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But finding that made me want to sing it again. I heard someone sing it, and they sang it in that rather crisp way that you hear on Crown of Horn. I decid- ed I’d play it in a different way, so that if it was in E minor I’d actually have the root note as though it was in C. That’s why you suddenly get that flattened fifth. I did it not romantically but bluntly. That’s the only word I can think of. It’s crisper. A bit punchier. I’ve shifted the tonal centre. I loved doing it like that because it made great sense to the way I was feeling at the time – really trying to use the guitar.
Then I heard Levi Smith, and I’m think- ing, “What the hell is that?” I listened to it again and again, that apparently throw- away version of it – speak-singing. By that time I’d listened to a lot of very old record- ings so my ears were getting quite sharp. That’s how you find stuff. Don’t question what you’re hearing. Just absorb it. Those people knew what they were doing.
So then I had to decide for myself whether it was in the minor or the major, because he sings it in the cracks so much. Norma was saying, “Why don’t you play it on guitar?” By that time I was beginning to realise that that was what governed whether I sang the song or not: whether or not I could play it on guitar. So I started trying to play it, worked it out, and I just fell in love with it.
Then I heard his brother singing it.
He’s singing the same thing but he sticks a couple of variations in. But that line, “Geordie shall hang in chains of gold” [looks like he’s had his breath taken away]… It’s all about paying attention to what people sing. Especially the gypsy singers, because they’re doing some amaz- ing things. They sing the tunes that are handed down to them, and it’s often in the cracks. It certainly works for me.
It’s very hard to find your way into if you’ve spent your life listening to pop music.
Yes, it’s harder when you’ve been lis- tening to stuff that is tuned.
The biggest problem I have as someone attempting to play some of these songs is abandoning the strict necessity of time signature – feeling your way through, as you said earlier, on a pulse rather than anything else.
Yeah. You just let it happen to you.
Play what’s there. One way of doing it is to accept that a quaver is a short note, a crotchet is a longer note, and a minim is a slightly longer note still. Then try to sing it not in tempo. It’s a trick, if you can do it. You could do worse than write out the tune and get rid of the bar lines.
If someone was coming to the Martin Carthy back-catalogue for the first time, which albums would you start them off on?
There was a clarity of purpose about the first album, and – to a certain extent – the second album. I like bits of all the albums. A really important one for me was Prince Heathen. That’s when I understood that changing something was not the work of Satan [laughs]. It’s essential to do it. I changed the song Prince Heathen to
At Sidmouth 2012
have a happy ending. The first time I got through it I got to the end and shouted, “No! You can’t do that!”
So, when you say change it, you’re actual- ly talking about re-writing sections of the songs?
Yes. In the version of Prince Heathen
that’s in Child [a song in which a woman is raped, imprisoned and only released when the baby is born, and the criminal father only falls in love with the mother once he sees her washing and wrapping her child for warmth], it says he wraps her in silk and washes her in milk, and the hearts are breaking and hands are bowing, and he says that now he loves his lady. And there’s no hint that she says, “No! Bollocks to you! ‘I love you’ is not enough! What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?!”
It’s very important that that notion is there. There are one or two people who have sung it with that happy ending [in which the woman forgives the man sim- ply because he says he loves her], and I find that so foolish. I don’t understand why she has to give in. Why would you want her to do that? The song is about clarity of purpose. It’s about firmness in the truth, in the Gandhian sense. When people said it was passive resistance, Gandhi said, “No, there’s nothing passive about it. This is about staying true. That is not passive.” A woman reviewer actually talked about it as “The Power of No”. I think there was a duty to change it. Once you get into that idea, then you can start to run with it. You’ll still make mistakes, but that’s OK.
After that, I’m very fond of Crown of
Horn. I had a lovely time making that. After I’d finished it, I walked out of the studio and saw a kingfisher. I’d never seen one before. I was absolutely knocked out.
The next album that I really like is
Because It’s There. Then there’s the first Brass Monkey album. I really love that one, and I love the albums that Swarb and I did around 1990, 1992. Life And Limb and Skin
And Bone. I’m very fond of them. Signs Of Life had some tunes that meant a lot to me at the time. It had Heartbreak Hotel on it. One thing I’ve often said, when asked, is that I bought three records on the same day: Rock Around The Clock, Rock Island Line and Heartbreak Hotel. That always struck me as important. I always say that Rock Island Line was the trigger, but I never learnt the words. The only words I learnt from those three records was Heart- break Hotel.
That song was so important to your gen- eration, wasn’t it? It was the gateway song for Jagger, Lennon, McCartney…
Oh yeah! The most important thing about it, though – and the reason I record- ed it – was that I discovered it was written by a woman. Ever heard of a guy called Hoyt Axton? Well, his mother wrote that song. She was a country musician. She’d been writing songs ever since she was lit- tle. If you listen to that song as a song written by a woman, it takes on a whole new thing. I saw it in a different light when I realised a woman wrote it.
OK! Last question, and possibly the most emotional one. Is it possible for you to sit back and cast a glance over all that you’ve done and be aware of the influence you’ve had on us all?
[Looks very bashful] Well, when some-
one like Tim Ericksen, a hugely accom- plished guitarist, says he copies me because that’s the sound he wants, then I’m hugely flattered. If they say “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, well, thank you very much. But usually, when someone stands up and plays just like me, I think, “cheeky bugger!” [Laughs] It’s all good humoured. I think, “Cheeky sod. I know where you got that from!”
This interview was first published on Jon Wilks’ excellent Grizzly Folk internet blog, only a short time before he closed the site down. Thanks to Jon for allowing us to preserve it for posterity
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Photo: © Judith Burrows
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