five years pass...
Gets serious about John Fahey
by Jason Gross
(May 2001)
Other than being one of the world's most manic record collectors, host of long-running, widely-syndicated Dr. Demento radio show (which the editor of PSF grew up on and worshipped), perpetrator of many enlightened articles, liner notes and compilations, Barret Hansen had one of his first forays into the music industry with his work with John Fahey in the '60's as one of his earliest fans and supporters.
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PSF: How did you first hear about John's work?
I was going to Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Around 1960, a fellow student who was a guitarist had a copy of his very first album, the one that there were only 95 copies of. He said 'you ought to hear this guy.' He knew nothing about him (Fahey). He just bought this album sight unseen in a store in Los Angeles, which caters mainly to jazz and blues buffs. So he wasn't sure whether John Fahey and Blind Joe Death were the same person. I remember him saying 'I can tell you that both sides were played on the same guitar, is all I know.' I borrowed his copy and made a reel-to-reel tape of it and enjoyed that frequently for the next few years.
Then flash forward four years later and I'm going to UCLA graduate school for folk music studies. The story is told in my notes in the beginning of The Return of the Repressed.
PSF: When you first met up with John, what did you think of him on a personal level?
He was skinny back then, dressed in a work-short and Levis blue jeans. He seemed very friendly because he had come to UCLA for the first time for the folk festival that they used to have there. He was just pleasantly surprised to see that somebody he'd never seen before knew about his first album 'cause the distribution had been so limited. I didn't know it was him- I had no idea what he looked like. But there I saw someone carrying an armload of albums which said 'John Fahey' on them. It was the first pressing of his second album. I couldn't resist stopping him, saying, 'Oh, a new John Fahey album!' He quickly said 'Oh yeah, I'm John Fahey.'
PSF: What was it about his work that struck you as being so unique?
I suppose it was the combination of two things that I loved: on the one hand, traditional blues and so-called ragtime guitar and on other hand, harmonies associated with contemporary classical music. Nobody had done anything like that before.
PSF: How did you first come to work with John?
The fall after the folk festival, which would have been '64, John enrolled in the same program that I was in. Then by pure coincidence, he moved in next door to me in Venice at a little beach area about 5 or 6 miles outside from Venice. Venice today is very gentrified and trendy. In those days, you could rent a nice cottage for $65 a month so that was a place where students could live. So, just by coincidence, we moved in next to each other. So between UCLA and Venice, we saw quite a bit of each other. That was the time when he was just starting to do some gigs. All through the early years of his career, he never performed in public.
PSF: Why was that?
I guess it just never occurred to him until he moved to Berkeley, which was the year I met him. There he found a few more people who were interested in what he was doing. He was certainly shy about it at first. He always had stage fright, at least all through the earlier years of his career. It's why he developed the habit of bringing the big bottle of Coke on stage with bourbon in it. He readily admitted, at least to me, it was to help him through his stage fright.
PSF: Where you promoting his work and encouraging him then?
As best as I could. I was not any kind of celebrity then. I was just Barry Hansen, graduate student in folk music studies. I'd done a teensy bit of writing but that was about all. Dr. Demento was still in the future. I worked at the Ash Grove and one thing I always did was... I was usually in charge of putting on the music that was on in the background before the show began. I'd always play John's albums, the only two that he had at that time.
PSF: Was there interest in the music from other people around there?
A few people said 'what's that?' There was one waitress who hated it: 'don't play that shit again!' But I'd play it at least now and then anyway. For a while, I played it every night. I guess she got tired of it. (laughs)
PSF: I know that you traveled to the South with John. Were you with him when he was looking for people like Bukka White?
No, that was before I knew him. I wasn't on the trip where he found Skip James either but I knew all those people. They're all gone now. Bill Barth (of the Insect Trust) lived in town so I knew him. I remember that they phoned me and said 'We just found Skip James.'
PSF: So you think that led to the folk blues revival at the time?
Certainly those two people. There were quite a few other people who were similarly rediscovered around the same time, like Mississippi John Hurt and Fred McDowell who never made records before. Lance Lipscomb was one of the first. Bukka and Skip were two of the best so you can't take that away from John. Stephen Calt, who wrote that book about Skip (I'd Rather Be the Devil), did everything he could to disparage John- don't bother with that one. There's a book about Charlie Patton that also disparages John, which is pretty good.
PSF: Revenant is coming out with a box set on Patton- one of John's last projects.
Of course, most of that material is already available on Yazoo but I'm sure that Revenant will do a terrific job.
PSF: John had kind of an impish attitude towards some of his work. He took on different pseudonyms and made
― brio, Friday, 23 July 2010 18:22 (fourteen years ago)
six years pass...