John Fahey (1939-2001)
I was pretty fascinated with a lot of virtuoso acoustic guitarists when I was younger, likely in part because I found it so damned hard to play the instrument with any degree of proficiency. One musician i was turned on to was Leo Kottke, a pretty fantastic guitarist, but I was told soon afterwards that the real deal above and beyond Kottke was a fellow named John Fahey. I found that Fahey's records both looked and sounded rather dark and cryptic, despite their ostensible folky accessibility. I didn't pay that much attention to Fahey for awhile, but my scant knowledge accrued enough to become more keen on finding out more about him. I eventually found that he wrote great anecdotal stories, collected in a book called How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life, including one about his not getting on with director Michelangelo Antonioni after having been commissioned to play some music for his film Zabriskie Point. And that Fahey was devoted to supporting niche music on an indie label called Revenant, from early blues to Captain Beefheart. And that in his later years Fahey took up the electric guitar and noisier arrangements more akin to Sonic Youth than the Delta Blues. It's high time that Fahey got wider recognition, albeit posthumously, and a recent documentary entitled In Search of Blind Joe Death is well worth seeing. Fahey's longterm staunch commitment to music over commercialism is not exactly a role model per se, but an intriguing example of an American independent artist entirely deserving of that phrase. Below is the trailer, and a few of the many nice clips of Fahey floating around....
