LOUDON IS A TUFT MAN
- (In which Loudon Wainwright
III discusses with COLIN IRWIN memories of Maria Muldaur's armpits,
edible underpants, magic mushrooms, and how his dog once talked
him out of a bad acid trip. A warning. This is weird stuff).
 Loudon Wainwright
III is heading for the nearest boozer like a man who's just renounced
30 years of abstinence. His single-minded advance is abruptly
halted by a cautionary observation from one of the companions
attempting to keep pace, and Loudon listens in wonder as he is
informed that the hostelry in question is frequented by masons.
"What, do you mean stone
masons?", he demands, nonplussed. No Loudon. Just masons.
It's a secret society.
He's incredulous. "A secret
society? My, my, what do they do?"
"Well, they er, they wear
aprons...and they have funny handshakes."
"They wear aprons? They
have funny handshakes? Sounds like a bunch of faggots to me."
Europe, and Loudon Wainwright
have become intimately acquainted this summer. At Lisdoonvarna,
on the West coast of Ireland, Loudon sang a song about Harrisburg,
urged everyone to attend an anti-nuclear festival at Cork the
next week, and got a standing ovation.
He was also on stage at Nyson,
Switzerland, at another folk festival, getting spectacularly
wrecked and going onstage with a portly hangover. The fact that
the audience could barely understand a word he was saying goaded
him into making his introductions even longer and zanier.
And then he was back on his happiest
hunting ground, the Cambridge Folk Festival, where he mercilessly
teased and taunted the BBC cameramen and gave a world premiere
to 'The Acid Song', an unnerving mixture of hilarity and chilly
observations about an LSD trip, it's destined to be ranked with
his best work.
In Belgium he poured beer over
his head in a brazen attempt to hold the audience's waning attention.
In Holland he played second fiddle to Van Morrison. Later he
was in Ireland - in the north this time, the same weekend Mountbatten
was killed - following the Strawbs and cracking the place up.
And back in England he played his best gig of all - for a small
unadvertised folk club night.
He's even got himself a flat
in London, right next to Regents Park, as a base for this European
campaign and for his longest-ever British concert tour. He's
also been to see Al Green and every samurai movie he can lay
his eyes on.
"I was over here in ' 67",
he says. "My parents lived here for a time. And then I was
here in uh, ' 71 right after my honeymoon with Kate McGarrigle.
We went to Denmark and came to London informally, and Kate, Chaim
Tannenbaum and me, we used to go out and busk. On Saturday afternoons
we'd go down to the Portabello Road and busk... More kinda for
fun than for money. But, well, when the other buskers found out
that we were professional, there was a lot of resentment, and
rightly so, and we stopped. We didn't do it for the money, but
we took the money, and we did well."
Some of the forthcoming live
album was recorded when he toured Britain in 1976. The rest is
more recent. Loudon paid for the compiled album himself with
his sister, and producer John Wood. He'd split with Arista amidst
animosity and also parted company with his manager of nine years.
For reasons of morale as much as business, it seemed a good idea
to put out a live record.
Record companies in the States
told him a solo singer and acoustic guitarist just wasn't on
these days - "just not commercial enough, son" - and
so they brought the tapes to England, where Loudon's following
has always been proportionally greater than in the States anyway.
For a time there was a grave danger that Stiff would take the
album, but in the end it went to Radar, an equally unlikely collaboration.
I ask him if it means he's disillusioned with big labels. "Actually",
he responds thoughtfully, "it's more that the big labels
are disillusioned with me."
The first time he played England
was in 1971, at the Royal Albert Hall, supporting the Everly
Brothers. The audience's reaction fell some way short of ecstasy,
and Loudon retreated from the stage in rather a hurry. He was
to return a year later, at the Cambridge Folk Festival.
"I never think of myself
as a folk singer, but I'm very partial to folk music. In the
Sixties that was the type of music that really affected me. I
was never an incredible Jerry Lee Lewis freak, or even the Beatles.
I never really got into them until 'Sgt Pepper', when I was taking
acid. I used to go to the Newport Folk Festival and my favourite
group were the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. They were the most theatrical
and the most funny and the most interesting. I liked Dylan, of
course, because he was the most powerful, but I was never too
interested in the singer-songwriter thing - I liked the whole
goofy, comedy, wacky, funny theatrical folk music thing. I had
all the Kweskin Jug Band records, knew all the words."
"And I was in love with
Maria Muldaur."
"I wanna tell you, in 1963
Maria Muldaur was something else. She was the first woman I ever
saw who didn't shave under the arms. I can remember at Newport,
Rhode Island, at the Newport Folk Festival, looking up around
the fence and seeing the Kweskin Jug Band - Geoff Muldaur and
Jim Kweskin and Fritz Richmond and Bill Eith, and Maria Muldaur.
And she was 23 years old. Had this shirt on with nothing up her
arms, and she kinda leaned up to scratch her head and I saw this
... incredible tuft of black hair. Aarggh. Most erotic thing
I ever saw in my life."
"Course it's old hat now.
Now she probably does shave underneath her arms. But then the
only times I'd seen it had been women Russian javelin throwers,
or shot putters, those big hefty girls in the Olympics. God,
to see an American-Italian girl like that."
I ask him the object of his fantasies
these days.
"Oh Amy Carter. Those glasses
really get me off. I've always been attracted to very strong
women. Now Margaret Thatcher ... There's this incredibly erotic
picture - at least erotic in my mind - of Margaret Thatcher dancing
with this black guy, and the smiles on both their faces. It looked
so bizarre. That's racist, I suppose, but it's very sexual. Rock
against it."
In 1972 an extraordinary thing
happened to Loudon Wainwright III. He got a hit single. 'Dead
Skunk', from Loudon's third album is a perfect example of his
perverse humour. It reached the American Top Ten, enraged animal
lovers everywhere, and screwed up it's author a little. He's
never had a skunk's whiff of a hit single since.
The star elect duly froze up.
He went and blew it, following it up with an album recorded and
mixed in five days ('Attempted Moustache') which he acknowledges
was his most uncommercial out of eight uncommercial records.
"It was almost like an attempt
to obliterate that success. In many ways that success freaked
me out. Success is scary. Almost scarier than failing. Failing
is frightening, but succeeding is really frightening."
"That album seemed determined
not to let anyone hear the songs. It's got a lotta great songs
on that album, like 'Clockwork Chartreuse', but you can't hear
what I'm saying. And it was an abysmal failure. Died a death.
It had 'The Swimming Song' and 'The Man Who Couldn't Cry', though
it was more like an anti-record."
"I don't think I could really
assimilate or absorb the success of 'Dead Skunk'. I felt guilty
about it. Almost apologetic about it. And from a psychological
point of view that probably explains the nature of the record
that followed it."
Perhaps, we venture tentatively,
he has an aversion to success. At the Cambridge Folk Festival
he took a fiendish delight in littering his set with obscenities,
purely, it seemed, to screw up the Beeb's proposed screening.
"I'm willing to compromise
to a certain extent, and then I reach a brick wall. People tell
me that if I vaulted the final brick wall then I'd be a lot more
successful. I suppose I do have a certain aversion to success,
but it's a case of pacing yourself. I wanna be in showbiz when
I'm 60-years-old, barring accident or premature death or a plane
crash. I hope to be in showbiz in one form or another until the
day I die, so in a way it's a mixed blessing not to be a huge
success. I've been successful in many ways on my own terms. By
failing."
Loudon Wainwright I was a solicitor,
who died when his son was still a boy. The son grew up to be
a renowned journalist, and the third in succession always wanted
to be an actor. He went to drama school, and then music took
over, though he still nurtures serious dreams of making it as
an actor. And why not? His characterisations on stage are brilliant,
and if Kristofferson can make it on the big screen, them LW3
must be in with a sporting chance.
He was in the 'M.A.S.H' series
on telly, but only for three episodes, and that was mostly down
to playing a couple of songs or saying "Yes Sir" or
"This way, Radar", and the experience merely left him
thirsting for more. During the recent lull he was in L.A, trying
to get something going, acting-wise.
Loudon himself is as thoroughly
engaging as his songs. His lyrics don't exactly convey cynicism,
but there are no illusions. There's a frequently harrowing acceptance
of the starker realities of life, however absurd/bizarre/amusing
the wrapping in which it is decorated.
Nothing unique about his realities,
but they always seem more real than other people's, closer to
the bone. The themes are frequently reiterated, whether it be
his apprehension about flying (cloaked in superficial bravado)
or the bitterness and/or self-recrimination of a broken romance.
Seemingly to counter this, there
are frequent flights into classic bouts of escapism to ease those
wounds: drinking, sports and womanising, all with their inherent
red lights. Nothing could be more poignant than the sheer desperation
within ' Motel Blues', obstensibly a straightforward, lustful
piece about picking up a groupie. There are always a few surreal
items and nonsense songs ('B Side' and 'I'm a Vampire') thrown
in for good measure.
Not everybody's cup of beaujolais,
of course. People without ears often accuse him of frivolity,
and he's pretty vulnerable to accusations of sexism, cheap laughs
and pure filth. The fact that he will cheerfully admit to these
charges doesn't help his case at all.
"At Cambridge, after the
second show, I was back in my caravan, and this elderly guy came
back - I think he'd had a few drinks - and he said "You're
very, very good, but what's with all this filthy language? You
don't need that. Really you don't."
"So I listened to this old
guy's advice and thought about what he was saying, and you know
something. I just wanted to go, Fuck you, you old ...... It just
made me want to be more gross. I love to enrage and outrage people.
It just fuels me to be more gross. And let's face it, life is
gross. Life can be incredibly sordid and not particularly attractive."
"If I talk about being scared
shitless, or I wanna eat your underpants, or anything else that
can be construed as offensive, it's because those thoughts are
in my head. I do wanna eat your underpants."
I ask him if he gets much violent
reaction. Does he, for example, ever have the women's liberation
movement on his back. "No", he leers, "but I'd
like to."
He continues: "When I'm
writing, a thought will come into my mind and I don't censor
it. Why strike it? Because it's not gonna get played on the radio?
Most of my songs don't get played on the radio, anyhow. I mean,
'Rufus Is A Tit Man'. There's no way that's gonna be on the radio
anyway, so why not just write it down the way the thought hits
me."
"It's more than just a little
obscene song. It's a real song. It's kinda like looking at Maria
Muldaur's tuft. I'm gonna write a song about that, too. I'm a
tuft man. These are real things. A line like ' Who needs love,
who needs romance / I wanna eat your underpants' (from 'At Both
Ends'). It's all real."
He's also incurred the ire of
the gay congregation with 'Hardy Boys AT The Y', a lyrical sketch
about homosexual romps at the YMCA, written before the Village
People were a glint in the cheque book. He used to do athletics
at the track next to the 'Y', and observed what was going on.
He's called to answer the charges ridiculing gays and trivialising
a deep issue. His answer is unexpectedly profound.
"Don't underestimate the
power of the cheap shot. What's so serious about anything? You
don't think I'm serious about the love relationship between men
and women? I certainly don't treat that with kid gloves. I suppose
I do put on a phoney gay accent on that track, which is maybe
going for the easy laugh, but again that's something I'm always
doing. It's not gonna stop me though."
"It's an uncontrollable
thing. You go out to perform, and sense the audience wants something
and you become it's slave. You can't be that objective. If the
audience starts to titter, you wanna make 'em explode. You can
play with them a little, you can pull back, you can trick them,
but eventually you go for the lower body stuff, you turn it on
and take the consequences, whether it's gross, offensive, or
cheap."
One of his most intriguing songs
is 'Muse Blues', another fairly desperate song, jauntily disguised,
which was written during an early crisis in his career when his
songwriting inspiration totally dried up.
"It was this block, and
the block was broken by writing a song about not being able to
write a song. It's always the fear. Like a sexual fear, the fear
of not being able to get it up. Everyone goes through it if they're
a writer of any kind. And the music becomes more and more evasive.
It's the kind of thing that killed Phil Ochs. Well, a lotta things
killed Phil Ochs ..."
"I knew Phil Ochs in the
latter part of his life, not in his heyday in the Village when
he was considered one of the great songwriters. I knew him in
the Seventies, when he was more or less an out-of-control alcoholic.
A Bowery bum, drinking the cheapest white wine, and sweating.
He was very fucked up on booze. Really out to kill himself. A
lot of things killed him, but basically it was excessive drinking
which created an incredible psychosis, and he was obsessed by
his writer's block."
"For me, seeing that was
a good thing in a way. It taught me that the thing to do is sit
back and not push it. The only way to maintain any kind of sanity
is to roll with the punch. To stumble and fall and make a lotta
mistakes, but don't fall into that kind of despair that Phil
Ochs and Nick Drake fell into. They take despair and augment
it with drugs or alcohol or automobiles. As I get older I keep
thinking about it."
The drugs particularly, by the
sound of 'The Acid Song', which tells - in typically vivid, funny
fashion - of a recent LSD trip, his first for ten years (and
last for another ten years). It's a scary song, which causes
Loudon to reflect on a brief but frenetic involvement in LSD
first time round.
"I was living in San Francisco
at the time, which was a convenient spot for that type of thing.
I did the whole cliche. Used to go to the Golden Gate Park and
watch Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger
Service and Big Brother and the Holding Company and all that
shit. It was fantastic. It was wonderful. Almost entirely drug-induced,
a hedonistic free thing. And it was new. We were into something
that nobody else really knew about."
"But it was a dead-end street.
I don't regret it, but I certainly wouldn't advocate it. Not
now, with the quality of the shit that's going round."
"I had an acid trip once
where I decided the solution was to get out of my body, and basically
I had to jump off this rock 50 feet down, a sailor dive, to break
my head open so my spirit could escape. I was sure this was the
answer to the stress I was feeling at the time. There was a dog
with me at the time and he talked me out of it."
A dog, huh?
"Yeah, a real canine dog.
No, I dunno what breed it was. There we were, talking to each
other without speaking, telepathically communicating. You think
I'm a normal guy, don't cha? And he said to me " Just wait
a minute, 'cos this drug's gonna wear off in about two hours
and you'll regret it. Slow down, take it easy, come back to the
house, have a cup of tea ". So I followed him."
Sounds like a good dog.
"Damm good dog. It was the
dog of a girlfriend of mine. Living in London now. The girl,
not the dog. The dog's dead. Haven't seen the girl in about eight
years."
"But it's dangerous stuff.
As I say in the song - ' it's usually dangerous, it can derange
us'. But I don't regret it. It was good to get your mind blown
in those days. Get the top of your skull blown right off. I don't
want to encourage anyone to do it, though. It's a silly drug.
But mushrooms ..... Do they do mushrooms round here? Where do
they grow 'em?"
Answers please, c/o Radar Records
......!!!
COLIN IRWIN
(From British Pop Paper 'New
Musical Express' - September 29th 1979. The interview was published
just before the release of 'A Live One'). |
