From the late 1950s onwards, guitarist John Fahey has forged a unique fusion of traditional American musics and avant-garde conceits, bending blues and folk templates into new forms and dousing them with found sounds. Today, Fahey is flattered by the collaborative attentions of underground guru Jim O’Rourke, Sonic Youth’s ever-adventurous Thurston Moore and experimental rockers Cul de Sac. While the early 1960s saw Fahey tracking down boyhood blues heroes such as Skip James and Bukka White for his own label, Takoma, three decades later, after re-emerging from a haze of drink and depression with 1997’s City of Refuge, he himself is now Skip James to the current class of free-form, cut-and-paste guitar wranglers.
“Ironic? I suppose so,” he concurs in a wheezy whisper, from the Oregon motel-room home he describes as “between nowhere and no place”. Taking a moment to adjust his position on the bed, he continues: “It’s kind of funny. I was looking for people from southern-Negro musical culture, and now these new people are looking for me. It’s delightful to be touring with someone like Thurston. And…it’s work.”
It’s work. Throughout his career Fahey has eschewed any marketplace that might offer him a platform. As early as 1958 he incurred purists’ ire by recording scratchy, ancient-looking 78s under the name of Blind Thomas, and sharing his first release with a pseudonymous “Blind Joe Death”, sending most of the album’s 300 copies to blues scholars or sneakily leaving them in the racks of second-hand shops and thrift stores. Throughout the 1960s, Fahey composed and recorded the beautiful, delicate instrumentals that he now contemptuously describes as his “little jewel art pieces”; and the introduction of found sounds and tape effects to 1968’s expansive and ambitious Yellow Princess might have seen a crossover to the experimental fringes of the rock scene, had Fahey been able to shrink his talent into a psychedelic shape.
“Most people assumed he was a ‘head’,” recalled producer Samuel Charters of Fahey’s 1960s concerts, in The New York Times. “But what they didn’t understand was that John was a drunk. So there would always be this stunned moment when they would look at him sitting up on stage with a quart of Coca-Cola and a bottle of whisky.” Fahey dismisses Charters’s re-collections as “bullshit”, but can’t conceal his contempt for the counterculture’s sacred cows. “When Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead died, we had a party in Salem. That guy was a silly prophet guru getting people to take drugs. How many deaths is he responsible for? I considered him a kind of paedophile, going around trying to influence youth through politics or drugs, the kind of parasitical adult who says he’s helping children but wants to destroy their creativity.”
Clearly, Fahey has what Americans call “unresolved issues”, which might explain his gradual slide into despair in the 1980s, watching from the sidelines as the “new-age” music of the Windham Hill label and William Ackerman shifted thousands of units with a marketable distillation of his own innovations. “New-age music! Yeuuchhh!” says Fahey, suddenly animated. “They were doing me without the passion, education or taste. It’s vapid crap. But I made some bad records in the 1980s. I didn’t even know there was an ‘alternative’ movement, and, when I experimented, reviewers gave me hell, so I gave up and churned out the same stuff.”
Pretty soon Fahey had given up churning out anything at all, stuck in Salem in hostels and cheap motels, scrounging a living seeking out valuable second-hand records in thrift stores and selling them on to dealers, drinking himself to death, until he was diagnosed with the chronic fatigue syndrome Epstein Barr virus and had to make some choices. Fahey’s new work has been characterised by an absolute refusal to compromise. His most recent record, Womblife, is a slow, face-down crawl through the American musical landscape, inspecting the sun-bleached bones of traditional forms at such intimate proximity they become unfamiliar and eerie. “What I did,” explains Fahey, “was play four boom-boxes of gamelan CDs simultaneously, and paid the kids in the motel to keep changing the CDs over. We had a lot of fun, me and the kids. Then I laid down some cheap acoustic steel guitars and put a screwdriver in the neck to tune them real high, layer by layer. It’s the best record I ever made.”
Fahey’s return to recording and touring might, at last, make his body of work more important than the legends attached to him. Before he goes back to sleep, he is coerced into finally confirming the exact circumstances of his 1969 confrontation with Blow Up director Michaelangelo Antonioni, who’d hoped Fahey might score his new film, Zabriskie Point.
“Well,” begins Fahey, unburdening, “the antipathy began when Antonioni got me over to Rome without telling me what he wanted me to do. Then he shows me film of this big sex scene in a desert, and I said, ‘Hey man, I don’t do no skin flicks.’ I should have flown back straightaway. I’m too Victorian. It scared me, made me sick. Antonioni starts describing the scene. ‘John,’ he says, ‘this is young love. But it’s in the desert. And what’s in the desert, John? Death, John, death! So it’s death and love and death and love and death and love and death and love and death and love and death and love…’ And I said, ‘Yeah, sure I can do that!’ not realising I was working for a madman. So I composed his sex-desert-death music and he said it was great, and then he took me out to dinner and started telling me how much he hated the USA and Americans, and kept talking about sex and death. To me it seemed impolite. Well, we were both drinking, and I don’t exactly remember who threw the first punch, probably him. We got in a fist fight and fell on the ground, but we were too drunk to really hit each other, just rolling on the floor in this expensive Italian restaurant. Anyhow, Antonioni got up and ran away, and then I flew back to the USA. He took my music out of the movie and hired in Jerry Garcia instead. Which is another reason why I hate him and why, I think, Zabriskie Point ended up as one of the 100 worst movies ever made.”
Playing his first concerts in the UK for more than a decade, Fahey seems to harbour a hesitant anger even towards his audience. “What I don’t want is people coming along and asking me to play things they know. They should just open their minds to what I want to do.” At 59, John Fahey is still clearly a dangerous man to cross.
Tweeter Kyriakou, Twitter
Tweeter Kyriakou, Twitter
12dgdgdgdgdgdg, Youtube
12dgdgdgdgdgdg, Youtube
Whoiscuriousgeorge, Youtube
Whoiscuriousgeorge, Youtube
Dominic Cavendish, Telegraph
Dominic Cavendish, Telegraph
Rudeness, Youtube
Rudeness, Youtube
Jackmumf, Twitter
Jackmumf, Twitter
Peter Ould, Twitter
Peter Ould, Twitter
Tokyofist, Youtube
Tokyofist, Youtube
Lucinda Locketts, Twitter
Lucinda Locketts, Twitter
Meanstreetelite, Peoplesrepublicofcork
Meanstreetelite, Peoplesrepublicofcork
Gmanthedemon, bbc.co.uk
Gmanthedemon, bbc.co.uk
Tweeterkiryakou, Twitter
Tweeterkiryakou, Twitter
GRTak, finalgear.com
GRTak, finalgear.com
Borathigh5, Youtube
Borathigh5, Youtube
DVDhth's grandparents, Twitter
DVDhth's grandparents, Twitter
Patrick Kavanagh, Guardian.co.uk
Patrick Kavanagh, Guardian.co.uk
Cyberbloke, Twitter
Cyberbloke, Twitter
Dick Socrates, Twitter
Dick Socrates, Twitter
Pnethor, pne-online.com
Pnethor, pne-online.com
Birmingham Sunday Mercury
Birmingham Sunday Mercury
Cabluigi, Guardian.co.uk
Cabluigi, Guardian.co.uk
Aaron, comedy.co.uk
Aaron, comedy.co.uk
Anon, BBC Complaints Log
Anon, BBC Complaints Log
Mpf1947, Youtube
Mpf1947, Youtube
Lenny Darksphere, Twitter
Lenny Darksphere, Twitter
Coxy, Dontstartmeoff.com
Coxy, Dontstartmeoff.com
Guest, Dontstartmeoff.com
Guest, Dontstartmeoff.com
Dave Wilson, Chortle.com
Dave Wilson, Chortle.com
Jamespearse, Twitter
Jamespearse, Twitter
Rubyshoes, Twitter
Rubyshoes, Twitter
98rosjon, Twitter
98rosjon, Twitter
Shit Crit, Twitter
Shit Crit, Twitter
Hiewy, Youtube
Hiewy, Youtube
Joycey, readytogo.net
Joycey, readytogo.net
Anamatronix, Youtube
Anamatronix, Youtube
Horatio Melvin, Twitter
Horatio Melvin, Twitter
Syhr, breakbeat.co.uk
Syhr, breakbeat.co.uk
Dahoum, Guardian.co.uk
Dahoum, Guardian.co.uk
Gwaites, Digitalspy
Gwaites, Digitalspy
Henry Howard Fun, Twitter
Henry Howard Fun, Twitter
Etienne, Chortle.com
Etienne, Chortle.com
Clampdown59, Twitter.
Clampdown59, Twitter.
Joe, Independent.co.uk
Joe, Independent.co.uk
Guest1001, Youtube
Guest1001, Youtube
Len Firewood, Twitter
Len Firewood, Twitter
A D Ward, Twitter
A D Ward, Twitter
Neva2busy, dontstartmeoff.com
Neva2busy, dontstartmeoff.com
Carla, St Albans, Dailymail.co.uk
Carla, St Albans, Dailymail.co.uk
Peter Fears, Twitter
Peter Fears, Twitter
Lee Mack, Mack The Life, 2012
Lee Mack, Mack The Life, 2012
Visualiser1, Twitter
Visualiser1, Twitter
Tres Ryan, Twitter
Tres Ryan, Twitter
Cojones2, Guardian.co.uk
Cojones2, Guardian.co.uk
Someoneyoudon'tknow, Chortle.com
Someoneyoudon'tknow, Chortle.com
Danazawa, Youtube
Danazawa, Youtube
Rowing Rob, Guardian.co.uk
Rowing Rob, Guardian.co.uk
Genghis McKahn, Guardian.co.uk
Genghis McKahn, Guardian.co.uk
Robert Gavin, Twitter
Robert Gavin, Twitter
Secretdeveloper, Youtube
Secretdeveloper, Youtube
Neolab, Guardian.co.uk
Neolab, Guardian.co.uk
World Without End, Twitter
World Without End, Twitter
Bosco239, youtube
Bosco239, youtube
Bobby Bhoy, Twitter
Bobby Bhoy, Twitter
Brendon, Vauxhallownersnetwork.co.uk
Brendon, Vauxhallownersnetwork.co.uk
Emilyistrendy, Youtube
Emilyistrendy, Youtube
Anonymous, The Northfield Patriot
Anonymous, The Northfield Patriot
Anonymous, don'tstartmeoff.com
Anonymous, don'tstartmeoff.com
Joskins, Leeds Music Forum
Joskins, Leeds Music Forum
Alex Quarmby, Edfringe.com
Alex Quarmby, Edfringe.com
Slothy Matt, Twitter
Slothy Matt, Twitter
Tin Frog, Twitter
Tin Frog, Twitter
Sidsings000, Youtube
Sidsings000, Youtube
Frankie Boyle, Comedian
Frankie Boyle, Comedian
Keilloh, Twitter
Keilloh, Twitter
Stokeylitfest, Twitter
Stokeylitfest, Twitter
Richard Herring, Comedian
Richard Herring, Comedian
Ishamayura Byrd, Twitter
Ishamayura Byrd, Twitter
General Lurko 36, Guardian.co.uk
General Lurko 36, Guardian.co.uk
Fairy Pingu, Twitter
Fairy Pingu, Twitter
Shane, Beverley, Dailymail.co.uk
Shane, Beverley, Dailymail.co.uk
Liam Travitt, Twitter
Liam Travitt, Twitter
Microcuts 22, Twitter
Microcuts 22, Twitter
Maninabananasuit, Guardian.co.uk
Maninabananasuit, Guardian.co.uk
Esme Folley, Actress, cellist, Twitter
Esme Folley, Actress, cellist, Twitter
Spanner, dontstartmeoff.com
Spanner, dontstartmeoff.com
BBC iPlayer edition of discussion of Stewart Lee on A Good Read
BBC iPlayer edition of discussion of Stewart Lee on A Good Read
Iain, eatenbymissionaries
Iain, eatenbymissionaries
Kozzy06, Youtube
Kozzy06, Youtube
Contrapuntal, Twitter
Contrapuntal, Twitter
Mearecate, Youtube
Mearecate, Youtube
Dominic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph
Dominic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph
Deepbass, Guardian.co.uk
Deepbass, Guardian.co.uk
Gabrielle, Chortle.com
Gabrielle, Chortle.com
Pudabaya, beexcellenttoeachother.com
Pudabaya, beexcellenttoeachother.com
Stuart, Chortle
Stuart, Chortle
Anon, dontstartmeoff.com
Anon, dontstartmeoff.com
Pirate Crocodile, Twitter
Pirate Crocodile, Twitter
Chez, Chortle.com
Chez, Chortle.com
Yukio Mishima, dontstartmeoff.com
Yukio Mishima, dontstartmeoff.com
James Dellingpole, Daily Telegraph
James Dellingpole, Daily Telegraph
Leach Juice, Twitter
Leach Juice, Twitter
Karen Laidlaw, Edfringe. com.
Karen Laidlaw, Edfringe. com.
Johnny Kitkat, dontstartmeoff.com
Johnny Kitkat, dontstartmeoff.com
John Robins, Comedian
John Robins, Comedian
NevW47479, UKTV.co.uk
NevW47479, UKTV.co.uk
Lents, redandwhitekop.com
Lents, redandwhitekop.com
Pudabaya, Twitter
Pudabaya, Twitter
Anon, westhamonline.com
Anon, westhamonline.com
Mrdavisn01, Twitter
Mrdavisn01, Twitter
Funday’schild, youtube.
Funday’schild, youtube.
FBC, finalgear.com
FBC, finalgear.com
Lancethrustworthy, Youtube
Lancethrustworthy, Youtube
Idrie, Youtube
Idrie, Youtube
Alwyn, Digiguide.tv
Alwyn, Digiguide.tv
Aiden Hearn, Twitter
Aiden Hearn, Twitter
Mini-x2, readytogo.net
Mini-x2, readytogo.net
Peter Ould, Youtube
Peter Ould, Youtube
Meninblack, Twitter
Meninblack, Twitter
Brighton Argus
Brighton Argus
Nicetime, Guardian.co.uk
Nicetime, Guardian.co.uk
Z-factor, Twitter.
Z-factor, Twitter.
Sweeping Curves, Twitter
Sweeping Curves, Twitter
Al Murray, Comedian
Al Murray, Comedian
Foxfoxton, Youtube
Foxfoxton, Youtube
Carcrazychica, Youtube
Carcrazychica, Youtube
Fowkes81, Twitter
Fowkes81, Twitter
Wharto15, Twitter
Wharto15, Twitter
Sam Rooney, Youtube
Sam Rooney, Youtube
Zombie Hamster, Twitter
Zombie Hamster, Twitter