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An Interview with Bruce Langhorne
The following are excerpts taken from an interview found in its entirety at www.richardandmimi.com
Bruce Langhorne was a crucial figure in the early folk-rock figure as a session guitarist on early electric recordings by Bob Dylan, Fred Neil, Richard & Mimi Farina, Richie Havens, Gordon Lightfoot, and others. Here he talks about his work with the early folk-rockers.
To your recollection, is the big schism between the folk purists and those who were going into rock as dramatic as it's sometimes been painted?
I was at a Newport folk festival, one year. And Alan Lomax and Al Grossman got into a fistfight. Here are two grown men, got into a fistfight. They were rolling around on the ground. Actually, Dick Fariña and I broke it up. But it was a real trip. And I never -- I was not there at the start of the fight, but it's my projection that it was about that very thing. It was about aesthetics, and probably Alan Lomax, who tended to be kind of outspoken, probably said something that Albert, who was very very loyal to Bob, extremely loyal to Bob, probably just didn't cotton to. (laughs) So it was very interesting, and the feelings were very strong. Because there were a lot of people who were very heavily invested in the traditional folk music. And with the folk music revival, these were people who had been playing folk music for years and years and years in obscure venues, and suddenly they saw their time had come. And they probably saw electrification and rock'n'rollation as co-option, total co-option.
Part of the angle that interests me is that, in spite of this perceived split, almost every folk musician of note who wanted to be meaningful in a contemporary context in the early and mid-1960s went electric, and very quickly. So if this was an Armageddon of sorts, it seemed like the electric side won very decisively.
Yes, it was [emphatically]. It was a six-day war (laughs hard). Well, the thing is that, you know, there's just so much more happening when you have music that you can dance to. It speaks to a whole other center. And that's what folk-rock was. It was danceable folk music. You didn't have to just listen. Listening was an option. You didn't have to hear the words.
But if you did decide to hear the words, it had more meaning than almost all rock'n'roll had had prior to that.
Yeah, it did. It was deeper than the Beach Boys, though the Beach Boys were great music. But yeah it's true, there was a little more depth. And history -- history's important.
I'm asking everyone who was at Newport '65 what their perspective was of Dylan's show, because it's almost like a Rashomon-type event. Everyone remembers and interprets it differently. Some people are like, "Dylan was great," and others are...
"He was terrible," right? (laughs)
Although you didn't play with Dylan, I know you played with the Fariñas there, did you play with anyone else at the festival?
Peter, Paul & Mary, I think, and I don't know whether I played with Odetta or not. But I know I played with Peter, Paul & Mary. I know I played with a lot of people, because somebody said to me, somebody said some kind of smart ass thing like, "Boy, it would have been great if you had gotten paid for every time you jumped on stage" or something (laughs)'Cause I'd recorded with all those people for the past couple of years, and I knew a lot of people's material.
Before Dylan's concert, was there already a sense at the festival of tension between purists and a younger generation more open to new sounds, if not loud electric rock? For instance, the Butterfield Blues Band and the Chambers Brothers also played, and the Fariñas had musicians with them even if they weren't using electric guitars for their slot in particular.
(Long pause) You know, I don't think that anyone said that to me. Because I don't think people really considered me a purist. Because, you know, I'd always been involved in the synthesis of black music and white music. Because when I started at Gerde's Folk City, I was playing gospel backup for Brother John Sellers, who was also doing some straight folk music. So I was playing some folk music. When I started sitting in with people, I'd be playing folk music. And I don't think, because of my ethnicity, that people ever could imagine me at some Appalachian folk festival (laughs hard).
Though, and that's a whole 'nother thing -- my book doesn't deal with it, but if you go back to the early 20th century and before that, there was actually a lot of interchange between rural white and American folk and country musicians, and they often shared similar repertoires.
Oh yeah, absolutely. And that was particularly true with Cajun and Creole music and everything. And I think it was with a real institutionalization of Jim Crow and segregation, which probably happened, started probably in the '20s and '30s -- well, I guess it started before that. But it got to be really serious. And a lot of like -- I can't remember this musician's name, but there was a black musician who played Cajun music, Creole music, and that was responsible for a lot of the repertoire.
Amadie Ardoin.
He got killed in some sort of racial incident. Everyone was doing his material, and he was doing everyone's material, and he was highly respected by black and white musicians in Louisiana. It was an example of some drunken racists going haywire.
Now I must say that I did not ever run into any prejudice or inequality in the folk world. I played with a lot of -- well, I must say this (laughs). I did at one point, I had dinner with Willie Nelson and his band. And a couple of the guys in the band were kind of, were making -- I was good friends with the bass player at the time, and that's how I happened to be there. And a couple of the guys in the band were making kind of off-color, racist comments. And I don't know whether they knew that I was black or not. And that is the only incident I can remember where that was ever shoved in my face.
Of course, I did play at the March in Washington. And I did absorb some of the -- I have to say that, too. I did absorb, during civil rights days I did absorb some of the black racist things going around. And there were some actual battle lines being drawn. And I aligned myself with black militarism at that point. I was married to a girl who was black. She was trained in classical ballet, and couldn't find work. Of course, there was no work for a black classical ballerina in the '60s. And I have to admit that I did pull away from my white friends a little bit in that period. And I remember having a discussion in my house with Al Grossman one time, about the whole racist thing. We got down. He talked about his background and the aesthetic at his house. And he said, "I was raised in a household that gave lip service to tolerance, but basically, you didn't hang out with schwartzehs. They were the lowest." So we did get down about that.
Fortunately, that period of -- you know, I was just trying to find myself. Fortunately, that period didn't last very long. I divorced that girl, and you know, realized that I was not just a black man. I was like a, I was a human being. So that's the story of my brief descent into madness.
At Newport in '65, did you see Dylan's performance?
You know, I saw part of the performance. I didn't see the whole performance, 'cause I think I came in in the middle of it. But I did catch half of it. I liked it. I thought it was excellent (laughs hard). Because I believe in innovation.
Did you have any impression of the audience reaction?
It was mixed. It was mixed. Some people were going, "what the hell's that?!" And some people were going, "Oh wow!" But my overall impression was that more people were offended than were enchanted. That was my overall impression.
Some people I've talked to, like Sylvia Tyson, have made the point that they supported Bob Dylan's musical direction into electric rock, but didn't like this show in particular, because they thought the sound -- meaning the PA and amplification and the quality of performance, not the whole idea of rock arrangements -- was bad.
Yeah, the sound was bad. They did not know how to deal with amplified electric instruments and drums [at the festival].
With hindsight, that's understandable. Because not just for Dylan, but for any rock band in 1965, the amplification was pretty primitive at large concerts, and it was still being worked out how to effectively project at a high volume, with clarity.
That's right. It was all new. How to get loud volume projected, and how to get individual parts heard. And Hendrix and Cream, they finally got it down, they gave the bass player [a] role, they gave the guitar player a role, they gave the vocalist a role, they gave the drummer a role. And everybody had their roles amplified to fill up that area of the musical spectrum. I mean, it's kind of a fine art now. People can actually do good mixes of loud music, so you can hear everything.
But -- I still think that it's not as much of an art as it could be, mixing for live performance. I think that a lot of electric performances that I go to, I really can't stand. Because first of all, they're not mixed properly, and second of all, they're too loud, and third of all, they've lost the dance aesthetic. Because the reason that loud electric performances used to be great was that they were in venues where people could dance. And people would totally get mesmerized by the loudness of it, and by the visceral quality of sound at that level, and by the rhythm. And they would have that kind of experience. Nowadays, I think concerts tend to be more compacted, and they're more in halls and auditoriums where the promoter can get as many seats as possible. They don't give up seating area for dancing area. People just don't dance as much any more. People go to clubs to dance. This makes me sad.
This is a question from Chris Darrow, actually. He said, "Ask Bruce if he is Mr. Tambourine Man."
Yeah. Dylan said in his Biograph album, you should read the liner notes...
Yes, I've read those.
He said, there was this guy who used to play this giant tambourine. It was like as big as a wagon wheel, and that was kind of the inspiration for the song. So I am Mr. Tambourine Man (laughs).
My guess is he didn't actually talk about that with you.
He didn't tell me about that. And probably if he did tell anybody, he'd probably deny it (laughs). Because...I don't know, just because he would. I think he has a wonderful sense of humor. And I think that he has a wonderful ability to let people just let out enough rope to hang themselves. And I think he'd probably do that with me, I think, if he thought that I was attached to being Mr. Tambourine Man, I think he'd just...(laughs hard). I did a TV show with Dylan, I think it was the Les Crane show. And Bob Dylan said -- Les Crane had on a tie. And I was just playing second guitar. And Bob said to Les Crane, he said, Les, I like your tie, man. And Les said, oh, thanks, Bob. And he took it off and he gave it to him. Bob looked at him and he said, Les, I like your boots. So, I mean, it's an example of that. If you get attached to anything, he'll run the rope out for you.
What do you think of the song itself, "Mr. Tambourine Man"?
I like it. I think it's a good song. I do. And it's about me (laughs). If I had a big ego...well, I do have a big ego. But if I wanted to fuel it, that'd be a way to do it.
What did you think of the Byrds' version?
I liked it. I thought it was very good. I still remember their hook (sings opening bass line). I always thought Roger [McGuinn]-- I always thought he was a wonderfully sophisticated musician.
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