Music

LINER NOTES

The Best of John Fahey

John Fahey changed my life. I’d been playing guitar since I was seven years old, but it didn’t resonate in my heart, in my soul, in my bones, until seven years later, when I heard John’s music for the first time. It was a crystallizing moment – I was suddenly able to distinguish the difference between noise, and music.

Today, the world is more full of noise than ever. The music business (my favorite oxymoron) is all about noise. And sadly, the guitar world is almost completely polluted with the noise of ego, image, ambition, endorsement deals, product positioning, marketing research, and all the other bullshit that signifies the presence of fear. Fear and music do not mix. Music, in it’s purest form, is the absence of fear.

John Fahey created and played music. Fearless music. Original music. It was music that expanded your conception of time and space, and tore at the superficial canvas of objective illusion. He spoke his mind, conscious and unconscious. He touched peoples’ hearts and souls because he played from his heart and soul. When John played guitar, you knew it was him, because he did it all in his own voice.

John spent his lifetime becoming himself. It was a full lifetime of creative self-expression. We are all called to choose between making music (audible or metaphorical), or simply adding to the world’s noise level. The decision we make defines who we are as human beings.

– Michael Gulezian, July 2002

John Fahey died yesterday morning, February 22, after sextuple bypass surgery. In his last couple days he was unable to see, speak, or move. But he could hear and comprehend. His ex-wife Melody had been allowed to visit him. She and a group of friends watched over him. And said good-bye.

In a country full of crap, John created living, generative culture. With his guitar and his spellbound witness, he synthesized all the strains in American music and found a new happiness for all of us. With John, we have a voice only he could have given us; without him, no one will sound the same.

By choice, John lived a difficult life. He made my life what it is. He recorded me, supported me and remained my friend for over thirty years. I remember his beard in my ear, when we were both playing the Wort Hotel in Jackson Hole, and his stretched voice whispering, “Sing something! You have a great voice!” He hated my voice. I remember turtles, tons of them, around his office, his home. We built a turtle sanctuary in his backyard in LA – on Palms Boulevard, a breezy name for a concrete noise. Even the turtles were unhappy. And I remember his Prairie State guitars, his knowledge and understanding, and much early tape: John as a youngster playing in a different voice. Like Robbie Basho, he seems to have been two people – and to have made a permanent break with the first, somewhere in his twenties.

But it is his vision that enriches us. He saw who we are. He wasn’t happy about it, but he told our story. And we fell down laughing, moved by what we had missed. Thank you, John.

– Leo Kottke, 23 February 2001

“To imagine the world without Fahey is something I had never contemplated. I had this crazy Idea that John might live forever. In reflection I realize I knew two Faheys, the mythical and the human. John shined remarkable as both.

Mythology captivated John. It was in the UCLA Department of Folklore and Mythology (not the Music Department) that he published his Master’s Thesis on Charlie Patton, “Founder of the Delta Blues.” Mythology permeated his creative works as he draped himself in the cloaks of “Blind Joe Death,” “Blind Thomas,” and eventually the “Legendary John Fahey” himself.

When I went to work at Takoma in 1972, I was terrified by his mythical persona. It took me months to discover the real John, whom I found to be kind, caring, and very human. He became a mentor, and friend.

To me, the most magnificent thing about John was his courage to persevere in our regimented world. John never allowed himself to be categorized, compartmentalized, or crushed. John took life on his own terms and remained unbridled and unbroken to the end. John’s crowning achievements are the result of a fierce struggle to become sublime (a struggle which we all share). His efforts produced an immense bounty of creative work which radiates John’s mesmerizing artistry and perspective. This volume includes many of those works.”

– Peter Lang, July 2002

A LESSON IN HUMILITY

Michael Gulezian

The more a man knows, the more he forgives.
– Catherine the Great

Early in my career as a professional solo guitarist, I knew I was very, very good. I was signed to a big record label, and big record labels have a way of making their artists feel like they are more important than they usually are. I don’t think I ever bought into that mentality completely, but I’m sure it did have at least some effect on me. The big record companies certainly do not have anything to teach their artists about humility.

So there I was, this young kid, out on tour, totally independent, playing concerts all over the country, getting great reviews, blah blah blah blah blah. In the early 1980s, Michael Hedges’ first album, Breakfast In the Field, was released. I thought it was good, but it didn’t knock me out.

I was scheduled to perform at Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma. I received a call from Ray Parker, the Dean of Students, asking me to approve an opening artist, who happened to be a graduate of Phillips University. He was also an acoustic guitarist; he was a big fan of mine, and loved my recorded work. His name was Michael Hedges. I’ll never forget what I said (and Ray will never forget what I said either). I replied that I would probably blow him off the stage, that I might make him look bad. I turned him down.

That is the truth. I refused to allow Michael Hedges to be my opening act, on the grounds that my own playing was so good, Michael would be embarrassed.

Looking back on it today, it seems like the most preposterous statement I could have possibly made in my entire life.

Soon afterward, I met Michael for the first time, at a concert in Santa Cruz. He was playing with Preston Reed and John Fahey. We were backstage, and John introduced me as (I am not kidding) the best guitar player in the world (remember, John was working for Chrysalis Records at the time). Michael was very gracious, and played some new compositions for me. I was startled to see and hear him doing things on the guitar that seemed impossible. I asked him, “How do you DO that?” He just laughed. We didn’t talk about my refusal to let him appear with me at Phillips University.

A couple years later, Windham Hill released Michael’s Aerial Boundaries album. I would not be exaggerating to say that upon hearing it, I went into a state of mild shock. This was the most powerful, majestic, original and beautiful solo guitar music I had ever heard. It was nothing short of revolutionary. I still remember that day very clearly. I was on tour, in Oneonta, New York. I was staying at a cabin on a lake. I repeated the first side of the album all afternoon, and all night.

As awed as I was by that recording, nothing could have prepared me for hearing Michael live in concert. It was a completely transcendent experience. There are no words to describe the hugeness of that sound, the technical command he held over his instrument, the grace of his music, and his utter authority on stage. It was 1986, in Tucson, Arizona. The concert promoter happened to be my old friend Larry Berle, from SRO Productions. He had flown in from Minneapolis for the night. We sat together, and he saw how deeply I was moved. So I told Larry the whole story of how I had once said the most absurd, arrogant and awful thing possible about Michael, and how heavily it had been weighing upon me.

Thank God for friends like Larry. He didn’t tell me what he was planning to do. After the concert, Michael, Larry and I were all gathered in Michael’s hotel room. Larry turned to Michael and said, “Michael has something he wants to tell you.” So I told him the exact words I had spoken to Ray Parker years before. I confessed it all. By the time I finished I was practically in tears. And once again, I was not prepared for what happened next. Michael smiled and shook his head, then walked over to me, gave me the biggest hug, and started laughing, and kept on laughing until all I could do was laugh with him. I laughed at my own stupidity, I laughed because the burden was gone, I laughed because it was all so funny.

Michael and I went on and became good friends. We would bump into each other whenever our paths crossed when we were on the road. We saw each other every time he came to Arizona. Michael died very tragically in a car accident in December 1997. As far as his place in the world of guitar music is concerned, I believe he was by far and away the greatest musician ever to touch an acoustic guitar. As a human being, he was a gentle, kind soul. He taught me the true meaning of humility. And he taught me a lesson in the power of forgiveness.

Life is fragile. Life is short. Life is precious. If we need to reconcile ourselves to the ones we love, the time to do it is now.