TOMMY EMMANUEL – THE GREATEST CONTEMPORARY ACOUSTIC GUITARIST ALIVE TODAY!!!Firstly, by what expertise do people claim to know who’s best? What expertise do I have to entitle me to make a judgment? I have been completely obsessed with music since the age of two, playing music (self-taught and badly) since the age of six and singing since the age of seven. I have tried to play nearly the whole orchestra, have sung in numerous choirs and have settled for singing and playing guitar competently and piano passably. I am not formally trained and despite numerous attempts to learn musical notation, I have failed miserably. I can find where I am on the manuscript but that’s about it and as a result, I have spent much of my life with a massive inferiority complex. I have on several occasions shelved and seriously thought about giving up music entirely during my regular fits of pique. These occur when I can’t do what I want to do because I don’t have the musical understanding and technical ability however; something keeps drawing me back – like an addict mainlining heroin and saying to themselves, “Just one last time.”
I have only ever performed once or twice to safe and non-judgmental audiences of non-musicians and the thought of performing to an audience of people that actually know what’s what gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies. I’ve never understood how people can find it pleasurable. The only performing I ever truly enjoyed was to the faceless wall in my bedroom and the relative anonymity of choral singing where there is safety in numbers. I suppose the enjoyment must come when you have the confidence in yourself to pull it off instead of being petrified of bombing in front of an audience. I can however, much to the annoyance of my fiancée, pick up almost any instrument and get a passable tune out of it first time, or pick up my guitar and play quite complex tunes by ear almost note and tempo perfect on the first or second attempt. I also apparently have an enviable skill of being able to transpose in to different keys in my head whilst playing. I am certainly no genius because that requires consistent excellence however, and most irritatingly of all, I do occasionally experience flashes of musical excellence that I can never replicate again on second, third, fourth, fifth, blah, blah, blah attempts hence the aforementioned regular fits of pique.
I must therefore conclude that the only reason I have reached my current standard of musicianship is due to a blinkered obsession and complete refusal to give up on it. Why couldn’t I have got to this standard when I was much younger? Why did I never show any special musical aptitude as a child which made people around me take notice and think my talents should be invested in? I dreamed of being a musician but knew in reality that I would never have been able to cut it in the performing arts. I found that rather than being propelled in to a state of rapture by the anticipation of performing on stage and the subsequent adrenaline jolt of all those people looking at me ascending me to the level of performance spoken about only in hushed whispers, that instead I felt an almost crippling panic – similar to Carly Simon I suppose. She regularly took tranquilisers to calm herself enough to perform and she preferred to pre-record performances without an audience.
I know now that I have late-blooming musical ability and that sadly, I will probably never have the self-confidence to perform coherently in front of other musicians. I consider myself to be a competent if erratic musician with a well developed critical ear honed by decades of all night secret headphone sessions listening to absolutely anything I could get my hands on when I should have been tucked up in bed getting my beauty sleep. So that’s me and my background, now back to the question of whether Tommy Emmanuel is the greatest contemporary acoustic guitarist alive today:
Let’s examine the criteria and evidence on which to determine the truth of the above statement. It is a wildly arrogant claim if it isn’t true and it is one that is bandied around by far too many music commentators about far too many upstart guitarists desperate to enter the hallowed halls of the music legends – to bathe in the same incandescent golden light as the Django Reinhardt’s, the Jimi Hendrix's, the David Gilmour’s and the Chet Atkins’ – I could go on for a while. In the case of Tommy Emmanuel, it may well be true. Having just recently seen a completely mind-buggeringly brilliant concert of his at Colston Hall in Bristol, I can’t even begin to imagine how he could have achieved some of the sonic marvels my ears witnessed – the rendition of “Initiation,” his self-confessed years long work in progress comes to mind. I could hear the didgeridoo’s, the desert winds, the Aboriginal foot stamping, stick-tapping, and guttural shouts, the bull-roarer, the thunder and lightning, the night time fires and the roasting roots going pop in the earth ovens. All this from one man, a battered guitar and an amplifier set on “destroy.”
To explain what I saw, I could descend in to the multitudes of mythologies that are written about musicians of note for example, Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil out at the unidentifiable crossroads on Highway 61, or Tommy Emmanuel not attending school and living an almost vagrant existence out on the dusty roads of the Outback, such was the passionate belief of his father in his talent as a guitarist. Look up Tommy’s biography on Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo etc. There is certainly truth rattling around in these myths and I am not trying to belittle any actual events. I only mean to say that they are often romanticised or elaborated on by journalists and writers who need to create a good read for publication so they can get paid their ten cents a word – a giant, whirling game of Chinese Whispers, if you will!
We certainly love to elevate people in to more than they actually are or were. Public personas often reach such epic proportions and are so completely spun and artificial that they bear little or no resemblance to the real individuals. Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris (an RAF pilot ace) said that often, when people met him in the flesh, “I had a perfectly dreadful time convincing them of who I actually was because they had an image in their minds which the real me couldn’t possibly live up to.”
I have also often wondered what Robert Johnson would think if he read the literature and urban legends that have been written about his life. Would he recognise himself in those stories? I am more of the feeling that he would have wandered off down the dusty train-tracks with his guitar sticking out of his hobo sack, silhouetted by the sunset, laughing his ass off. Oh no, I’m doing it now!!! The reality was he was a young, dumb and full of something twenty-seven year old who lived hand to mouth and for the moment, had an immeasurable talent at song writing, singing and guitar playing however, was more than a bit socially clueless when it came to not sleeping with powerful men’s wives, hence getting himself wiped out of existence whilst still a youth. In all honesty, we all need superhero’s and music fans are no different however; I think we need to be a bit more discerning about the criteria which need to be met before we lavish hero worship upon an individual.
Firstly, they must have special abilities that the average person can admire. I'm absolutely sick to death of talentless, carbon-copy celebrities who are only famous because they have either managed to get themselves 'seen' via some voyeuristic and twisted reality show, are bordering on clinical mental illness (people love watching someone crash and burn), or have an already famous relative where they can bask in some of the reflected spotlight until they make their own bones with the press. The lengths they go to to achieve press coverage and ultimately a nice fat pay check is quite pathetic and it is my firm belief that Max Clifford should be shot. If I see any more tabloid scandals where a grainy, seedy C-List celebrity sex tape has made its way on to You Tube much to the feigned dismay of the C-List celebrity who is secretly, behind closed doors, dancing wildly round in triumphant circles, rubbing their hands together and greedily counting their piles of cash with Mr Max, I think I might just see what weaponry I can muster up because Max was probably the one holding the camera. The only thing these people are talented at is ruthless opportunism and having no personal moral code of conduct. These are certainly not traits we should encourage youngsters to admire.
FOLLOWING ARE THE CRITERIA WHICH I BELIEVE A MUSICIAN MUST MEET IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE GREATNESS AND LONGEVITY, THEREFORE EARNING THE RIGHT TO OUR ADMIRATION: 1.
Technical ability- ability to play to a consistently excellent standard and to continuously find something new and fresh to communicate at that standard. Nothing I have ever heard by Tommy Emmanuel has ever sounded tired or half-assed. Also, I think it's important to explain what I mean by technical ability. Some people are lucky or cursed , depending upon which way you choose to look at it, to have been either born with or had drilled in to their developing minds, the extraordinary skills that the rest of humanity holds in such high regard. Through a combination of:
1. A random genetic drift that has produced a positive hit - nature
2. An intense internal motivation to reach for the stars and fight the status quo by not just accepting their current status in life - nature and nurture
3. Finally, an obsessive compulsion to practice these abilities way beyond the call of duty - nature and nurture,
a very few individuals are empowered to transcend the limitations of brain, blood, body and spirit that hold the rest of us back in the 'normal range,' and express themselves as master artists of a craft. This description can equally be applied to athletes, philosophers, physicians, leaders etc.
2.
Adaptability - Ability to play to an excellent standard in other, unfamiliar genres or subgenres and to be equally comfortable in a 50,000 seater stadium stage or a 25 capacity pub back room. They must also have the ability to “wing it” on stage and cope with unpredicted events without the audience being made aware that there is a problem i.e. being a cool-headed professional when the shit is hitting the fan all around them. Only then will you be a man my son...
3.
Showmanship - Ability to continuously “wow” an audience without showboating or being spent after a couple of numbers when the novelty nature of the playing wears thin. I have seen it many times – a musician gets big audience interest initially, then it rapidly tails off when it becomes apparent that there are no more rabbits to come out of the hat. Great magicians or illusionists see their illusions as a series of stages which must be achieved successfully in order to impress the audience. The earlier stages and the final flourish, known as ‘The Prestige’ must be repeated over and over again at breakneck speed throughout the course of a concert in order to keep an audience on the edge of their seats – great musicians therefore must be great magicians. I could have watched Tommy Emmanuel playing for hours and hours. Every second, there was something new and fresh and as his wing-man Rick Price so aptly said as an introduction, "For those of you who have never been to a Tommy Emmanuel concert, you're in for a treat. For those of you that have, you know the routine... buckle up and prepare for the rollercoaster ride!"
4.
Peer Respect - To be known as ‘a musician’s musician’ – a moniker awarded by other musicians to those who rise noticeably above the rest due to their artistry, flair and personality (the constituent parts of originality), technicality, consistently excellent live performances and consistently excellent quality and quantity of both live and studio musical output. Tommy has apparently been cited by Clapton, Satriani and Atkins to name but a few as "The Best They Have Ever Heard." This could be seen as a double-edged sword because it must make any artist feel an intense pressure to live up to what their greatly respected peers are saying about them. Also, it’s no good producing a seminal debut if there isn’t an adequate follow-up or subsequent output is sparse. The only people who got away with it are those whose one and only masterpiece burned so brightly that all knelt before it, shielding their eyes from its incandescence. The other unfortunates are the ones who died young and there will always be a steady flow of reminiscences and what might have beens in the press to maintain them on a high level in the collective consciousness.
5.
To navigate the shark-infested waters of fame astutely and with panache, therefore maintaining a level-headed and down to earth philosophy about 'The Greatest Circus Of All' - Many unfortunates have been destroyed by their own masterpieces, by the natural jealousy of others and the weight of expectation heaped upon them to continue producing the goods at the same standards. Again, it depends on how you look at it, but you could interpret it as a wolf in sheep's clothing. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. How many of them would trade off their masterpieces for a normal, uneventful and contented existence if they had known in advance the true cost it would exact upon them? Charles Darwin and 'The Evolution Of Species' and Beachboy Brian Wilson and his well documented family history and descent in to decades of mental illness (and there is a subject for a separate article about how much information about the private lives of public figures we should be allowed to cannibalise). Vladimir Nabokov showed a heightened level of awareness over the ramifications of 'Lolita', the manuscript of which, his widow claims, she rescued from the fire he tossed it in to in a moment of panic. This was apparently instigated when he thought about the repercussions such an inflammatory piece of writing could have upon his personal life. These are just three prime examples of the many that leap in to my mind. Also, if being famous is so wonderful, why does it have a steadily rising body count? Someone with their head screwed on straight before they enter the shark-infested waters of fame will probably navigate them successfully by taking everything with a pinch of salt; accepting that 99% is smoke and mirrors / coloured bubbles and only taking notice of the 1% that has substance; by not taking themselves too seriously and most importantly, not becoming mesmerised by their own legend. Probably the best thing that could happen to a public figure is to publicly fall on their backsides once in a while to remind themselves that they are still just a flesh and blood human, albeit a lucky one. T.C. (the highest paid actor in the world) might benefit from it however; he has twenty-five minders to steady him should he stumble. Not one of them, from the one who picks out his clothing to the one who organises every nanosecond of his day so that he doesn't have to worry about it are doing him any favours either. He is living in a trance inside a big pink balloon and maybe he should just go out and mow the lawn. Those with their heads screwed on know it's a just a job - a wonderful job nonetheless - a job that puts ample food on the table for themselves and their descendants if they play the game smart. They don't take it for granted and they plan for the future and an afterlife if they should fall from grace and the fragile illusion shatter. Those that enter fame with a desperate need to be loved due to a dysfunctional personality type or an empty void in their soul are only ever going to be headed for an abyss. The speed at which they run blindly over the edge of the precipice is only down to the effectiveness of the emotional and physical protective buffers placed quietly in strategic locations by loved ones and those with a personal or financial stake in the individual. A tragic case in point is that of Amy Winehouse - a talented singer who is ill-prepared to deal with fame. Sadder still is the exploitative nature of the press in cataloguing her spectacular crash and burn and the apparent lack of protection put in place by those around her. The original talent that made her famous is now incidental because it has been eclipsed by her erratic behaviour. Perhaps she needs a knight in shining armour to sweep her out of the limelight, get her clean and fill her heart and soul with something other than the desperate need to be loved by strangers. God, if any more evidence is required that she is teetering on the edge than the lyrics of 'Rehab' on the album 'Back To Black', then the most charitable / politically correct thing I can say is to suggest that you go take an I.Q. test and not to expect a result in double or triple figures. At the moment, the people surrounding her are profiteering by her fall and it appears they are not going to catch her whilst there is still money to be made. And if, tragically, a celebrity does hit the bottom (and it appears that Amy well might), the people surrounding them will be comforted in the knowledge that they can still resurrect the corpse at any time and make more than a few quid appearing on tribute programs, organising benefit concerts and ghost-writing a tell-all book in which they paint themselves as the hero who tried their utmost to save them whilst further debasing their memory with all the sordid little details of their troubled life and eventual demise. Hell, why wait till they are dead? Get agent representation now in anticipation! Another casualty - a woefully ill-prepared and fame-scarred individual by the initials of M.J. comes immediately to my mind also. Nick Cave said that when he was at his lowest ebb due to drug addiction and personal demons which he had yet to wrestle under control, he had the biggest audiences during that era of his musical career. He knew they had only come to see if he would go up in flames in front of them - nice... Shame on the lot of them! Sorry about that... Deep breath... Calming thoughts... Rant over.
Tommy certainly appeared to have his head screwed on straight and the evidence that this is so - his longevity and the quiet , measured diligence of the performance suggests that he will still be going after countless others fall by the wayside. Whether this is due to a down-to-earth personality type or just the sheer weight of all those decades in the spotlight, I don't know but whatever the explanation, it appears to have served him well.
6.
Finally, to inspire mythmaking and urban legends among the Prol's - I hazard to mention this as this is somewhat harder to quantify but what the hell, here goes: an eleven year old once asked me when I was teaching a science lesson if it was true that the guitar that got set fire to by that guy with the big hair from ages ago (because it was in black and white) got sold for £100 million. Apparently a friend had told him about it and he thought because I played guitar, I might know. My case in point.
I don’t claim that my personal opinions are correct as they are completely subjective and I find this obsession with producing lists of the greatest anything and everything rather irritating even though I do confess, I will happily read or watch them during my more brain-dead periods. Who says that so and so is better than so and so? What expertise are these people claiming to have to apparently be justified in making these judgments? It’s all so damn subjective and they can go one of two ways. They can produce a wildly contrary list to those that came before and therefore set themselves aside as mavericks according to some or clueless eedjits according to others, both of which get juicy column inches, or they can research what others have said and produce something similar. You might see a couple of ranking changes in the same old names with a couple of added wild-cards designed to court a safe amount of controversy. Well it’s non-challenging and makes acceptable copy doesn’t it? I never underestimate people’s desire to conform to the peer group.
Perhaps the only way to build a truly accurate picture of 'The Greats' is to anonymously ask the most widely respected and most consistently employed musicians - and not just the front men. Perhaps we should also ask the highly talented backing musicians who graft away year in, year out in the shadows, watching others reap the glory. This is the sacrifice often required to achieve a music industry career with longevity and a regular pay check. These individuals have seen them all – the flash in the pans and the old dogs – the people who came and went and the people who stuck around whilst they kept their heads down, diligently plying their craft and honing their skills. Names that immediately jump in to my mind are Sam Brown, a backing singer who sings all over the place or Ray Phiri, long-time lead guitarist of Paul Simon.
I think perhaps therefore, it should just be enough to say that Tommy Emmanuel does, in my humble opinion, meet and often surpass my aforementioned criteria and is most definitely a “Musician’s Musician." He is hugely respected for his technical prowess and is regularly cited as an inspiration by other guitarists. These are more truthful, more considered and less sycophantic statements and therefore, should probably be ultimately more satisfying to Mr Emmanuel than to call him “The Greatest Contemporary Acoustic Guitarist Alive Today”. As he himself has said, his inspiration for picking up the guitar was hearing Chet Atkins on the radio. If we were to find out who floated Chet Atkins’ boat and ask them, and then asked Tommy Emmanuel who currently yanks his chain, then we could ask those people which musicians take them around corners and so on. Perhaps then you would have the beginnings of a truly definitive, silken spider’s web (not a sequential list) of greatness and the beauty of this concept is that it could be an organic, living entity. If you returned to the living musicians in the web every two years or so and asked them to state their inspirations again; new names would be breathed in and the one hit wonders would be breathed out. The people providing this information would be the ones you could truly respect and mind and if the same names kept cropping up year in year out, throughout the decades, then you could accept that they in fact are the greatest musicians in the history of music performance. Some people might say that they were inspired by simply reading notes on a fading old manuscript page and imagined the music therefore; we would not be limited only to the era of recorded music. We could research to find out who inspired musicians such as Beethoven and we would then know that the judgments on which names entered the web had really been made by the most eminently qualified people and not even death, or the dimming effect of passing time would be a barrier to hearing their voices. They would surge forward, strong, vibrant and clear like a newborn river of stars.
Anyway, enough of my waxing lyrical for another little while... On a lighter note, whilst looking at Tommy on You Tube, I found a video that appears to show him bending the neck of his acoustic guitar away from himself by brute force. This was probably to make up for the absence of a tremolo arm on acoustic guitars and it appeared to expedite a drop in tone – like a reverse string bend. Now:
1. Please tell me that wasn’t a functional Martin he did that to, or was it a onetime only event on a guitar that had reached the end of its useful life?
2. How the hell did he bend the truss rod like that without snapping it, or, more worryingly, did it even have a truss rod? Ouch for the guitar on either count.
3. What the hell???
(Actually, I wanted to end on f*%k but then it might have been a tad overly dramatic and I’m never going to find out whether I actually saw what I thought I saw – if that makes sense... I can't even find the video again despite repeated searches. It’s now three o’clock in the morning and I have yet another stinking winter cold. When I’ve finally managed to scrape my jaw off the floor and unscramble my fricasseed neurons (the effect the concert had on me), I may well decide that everything I have just written in this article was the rantings of a star-struck nut job with a high fever and that it should be deleted forthwith lest I be sectioned under the Mental Health Act! Sigh, so what’s new...?)
Sylvia
