RALPH, ALBERT & SYDNEY
Ralph McTell and The Autumn Tour
An Interview with Ralph McTell - Summer 2006
... for the Ralph, Albert & Sydney Web Site
by Michael Cohen

Interview with Ralph McTell Summer 2006

Well the album is almost out and the tour will soon be upon us. Ralph kindly agreed to have a chat about the album and tour. I hope you find it as fascinating as I did.
Mike Cohen September 1, 2006

The forthcoming tour is “up close at small intimate venues”. Why now and how do you think it will go?
“First of all every now and then you have to be kicked out of your comfort zone. Some would think there is no such thing if you are a performer-there is nowhere that’s really comfortable. I used the analogy of the boxing ring when I was younger and I have no reason to change to change that except now they are all friends out there and I don’t have to prove anything. But sometimes it’s good artistically to be pushed a little bit. I was pushed into doing the children’s songs, I was pushed into doing that television thing, I was pushed into doing the radio programmes, I was pushed into reading my book out loud in bookshops and this was a gentle nudge to say why not try playing in small venues almost like folk club intimacy and see what’s different about it and see how you react. It also it gives people an opportunity to see you close up without that stage which I love-that stage is my comfort zone-as I have said before the successful gig to me is when a big room feels like a small place. I thought maybe I should try something different and I said maybe I should do a tour of  book readings again and do songs that leap out of the book because I am going to an album of readings and songs appropriate to those readings at some point. Then I said maybe I could even do a rootsy sort of thing and that’s how it all began to take shape- Dylan, Guthrie and the Country Blues- and immediately I went “that’s the one let’s do that.” But then I thought I’m not ready yet but then I realized actually I suppose I am and I suppose I should. It would be a real challenge to see if  I could hold an audience with other people’s music and it not being my own. If it is done with honesty and I thought well I suppose I could do it and I suppose I could record it and that would be fun. So that is what I have done.”

Well that is fantastic
“Well the dates are in and if they have not been announced they should be shortly and I have been recording all summer down in Cornwall with Steve Turner from my Red Sky album who is a neighbour and a very accomplished guitar player. There are a couple of tracks with Willie Wilson from the Bucket Boys .They are a local band which they both play in but Willie was also with the Sutherland Brothers and Quiver. He has played the drums on a couple of tracks. We also have a sousaphone player and we have put together an album” 

Will the album be on sale when you tour?
“Yes I very much hope so. I loosely said I’d have five country blues, five Woody Guthrie and five Bob Dylan songs but it actually was much harder to record the country blues. I assumed I’ll be able to play them and then I listened to the guvnor’s and I thought “Oh my God I have got a long way to go.” Mr. Blake as usual has caused the most consternation. I have recorded one song by Mance Lipscombe, one song by Blind Boy Fuller, one song based on Reverend Gary Davis who’s also impossible and wonderful, and a version of Glory of Love which I learned from Big Bill Broonzy. Actually it’s gone in reverse-Broonzy did the bluesy version of a schmaltzy  1950’s standard and I have turned it back into a schmaltzy  1950’s standard I think-I don’t know but anyway it was fun to do.”

That sounds really good-haven’t I heard you play The Glory of Love on tour ?
“I have and we made three passes at it- I call them passes-and each one had something quite nice about it and they were like playing live because I hired a local village hall and bought in a mobile and it was bit like playing a gig-you know the hall had a natural reverb and they were sort of like live performances and I think the recordings were good as a result of that. They are not perfect but they are nice they’ve got a warmth to them and I like that. Striving for perfection can be fruitless and you can lose sight of whatever it is you do that communicates in the first place.” 

When you were talking about the choice of material you were going to chose for the tour I was thinking about that part of your career that I missed out on in the sixties when you played at Les Cousins in London. Would the repertoire for this Roots tour differ a lot from say these earlier sets?
“Yes I would have to say probably for two reasons. One, I did not feel qualified with one or two exceptions, to sing anything that Bob was singing because his unique experience and his unique take was not mine. But if Bob had died young and I had continued to grow and mature I would have eventually caught up with him as I feel I did with Dylan Thomas. Then I would be able to offer an opinion on his early work which I think I can now do. I have chosen quite deliberately nothing past about 1966-because I thought this was the writing that I could have a shot at. You know these songs move me-yes they not only move me they thrill me these songs thrill me and now I have a take on them and I think I know what he was talking about. I have even done a recording of Gates of Eden. It is an amazing song and I have actually turned that one around because when I listen to it in my mind, without putting Bob on the record, I could see that his take is from probably a traditional song from somewhere or other-so many of the songs he wrote around that time were influenced by people like Martin Carthy as well as from his trips over to England and his absorption of traditional forms. It is not a giant step from what Bob played on the Gates of Eden to an Irish or Scottish air- you have to cheat the odd note here or there but you know when you play an F chord in the key of G or a C chord in the key of D you get that kind of Celtic thing. If you put it into ¾ you get a kind of  traditional form and time signature. I took it back almost to that and then worked out an arrangement on the 12 string actually which I felt complimented it. The so the tune is slightly different but it all fits and I’d like to think Bob would maybe approve.” 

I am sure he would!
“It was great to do and we’ve added some electric guitar and bass to that.”   

You have already alluded to my next question which is what is your favourite Dylan period?
“That was the period I was most deeply envious of him if you like because he was writing the songs out of the tradition which I understood and had been following in parallel until he came along. Don’t forget when his first album came out he was 21 and I was 17 or thereabouts and full of it and had written to Woody-he never wrote back. I was in touch with the living man and Jack Elliott and Derrol Adams and the Carter Family and the Blues players and I had seen people like Lonnie Johnson live and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee and Rev. Gary Davie and Muddy Waters-I’d seen all those people and had loved the music and Victoria Spivey who Bob had a picture taken with-I saw her too. Here was this young man saying “Hey I can do all that” you know  I was just blown away by it and of course the marvelous “Song to Woody” had to be recorded and I turned that one back into a kind of Irishey thing. Because Bob took a song by Woody called 1913 Massacre and added his own tribute to Woody and Woody would have got that tune from some traditional source. I would have guessed probably Irish and I just sat down in the studio and this tune-I didn’t plan it-it just came out and it sounds Irish to me again or Scots or something-and I got a fiddle player to announce the melody and this will be the track that closes the album.”

Does it sound very different to Bob’s then? I know Bob’s version is a kind of bass strum?
“I think it is nearer to the melody I learned from Jack Elliott singing the song on a little EP when I was about 16 or 17. I can’t say because I don’t consciously try to do it I just sat down and thought this is such a beautiful simple little tune and the guitar sort of walked away with it really and I said to the guy “Did you get that” and he said “Yeah I’ve recorded it” so I said I am not doing another one.” 

They’re the best I think.
“Well I hope you will agree when you hear it. It comes from the heart and I mean I so much wanted to have written that song for Woody Guthrie-it was so appropriate and it is a lovely way to end the album.”

What are your favourite Dylan Songs.?
“Girl of the North Country has got to be one. I have always loved To Ramona and I have a version of that on the album. It’s a pretty pretty tune and it’s strange and it’s a bit uneducated musically because it stops all over the place and it doesn’t scan and the bars are shortened here and there. The sentiment is a strange one for Bob –he is both consoling and warning and sensitive to her and attracted to her and you know offering advice. It is a fantastic piece of work. And also Song to Woody I have just mentioned-I have never played it in public and I have got to do a lot of boning up and learn all these words!And to me One Too Many Mornings is the goodbye to innocence the end of something and the beginning of something else and I still feel the same way-I love that song.” 

I love the way you play it. I learned it through you and played it at our folk club and someone said “Is that a Ralph McTell song?”
“How lovely-well that is a great compliment. It is pretty much as I have been playing it on the guitar and I was going to add some things on to it but the engineer a lovely guy Mick Dolan who has done a lot with Show of Hands said you can’t muck about with that leave it like that. So it is going to be one of the solo pieces on the album “

I know you played in Soho in the sixties and Bob was sort of fleeting in and out at the time with people like Paul Simon and the like. Were you lucky enough to catch him at the Troubadour or one of the smaller clubs?
“No no. I didn’t know he had been in London until long after he had gone but I did bump into Paul once or twice. He wouldn’t remember. I would be in the same room as him and in 1965 I played somewhere along the same circuit as him because I was playing in a bluegrass band called the Hickory Nuts at that time. I have to say Paul did not ingratiate himself with many people he was a bit of loner and there was a little bit of a cloud hanging over him with the Scarborough Fair scalping and sort of thing. But you know I actually did a gig with him.”

I remember that story
“Oh yeah which was wonderful and so I am grateful to Paul for the fact  that I got a Robert Johnson album which was just wonderful and I still have it.”

Going back to your autobiography Ralph I know many folk singers at the time you were starting out such as Woody, Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger and Ewan McColl were strong socialists and identified with labour movement. Was part of an attraction for you?
“Oh definitely. Political awareness helped me shed  the shackles of religion although one is never really free I don’t think from that no matter hard you try. Bigger men and greater writers than have explained that any indoctrination at a young age is there always and it takes a great deal of courage to shed it but it was much easier when Woody wrote “Jesus Christ was a man” to the tune of Jessie James. It was a socialist track about a man who just wanted to share wealth around and he was just a working man, he was a carpenter. It was just so simple and direct-“yeah right on” and that was me. I mean I was left wing from then on. I used to listen to speakers on soap boxes warning about the end of capitalism was fall of employment and we had to be in the union and Woody sang about union matters and they went straight to my heart and I never ever felt the need to declare that. I felt it was self-evident and it was in my songs from day one-well of course it probably wasn’t-to me it was obvious that I was a socialist. Actually the Bells of Rhymney was written by a Welsh schoolmaster called Idris Davies and when I first heard that song it made me weep-you know Seeger was playing it on a 12 string and I had to have a 12 string and got one and learned to play it.”

Actually I bought a best of Pete Seeger recently because I got the Springsteen tribute album-did you hear the Seeger sessions?
“I heard some of it I think it is very nice and jolly. I think Bruce is very courageous to expose his rather limited guitar technique so well played. It’s such a whale of a time but it rocks-it’s a little bit over-egged I think personally. But how can you condemn it- I think it is courageous and it’s nodding to another hero. And Pete Seeger deserves all praise and he is a wonderful wonderful human being”

Well I heard your tribute on the radio to him and bought the album as I had not heard the Bells of Rhymney which I know you played.
“Well I think it is absolutely beautiful and wonderfully written lyric and a marvelous accompaniment and I have borrowed bits of it probably all my life you know in my dropped D tuning and so on but have never been able write a song like that. Idris Davies sadly died aged 37 from some poverty related disease.”

I know you met Rambling Jack Elliott a couple of years ago. Did you talk about Woody to him?
“No I have never really talked about Woody to Jack. I met him again this year- we spoke at the Folk awards and I have just managed to get his autograph on a picture taken together with him at the Folk Awards and he sent one back and he wants me to sign one to him which I find really weird and amazing. Jack is honestly where it begins because it was Jack singing other people’s songs that moved me. The songs moved me but Jack’s voice and interpretation is second to none to such a degree-and this will be noted on my album cover because I am going to dedicate the album to Jack. He is 75 next month.”

He looks very young doesn’t he?
“Well he is full of life isn’t he-he is just amazing. I was almost disappointed when I heard Woody sing because it was quite obvious that Jack was-how can I say- a caricature of all the best things amount Americana that I wanted to believe in. The cowboy hick with the wide accent and marvelous delivery and great guitar playing. Woody is kind of a pedestrian guitarist but a clear beautiful singer in the old American tradition. He learned to sing from his Mum I think-you know in that way- no one has clearer diction than Woody but Jack is almost synthesis of all those things and I just loved it so much. I mean in spite of what Bob might say everyone knows Bob wanted to be Jack Elliott and sang in Jack’s exaggerated accent at first in his early career-you can hear it on records-when he tends to have hitch hiked into New York City and all that and wrote about freight trains and all that sort of thing. But he dressed like Woody and posed like Woody-we were all much of a muchness. But Jack is the man that was the spring board to it all really.”

You once said I think you could learn Woody’s repertoire in about three weeks. Did it take you that long or longer?
“Actually what I said was that anything Woody wrote anyone who had been playing the guitar for 3 weeks could probably get around because he didn’t write that many tunes and when he learned to play a D7 chord apparently and could now play three chords instead of two he got loads of letters saying well done Woody! He borrowed from the tradition and hardly ever wrote a tune- I don’t know where he found them and I have found one or two that are quite clearly adapted from American standards but yeah that is the beauty of the Guthrie catalogue-it is simple to learn-and Woody would say that is part of the socialist ethic-why should I get complicated and make it difficult for you. If  I make it difficult for you, you won’t sing the songs. One of his famous little sayings was “anyone found singing this song without my due consent and permission sure is a good friend of mine” because that is what I wrote them for-to be sung not to change the world and that was Woody’s philosophy. Woody’s writing was all about the Union and a better world that was coming.”

If you were to bump into Woody in another life what would you say to him?
“Thank you would be a good start for inadvertently setting my life on a path. Well that would be quite a few men I would have to say that to because what I have tried to do on this record is to say “It may surprise a lot of people to know that I find a connection between all these threads” It has sort of woven a rope for me to hang on to in difficult times. I have always believed in the power of this music. I know that a lot of the black music isn’t socialist or anything like that it is just great playing. You are led from the instrument or whatever inspires you - the sound of the instrument to come across the masters of such an instrument. I am 61 now and I have never tired of the acoustic guitar and when I hop the twig I will have learned half of what is out or even probably heard half of what is out there  but I never tire of it-never tire of it.”

I know you play your guitar and your rags and blues everyday of all your blues and ragtime heroes whose music gives you the most joy to perform and why?
 “I am deeply moved by Reverend Davis’s commitment through his music and his wonderful singing as well. There is no one who sings better than him and there is no one who played better than him. They are songs of a certain type but they continue to inspire and amaze me. But is still has to be Arthur Blake. I now have the boxed set and I am rationing myself- I am just dipping in and just going “what the hell is he doing there?!” And I thought for this album I’ll do Georgia Bound which is a very strange song. Possibly written by a white man because it paints a picture of the South and the position of the African-American as a contented cabin dweller with water melon on the vine and chickens on the roof of the house but it is credited to Arthur and if it is a sentimental view of the South it is a beautifully written one. However it does not tie in with the thoughts of exploitation and deprivation that most people like to imagine was there but the playing on the guitar man-he does not repeat a phrase through a six verse song and he solos in between each one. I’m aghast and have had several goes at doing it- I am actually thinking of going back next week to Cornwall and doing one more version! It is just staggering-if you can’t play just listen and weep-you know (laughs) and it is recorded in 1931 you know-marvelous, marvelous playing. Again just picking through it again I learned a couple more licks and got my fingers to do something that they hadn’t learned to do prior to it and you just marvel. He was probably dead before the time he was 32 or 33 looking at the photographs and the dates and he could do all that.”

I have heard you talking about the blues and pieces such as Weeping Willow by Blind Boy Fuller and say that these musicians were true poets. As a poet yourself can you expand more on this theme?
“First of all I think it is very dangerous for someone-say a white man, an Englishman, who has had the benefit of an education and literary understanding, not to not sound patronizing discussing apparently quite simple couplets because that is basically what blues are. But someone wrote these lines and they were adapted and they have been used by generations and generations of people. And to me although most of them talk about sexuality and that form of expression and love and the deprivation of it and the pain that that brings-isn’t that really what life force is about. Isn’t that what Picasso was on about in his paintings-if it isn’t religion it’s sex and in the blues there is a lot of sex and there is a lot of underlining of how important that expression is. Isn’t that about life, vitality and living?
So when a writer says “Weeping willow and the mourning dove” now what does that mean? Is that an expression of sadness. Is that the sound that the bird makes when it is missing its mate? Dove happens to rhyme with love so that is handy and it often appears in American tradition. But when Robert (Johnson) sings “I followed her to the station with her suitcase in my hand” -the line for The Setting comes from that more or less- it sort of tells you he still loves this girl and she is going and he is actually carrying her bloody bag for her. So you have a depth to the picture. A lot of people miss that-and that simple statement has more depth.-and these simple statements have lasted and many people have woven them into their own blues and there own songs and none more so than Bob. “She wanted my heart but I gave her my soul” well Robert Johnson wrote “She has a loan on my body and a mortgage on my soul” he compared the two things. Bob does that he has adapted it all his life “And don’t my girl look lonesome when she’s gone away from me don’t the clouds looks lonesome across that deep blue sea” Actually it is Leroy Carr who played with Scrapper Blackwell.
I am sorry to be so long winded about this but I’ve never been asked this question before and I am finding this is my answer to it. These men had limited literary references-they wrote about the deep and massive things in their lives. The things that told them they were men. They lived, they existed they were powerful, they had power and it was taken away from them whether it was sexual power or whatever and they moved me tremendously because they are working to the best of their ability and when they cannot find the words they play the notes.”

And the fact they had major disabilities makes it even more mind blowing……
“Yeah when I listen to these musicians-and you can even talk about Stevie Wonder’s Inner Visions-where this music comes from- a place in the soul. It is all the spirituality and religion I ever need.”

You know Billy Bragg was given some of Woody Guthrie’s unfinished material-would you have liked to have been given that opportunity?
“I am so jealous of Billy Bragg I am so envious. I even wrote to my publisher-they offered me the chance but by the time I’d got the letter Billy had already done it! I said “Do you not realize how important this would have been to me?” So they have been on to Nora Guthrie and they have said Ralph McTell would really like to do this and they have gone “Ralph who?” So they actually asked to hear some of my material which I sent over and I said “I haven’t done auditions for years and this is the creepiest kind of thing but I have been a fan since I was 16-I’d love a shot at writing a few tunes” Whether I ever get opportunity I don’t know but it would give me enormous satisfaction to see composed “Woody Guthrie/Ralph McTell” but we shall just have to see. Stranger things have happened.”

Ralph I want to ask you about your enjoyment of Jazz music. I have read about your enjoyment of jazz music and guitarists such as Django Reinhart. Do you play any jazz style guitar yourself?   
“No. I have never reached that far ahead. But when it is played well it is the most amazingly good thing for your soul. I tried to explain once-when you are a little boy and you watch the magician do the conjuring trick what you want above all to know is how he did it. When you get older you just enjoy the effect and that is how I am with jazz. When it is played well it is like transcendental meditation I should think. I just drift off into this wonderful peaceful place in my head. It has to be melodic jazz not honking horns and screeching saxophones with no form to them. It is huge and it is always on the edge of danger. It might not resolve and it might not come back to the root. Recently the best young player I have seen is Benny Green who is from San Francisco and is a young pianist and I went to see him three times.  I saw him at The Bull in Barnes and I was on my feet at the end of this gig gasping. He performed classic standard material from the 1930’s and 1940’s improvised and played with such respect, understanding and comprehension of the melodic structure of the songs and took them to wonderfully exciting and very satisfying places. That is what jazz does to me. It doesn’t have to be too way out but I can take that too-but small combos where guys are looking at each other and smiling because it sounds so bloody wonderful- now that is a lovely place to be!”

Ralph I am really excited about this tour because it was you introduced me and I suspect many others to your musical roots and it is music I would not have discovered without you.
“Well Mike you are very kind. I do hope you will enjoy it. As I said if I felt I couldn’t bring real respect for these things I wouldn’t do it. I don’t know I’ll play the entire album every night on this little tour because I think that might be too much of a test but all the artists on the album will be represented and I think the album will have its own legs and hopefully people will enjoy it and it will be a apart of the McTell catalogue.”

Any message for your fans coming out to catch you on the tour?|
“I’d love to see as many people as possible. I don’t know how it is going to pan out but I promise you I have the deepest respect for this music and if you like what I like I think you will like the way I have looked at these songs.”

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