Adrian Legg Anderson Fair, Houston, Texas 14 May 1999
Though I'd set this up before hand, I had not much of a clue on what to ask someone who "plays guitar." I was pretty much out in left field without a canoe. I've clipped off the first few minutes of attempts to get something started.
We're at Anderson Fair and this is the 14th of May 1999 and I'm talking to Adrian Legg. Hi there. Hi! <clip> How old were you when you started playing guitar? I was about t 15 when I wanted to. I really didn't get going until I was about 19. So it wasn't anything you did when you were really young? No my parents hated it, wouldn't have anything to do with it. <clip>Potted history: I was brought up in church choirs, very good church choirs actually, school orchestras so I had sort of a hands on experience of harmony as a child...every time I squeaked a note it had a relation to notes that were going on around me so it was a hands on experience in terms of music. Same thing happened in the orchestras, too. I played oboe and so I sat in the middle of the orchestra and played my notes and all around me were notes that related to those notes, so harmony was a natural way to think. That stood me in good stead on the guitar, I suppose, it's just a hands on experience. I've had some interviews with English people recently who've said traditional music wasn't floating around as much as in some other countries. Well, the guitar's an American instrument. So did you learn "American" music, then? Essentially, yes. That's what we all did, we learned the American instrument. Can you tell any difference between English guitar players and American ones? Yes, American guitar players I thought tended to be more disciplined and they tended to have more support than we did in their communities. The guitar in America is much a part of a most peoples lives. Most people in America have some experience with it. That's not the case in England. A minority have an experience with it. So when you were learning guitar, you were playing American music...and when you were saying when you first had a child you were playing in bands... Yes. In London? Yes. Did you tour around then? No, they were mainly residences in London pubs. There was a lot of work in London for bands. There isn't now, it's just guys with tape machines and drum machines, but then there was work for 4 or 5 piece bands. Can you give me a date on that? That would be '70 onwards. '73 and '76. You were playing an acoustic guitar? No I was playing electrric. The acoustic developed a long side it, and the two things were very separate and conflicted quite a lot. I used to do a lot of broadcasting with the acoustic, but I did all the gigs on electric with bands, but I gave up the electric because there was such a conflict and I went into the instrument industry, it was about '79, and I started using Ovations there because the company I worked for imported Ovations and I was the technical guy. And I found that I could, because of the way the pick up is the way it is for various technical reasons I could use it to blend aspects of acoustic tone with respective electric technique and that is what essentially where what I do comes from. Going back to your bands, who did you play with, any one I ever heard of? No. We were pub musicians and club musicians. There used to be plenty of us. We didn't make huge amounts of money but it was possible to make a moderate living. As I say that's gone, but then it was possible to make a moderate living. So who else was playing in London then? Well, all the rock things were going on. The scene I worked on was fairly separate. Through the acoustic thing I started writing for a magazine. I met Martin Simpson there, he's moved over here now, I met Albert Lee, I met quite a few people. Albert did extremely well over here on the country scene. He came over here and got a job with Emmy Lou Harris. Who is this now? Albert Lee. I don't know who that is? Oh, well, he changed the way people thought about the guitar in Nashville. He's a very influential guitar player. He came over here, got the job with Emmy Lou Harris, was essentially told to learn James Burton solos until they realized what they'd got. On the Luxury Liner, on one Luxury Liner track is the first time they let Albert loose, and the whole end of the track is one straight long Albert Lee solo, and from there on, a lot of people in Nashville started playing like Albert, and now you can hear Albert Lee solos all over the place. Gosh, I totally missed that. Who do you like, who's playing? In terms of guitar? Anything! I always like Joe Pass. I love his playing, and I love the way he manages to come away from the edge of the abyss with drugs and things, come back to being a really nice human being and a wonderful guitar player, so he was a hero. Wes Montgomery I really liked because he made a whole style out of a compromise. His wife didn't like him playing with a plectrum because it was too loud, so he played with his thumb and from there developed this unique sound. He just played with his thumb, a lovely soft attack So you just listen to contemporary music right now? No, I listen to very little. Do you have no influences any more? No, it's hard to say. Daily things influence you. You just potter along with, your life influences you. Stories, you know, meeting people. I think the first time I heard you was in your former album, Waiting For A Dancer. I usually do traditional folk music and I had heard that album and I liked it. Is that how you've always played? Since about '82, that all came together in about '82. Because in "83 I was coming to the end of my time in the instrument industry because the guitar was coming back, what I did with the guitar was coming back. I'd found a new direction. And so since that time that's been pretty much what I do. That's a while. There's been a few variations along the way. There's been 6 albums, 7 albums out in the States now. If you had a favorite tune for me to play for my listening audience, what would you have me play? Off the new album? Whatever. I think "Not Remotely Blues" is kind of fun, but I actually like the track I did with Eric Johnson, "Lunchtime At Rosie's." I toured with Eric for a while and we did that together, so we recorded it on this album. It's like a family snap you know. It's a fun track and Eric plays beautifully on it. "Lunchtime At Rosie's is what I'd pick..." Watching you up on stage, you have a lot of dry funny stories, you're a lot calmer now, maybe because everybody's about to fall asleep. Because I'm worn out and waiting for my dinner (laugh). Do you find...when I listen to guitar is more fun when I hear stories in between. I think the guitar can be very borning. I didn't want to say that. (laugh) It's true. It can boring. People take it terribly seriously sometimes. And it can be boring. I noticed the people out in the audience were going <gasp!> every so often. Well, they don't know where I stole things. I was looking at your website <clip> and I did see DADGAD... It's an old tuning. Davy Graham went over to Morocco and hung out with the local lute players and jammed with them and probably smoked all the local dope as well, and came back to England with this tuning. He found this tuning worked for him when he was playing with lute players...that's the story! We just got his album in. Well, the story is that he introduced DADGAD to England and everyone's used it ever since, variations on it. It seems to be a big thing for the Celtic people. Yeh, it's a good tuning for Celtic stuff, it's kind of automatic Celtic, yeh. Do you like any of that oriental stuff? I like all sorts of things. The thing that most impressed me was a pipa player 3 years ago in Winnipeg that had the most extraordinary right hand technique I've ever seen. The pipa is that funny looking thing that looks...<garbled> But not everyone does. I guess it looks like a badly made tennis racket, doesn't it with things stuck in it, don't know a better way to describe it, but she played everything with the back of her nail, all the strings were struck with the back of her nail, including the back of her nail of the thumb. This woman had the most extraordinary technique I've ever seen. Your average flamenco guitarist would have killed for it. She had an extraordinary technique with the backs of her nails...as far as she could do tremolos with it, brass garters <?> with it, single note runs, extraordinary technique, but that was the most fascinating thing I ever saw, I think. You know when you're suddenly confronted with somebody's culture to not understand it at all it goes over your head, but to have a vague idea of what is going on, like the right side of the guitar is the opposite way round, to suddenly see another possibility is quite awe inspiring when you realize...it gives you the ability...the experience of your own instrument gives you the ability to realize just WHAT somebody else is achieving and this woman was really achieving something phenomenal. <clip> I can ask about touring... Sure. <clip> [NPR interview] They had talked about you doing a series. I did a few commentaries And I thing you had some commentaries about Americans and how different they are. Yes, it was from an English perspective and that is what makes it funny, I think, you know, when you see yourself through somebody else's eyes. The American vision of England is always interesting because it sees us from a different perspective. You yell at your kids too much. You teach your children self-esteem and nothing else. Ha ha! That would be them being disrespective. I know I felt that when I was travelling in England that I felt my kids weren't really welcome. Yeh, English restaurants are terrible about kids, they're awful. Italian restaurants are much nicer. Also, I was afraid of calling you "Adrian," you had expected to be called "Mr. Legg..." No, by a stanger. I object to being called "Adrian" by a salesman. The relationship is formal; it's a business relationship. I expect to be called Mr. Legg and I expect to call him Mr. Soandso. It's a matter of courtesy. We're not familiar, doing a radio interview is a different ballgame, its not necessarily a formal thing, its much more informal. I don't expect my bank manager to call me Adrian; I expect he will call me Mr. Legg and I will call him Mr. Whatever. A professional business relationship, it's a formal relationship and there's a certain amount of sacredness there. We're not intimate. I find that a problem in America when somebody I'm dealing with gets my credit card and runs it through and it says "Thank you Adrian." It's not right, it's "Thank you Mr. Legg." I would expect that in Texas. Oh in Texas, manners are wonderful, really. The manners are exquisite, the courtesy is absolutely beautiful. I think we're pretty nice to people. You are. But it comes down to courtesy as well. It's built around courtesy and the whole point around that type of courtesy was that it gave you a way of entering a relationship if you wanted to. You had kind of a formal way forward. See if you wanted to you could become intimate with a person and there would be a way of doing that. But you start out with this formal distance.and that's a measure of respect for the other person and you have that here. Do you see anything different in audiences over here? Being foreign is a great advantage. You can get away with murder being foreign. People excuse you for so much. Never underestimate the value of a foreign accent; it's...you can get away with an awful lot. I suspect that what I do on the stage here would be boring for an English audience because they know it. What's fun for us is the difference between us. You know I'm English, the audience is all American. And this differerence is quite intrigueing and thoroughly enjoyable. We share enough language to get into occassional arcguments and appalling misundertandings but we do share enough language to be able to get a glimpse of our different cultures, and that's an awful lot of fun.