Culture That Made Me: Ralph McTell on the streets of London and other influences
Ralph McTell is touring Ireland, with gigs including the Everyman in Cork.
Ralph McTell, 81, grew up in Croydon, London, England. In 1968, he released his debut album,
He won an Ivor Novello Award for his song in 1974. In 2002, he was awarded the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
He will perform at Cork’s Everyman, Sunday, November 1. See: everymancork.com
I watched about six times in one week at a little cinema in Croydon. I was fascinated by James Dean. The film largely passed me by. I was watching his attitude. I know that Brando was a big fan of James Dean and probably influenced Brando's approach to acting. There was something about James Dean. I wanted to be like him. I never was. I was too gangly, too awkward, but there was something so cool about him.
My cousin had Elvis’s on a 78 record. I must have played that 10 times the first time I heard it. I was about 11. It was so effective to me, just wonderful — I couldn't get over it. I fell off the roundabout when he went into acting in films, but his early rock 'n 'roll thing is peerless.
When, aged 16, I heard Jack Elliott singing, I knew there was a truthfulness and something special going on. My journey into acoustic music began with him. I was taken in by the country-sounding wisdom of his music. He sounded like a cross between a cowboy and a hillbilly; actually, he was a New York doctor’s son who based his style on Woody Guthrie. One time Jack was my support act in a concert in Denmark. I felt very uneasy about it. I tried to explain to the audience how important this man was in my life. He’s well into his 90s, still going strong. He synthesized, in a crude way, all the best things of country music, from dink songs to blues.
I was a pen friend with Woody Guthrie. I call it pen friends although of course he couldn't write back but I wrote to him. I got a letter back from his wife saying that Woody had read the letter. I was so thrilled with that. Woody remains one of my heroes. The quality of simple tunes with big thoughts in them was a good lesson for me.
The greatest of all the ragtime blues guitar players is Arthur Blake, or Blind Blake as he was known. I got an album of his best songs when I was 17 from a friend. It's an inspirational record. This guy could play the guitar and make it sound like a piano.
I met a guy in Paris who had lessons from Reverend Gary Davis. That was an amazing thing. Reverend Davis only played blues occasionally; most of the time it was religious songs which had a limited appeal to me as I'm not religious, but the techniques this man used were pianistic and beautiful. I got to introduce him to his last concert at London’s Shaw Theatre, which was a big honour. I have a lovely photograph of him and me together, a treasured possession of mine.
Robert Johnson had it all. He could play. He had mystery and mystique singing about a variety of things, not just his sexual prowess, but observational songs that are exquisite and played on an acoustic guitar that I defy anyone to better. Anybody who thinks they know the blues should listen to Robert Johnson once a year in a darkened room to discover what it's really about. His music is a wonder to me.
When Robert Johnson talks about how his girl’s left him, “she got a mortgage on my body, now, and a lien on my soul”. Where does that come from? For a young man of maybe 24 years of age to describe the debt he owed this woman or that he was paying for something. Mind boggling. Natural poetry in the blues is a rare thing, but Robert found other ways of addressing various insecurities, broken love affairs, sexual desire, and loneliness too, providing insight into a world totally alien to a white boy growing up in south London but somehow his music reached out to me and others — there was a whole subculture in south London amongst young lads trying to play guitars and identify with freight trains, 30 years after our muse had died, and it was lovely.
I came late to Nina Simone. I managed to see her at London’s Hammersmith Odeon for a show. She sacked her bass player that morning, so she did it with a guitar player trying to cover. But sometimes it's just nice to be in the same room as someone that you admire. You're sharing a moment that nobody else is, only the ones who are there can have it and you're soaking it all up. And you know her history — she wasn't a woman to be trifled with — and those amazing songs.
The film I can never avoid re-watching is The complexity and the turning of an open-hearted, young war veteran into the most ruthless, perfect representation of evil with young Michael Corleone played by Al Pacino is a masterpiece. The cool restraint as he slowly took over the empire. It's horrible, an evil part to play. The idea of the family at home and the sacrifice of sons. Is it a metaphor for war? The code of honour. There are so many levels going on. It had a huge influence, and an even bigger influence on my brother, who started wearing dark suits and sunglasses.
Aretha Franklin takes my breath away. One of my favourite singles of all time is
I cannot believe that that was all done live — the backing vocals, those girl singers all in one room, sharing the lead vocal. It was stunning. It's so tight and one of the most beautiful sentiments and great lyrics.
As a teenager, Jack Kerouac’s was a bit of a bible, although I never read it all. I read Maggie Cassidy. When you're young and you're supposed to be impressed by these people, but then you realize he was swallowing great handfuls of Benzedrine to get his flow of consciousness writing going you perhaps conclude it was more trouble than it was worth.
I enjoyed reading and being puzzled and bewildered by beat poetry. I met Allen Ginsberg, who I thought was a bit of a chancer. He would hook onto people. There was less in that man than meets the eye. When I met him, we had a very nice evening. I was on the road with David Bromberg's band in the ’80s. We went to Ginsberg’s house in Boulder, Colorado somewhere. We were entertained by him and his pontificating. It was great to rub shoulders with these icons.
The best beat poet came much later in the form of Tom Waits. Some of his writing was better than the folks he was clearly influenced by because his lyrics rhymed properly and they scanned; you could put tunes to them. That’s a rare skill. Tom has been on his own road. Just when you think you've got a handle on him, he goes somewhere else and does something different.
