250:11:31

John started Takoma in 1959 on 8s, actually.

0:11:390:11:44

I think the reason was simply it was the only way you could

0:11:440:11:47

get your own music onto a record was to start your own label.

0:11:470:11:51

That's how he saw it.

0:11:510:11:53

It would've been hopeless for him to try

0:11:530:11:55

and approach a record company with his music.

0:11:550:11:59

It was just too strange to what was being issued by record

0:11:590:12:03

companies at the time. John Fahey and Ed Denson

0:12:030:12:06

managed Takoma Records and put out mostly John Fahey albums,

0:12:060:12:11

but also Robbie Basho and a few other blues artists.

0:12:110:12:15

Takoma became an icon of independent, artist-owned,

0:12:170:12:22

artist-started record labels within the independent label

0:12:220:12:27

world, but it was John's vision really,

0:12:270:12:31

that started that whole genre.

0:12:310:12:34

Well, when I made my first...record,

0:12:370:12:42

um...

0:12:420:12:45

I thought it would be a good joke

0:12:450:12:49

to have me on one side, have the label say

0:12:490:12:53

John Fahey on one side and this guy Blind Joe Death on the other side.

0:12:530:12:59

The reason it says "blind" is because a lot of people I learned

0:12:590:13:03

from were on old 78rpm records and a lot of them were blind.

0:13:030:13:08

Their names were Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Boy Fuller,

0:13:100:13:14

Blind Joe Taggart. A whole bunch of them were blind.

0:13:140:13:18

I think he thought the sort of earnestness with which many

0:13:180:13:21

people of his background approached it needed a bit of sending up,

0:13:210:13:26

so I think some of that comes

0:13:260:13:28

from that wanting to kind of, you know, um, give something

0:13:280:13:32

a little bit of a poke. And...kind of mess with people's minds, too.

0:13:320:13:39

Also I was thinking,

0:13:390:13:41

whenever you print the word death, people look at it.

0:13:410:13:44

I was thinking of record sales already.

0:13:440:13:48

Even though I was only going to have 100 copies pressed.

0:13:480:13:53

John is a guitarist and composer, he's both. You can't separate them.

0:14:000:14:05

Very early in his career, before he ever recorded anything,

0:14:050:14:08

he started making up his own pieces. The first pieces were

0:14:080:14:13

pretty much just things that could have

0:14:130:14:16

been traditional, but as time went on, he began putting

0:14:160:14:20

the harmonies that he would come up with into these pieces.

0:14:200:14:24

He was inspired, certainly, to some extent by classical music.

0:14:240:14:28

Certain composers, especially. Bartok, Charles Ives.

0:14:280:14:33

I met John Fahey in 1964 when we were both

0:14:370:14:40

part of the Folk Music Studies

0:14:400:14:42

masters degree programme that UCLA had.

0:14:420:14:45

He does his MA on Charley Patton.

0:14:560:14:57

It is still a definitive work on Charley Patton if you want to learn

0:14:570:15:01

about who the heck Patton was and learn about his life and so on

0:15:010:15:04

MUSIC: "Stone Pony Blues" by Charley Patton

0:15:040:15:08

# I got me a stone pony and I don't ride Shetlands no more... #

0:15:080:15:15

There was something about Charley Patton in particular that

0:15:180:15:21

really moved him deeply, but also the techniques.

0:15:210:15:24

He would build his own music around the fingerpicking

0:15:240:15:29

and playing techniques, the slightest techniques,

0:15:290:15:32

the slide techniques that were

0:15:320:15:33

originally developed by Charley Patton and other Delta blues people.

0:15:330:15:38

It was all grist for his mill.

0:15:380:15:40

# Vicksburg's my pony Greenville is my grey mare

0:15:400:15:45

# Vicksburg's my pony Greenville is my grey mare... #

0:15:450:15:51

Patton was an entertainer, not a social prophet in any sense.

0:15:540:15:58

He had no profound message.

0:15:580:16:00

He was probably not very observant of the troubles of his own people.

0:16:000:16:04

He was not a noble savage.

0:16:040:16:07

The music, it is part of the pulse, the heartbeat of this place.

0:16:120:16:17

Maybe it is linked to the Mississippi River.

0:16:170:16:20

If you think about it, there is a steady, giant,

0:16:200:16:24

volume of matter moving at 9mph

0:16:240:16:28

which almost has a, perhaps, magnetic pull.

0:16:280:16:32

It's hard to imagine what contemporary music would be like

0:16:520:16:58

if people like John Fahey had not been obsessively

0:16:580:17:03

fascinated with roots American music from the '20s and '30s.

0:17:030:17:07

# Praise God, I'm satisfied

0:17:070:17:10

# For me he bled and died

0:17:100:17:14

# Well, I'm glad to know that he loved me so

0:17:140:17:18

# For me he was crucified... #

0:17:180:17:20

The tune kept going through my head, something about it kept going through my head.

0:17:200:17:24

And within ten minutes, I had to hear it again.

0:17:240:17:27

I would have killed to hear it again.

0:17:270:17:29

So they played it again and I thought it was the most

0:17:290:17:32

beautiful thing I ever heard in my life. I started crying.

0:17:320:17:36

It was like a conversion experience, you know.

0:17:360:17:39

There is the oft told story of him

0:17:400:17:44

weeping after hearing Blind Willie Johnson's Praise God, I'm Satisfied.

0:17:440:17:49

Although, initially, he was sort of sickened by it.

0:17:490:17:52

He didn't know what to make of it. It was so alien to him.

0:17:520:17:56

He grew up in the suburbs in Maryland.

0:17:560:17:58

He was he was a fan of bluegrass and country stars of the day.

0:17:580:18:01

He hadn't had exposure to black artists.

0:18:010:18:04

He didn't have an instant affinity for this music.

0:18:040:18:07

This was, if you like, a transition from Mars to him.

0:18:070:18:12

John was always fascinated with other cultures,

0:18:120:18:16

so I am sure the southern black culture was fascinating to him

0:18:160:18:21

Any culture that isn't your own culture teaches you something

0:18:210:18:25

new and expands you, and I think John was always into expansion.

0:18:250:18:30

I spent every summer in the deep South, looking for old blues singers

0:18:330:18:37

and collecting records, old records and so on.

0:18:370:18:40

We would go door-to-door in the black sections of these little towns

0:18:420:18:47

along the way. We'd knock on the door,

0:18:470:18:49

knock, knock, knock.

0:18:490:18:51

People would answer and he'd say, "You have any old phonograph records?

0:18:510:18:55

"We're buying up old phonograph records.

0:18:550:18:57

"Give you a quarter a piece for the good ones." That was John's spiel.

0:18:570:19:01

He kind of trained me how to do it.

0:19:010:19:04

So John had been making a living doing this,

0:19:040:19:06

or at least part of his living since the early '60s.

0:19:060:19:09

There were some other college kids coming into this

0:19:100:19:13

neck of the woods, but they weren't doing a voters

0:19:130:19:16

registration drive, and it cost them their lives.

0:19:160:19:19

And people were not really aware of the courage or foolhardiness it

0:19:200:19:25

took to go into that same neck of the woods.

0:19:250:19:30

Being young white guys talking to black people,

0:19:300:19:32

they could have very easily been misinterpreted or misidentified.

0:19:320:19:37

'How do you do that, by the way I'm just curious.

0:19:390:19:42

'How do you find somebody?

0:19:420:19:44

'Or do you have them in mind and then go looking for them?

0:19:440:19:47

'Well, I might be looking for somebody

0:19:470:19:49

'specific like Bukka White or Skip James.

0:19:490:19:52

'Bukka White, you know, he made these old 78s. Right.

0:19:520:19:57

'And I thought he was very good

0:19:570:20:00

So I said, well, maybe Bukka White is still alive.

0:20:000:20:05

So he'd made a record called Aberdeen Mississippi Blues.

0:20:050:20:09

So I wrote him a little postcard.

0:20:090:20:12

I knew his real Christian name or whatever you call it.

0:20:120:20:17

It was Booker T Washington White.

0:20:170:20:21

Then I wrote in caps...

0:20:210:20:24

I wrote...

0:20:330:20:34

On the back, I wrote...

0:20:360:20:37

So we did that. And about three months later, a letter came back,

0:21:040:21:09

and we left the next day.

0:21:090:21:10

Booker knew all about trains. Booker taught me how to ride freight cars.

0:21:390:21:43

And we had a lot of adventures all over the South.

0:21:430:21:46

Bill Barth, John Fahey and I believe Henry Vestine was with them

0:21:490:21:53

when they found Skip James, and that was in a hospital, I believe,

0:21:530:21:59

in Tunica, Mississippi, just down the road from Memphis.

0:21:590:22:02

MUSIC: "Devil Got My Woman" By Skip James

0:22:020:22:06

# I'd rather be the devil

0:22:060:22:10

# To be that woman man... #

0:22:100:22:15

But why was I so interested in Skip James?

0:22:150:22:20

What was so distinctive and wonderful about his records?

0:22:200:22:24

# ..To be that woman man. #

0:22:240:22:28

James' style was so aggressively melancholy,

0:22:300:22:34

so desperate and wretched, and full of gloom,

0:22:340:22:38

that we reasoned that James' life must have been unbearable.

0:22:380:22:41

Just underneath the great sadness in James' music, we hear anger,

0:22:450:22:50

disguised and hardly noticeable

0:22:500:22:52

# Nothing but the devil... #

0:22:540:22:57

John hated phoney emotionalism.

0:22:570:23:00

But he did think his work channelled often the very darkest

0:23:000:23:04

emotions that he could dredge up,

0:23:040:23:07

and it happened that some of them may have sounded pretty...

0:23:070:23:12

or something akin to a Skip James tune or something like that, but...

0:23:120:23:18

For him it was catharsis, you know?

0:23:180:23:21

And he was, you know, venting his spleen there in the recording.

0:23:210:23:28

Would you play something on this for us?

0:23:280:23:30

Yeah, I'll try to play The Death Of The Clayton Peacock,

0:23:300:23:33

which is another song I wrote.

0:23:330:23:35

I used to live out on Mount Diablo,

0:23:350:23:38

and I'd ride into school every morning,

0:23:380:23:41

and there was a lady out there who raised peacocks,

0:23:410:23:44

and she had one peacock left, and it got run over one morning

0:23:440:23:47

And it laid in the street for two or three days

0:23:490:23:51

and then somebody cut his tail off.

0:23:510:23:53

Oh. But... I was very upset. And so you wrote a song about it?

0:23:530:23:58

Well, no, but it made a good title, you know? Want me to hold that for you?

0:24:000:24:03

I'll mind it till you're ready

0:24:030:24:05

HE STRUMS GUITAR

0:24:050:24:08

Open G tuning? Yeah. Famous open G...

0:24:090:24:12

Not regular Dobro tuning, because that's...

0:24:120:24:14

Then you have that...

0:24:140:24:16

But...

0:24:160:24:19

MUSIC: "Death of the Clayton Peacock"

0:24:190:24:23

One night, Fahey was playing at the Jabberwocky Coffee Club in Berkeley,

0:24:340:24:39

and he was on stage performing, and in his own wonderful style

0:24:390:24:44

he said, GRUFF VOICE: "I gotta pee."

0:24:440:24:47

And so he just walked off stage to pee.

0:24:470:24:50

And I met him and said, "Hey, John, I'm Stefan."

0:24:500:24:52

And he took me, and just grabbed me,

0:24:520:24:55

and went into the bathroom, holding me.

0:24:550:24:58

Took down his underpants, and we were talking about

0:24:580:25:02

Willie Brown's guitar style while John was farting his brains out.

0:25:020:25:07

And then we finally, thank God, got out the bathroom,

0:25:070:25:10

and he went back up on stage. That was my first meeting with John.

0:25:100:25:14

I hear Stefan Grossman was here

0:25:140:25:16

Uh, I heard that Stefan Grossman played here, that true?

0:25:180:25:22

He said he didn't like it here

0:25:220:25:24

Did anybody here like him? AUDIENCE LAUGHS

0:25:240:25:28

Yeah? I hate his guts, but...

0:25:280:25:31

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

0:25:310:25:34

I also hate his guitar playing

0:25:340:25:37

HIGH VOICE: He plays like a little old lady,

0:25:370:25:41

HIGH VOICE: with real long little fingers. Very dainty.

0:25:410:25:44

John had a sick sense of humour There's different levels.

0:25:530:25:56

One was his writing talents in the sense of titling tunes.

0:25:560:26:01

I don't remember what year, but I was living in London,

0:26:010:26:04

and a student came by with and album he had just recorded,

0:26:040:26:08

and on it was a tune called The Assassination Of Stephane Grossman.

0:26:080:26:11

I thought, "what cheek!" I got really pissed off at that

0:26:110:26:15

so I then recorded a tune called The Assassination Of John Fahey

0:26:150:26:19

and then HE got really pissed off about it!

0:26:190:26:22

And then I don't know whether it was John or Manny Greenhill,

0:26:220:26:26

his manager, said, "what would be great for America,

0:26:260:26:30

"let's do an assassination tour "

0:26:300:26:32

And it was a great idea. Unfortunately my back gave out with herniated discs,

0:26:330:26:37

so I had to cancel the tour. He did a couple of dates,

0:26:370:26:40

and apparently told people that the only reason I wasn't there was cos he had killed me.

0:26:400:26:44

That is called a - what? A Hawaiian guitar? Yeah.

0:26:450:26:49

Is it called a Hawaiian? Is that what a Hawaiian guitar is, right?

0:26:490:26:53

It was made in Hawaii.

0:26:530:26:55

It's an ashtray, it's not a guitar. You're kidding me.

0:26:560:26:58

It's a real cheap guitar, it's. .

0:26:580:27:00

He could be a very strange person to work with.

0:27:000:27:04

There was a period where we just hadn't heard from John in weeks,

0:27:040:27:07

and I think even months at that point,

0:27:070:27:10

and we were starting to get seriously worried about him.

0:27:100:27:13

Finally we got a phone call from Tasmania

0:27:130:27:18

that a recording studio

0:27:180:27:20

was calling to ask for authorisation to record a concert of John.

0:27:200:27:25

John wanted to do a live album

0:27:250:27:27

we authorised the money

0:27:270:27:30

and he recorded the album which came out, Tasmania.

0:27:300:27:34

MUSIC: "Waltzing Matilda" by John Fahey

0:27:340:27:38

He was self-destructive,

0:27:440:27:46

in a way that didn't allow him commercial success.

0:27:460:27:50

He really had no sense of business.

0:27:500:27:52

He didn't keep track of his money that well.

0:27:520:27:55

That first time I went on the road with him,

0:27:550:27:58

he was facing divorce with his first wife, Jan,

0:27:580:28:01

so he demanded to be paid in cash at all his gigs,

0:28:010:28:05

and I wound up having to stuff these bundles of cash in my boots and my luggage...

0:28:050:28:12

It was just crazy, I was carrying, like, 15, $20,000 in cash.

0:28:120:28:16

You know, he had a real edge to him. I think that's why I liked him

0:28:160:28:20

SONG: "Amazing Journey" by The Who

0:28:200:28:24

In 1968, I released Tommy with The Who,

0:28:260:28:30

and Robbie Basho sent a copy of it to John Fahey,

0:28:300:28:34

who listened to it, and sent me the most delightful note.

0:28:340:28:38

And he said quite simply, "I listened to it,

0:28:380:28:40

not quite sure what to make of it."

0:28:400:28:42

But he said something like, it was a...

0:28:420:28:45

You know, "an admirable endeavour."

0:28:450:28:47

I think that's what he said.

0:28:470:28:49

It was very touching.

0:28:490:28:51

Cos I suppose, you know, I'd thought of him as kind of a...

0:28:510:28:55

You know, living up a mountain or something.

0:28:550:28:59

Unreachable, you know, guy... And there he was.

0:28:590:29:02

And the letter that he sent me was incredibly kind,

0:29:020:29:06

but also quite, you know... He didn't... There was no gushing.

0:29:060:29:10

He obviously didn't like Tommy but he begrudgingly and kindly

0:29:100:29:15

and with a twist of humour gave me... He gave me something.

0:29:150:29:19

John Fahey's music didn't fit into a club, it was his own thing.

0:29:340:29:38

And then you get into his personality, and you're like...

0:29:380:29:41

This certainly did not fit into

0:29:410:29:44

any sort of genre or specific behavioural patterns

0:29:440:29:47

to impress people. He was just on his own trip.

0:29:470:29:50

And that's when I realised the guy was truly punk rock,

0:29:500:29:53

or whatever you want to call it His own artist.

0:29:530:29:56

I think that's really the core of it.

0:29:560:29:58

Art for art's sake, on so many levels.

0:29:580:30:01

And when you first set out and start listening to Fahey,

0:30:010:30:06

it strikes you in a way that you .. that you recognise something.

0:30:060:30:09

You're familiar with it instantly, with the sound of the guitar,

0:30:090:30:13

the acoustic steel string guitar. so there is that familiarity,

0:30:130:30:17

and yet, when you start listening to where he goes melodically

0:30:170:30:20

and harmonically, you can tell that he's not about playing it safe.

0:30:200:30:25

The way he treated the guitar,

0:30:250:30:28

as though the guitar was certainly not by any means limited to

0:30:280:30:31

accompanying the voice, as though it was an orchestra, almost.

0:30:310:30:34

You know, he used it like, the guitar as a band.

0:30:340:30:37

He was really one of the first people to do solo concerts

0:30:370:30:41

on a steel string guitar and not be singing.

0:30:410:30:45

MUSIC: "A Raga Called Pat - Part One" by John Fahey

0:31:280:31:32

He is sampling, in effect, before that term is being used.

0:32:030:32:08

He's got to be drawing on influences from musique concrete,

0:32:080:32:12

which is tape composition coming out of Western European art music, where people are using found sound.

0:32:120:32:16

MUSIC: "A Raga Called Pat - Part One" by John Fahey

0:32:160:32:22

Raga For Pat actually has him using two different records,

0:32:220:32:26

a Folkways album, songs from a tropical rainforest,

0:32:260:32:29

and another record of steam engines that he's playing backwards and forwards.

0:32:290:32:33

Turntablism!

0:32:330:32:34

John Fahey was one of the early turntablists in American vernacular music.

0:32:340:32:38

John's music evolved greatly through his career,

0:32:450:32:49

but it was not a straight path from point A to point B.

0:32:490:32:52

We used to sit around and listen to records for hours and hours and hours,

0:32:540:32:58

and it would always be all kinds of stuff,

0:32:580:33:01

from Charlie Patton to

0:33:010:33:02

Charles Ives, to Roy Acuff

0:33:020:33:06

to Booker T The MGs, to Rod Stewart.

0:33:060:33:10

I mean, he loved Rod Stewart!

0:33:100:33:13

Like those great classical composers like Bartok and Stravinsky,

0:33:130:33:18

he would take, you know, this approach of listening to different

0:33:180:33:22

kinds of music and incorporating it into what he played.

0:33:220:33:25

NEW ORLEANS JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS

0:33:270:33:30

Then came a little phase

0:33:330:33:34

where he got interested in playing music that was informed

0:33:340:33:38

by New Orleans jazz, old-fashioned love of rivers and religion.

0:33:380:33:43

I think of myself as a classical guitar player,

0:33:550:33:57

but, you know, that's the way it turned out.

0:33:570:34:00

I'm categorised as a folk musician.

0:34:030:34:07

"Dear Stephan, just got off the road, very tired, must be brief.

0:34:070:34:11

"I am moving to Salem, Oregon end of this month.

0:34:110:34:13

"Just bought a house up there.

0:34:130:34:15

"I'll no longer be working for Takoma Records. No loss.

0:34:150:34:18

"Well, I suppose we might stop fighting, but I must retain the right

0:34:180:34:23

"to call you with news, and you must stop staying "Peace, brother" to me.

0:34:230:34:27

"How nauseating!"

0:34:270:34:29

John was looking to get away from the big city,

0:34:470:34:52

and he wanted a quieter place.

0:34:520:34:55

John had this idea that a state capital like Salem would

0:34:570:35:03

always have jobs because there'd always be government,

0:35:030:35:07

and so if the economy went really bad,

0:35:070:35:09

your house would never become worth absolutely nothing.

0:35:090:35:12

So he just moved to Salem,

0:35:150:35:17

and we started talking a lot on the phone and kind of hanging out, and

0:35:170:35:20

one day he said, "I just got a deal. I want you to produce our records."

0:35:200:35:23

And we started working together

0:35:230:35:25

and he was into, kind of, concept things at that point.

0:35:250:35:29

And how he produced was great.

0:35:290:35:31

He would call me up and say, "I got this idea for a record,

0:35:310:35:34

"think about this and call me back in two weeks."

0:35:340:35:36

I'd think about it and he had thought about some stuff. "Thinking about some tunes."

0:35:360:35:40

We'd either get together his place or my place

0:35:400:35:43

and we'd start putting it together.

0:35:430:35:44

And it was very well planned out ahead of time,

0:35:440:35:47

preproduction was important.

0:35:470:35:48

We never went into the studio and just messed around.

0:35:480:35:51

I think the last time I did a record with him was probably '90, '91.

0:35:510:35:56

And that's when he wasn't really playing that well.

0:35:560:35:59

He wasn't doing that kind of music any more.

0:35:590:36:02

I have taken a vow of silence.

0:36:020:36:04

For the next 30 years, unless..

0:36:080:36:11

the occasion arises in which I need to talk.

0:36:110:36:16

Obviously, this is not one of those occasions...

0:36:160:36:19

So I will continue to play my guitar and transform the universe.

0:36:240:36:28

HE PLAYS GUITAR

0:36:300:36:31

I guess he had had some problems with

0:36:310:36:34

managing his sleeping for a long time.

0:36:340:36:38

When you are on the road and you have...

0:36:380:36:41

You're flying here and there, that sort of thing,

0:36:410:36:44

you are in different places all the time, that's one of the reasons

0:36:440:36:47

people get into sleeping pills which is what he was into a lot

0:36:470:36:51

was chloral hydrate,

0:36:510:36:53

which, um...was a prescription drug and he had it from a doctor.

0:36:530:36:58

So when he was taking the sleeping pills, I think

0:36:580:37:02

it did have an effect on his personality.

0:37:020:37:05

He wasn't able to drink at all when he was on chloral hydrate

0:37:050:37:09

so he'd drink tonnes of Coca-Cola, which I think is probably what

0:37:090:37:12

killed him, finally, was diabetes and heart disease.

0:37:120:37:15

When he wasn't on chloral hydrate, he did drink quite a lot, alcohol.

0:37:150:37:19

He wasn't a street drug person at all, he wasn't...

0:37:190:37:23

get illegal drugs and get high, type of thing.

0:37:230:37:27

First of all, he didn't need that, his mind was

0:37:270:37:29

so imaginative that he didn't need to be...high.

0:37:290:37:35

HE PLAYS GUITAR

0:37:370:37:39

You have to realise that the entertainer's life is...

0:37:430:37:48

has built into it a bipolar...

0:37:500:37:54

..ingredient that you cannot escape from.

0:37:580:38:00

When you are on stage and when you're on the road, um ..

0:38:000:38:03

..you are on top of the world.

0:38:050:38:08

When the tour is over, even if you are exhausted,

0:38:080:38:10

you are at the bottom.

0:38:100:38:12

You don't notice it, but you are really down.

0:38:120:38:15

I've only began to notice this lately.

0:38:160:38:18

Or begun to pay any attention to it.

0:38:200:38:22

My solution to it is possibly a woman,

0:38:220:38:28

but it's a kind of sickness, being an entertainer.

0:38:280:38:31

You have to be an entertainer.

0:38:310:38:33

That is, anybody who's an entertainer

0:38:330:38:35

is not an entertainer by choice

0:38:350:38:36

He's an entertainer because he has to be.

0:38:360:38:39

He had a lot of pain.

0:38:510:38:53

Usually, everything would be prescribed by a doctor,

0:38:560:38:59

but he did have this habit of having run out

0:38:590:39:04

and being in a different town and giving the guy his prescription,

0:39:040:39:09

so he'd have multiple doctors

0:39:090:39:10

and maybe lots more pills than you normally should be taking.

0:39:100:39:15

SLOW BLUES MUSIC

0:39:170:39:20

But I think at that point, he sort of got a little apathetic

0:39:310:39:37

to what was happening, cos people thought he was a big drug-head

0:39:370:39:40

and he wasn't.

0:39:400:39:41

He was very laconic and when he would communicate with people,

0:39:410:39:45

he would be very...

0:39:450:39:46

Laid-back isn't even the word.

0:39:460:39:51

Laid-back would make it seems like he was really doing something fast

0:39:510:39:56

and he was really...

0:39:560:39:57

It would seem like he was on elephant tranquilisers sometimes,

0:39:570:40:01

as well as he had a drink problem,

0:40:010:40:04

so a lot of times his stage performance would be...

0:40:040:40:06

..to be nice, would be idiosyncratic, him on stage,

0:40:070:40:11

cos he would be doing some nutty things or he wasn't playing well.

0:40:110:40:16

But it all kept building up into this mystique,

0:40:160:40:18

so you got a real John Fahey mystique,

0:40:180:40:22

whereas behind that mystique there was a real human being with problems

0:40:220:40:27

with what everyone else has,

0:40:270:40:29

and he was involved in trying to understand those problems

0:40:290:40:33

with analysis, et cetera.

0:40:330:40:35

It was mostly memories of my father that came out in psychoanalysis

0:40:370:40:41

Mostly anger, frustration,

0:40:430:40:46

which on the surface looks like depression, usually.

0:40:460:40:50

My father was a paedophile.

0:40:500:40:53

And then you get scared of people.

0:40:590:41:02

You know, here's your father, your family,

0:41:020:41:04

you're scared of your family..

0:41:040:41:06

..and it transmits into being afraid of everybody, really.

0:41:070:41:11

Then you compensate for fear with drugs and booze and stuff and, uh...

0:41:150:41:20

..then you get troubles.

0:41:230:41:25

But...

0:41:250:41:27

..that's the way it goes.

0:41:290:41:30

All the things he experienced,

0:41:400:41:42

particularly this trauma of childhood sexual abuse,

0:41:420:41:46

those things clearly had a profound influence on his thinking,

0:41:460:41:52

maybe his relationships with people and certainly his art.

0:41:520:41:55

Um, playing the guitar helped keeping me from going nuts...

0:41:570:42:01

..when I was 14, 15, 16...

0:42:030:42:07

..17, 18, 19.

0:42:080:42:11

You know, I could sit around and bang on the guitar

0:42:130:42:17

instead of banging on somebody else.

0:42:170:42:19

All of a sudden, he kind of fell apart, as you know,

0:42:240:42:26

and he stopped playing and he didn't want to play how he played before.

0:42:260:42:30

He never really liked to repeat himself,

0:42:300:42:32

cos I used to say to him, "Why don't you play Requiem For John Hurt

0:42:320:42:35

"the way you used to?" and he would get mad.

0:42:350:42:37

"I already did that!" It was kind of like Miles Davis in that sense.

0:42:370:42:41

Anyway, I was thinking, "He's going to find something.

0:42:410:42:44

"He'll do something. This just isn't it any more for him."

0:42:440:42:47

'People other than myself do not understand

0:42:520:42:54

'that I do not have a career.

0:42:540:42:56

'I've never had a career.

0:42:580:43:00

'I do not want a career, so I probably never will have a career.

0:43:000:43:05

'Fine.

0:43:070:43:09

'That's the way I want it.

0:43:090:43:11

'What I have is this,

0:43:130:43:16

'and it is very important -

0:43:160:43:18

'I have a small, little niche carved out here

0:43:180:43:20

'where I play guitar for people every once in a great while.

0:43:200:43:24

'I make just enough money to get by and have a little left over

0:43:250:43:28

'and that's all I want to do.'

0:43:280:43:31

THROAT SINGING

0:43:370:43:40

Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth took this great interest in him

0:43:480:43:51

so he met Thurston and they made music together

0:43:510:43:55

and John wound up making this electric music towards the end

0:43:550:43:59

of his career that was very different from anything he'd done before

0:43:590:44:02

All of a sudden, Fahey was big, it was this whole new crowd

0:44:040:44:07

that hadn't really heard of his earlier stuff and everything

0:44:070:44:09

and I thought it was great

0:44:090:44:10

and I knew he was going to come through with something

0:44:100:44:13

LO-FI DRONE

0:44:150:44:17

We did a lot of travelling together when we were trying to bring him

0:44:170:44:20

back into circulation, cos it was clear

0:44:200:44:24

that his work had been embraced

0:44:240:44:29

by everybody from the avant-garde to the underground.

0:44:290:44:33

Dropping his name frankly carried a lot of weight

0:44:360:44:39

with a lot of the communities I ran in,

0:44:390:44:41

so I didn't have to do a whole lot.

0:44:410:44:43

John was sent to New York.

0:44:430:44:47

I went to the airport,

0:44:470:44:49

I went to the gate, waiting around

0:44:490:44:52

and, unmistakeably, from the gate emerges this guy

0:44:520:44:57

and he's wearing sort of cut-off jean shorts,

0:44:570:45:01

not what you would expect from someone getting off of an aeroplane.

0:45:010:45:05

He looked more like he was getting off of a boat.

0:45:050:45:07

Then he walked straight up to me and he said,

0:45:070:45:09

"Well, I'd like to thank your employers for sending you here.

0:45:090:45:14

"They always do really great work for me."

0:45:140:45:16

I don't really have any employers.

0:45:180:45:20

This was his way of saying, "OK, you're here to take me to the gig."

0:45:200:45:26

AMBIENT DRONE

0:45:260:45:30

You can definitely hear a man

0:45:340:45:36

in transition, certainly moving away,

0:45:360:45:40

maybe even writing off

0:45:400:45:42

the previous person that he was

0:45:420:45:44

crawling out of that skin altogether.

0:45:440:45:45

I think he was trying to take it further and further out

0:45:450:45:48

and he was trying to give you blocks of sound.

0:45:480:45:51

He was trying to make you uncomfortable.

0:45:510:45:53

He was trying to put you through all of the things

0:45:530:45:55

that he probably was going through.

0:45:550:45:57

A lot of stuff I've been doing for the last two years,

0:46:050:46:09

including Tuvan singing

0:46:090:46:12

and tuning all the strings on the guitar to the same note

0:46:120:46:15

and playing steel...

0:46:150:46:18

I didn't know what I was doing so I recorded a lot of it.

0:46:180:46:23

AMBIENT DRONE # Yes, yes, yes, yes... #

0:46:230:46:29

I took it round to various record stores

0:46:360:46:39

and two or three people at least told me

0:46:390:46:42

what I was doing already existed and it's called

0:46:420:46:46

gothic industrial ambient.

0:46:460:46:49

And it's a lot of fun, cos you get to scream and make noise.

0:46:530:46:58

LO-FI GUITAR

0:46:580:47:04

I think a lot of casual observation

0:47:120:47:14

of what he was doing in his later years was that,

0:47:140:47:17

"Oh, he was just kind of burnt out

0:47:170:47:19

"and upset with everyone and difficult to deal with

0:47:190:47:22

"and he played this kind of strange, abstract music

0:47:220:47:25

"as opposed to doing what he really could do."

0:47:250:47:28

That wasn't my experience with him.

0:47:280:47:30

My experience was that he was doing what he thought he should be doing,

0:47:300:47:34

because he perceived that the times were indicative

0:47:340:47:38

of this kind of presentation.

0:47:380:47:41

BLUES

0:47:410:47:44

This was another chapter of his creative life

0:47:530:47:57

that we wanted to bring to the forefront.

0:47:570:48:00

I've heard stories that he put paint on his feet, he'd spin on them

0:48:000:48:04

he'd take his shoes off and spin around on these works.

0:48:040:48:07

Antifreeze, all these crazy materials.

0:48:070:48:10

I even heard one story that he would just drop trowel and spin around

0:48:100:48:18

with a naked backside and he called them ass paintings.

0:48:180:48:22

There you go, 45-H.

0:48:240:48:26

This one's signed twice.

0:48:290:48:31

This one says, "Tart" or "Jart 3".

0:48:350:48:39

There were just random little bits that he himself put on them

0:48:390:48:43

and when he was asked, "John, what are you doing?",

0:48:430:48:46

He's like, "This is what real artists do.

0:48:460:48:48

"They put things like this on the backs of their works,

0:48:480:48:51

"so that's what I'm doing."

0:48:510:48:53

Getting to know him, he was quite a complicated figure.

0:48:530:48:57

I don't think of him any longer in terms of being a musician per se.

0:48:570:49:02

I think of him more

0:49:020:49:05

as something of a sort of journeyman kind of thinker,

0:49:050:49:12

provocateur in the romantic mould.

0:49:120:49:15

SPOKEN WORD TO MUSIC: ..In life

0:49:270:49:29

and in death.

0:49:290:49:31

The Oregon capital...

0:49:330:49:36

He invited me out to Oregon where he was living - Woodburn, Oregon.

0:49:390:49:45

John Fahey living in the middle of nowhere in a one-room motel

0:49:450:49:50

Just the most vague stretch of highway,

0:49:500:49:53

the vaguest motel one could imagine.

0:49:530:49:56

One would never think that THE John Fahey

0:49:560:49:58

was living in that particular place.

0:49:580:50:00

His daily routine consisted of

0:50:060:50:08

looking for rare records in thrift stores

0:50:080:50:10

and anything else he could find with an interesting catalogue number

0:50:100:50:14

and bringing it back to his place, which was a bit of a dump,

0:50:140:50:18

and sort of leaving it in the corner and allowing it to gather dust

0:50:180:50:22

until some collector would call him up and say,

0:50:220:50:25

"Hey, have you got this catalogue number?"

0:50:250:50:28

Fahey would miraculously say, "Yeah, I've got it."

0:50:280:50:30

We had arranged for the pick-up time.

0:50:400:50:43

He comes to the door and he's completely naked

0:50:430:50:45

and he's just standing there at the door and my brother tells me later,

0:50:450:50:51

I was trying to look away but I look inside and I see him

0:50:510:50:56

walking away from us,

0:50:560:50:59

his bare behind facing us and I see all these small, round,

0:50:590:51:04

brown tattoos on his back, and little by little the tattoos

0:51:040:51:08

dropped off and it was all the pennies and change.

0:51:080:51:13

He had rolled around on the bed in his nakedness

0:51:130:51:16

and everything stuck to him.

0:51:160:51:18

That just sort of summed up the guy.

0:51:200:51:22

He died at 61,

0:51:330:51:35

largely because he hadn't taken very good care of himself over the years,

0:51:350:51:39

but I think if you had put the equation to him,

0:51:390:51:42

"Hey, this is the trade you're making.

0:51:420:51:45

"You live the life you want...

0:51:450:51:46

"..but you're going to die at 6 ",

0:51:480:51:51

I think he would still have made the same choices.

0:51:510:51:54

SLIDE GUITAR MUSIC

0:51:570:52:00

For, lo, the winter is past,

0:52:100:52:13

the rain is over and gone...

0:52:130:52:15

..the flowers appear on the Earth,

0:52:170:52:20

the time of the singing of birds is come...

0:52:200:52:22

..and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

0:52:240:52:28

You can't get any more American than John Fahey in the sense that

0:52:360:52:40

he just took something that existed in our lineage

0:52:400:52:44

as Americans and American music

0:52:440:52:46

and tripped out somewhere along the line.

0:52:460:52:49

Went to outer space.

0:52:490:52:50

He's in his own bubble.

0:52:500:52:52

He claimed his space...

0:52:520:52:55

..and it feels as though he's not quite going to let it go.

0:52:590:53:02

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:53:250:53:28

Download Subtitles

SRT

ASS