Interview with Ralph McTell
Summer 2006

Ralph kindly chatted to me about the Gates of Eden album and forthcoming tour.
Here is an edited version of this interview.
The full version appears on the Ralph Albert and Sydney site www.ralph-mctell.co.uk so do check it out.

1. 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 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 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.”

2. 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.”

3. 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 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.”

4. 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 heir- 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 _ 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.”

5. 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.”

6. 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.”

7. 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 “

8. I know you met Ramblin' 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.”

9. 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.”

10. 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.”

11. 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.”

12. 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 it 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.”

13. 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 morning 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.”

14. 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.”

15. 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 I think you will like the way I have looked at these songs.”Thanks Ralph for all of that. For all of us who have been following you over the years the tour will be a unique experience and I wish you every success with it . I for one cannot wait to hear the album!

Dr. Mike Cohen
Bristol 1/9/2006

Album available from the website.