Customer Reviews

How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life

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There's a lot in this book that could do a lot of us a lot of good, if only we'd listen. The person responsible for creating a stage for solo acoustic guitar is firing from both barrels here with something one shouldn't mix up with the word "fiction". This book doesn't have to be rated or promoted: it will find its own readership amongst the ones who've followed John's path all along and know how to deal with it. Funny and sad, frightening and enjoying, a gifted guitarist gives us a generous insight into what growing up in Takoma Park can mean. Warning: there are no guitar tabs in this volume! Ha!

As a dedicated fan of John Fahey's music, I couldn't wait to read his book. Well, I was not dissapointed. He writes a lot about his childhood, his professional life as a guitar player, his part in the rediscovering of bluesman Skip James, and other experiences he has had. While not entirely based on fact, I wouldn't call it fiction like the back of the book says. Anyways, this is a fascinating portrait of one of the great composers of our time, and I doubt that the reader could put this book down for very long. It's simply brilliant!

The recently deceased guitar master takes you on a tour of his childhood and young adulthood... basically this book is about as highly recommended as they come for a fan of his music- it will provide musical, emotional and even philosophical insight (with several references to hegel, heidegger, and other great german philosophers) into his life. there are moments of fiction, but it doesnt overwhelm the autobiographical nature of the work. you really do get a feeling for the personalities of bukka white, skip james, roosevelt sykes, and antonioni, which is the real reason may of fahey's most loyal fans would want to read the book. some moments are harrowing, from tales of childhood abuse to stories of social alienation. other moments are endearing, there are stories of first friendships, loves, and comfort (mostly on the part of white and sykes). Fahey led a very interesting life, and this book has a good deal of serious instrospection. he's actually a pretty good writer, so i give it the highest recommendation. someone new to fahey or not interested in 20s blues figures be warned, a lot of it will be confusing, leading to reviews like the one up top by that poor bitter guy who completely missed the point.

The recently deceased guitar master takes you on a tour of his childhood and young adulthood... basically this book is about as highly recommended as they come for a fan of his music- it will provide musical, emotional and even philosophical insight (with several references to hegel, heidegger, and other great german philosophers) into his life. there are moments of fiction, but it doesnt overwhelm the autobiographical nature of the work. you really do get a feeling for the personalities of bukka white, skip james, roosevelt sykes, and antonioni, which is the real reason may of fahey's most loyal fans would want to read the book. some moments are harrowing, from tales of childhood abuse to stories of social alienation. other moments are endearing, there are stories of first friendships, loves, and comfort (mostly on the part of white and sykes). Fahey led a very interesting life, and this book has a good deal of serious instrospection. he's actually a pretty good writer, so i give it the highest recommendation. someone new to fahey or not interested in 20s blues figures be warned, a lot of it will be confusing, leading to reviews like the one up top by that poor bitter guy who completely missed the point.

...so any debates about the possible "fictional" aspects of this remarkable book are really moot. I was there. Then. John lived about four blocks from us, he was six years older than me, and he was a major influence on me, not only musically but also philosophically. The fact that I turned down an offer of one of the 95 surviving copies of the initial (and only) pressing of the original "John Fahey/Blind Joe Death" LP and also refused to sell John my 78 RPM copy of Vernon Dalhart's "The Prisoner's Song" proves I was crazy enough, at least in hindsight, to have belonged right there, right then. Reading this book brought back summer nights across from the field where "April in the Orange" was largely played out in "real" time, and he and the other, older guys played poker, tormented the beat cop and John picked out ethereal, otherwordly melodies which floated through the window on the mimosa-scented summer air and would eventually become the backbone of his cannon of recorded work.

This book is absolutely essential for anyone with an interest in blues, bluegrass or really any form of American music or just America, as well as the workings of a genius mind in constant search of the Lost Chord. Or anyone who's ever been in love. With anything. An emotional roller coaster of seemingly insane vignettes (which are, I assure you, not really insane at all, just peculiar to the place and time where we all lived and loved and moved around in the midst of time) juxtaposed with horrifyingly lucid and stunningly loving moments - more like William Burroughs and Mark Twain speaking with one voice than anything remotely Vonnegut - and transformative in its power. John never really left "Azalea City" (the actual official nickname of Takoma Park), not in his mind nor his heart, and he never really recovered from the trainwreck that was his childhood. We are all richer for his having shared those experiences and that mind-too-big-for-his head, let alone the countless recordings that fill the space where words utterly fail.

By the way, the real Swami rode a Harley. No lie, b'wana.

...stimulating and entertaining too. Yes, it will have a major appeal to blues fans, particularly guitar fans. How much of this hypnotic, sometimes shocking book is true? The chapter "Honey" should be included in all sellf-help books. I read most of it twice and enjoyed the evocations of Americana. As a fingerpicker myself, I found John's mental states more illuminating than an explanation of his guitar technique would have been.

Fahey always possessed some kind of magic ability to slowly, almost as you not being aware of it, dragging you into his universe...and once there...impossible to get out...before he allows you to do so.....
So with his music, so with his writings and even so, I lately discovered, with his paintings...
I bet twenty dollars that if he had been an architect he would even have constructed buildings where you had been unable to find the exit sign before he wanted you to find it!
This collection of short stories...I have been on the hunt for it for a couple of years until I found it on Amazon
(thanks Amazon!)...a relief that it is not at all about open tunings and fingerpicking techniques and such paraphernalia (that has well been taken care of in "guitar-playing-books")sets the agenda for the interesting question of where to draw the border-line between the Artist and his Art...somehow they seem inseparable...I mean for the artist to express himself he must have something to express...and Fahey did that quite well with his guitar for more than forty years...and he did it quite well in the hilarious liner notes for the first half a dozen or so records...and now he does it again (express himself I mean)with this magical little book.
And of course I will always allow the artist to choose whatever means and vehicles of expression he finds suit his needs...And consequently I will always allow myself the privilegium to have the right to think whatever I want to think about the result of the artist's efforts!
And what is to be defined as biographical or fictional in the life of an artist?....And by the way also in the lifes of ourselves...most of us tend to construct some fantastic mythologizations and sagas about our lifes and what happens therein...if not so...at least some of us would end up in the Asylum!
A beautiful collection of stories...somewhere between Cabell, Kerouac and Hesse...if there exists such a "between"!
And by the way...on the cover...could it be the Clayton Peacock?
Put your past ahead of you...says chief.karlsson

John Fahey was the most profoundly emotional guitar player I have ever heard. His music sounds so simple, but then you realize that he was hitting every single note, deliberately, and with exactly the right tone, each and every time, the feeling grabs you, and it floors you. His writing is shockingly on the same level. If my description of his music resonates with you, you must read this book! I cannot say any more - I don't have the tools.

Love,

Randy

P.S. The book is worth it alone for his relating of his story about the time he decked the famous movie director who had connived John into writing some music for his rancidly crappy movie. Not only did dude deserve to get his mug pummeled, but as John gleefully recounts, the movie in question ended up on the list of the 50 worst movies of all time. What a hoot!

My only real complaint about this book is that I wish 'Jawn' would've fleshed out some of the real standouts in this collection (in my opinion the opening story about the renegade kids, and the Hank Williams story) into much longer pieces, and do away with some of the other chaff. The two stories mentioned above would make great books if expanded into such - maybe John or even another writer should take them up the challenge and do that. Nevertheless a fun read, if not terribly cohesive as a collection.

Is it just me, or is Mr. Fahey's sorry attempt to emulate Kurt Vonnegut Jr. nothing more than the ramblings of a bored old man? His seeming fascination with making sure that you know the race and/or religion of the characters (at least if they are Black or Jewish) seems to hover just above the strata occupied by alleged reformed sleazeballs like the KKK's David Dukes. All in all I'd rather he told me about the depths he'd plumbed to create interesting and original music, rather than delineating his experience by meandering along the oldest and most pathetic of paths.