LOUDON WAINWRIGHT
- And Being A Singer-Songwriter
In 1979
 About
a decade ago, when the summers were longer and hotter than they
are now, the emergence of a new singer-songwriter was like the
emergence of a New Voice, and Loudon Wainwright III tall, lank,
bearded, folksinging satirist from North Carolina, was celebrated
appropriately.
Today the beard is gone, but
Loudon is still the self-accompanied troubadour who takes the
stage with isolation as the principal prop and wrings his songs
from a merciless wit, an untrammelled imagination and an unfailing
perception. And he still packs his concert halls with audiences
who are captive to his characteristic vision of contemporary
urban life. I caught him at the beginning of a British tour (the
first venues were already booked solid) and asked about his songs,
his unique stage act, and the way he sees his work and his career.
"You see", he muses...
"I never really thought I'd do this for a profession."
He considers rather carefully. At an interview, his peculiar
brand of humour is filtered through a certain diffidence. "I
started guitar at 14 with folksongs and stuff like that, but
at that time I wanted to be an actor ... went to drama college
for a year and a half, and then dropped out and about 1966-7
was travelling around the USA ..."
It was a nice time to be doing
that. After a period when he did very little musically, Loudon
visited a friend who had a guitar, played around with it for
a day or so, and ended up with his first song. " ... not
a very good song ... but good enough so that, well I got interested,
began to play around bars and folk clubs in Boston and New York,
and quite rapidly, in fact, I started to make a living at it.
Then in 1970 I met the guy who was to become my manager, someone
from Atlantic records came to see me at the Gaslight, and as
a result I got to make the first two albums ... "
Easy. And very impressive albums
they were too - yet Loudon has been described as 'despising'
recording and certainly not all his records have met with the
unbridled success of his live performances. What is his attitude
to the studio?
"Well with the first record
I was so freaked out that I did, in fact, despise it - it made
me very nervous and uncomfortable, in fact it still makes me
nervous and uncomfortable. I just don't feel very comfortable
in a recording studio."
"But I'd like to produce
good records, now. My records have never sold very well and I
haven't been particularly well received by the critics - so that
leaves a kind of void in my life I'd like to fill."
"You see, a record is a
complete mystery to me and it's also a traumatic thing. I don't
know - I think there's some good stuff on some of them ... "
But he feels satisfied with individual tracks rather than any
production as a whole. So what's the solution to bringing over
on record a style of playing that's highly dramatic, geared strongly
towards gaining a rapport with your audience, and to a certain
extent spontaneous? Do you just hand over production to someone
who likes your stuff, and play away to yourself in an attempt
to forget where you are?
"I've done that, and I've
also done the opposite and produced my own record completely
but ... neither is a complete solution. I feel good about some
things, and other things make me wince. I think the complete
solution is probably not to listen to my own records ... "
Out of a hundred songs written
by Loudon Wainwright III, some 70 have been recorded. He has
his own favourites. "Some songs I don't do any more, others,
like 'Schooldays', still seem to be relevant." Nevertheless,
most of his gigs reach the stage (you can hear it on his live
LP) when the audience sets up a shouting match of requests. "The
problem is, for some of the older ones I not only feel uncomfortable
doing them, but I don't know the words ... "
A pause. I am constrained (because
journalists are) to ask a question to which I know beforehand
there is no satisfactory answer. How do his songs get written?
"I just walk around and
see things and things happen to me that I think about ... there's
no way I know how it's done. I'm a great believer in things like
the spiritual or the Muse - when a song comes it comes through
you as opposed to being created by you ... a lot of strange things
can inspire you to write songs ... " He grins. Dead skunks,
suicide, swimming, cigarette smoking, being 'in hate', alcoholism,
bees, vampires, hanky panky in the gym, marriage guidance, loneliness,
breastfeeding ... he may well grin. "Of course, they're
frequently based on genuine episodes only I certainly employ
a lot of exaggeration ... reality is not enough."
Where he fits into the songwriting
fraternity is uncertain - somewhere in between Tom Lehrer and
Woody Guthrie, probably. He himself acknowledges a certain similarity
of approach and attitude to Woody Allen - both portray the same
exaggeratedly morbid, uncertain, hypochondriacally suggestible
personas, and use them to produce irresistible humour.
Wainwright, however, has a self-avowed
predilection for shocking people. What is his reaction to the
imprecations of bad taste his material sometimes attracts?
"Well, personally I find,
for instance, Helen Reddy is bad taste ... insulting and tasteless.
I find a lot of disco in bad taste - I'm not a person who doesn't
like the Bee Gees, but my point is that it really depends on
your personal taste. People are offended by some of my songs,
like I've actually received letters from religious organisations,
and so on, but really, taste is in the tongue of the taster."
"Partly, it's just comedy.
People come up to me and say, 'you're singing these songs about
quite serious things ... broken romance, suicide, alcoholism,
really quite serious, and not only are people laughing at it
but you seem to be actually encouraging them to.' And I say yeah,
I know, I can't help myself ..! "
"Of course, sometimes, I
think the laugh is rather a nervous laugh, and that's okay, that's
fine. I still think a lot of the songs are basically serious,
if anything's that serious, but you know there ain't a lot of
serious things."
Matching his characteristic song
writing, Loudon has a characteristic vocal style and a characteristic
guitar technique. Concerning both, he notes that he has never
had a music lesson of any kind. Vocally, he feels he's been influenced
by "a lot of good singers ... I'm not only the Woody Allen
of Rock but someone once described me as being like the male
Melanie. I hadn't seen that one myself. I thought it was great,
except it's a rather depressing thought being both of those people."
As for his guitar playing, what
does he think of George Gershwin's description of it as 'string
percussion'? "I use it very simply - I think George is right
in as much as my guitar technique is not particularly advanced,
but highly evolved as an accompaniment - which is as valid a
direction to progress in as any."
"Well, it's simple and just
basically strumming - I sing in about three different keys and
that's about it - it's certainly not complicated. The guy who
most impressed me was Rambling Jack Elliot; you know, he does
Woody Guthrie songs and he has a really rhythmic righthand, kind
of bashing as opposed to intricate melody lines - I've never
been interested in broadening my horizons as a guitar player."
"It's simple yeah, and also
I ... always feel I'll bang my guitar to death, it's kind of
riddled with holes and ... scratches and chips and so on ...
" He paused, as if reminiscing half-humorously on the stage
Wainwright. "Yeah, I hit it a lot - it's a kind of moving
sound, hitting the guitar sort of style as opposed to just standing
still singing ... "
Bearing 'The Red Guitar' in mind,
the little song in which Loudon himself added the Pete Townsend
of Folk to his growing list of sobriquets, one might be excused
for wondering what sort of a life span his instruments have.
"The Red Guitar? Oh that
was the one guitar that died prematurely - I usually have a lot
of respect for guitars - I don't destroy them. I have several
guitars that I've more or less retired, because they do take
a certain amount of beating ... "
He doesn't account himself a
collector of guitars although he greatly prizes a 1933 D Angelico
arch-top - one of the models he's 'retired'. He now uses the
Martin D-21 ('quite a good guitar'). The Red Guitar, dead, but
immortalised in song, was a Gibson Hummingbird, while the Blond
Guitar which briefly succeeded it was an Epiphone. Did he ever
get it back?
"No - some junkie broke
in ... sold it for some heroin ... I'm sure it was a junkie."
He doesn't say why he's sure. Probably, like many people with
a lot of imagination, he pictures the situation so vividly as
to be the only evidence he needs.
To most of Loudon's British admirers,
and he agrees he has a considerable following here, he's strictly
a solo artist. But that's only partly from choice. Like a lot
of performers he was daunted by the business aspects of touring
with a backing group.
"I did set up a band. I
played last year with one for a while, but it got to the point
of being too expensive and there were a lot of other problems
so I disbanded ... the band." He chuckles approval at the
idea of disbanding a band.
"I was very pleased with
the way it was moving along musically though. It made a totally
different act - what would happen was that the band who were
like a separate entity unto themselves would do the support,
and then I'd come on and play for about 40 minutes, and then
we'd both join up at the end. And it was great - I'd just put
the guitar down and do like lead singer stuff, which from a physical
point of view gave me the whole of the upper half of my body
as well as the lower half - so I was like running around and
it was fun."
"Actually, it needed a bit
longer to get really together, really interesting - but we were
paying out ten thousand dollars a week ... rock'n'roll is an
expensive proposition ... "
Forming a band is not the only
direction in which Loudon Wainwright III has temporarily extended
his interests. Over the last 10 years he's also done a certain
amount of acting (the attention to his M.A.S.H. appearances he
regards as disproportionate, but suffice it to say his drama
training has not been wasted). Does he intend to develop this
side further, in the immediate future?
"I think I'm at the point
where I'm beginning to hopefully branch out ... I'd call myself
a kind of semi-success at the moment, I have a respectfully good
following for which I'm grateful but being the kind of egomaniacal,
selfish, power-hungry, mad person that I am I want more, more,
MORE ... " Quite suddenly he's metamorphosed into his devilish-like
on-stage self. "Next I want Wembley, you know, I want the
WORLD ... "
He relents a little. "Well,
maybe I don't want Wembley, but I don't think you're ever really
satisfied. I like being on the road, but I'm definitely interested
in other stuff so if anyone's reading this ... " (He leans
abruptly toward the microphone) ... "Woody, if you want
a song for your new movie ... "
As for the new album "Yeah - if I can find the right producer
and the right musicians. I'm writing all the time and getting
some good songs, so maybe in the spring ... "
And I'm sure many of those who
have heard the material from his recent tour will be looking
forward to it.
PAUL ASHFORD
(From 'International Musician'
- November '79) |
