The Boy Who Cried Freebird
Page 9
Adam thought about the rest of the second set, which he had memorized. The Dead were due to play “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” and then jam on “Alligator,” which went in and out of “Drums” and into “Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)” before closing with “We Bid You Goodnight.” Adam didn’t know what to do.
By this time the Dead were well into a cooking version of “The Eleven” and Adam heard these words reverberating in the air. “…now is the time of returning…with our thought jewels polished and gleaming…. Now is the time past believing…the child has relinquished the rein…now is the test of the boomerang…tossed in the night of redeeming….”
“Wow,” thought Adam.
He wondered about the trouble that he was going to be in when he got back to 2069. “What’s going to happen now that I had sex with Cinnamon Girl and did acid and told Sonny Barger all about the future?” Adam remembered the liability clause of the contract that he had signed and the massive bancredit debt his family would incur.
And what would Grandpa Coil say?
Besides all of that, Adam really just wanted to stay out past his stupid time-traveling curfew. He hadn’t even found Cinnamon Girl yet—would it really matter if he let her keep his jacket? It was a dilemma that Adam was in no condition to contemplate. “Man, the future is uncertain,” he thought.
Adam became distracted by the psychedelic light show going on behind the Grateful Dead. He gazed at the splashing hot colors and the lights that throbbed in sync with the music. When Adam shifted his gaze from the undulating backdrop, he saw Sonny Barger, Bill Graham, and John Walker standing together on the right side of the stage. Adam was also pretty sure that he’d glimpsed Terry the Tramp stripped down to his underwear again.
At the last minute, he spotted Cinnamon Girl and her friends spinning around near the front of the stage. The room was shimmering in a great golden light, and it occurred to Adam that everyone he knew at the Fillmore was smiling. Cinnamon Girl was smiling. Terry the Tramp and Mouldy Marvin were smiling. John Walker was grinning from ear to ear, and even Bill Graham and Sonny Barger looked happy.
But there was no time to say good-bye. Adam had to leave immediately if he was ever going to get back to his life in 2069.
As Adam sadly turned away from the dancing throng, he realized that he himself had never danced, ever. Adam had not danced one time in his entire life and now he was heading back to a world that didn’t dance, either.
Impulsively, Adam ran back through the crowd toward Cinnamon Girl and began moving in a wild, spastic manner. He twisted and twirled and jumped up and down as the music of the Grateful Dead echoed around him.
At that precise moment, Adam decided that being stuck in the past wasn’t such a terrible thing after all.
His long strange trip had truly begun.
—Deadicated to J. R. Young, wherever you are
THE STEEL-STRING TRILOGY
A Man Out of Time
John Fahey’s life on Earth ended in 2001, but the iconic guitarist was always a man out of time. Fahey, the man, was perennially self-destructive, squandered money, and spent his final years occupying Oregon flophouses or living out of his car.
Fahey, the musician, was an obstinate blues scholar who advanced a decidedly nonfolkie version of instrumental Americana and formed his own record company at the age of twenty. Along the way, he revived the art of steel-string solo guitar.
John despised the decade in which he came into prominence and reserved a particular antipathy for the grandiose self-indulgence of hippies. In 1964, while most people his age were digging the Beatles, John soldiered down to a hospital in Tunica, Mississippi, and unearthed lost bluesman Skip James. He took James to the Newport Folk Festival where the elder was treated like an anthropological discovery. The appearance revived James’s long-dormant career, though after the fact, Fahey determined that Skip was a recalcitrant SOB and regretted wasting his own time and effort.
In 1970, despite differences with the director and disdain for the other performers, John appeared on the soundtrack of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point. “I hate all those phony fake suburban folk singers,” he later insisted. “When Jerry Garcia died, several people phoned me up and said, ‘Have you heard the good news?’”
So he was a cultural misanthrope, but big deal—Fahey’s fingerpicking utilized open tunings, Charlie Patton’s unorthodox delta blues, classical structures, and syncopated ragtime rhythms. A steady-rolling nonjazz improviser, he energized his music with avant-garde abstractions and an aggressive punk attitude. Perpetually dissatisfied with his own work, Fahey denounced his performances and re-recorded entire albums. He always had a soft spot for baroque and medieval carols, and Fahey’s best-selling works are still his Christmas LPs.
In 1959, John formed the proto-indie label, Takoma Records, and put out his first album, Blind Joe Death. Blind Joe Death served as Fahey’s recurring melancholic blues alter ego, and established his resolute artistic vision. It was his dream to generate an “American Primitive” school of solo steel-string guitarists and raise the experimental folk form to the level of classical music. His pursuit inspired many disciples, some of whose records Fahey released on Takoma, most notably Leo Kottke and his 1969 opus, 6- and 12-String Guitar.
Decades later, using an inheritance as seed money, Fahey funded the start of yet another indie imprint, Revenant Records. His final CD, + (its title literally a red cross), was completed before his death, but it took another year before Revenant cofounder Dean Blackwood could face the emotional task of preparing the disc for release.
On +, Fahey abandoned the sound collages and technology that typified his later recordings and finally made peace with his acoustic past. His picking had become slower, starker, and more focused than it once was. Time itself had made Fahey technically less proficient, but the mythic heart of his playing—that of a strangely detached romantic—remained timeless.
John dedicated the album’s dissonant title track, “Red Cross, Disciple of Christ Today” to Guitar Roberts, better known as Manhattan-based experimentalist Loren Mazzacane-Conners. The droning composition “Ananaias” extended Fahey’s meta-guitar vocabulary, while his eerie interpretation of the Gershwin Brothers’ “Summertime” swings pensively, resonating with cold (but not indifferent) precision.
But it was Fahey’s handling of “Motherless Child” that emerged as the album’s emotional centerpiece. Wielding his piercing tone like a buck knife, the guitarist carved concentric circles around the traditional melody. Repeating and reframing the eternal lament as a cosmic blues of epic proportions, John Fahey put the song, and his own myth, to rest.
The Strength of Strings
Leo Kottke’s debut album, 6- and 12-String Guitar, first came to light in 1969. His music was a straightforward antidote to the fervor of the ’60s hard-rock scene, and Kottke was lauded as a welcome alternative to the era’s heavier, more publicized artists.
Kottke’s technical virtuosity emerged fully formed on the LP, but it was more than his quick-fingered precision that filled the grooves with excitement. Leo had captured something both astonishing and ephemeral—acoustic guitar lightning in a jar—and he opened the lid for all to hear.
The story of this record isn’t just Kottke’s. It’s the tale of two guitarists, Leo Kottke and John Fahey. The two were worlds apart when Leo recorded his landmark debut; Kottke was working the coffeehouse scene in Minneapolis while the enigmatic Fahey was running Takoma Records in California. Leo had innocently sent a demo tape to Takoma that impressed John, and after months of benign neglect, the elder guitarist finally contacted Leo and commissioned the recording that would become 6- and 12-String Guitar.
John had been making his own solo steel-string guitar albums on his insurgent record label since 1959 and his influence on Leo was profound. “I have a real fondness for [6- and 12-String Guitar] because of John Fahey,” Leo told me. “John was the only guy interested in recording me at that time and if it hadn’t been
for him, none of these things would have happened. My whole life was at a critical point and it pivoted because of John. I wasn’t planning to do anything as far as making a living as a guitar player. I just wanted to meet John.”
Although commissioned by Fahey, Leo was still on his own when arranging his first real recording session. The process was simple, but some ’60s synchronicity graced the circumstance as well. “It was recorded at Empire Photo Sound, a little idea of a studio working out of a warehouse,” Leo recalled. “I set it up myself, just looked them up in the phone book. They were looking for work doing sound for films. The only other thing they had done at the time were the first promos for the 747 airplane—they weren’t set up for me at all.”
Though the makeshift elements of that Minneapolis recording studio were crude, the bright clear sound attained on 6- and 12-String Guitar was nearly perfect. “The engineer was Scott Rivard who’s now working for Prairie Home Companion,” said Kottke. “They hung sheets in the warehouse and it was as if I was in this little square white room. They used an old technique for the microphone placements called near/far. The 87 microphone was near the guitar and the 451 microphone was further away.
“The 451 microphone was placed above—at about head level. This had advantages and disadvantages, but it was the first time I’d recorded anything that threatened to be a real record. Now Scott says that he would switch the two microphones but then, it worked. He recorded the tape at 15 inches per second with no noise reduction and I don’t believe there is any reverb either—I doubt they could have afforded it.”
Leo had his performance repertoire down cold, but the young guitarist still felt the anxiety of his maiden voyage. “I remember being scared to death,” said Kottke. “I was just petrified, so concerned to get it right and I didn’t know what right was. My foot made a lot of noise so I took my shoes off.” Despite his nervousness, Leo completed the entire recording session in a little over three hours.
Besides being well rehearsed, Kottke credited his trusty guitar for the easy time he had in the studio. “The thing about [the record] is the 12-string. It was unusual, a Gibson B-45. I had stripped the finish off it. The first B-45 by Gibson was the good one, Gibson gradually revised it but the first few years it was fabulous. I had heard that raw linseed oil was a good way to finish a guitar and it sounded fantastic. I also painted that guitar brown. It had a magical quality—it was the only guitar that recorded itself—it loved tape. I’ve always thought that a big part of the record’s staying power is the sound of the guitar.”
Kottke’s enchanted B-45 served him well, but the album’s distinctively low guitar tunings were mostly guesswork. “Originally 12-string guitars were supposed to be tuned down to accommodate the tension, but most weren’t strung that way,” Kottke said. “This one was strung with silken steel strings and I tuned it way down. I had no idea of actual pitch and it was in between everything. I’ve always been a tone player but that guitar and the linseed oil—linseed oil had actually been used to finish violins—for the first six months it would be great and then the violins would die, the linseed oil would never make it through the wood.”
Ultimately, the B-45’s luminous sound and Scott Rivard’s judicious microphone placement combined for a dynamic recording that captured the immediacy of Leo’s style.
Leo’s symbiotic relationship with his dependable 12-string led to some difficult moments later on. “I went out to meet John [in Portland] and right after the first job we did together my guitar was stolen. It sent me into a tailspin and I had to relearn everything. The guitar meant so much to me and when I used other guitars it sounded like crap and drove me crazy for years. The 6-strings were never a problem. It was the first 12-string that sounded like that and it was one of a kind. I [have] found a bunch of B-45’s and they just don’t sound the same.”
Leo recovered from the loss of his favorite guitar, and his admiration for Fahey remained undiminished. “With John, you have to figure he stole the guitar,” Kottke said only half-jokingly. “I was so happy to meet him. The whole trip out West—it was just to meet John Fahey. My friend had John’s Blind Joe Death album and it was clear there was this whole musical world that had been around but John was the only one who knew it. ‘Sligo River Blues,’ I learned it off of Blind Joe Death. That record was the one for me and to meet the guy who had done that stuff was really a big deal. He could have my guitar.”
For the album’s release, John Fahey made some prudent editorial decisions. “None of us knew anything about sequencing,” Kottke recalled. “We sent it to John just as we did it. It was the actual sequence but John just took off three tracks and released it as a record. It was the simplest record I ever made. I have another soft spot for it because it was the only recording I made where it was all the material I knew. It would never be the same after that.”
Subsequent reissues of the album have always contained the same fourteen songs, without variations or additions. And for those wondering what became of those three tracks John had deleted, you can find them on Takoma’s classic guitar compilation, John Fahey/Peter Lang/Leo Kottke.
Looking back, Leo has come to terms with Fahey’s role as an imposing career mentor. “At John’s funeral I realized it was always obvious that I wouldn’t be working if it weren’t for John,” said Kottke. “I’d be playing, but not working as a musician. It struck me that John gave me my whole life. He was one of those dangerous teachers where your entire life is in jeopardy and it’s all in that record. John was the real thing.”
Along with the music, Leo’s album was noticed for its cover art, a black-and-white drawing of an armadillo. Sometimes referred to as “The Armadillo Album,” the record captured the hearts and minds of guitar lovers across the country. In the early ’70s, it was nearly impossible to enter the home of a fledgling acoustic guitarist and not find the armadillo staring out from the record collection.
But where did the armadillo come from in the first place? “I was performing at a coffeehouse called The Scholar,” said Kottke. “A woman who worked there made the menus and drew the armadillo. One night I was having trouble with my 12-string and said, ‘There’s an armadillo in my guitar.’ She put it on the menu and I loved it and asked her to do the album cover.”
“I was always really happy about the armadillo,” Kottke continued. “John Fahey added the scrolls on the cover but I could have left them off. Then I got booked at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas, and before I played there they took me to somebody’s house and interrogated me. They wanted to know all about my relationship with the armadillo. We became a real pair—the Armadillo World HQ and me—I really wanted to be a performer and the HQ showed me what a real performance could be.”
The Armadillo album sold more than a half million copies, but it took nearly forty years to get there. The record’s gradual impact helped elevate the concept of solo steel-string guitar music into the acknowledged art form that Fahey envisioned.
The recording first gained national attention in 1970 thanks to a glowing review in Rolling Stone. And while Kottke’s back-porch fingerpicking may have been out of step with the amplified sounds of the times, he struck a universal chord that has never ceased to resonate.
More than anyone, Leo was shocked by the response to his first album. “I was flabbergasted at the reception of that record and I didn’t realize until years later how much impact it had,” he admitted. “The Rolling Stone article was important. And there were also two guys in Chicago, Randy Morrison on WLS and John Schaffer at WXRT; they were both playing it. Radio still existed then and DJs could pick up a record with no label behind it—it was a different world—and the record just took off.”
Nineteen sixty-nine was an exotic time for music and pop culture, and in retrospect Leo’s dazzling display doesn’t seem so out of place. Tapping into the era’s collective consciousness, Kottke and Fahey somehow found each other and created a unique musical document that has withstood the test of time.
Bundy K. Blue’s Dance with Death
Bundy K. Blue was bored. With hopes of breaking the monotony and getting his artistic juices flowing, he invited some friends to his loft in Chicago to play some acoustic music. Within a few days, his buddy Curt flew in from New York and good old Chris arrived from Boston. Bundy’s pal Doug was also in town and he promised to bring over a few bottles of wine.
While everybody was eager to jam, things started slowly. Each player had been working on new compositions, but their group sound had yet to meld. After hours of aimless jamming, the foursome decided to go out for Mexican food. It was a warm Chicago night and there was plenty of activity on Damen Avenue as they walked down the block.
It was then that the strangest thing happened. They had just stepped off the curb to cross the street when a flash of light exploded before them and blinded the group for a good twenty seconds.
As their vision returned, they noticed that Damen Avenue was practically deserted. The street also seemed different in some way. “What the hell happened?” exclaimed Bundy. The men huddled and tried to cope with their uncertainty.
A few moments had passed when Chris noticed a newspaper on the sidewalk and shouted, “Hey! Look at the date on this paper. It says today is July 25, 1973!” Doug snorted and said, “Yeah, right, and we’re the freaking Hardy Boys. Let’s ask somebody what on earth is going on here.”
As luck would have it, a tall bearded hippie was walking past the bewildered foursome.