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’60s we can’t ever forget Phil Ochs. There was Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton and Bob Dylan, and me, and a couple of others. Apparently Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs used to enjoy picking up the newspaper – none of us knew what we were doing – the New York Times, and whatever was the startling headline they would challenge themselves to write a song.”
1960s Buffy
You’re Dying. I wrote that one in Spain, liv- ing on a tiny island, Formentera, most peo- ple have never heard of – a very weird place. I had a gypsy boyfriend from the US who was a painter and we travelled together. There were no tourists on the island, it was very hard to get to.”
“The reason why I wrote it was because I had well-meaning people, like teachers, wanting to know more, and there was nowhere you could find the whole history in a nutshell. No books that really covered it well. So in 1960-some- thing-or-other I wanted to write it all down and I did. It apparently has made a big difference to a lot of people’s lives to go that deeply and broadly into Native American history, the stuff most con- sumers never come across.”
“If you’re Native American or if you’re a scholar you can find it, but it wasn’t out there in the public. So I gave it a shot, and it was too early, but it it’s not too early now. 50 years later I look back and – god, we’ve made so much progress. The Truth & Reconciliation Commission [into abuses through Canada’s Indian residential school system] was a miracle. I still don’t know how it ever happened. It was a miracle to get that information out and into circula- tion where people can do something about it.”
“So My Country ’Tis Of Thy People
You’re Dying I think was the first place I ever saw the word genocide used in rela- tion to the Native American holocaust. I think people just thought ‘Oh, the little Indian girl, she must be mistaken, she just isn’t worldly enough.’ In which case I would pull out a whole bunch of letters after my name, and back it up with facts. And yet neither the US nor Canada – to say nothing of the countries to the South – nobody had any background.”
“I can’t think of too many artists who kind of combined that journalistic impetus with songwriting. Bob Dylan did for a little while. And it was so brilliant. But then he kind of stopped – god bless him – he just got too famous. I love him. But then in the
“And that’s kind of fun. But it’s not the same thing as someone who’s living in the shit, and writing about the shit. Read- ing about it in the newspaper is a little bit secondhand. Tom Paxton has continued to write some meaningful songs; Peter Yarrow has a little collective of ‘songs of meaning’ that he runs, but for the most part people are not writing about current events – except in hip-hop. It might be that the 24-hour news services are providing either enough – or in some cases too much – information. So maybe other songwriters are not inspired to write about the big issues. I’m just not seeing the songs, I don’t know where they are. But I’ve got a bunch of them, so – here I am.”
A
t the start of the next question Buffy jumps in to say she’s excited to be able to talk about her times in Britain and Ireland, and early inspirations. Adopted at birth by a couple from Mas- sachusetts, she grew up there among mid- dle-class white families and reveals a sur- prising first musical bond.
“Tchaikovsky was my first influence – I really did used to want to be a ballerina. When I was a little girl there was a piano in the house, and I used to play fake Tchaikovsky from the time I was three, I’m told. I can’t read, so I play by ear. I’m actual- ly dyslexic in music. I’ve never been able to read. I mean I can write for an orchestra, it’s not like I don’t know how but I just can’t read it back. Tchaikovsky was probably my first inkling that that’s what I want to do, and I started hearing music in my head. I can hear all that kind of classical romanti- cism thing in my songs [Grammy winner] Up Where We Belong and Until It’s Time For You To Go. It’s that classical romantic love thing that’s in a lot of my music right along- side the hardest-hitting protest stuff.”
Later Pyotr Ilyich T rolled over for a while to make room for Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Bill Haley, and the first flush of rock ’n’ roll. “I just went cuck- oo! I was I guess twelve or thirteen but I knew that’s what I loved, then I went off to college, and the songs I had been writing all my life, I’d be singing them to the girls in my dorm; and I had gotten a guitar when I was about sixteen but I didn’t have anyone to teach me how to play it so I tuned it all upside down and inside out and it gave my music a very interesting sound.”
When Buffy finished high-school in 1958, folk music wasn’t yet on the popular radar in the US. But by the time she gradu- ated from the University of Massachusetts – with a degree in Oriental Philosophy – it had arrived big time. She started out lis- tening to Folkways Records.
“But not to Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, it was never my style. And the Kingston Trio and all that kind of preppy-
boy fraternity stuff. No! Please! I hated it. I was listening to Blind Willie Johnson and Bukka White. And later on I toured with Bukka White and that was great – he was a friend of mine. Also I knew Lonnie John- son. That kind of music was very attractive to me, that Deep South thing, I’ve always loved it – that Delta blues, that East Texas, that New Orleans, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard. I like that Deep South originality. With rock ’n’ roll, give me ZZ Top.”
“I was doing really wacky tunings
quite early, all over my first records. Later it became impossible to bring all those gui- tars and it would bother me having to tune over and over again one guitar, so I started limiting my tunings on the road. Guitars would get smashed, and stolen. It was so hard being a girl all by myself carry- ing not only my personal things but a bunch of guitars, and became prohibitive. I didn’t have a band, so I was all alone, and I think that aloneness too contributed to the uniqueness of both my point of view and the way I played. Some people liked that. Not everybody did. I think I’ve always been one of those tastes where you either like it or hate it – I’ve got kind of a strange voice and point of view. But I’m an artist, so that’s good. I like that.”
Buffy’s music only reached the majori- ty of European ears via Donovan’s 1965 recording of her song Universal Soldier, which became a Top Of The Pops hit in the UK. She recalls coming to Britain and Ire- land around that time, on a tour organised by London-based promoter Roy Guest.
“He brought me to the Albert Hall, and I did a tour with Julie Felix, Reverend Gary Davis, Rambling Jack Elliott, and Paul Simon. I’ve just finished the biography of Paul Simon, Homeward Bound, and was so surprised because it says that on that whole tour Paul Simon was kind of trying to push me out of the spotlight. He want- ed top billing and nobody had heard of him. Oh god, I was so disappointed to hear that, but it was a revelation.”
“We travelled around Wales, Scot- land, Ireland, and all throughout England in cars, doing these little shows. And Paul was writing, and Julie was writing. It was remarkable. Back then for artists, you could afford to have downtime. Now touring is so expensive you almost have to do one-nighters, and not go see things. But in those days I’d maybe do concerts on the weekend and had the whole week off. I remember spending time in a hospi- tal with a lady who wanted to share songs with me, and she taught me some songs, like The Banks Of Red Roses. I was doing things like Sir Patrick Spens and The House Carpenter, these great, great songs, only I’d do them them all upside down and inside out with crazy tunings, and make them real dramatic. ’Cause I didn’t think I was going to last, so I went for broke all the time.”
Buffy was fearless, singing whatever
moved her. On her fourth album Fire And Fleet And Candlelight [1967] she sang the old Yorkshire-dialect dirge Lyke Wake Dirge, about the soul’s travel between earth and purgatory. But her visits to the UK weren’t always as a folk artist.
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