I saw him at a Goodwill Store in Albany, Ca back in the late 80’s. He was rummaging through the records and I watched him go back to his car with one LP he had purchased, which was I think accordion harp music from Bulgaria. He appeared to be living out of his car and I offered to buy him lunch. He and I went to a place called Brennan’s by the railroad tracks in Berkeley. He told me that he lived in his music and the outside world had very little that he could use. We both got drunk on Irish Coffees and ended up jumping onto a freight train as it passed. We rode up to Oregon and he must have vanished because I was all alone. I went into a donut shop at 6am and the owner gave me a free breakfast because I told him who I imagined I had just been traveling with. He thanked me for the story. I will always love John Fahey for the music he gave us.
It ain't about the technical skill, precision, speed, or any of that. It's not about knowing and practicing a lot of scales. Its not even so much about the guitar. Its about using the guitar to make music, and no one did it with as much imagination, beauty, and artistry as Fahey.
lacking some tunes, if you notice anything I missed let me know 06:59 segue into Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel and some other things 10:41 a neat little C run 10:58 piece of Brenda's blues, retuning, 12:02 Last steam engine train 16:50 Ann Arbor / Death by Reputation 18:50 interest in percussive guitar, foreshadowing of "Sandy on the Earth" released on God, Time and Causality 20:30 I'll see you in my dreams 22:10 On the sunny side of the ocean 26:07 Hawaiian / tasmanian two-step 27:30 Spanish flang-dang (Elizabeth Cotton) 29:11 back to two-step 30:35 Steamboat gwine 'round the bend 34:40 How green was my valley 36:51 Summer cat by my door 38:13 I'll see you in my dreams, another take 39:30 Might as well segue into Moscow Nights / Midnight to Moscow 41:53 SPLOICE 42:57 another take (starting to appreciate the sound guys' patience at this point)
I don't mean to be overly presumptuous or offend anyone but i've been watching a lot of his live performances (especially ones where he's younger) and i just have to ask, does it occur to anyone else that Fahey may have been autistic or at least on the spectrum? He has a very peculiar way of speaking and is visibly uncomfortable in a lot of interviews and stuff.
Nobody will ever sound like Fahey. I can't explain this sound. It's full of contradictions. It's raw but polished. It's brutal but delicate. It's smooth yet staggered. It's light and dark at once. It's incredible. It's hypnotic. It's Fahey.
This Man was in his own league no one else went to these places that he,and only he could find..RIP SIR JOHN !!.....One interesting point I noticed was when he asked if he was in tune he would look up as if to ask Alan ( Blind Owl ) Wilson if he was, because ya see Alan used tune Johns guitar back in the day for him as he had perfect pitch.Alan died in 1970,but I don't think John ever forgot him...just sayin ! Maybe now they are at it again !....RIP You 2 GREAT,TALENTED,and UNIQUE MUSICAL GENIUSES, and Thank you for all you have left for us !!!
@@billpresing5568 I'm reading dance of death right now and fahey said when Wilson died: "I'll never forget Alan. How could I? He taught me a lot about music. Plus he was my roommate for half a year. How could I forget that body odor of his?" Haha Wilson apparently wouldn't shower at all and had an intense thick smelling body odor that made people not wanna hangout with him 😂
@@kennethnick3213 and his pockets would be stuffed with mushrooms and things that he picked in the forest and the muddy boots to prove he was no pretty boy !
Watching this astonishingly intimate performance is like seeing Bill Monroe inventing bluegrass or Picasso at his easel. Fahey is giving a tour of an entirely new musical genre that would inspire tens of thousands of musicians to travel the path of American Primitive Guitar.
I just painted a guys house who used to be a cop in salem oregon, he said he was parked outside some apartments when John Fahey a resident of the apartments approached the car and said there was drugs being sold out of one of the apartments and wanted to let the cop know, the cop gave him his card and recognized his name. I live outside salem and it seems like a lot of noteworthy musicians and rockers spent there later days in my area
@@KINGBublepop i think he went through a lot of alcoholism and health issues throughout the 80s and some of the 90s before entering his experimental phase shortly before his passing in 2001. www.acousticfingerstyle.com/jfahey.htm read more here
@@jamesderoc6717 of course not.. Yes, he's older, yes, he had problems with alcohol, but people are just so fucking judgmental, especially of older people who don't come off as 'perfect' in their twisted sense of what growing older means. It would be sad, if it didn't just make me laugh. I'm 52, and see a lot positive with the younger generations, but goddamn, they are on the whole, just quicker to judgment based on surface qualities. Thank the Internet, and Social Media, for that.
Does anyone know what this venue is that he's playing at in Santa Monica? It looks like someone's living room or garage. I wouldn't put it past Fahey in that, on several occasions, he would comment about where his next job would be. This musician lived by the seat of his pants staying in Salvation Armies to roughing it in his car. He's one of my favorite guitar players.
The problem with open tunings you have the risk of itbeing out of tune after each song..unless the guitar needs work by way of the truss rod need adjustment. Fahey was a true primitive guitarist in his time.May he rest in peace.
bola sete, yeah, his record "ocean" was faheys favourite for years and he said this until he died :) he served as a big inspiration for fahey when he saw him live in the 70s
According to the person who filmed this (see original link: vimeo.com/150294804) it was Fahey's basement: The filmmaker Erik Nelson shot this video in John Fahey’s basement in Santa Monica, in the summer of 1981, for an MTV News segment. It was hot-at least ninety degrees, Nelson recalls, under the television lights-but Fahey was nonetheless in enviable form. There’s sweating! A Charley Patton demonstration! Furrowed brows! And, of course, almost an hour of beautiful guitar-playing. “Fahey, who did not suffer strangers nor fools, suffered both with us, and gave us a private concert,” Nelson said. “We filmed on 3/4 video cassette-and, as my company had no money, I have a hunch we filmed on used tape stock. We did have the presence of mind to keep rolling, and the cameraman, John Torcassi, did a brilliant job of filming, and, as we were such a badly dressed, impoverished-yet-enthusiastic rabble, Fahey was relaxed. He had an innate suspicion of TV types, certainly ones working on behalf of MTV, something he probably had never heard of. Note he asks what the taping was for!” Taken from here: www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-celebration-of-john-fahey-and-american-primitive-guitar
@@officialpooheadjohnson He had an unorthodox approach to music ' Odd but for some reason ' He reminds me of the scene where Forrest Gump addresses the crowd about the Vietnam war Lol ' Acceptance for that period in time. Unorthodox.
Somehow I landed on this video. I never heard of John Fahey, so my opinion is only on this video. This sounds really bad, maybe the guitar is out of tune, not sure. Seriously, I don’t play guitar all that well, but much better this. Perhaps this was a bad night
Pretty sure he's drunk, playing an awkward show in some strange basement full of stuff. You should try learning some of these tunes, though, and see if you're "much better" than John Fahey.
