Shawn Phillips Interview

by Rick Landers.

Diehard fans of Texas-born troubadour Shawn Phillips have watched his evolution as an artist from his days in Haight-Ashbury, Greenwich Village, London, Italy and now in South Africa. During the '60s when music innovators and experimenters conjoined folk, rock, and music from the Middle East, Shawn always seemed to be one step ahead of the crowd as an early adopter who constantly looked beyond his own musical horizon.

Phillips' discovery of the sitar led him to the time when he found himself sitting next to George Harrison, showing George the basics and nuances of the Indian instrument. Shawn was also on hand to help a young Joni Mitchell learn how to play guitar, as well as found himself sharing a London flat with his talented roommates Donovan and Paul Simon. He co-wrote “Sunshine Superman” with Don and was later invited by Paul McCartney to sing backup on the Beatles' "Lovely Rita”.

Shawn has 18 albums to his credit with four that have listed in Billboard’s Top 100 including, Faces, Bright White, Furthermore and Do you Wonder. And his singles “Lost Horizon” with Burt Bacharach, “We”, and “Woman” populated Billboard’s Top 40. His Second Contribution album sold in the multi-millions. And in 2002, Universal Music honored Phillips with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Since his days as a pioneer rock balladeer of the ‘60s, Shawn Phillips 12-string guitar has entertained as often with a big splash, as with a tender touch. His incredible three octave vocal range continues to stop us in our tracks on songs like his masterpiece “She Was Waiting For Her Mother At the Station in Torino and You know I Love You Baby But It’s Getting Too Heavy To Laugh” where his voice hovers gently in baritone before it soars into the realm of Counter Tenor.

Modern Guitars spoke with Shawn in June of 2006 just after he returned from his 2006 North American summer tour. In his friendly Texan drawl, Phillips bantered a bit and let us know that his sites continue to focus on his love of music and experimentation with his most recent excursions moving his compositions into the world of classical music and collaborations with symphonies.

Your 2006 summer tour had quite a few gigs in Canada. Has your fan base been strong up north over the years?

Shawn Phillips: It’s been very strong in Canada. Initially, when the career started, I got a lot of radio play up in that area in Montreal. And a particular song, the short name for it is “Woman”, the long name is “She Was Waiting For Her Mother At the Station in Torino and You Know I Love You Baby But It’s Getting Too Heavy To Laugh”! They played that a lot in French Quebec, where most of the music was.

What gear did you carry along with you?

SP: On this tour I didn’t bring any computers or synths. I think I had five guitrars. I had a small classical Paul Champagne guitar that I use to warm up with. It’s an interesting guitar, because it has a split bridge. On the bottom, the first three strings are separate from the bottom three strings. And it gives it a nice lovely warm sound.

And I have a twenty year old Ovation gut string that I play. Then I had a six-string, steel string Washburn guitar that they gave me the first time I came to South Africa. And then my red Gibson Dove. I use the Gibson a lot because it’s twenty-five, thirty years old and the sound is absolutely beautiful out of it. And then the last guitar is the famous double-neck. That’s a 1968 Fender Stratocaster and a 1964 Gibson Les Paul that’s been put into one guitar. It’s a double neck.

I think there’s only two in the world and Ozzy Ozbourne has the other one. He doesn’t play guitar! What’s he doing with it? [Laughs]

Years ago, at the old Cellar Door in Washington, D.C., I saw you with what must have been one of the first wireless guitar gadgets.

SP: I did have a wireless! It was the first Navy wireless that was made. It was a big white box with an FM tuner on it and you had the little cast iron transmitter that you put on your belt and a 9 volt battery. You needed a rather large antenna on top of the transmitter. I think the song I was playing was “I’m an American Child [On a Nuclear Pile]” from the Transcendence album.

Was your father, author Philip Atlee, supportive of you when you chose music as a profession?

SP: Well, yes and no. He didn’t much care one way or the other. He really didn’t really care whether I became a musician or not.

A lot of Texans are firmly planted or rooted in their home State, but you’ve led somewhat of a gypsy or nomadic existence. Are you a die-hard Texan?

SP: Well, no. I mean, I have to tell you what I’ve told people over the years. Edgar Winter once walked up to me at a festival in Toronto and he said, “Man you come from Texas, how come you got so far away from your roots?" And I told Edgar that there’s a whole tree above the ground.

No I don’t really consider myself that. My base [pauses], the basic music I started out with was Texas rock and blues. But, I’ve sort of evolved far from that and I’m concentrating now almost exclusively on writing classical music.

When you started out, you were with the Greenwich Village crowd. That must have been a very cool scene and a Mecca for folk and beat artists like Tim Hardin, Ritchie Havens, Roger McGuinn, Carol King and others.

SP: It was absolutely amazing because you had so many different people who played so many different styles. I mean, Tim Hardin would play what he played and he developed that into his own inimitable style. And then you had Ritchie Havens who had his own style. To this day, Ritchie doesn’t play guitar yet that’s tuned to normal tuning!

You had so many people doing so many things those days. I was doing what you’d call contemporary folk music. I was doing some writing and I was also covering some other peoples’ songs at the same time. I probably hung out with every single one of them or another, all of them at some point.

Who’d you hang with?

SP: Well, it would have been mostly Tim Hardin, Ritchie Havens and Bob Dylan was on the scene then, and Dave Van Ronk. There were two different factions. There was a faction out in California where you had Travis Edmonson and you had that sort folks’ scene out there, the Kingston trio and those guys. And then the New York scene was Tim Hardin, Ritchie Havens and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. All of those different people were hanging out at the same time.

Did you know Tim Buckley, another 12-string player?

SP: No. Tim Buckley was in California and I never actually met Tim. I wanted to meet him after I left California, but I never got to meet him.

Were you influenced by Bob Gibson to pick up the 12- string guitar?

SP: No, what drew me to the 12-string was the sound of the instrument itself. My very first twelve was bought for me by a friend of mine named Hal Key in Los Angeles, California. That was probably about 1966. I don’t actually have it. Peter Robinson, in LA, has the actual instrument. The Gibson that I got, the B-45 twelve, was the second one. Barney Kessel, the jazz guitarist who I think has passed away now, got the first one.

One day we played on a session together and he played mine. He said “I’ll trade mine for yours and give you $500 on top of it” I said, “I don’t think so” because it was so much better. The reason Peter Robinson has it is because he uses a New England digital and he’s got a Synclaviar. He sampled the 12-string for film.

You taught Joni Mitchell some guitar?

SP: Basically, she was a waitress at the Louis Real coffee house in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan when we first met and she was just starting to play the guitar. And she said, “Will you help me in learning some guitar?” And basically, we just sat down I said, “Anything that you can do at this end of the neck, you can do at the top end of the neck.”

I spent two weeks giving her pointers on how to become comfortable with the instrument. Little did I know that she was going to turn out the she did! [Laughs]

How did you end up sharing a London flat with Donovan and Paul Simon?

SP: I was in a music store and Don [Donovan Leitch] walked into a music store called Ivor Morants and we struck up a conversation and he asked if I wanted to go out and get something to eat and so forth. After we gradually became friends and started sort of working and playing together, we moved into an apartment and began to play together. We moved into a place in Marble Arch, in London. And one day Paul had come around and he just gotten to England and he didn’t have anyplace to stay and we told him “You got a place now and you can camp out as long as you like.” He stayed for about a month and that was the last time I ever saw him.

I understand that you sang backup on the Beatles “Lovely Rita”. How did you get there and what was that like?

SP: Well, hanging out in England and working with Don, you just sort of ran into all these people at the clubs we’d got to like the Speakeasy. We’d run into Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, all these people and gradually you get to know people.

At one point I was giving sitar lessons to George Harrison. He was just getting started with the instrument. We had dinner over at his house, I don’t know how many times, and I’d sit down and give him the pointers I knew and so forth and one day he said, “Why don’t you guys come over and visit the studio? We’re doing this new album.”

We walked in and Paul said, “Hey, why don’t’ you guys sing back up on this tune?”

You don’t think about the fact that you may be making music history. We were just a bunch of guys hanging out.

Did you like them?

SP: Nice. Very nice guys, every single one of them. John Lennon and I got along very very well. I once cracked a joke that had a sort of kind of a pseudo religious theme to it. And Paul didn’t think it was funny, but John thought it was hilarious. It was Lion’s 12, Christians nothing. Paul didn’t think it was funny at all, but John thought it was hilarious.

You and George became friends?

SP: Yeah, we were friends. He was an amazing guitarist. George was really the quietest one. He was quite an introvert. He didn’t really finger pick, but he was a much better guitarist than a lot of people give him credit for. When we sat around jamming, he would play things that just absolutely amazed me!

It wasn’t what he played; it was the speed at which he’d play them. He never really showed off that side on any of the Beatles’ records. That guy could jam and he’d play these amazing runs.

Where did you learn to play the sitar?

SP: I was playing in Toronto where I had a two week gig at a place called the Purple Onion. In each of those weeks I had a night off. And I was told by somebody that I needed to go see this guy named Ravi Shankar and that I ought to listen to what he plays. So, I thought “Okay” and I went to whatever hall it was and he just blew me away! I couldn’t believe what he did with that instrument. It was absolutely fantastic!

I went back stage after the show and Ravi was very very kind and very humble. I asked him a all kinds of stuff about the instrument and he sat me down, we must have been there for two or three hours. He sat me down he showed me how it’s tuned, each melody has a different time of day, each raga has a different time of day, and each one has a different melody and you tune the synthetic strings to the melody that you’re playing. He showed me how to sit. He gave me all the basics that I needed to know about that and that’s what started me on sitar.

Even the basics sound pretty complex.

SP: Yeah, they were complex! I mean, complex to the point where he told me what vein you have to put the sitar on on your foot so that it shuts the blood off from your legs so you don’t get tired. The foot goes numb so you can sit for hours!

Did you know some of the other folk artists around London?

SP: I met Roy Harper, "You Can Lead A Horse to Water, But You Can't Make Him Drink." Roy and I got along real good when we met. I knew both John and Beverly Martyn when they were married. And you had those guys like Bert Jansch and David Graham. They were on the scene at the time.

Can you give us a run down on the guitars you’ve owned, some you no longer have but miss?

SP: Yes, especially one. I had a Fender 6-string bass that I’d turned the bridge around so I could use guitar strings on it. I’m told that it’s still in Italy. That guitar and I had a Gibson double-neck 6-string and 12-string that was specially modified by a guy named Wall in England. It was absolutely beautiful. That guitar got stole in Nashville. And the other guitar that I miss was a Gibson double-neck that was a 6-string and 4-string bass.

What made you pick up your first guitar?

SP: Oh man, Rick, I have no idea! I gotta go back a long ways. Now we gotta go back to that question about “How did my Dad support me?” Actually it was my Dad who bought me my first guitar. It was a Stella. I guess I have to say that he was supporting me. I didn’t ask for it, he just bought it for me. And I think that’s what started the whole thing.

Your music always seems to have some electrical charge or almost a contained energy to it, even the ballads – does that indicate that you’re a pretty intense adrenaline driven guy?

SP: Well, I’m definitely that. The fact that I’ve been a firefighter and a National Registry Medical Technician for about the last twelve years, you know that I’m an adrenaline junkie. You’re right. Now we're getting into an area that is very interesting. Music does something to and for people. Every musician is trying to articulate some energy they feel inside.

In my music and things that I write, I have always equated the force of music with divine energy. I don’t want to put a religious thing on it. But there’s just this tremendous energy force that drives consciousness. And I think I try to make that come through in everything I write, whether it’s a ballad or up tempo and cookin’. And it doesn’t make any difference. That energy will drive that piece as it is.

One amazing thing about your talent is your vocal range. Are you schooled in voice or have you always had that voice?

SP: I’ve always had this voice naturally. I’ve never taken a single voice lesson. When I sing something in the higher octaves, I create, I hear it in my mind but I don’t actually try to physically manifest the notes until after I’m very comfortable with the song. When I get to the point where I’m playing it almost by rote, that’s where I start to sing those notes I’ve heard in my mind.

Tell us about your CD "No Category" and how your music has changed over the years.

SP: The music just evolves by itself. Any musician that continues to be a musician beyond his teens is striving for an evolution of his or her work. No Category was an album for me in which I was able to continue to work on two or three songs did not have the vision that I had wanted for them in a previous recording of them. Some of them I had recorded maybe three or four songs on a previous CD that I was not happy with and neither were any of the people who knew me or knew my work. So I had to get these songs recorded the way I wanted to hear them.

Also, what was interesting about No Category was the fact that I got the best of the absolute best musicians in the world playing on it, the best session guys. I mean, Ralph Humphrey’s on drums, Lee Sklar on bass, Mike Miller on guitar, Pete Robinson on keyboards, Paul Buckmaster doing the arranging and Rick Hart as the engineer. Rick was the second engineer with James Guthrie with Pink Floyd on Dark Side of the Moon and Another Brick in the Wall. You can’t put together a better team together than that!

And it was really a labor of love and tunes that had been begging to be recorded for several years. Once you get to a certain point, what I was talking about is that if you are that musician that is evolving you are going to evolve yourself right out of the popular music industry. Because they want a set thing and once your start working in something that’s a little more complicated, a little more beyond what one has been doing and learning from. Once you get beyond that, you’re beyond their reach anymore and it’s just a question of taking that evolution and running with it.

How disappointing is it to lose your audience?

SP: No, no you don’t lose people, you just lose the music industry. The people that listen to you, most of them, I’d say eighty-five to ninety percent of them want to hear the evolution of what you’re doing as an artist.

The music business doesn’t want you to evolve at all. They want you to stay in a formula profit winning situation. If you really are going to be a true musician, you must evolve musically.

What kind of reception did you receive for the world premiere of your new classical nine movement suite "Events in the Life of a Prince"?

SP: Yes, it’s called Disturbing Horizons: Events in the Life of a Prince. And the reception was fantastic! There were about three thousand people in the park! And the conductor, Byung Rhee, he was amazing! This guy had the orchestra at the ends of his fingers.

What was so interesting, was that the people who are the directors of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, I think they sort of had the idea that this was going to be a singer and the orchestra was going to be backing them up. I don’t think they fully realized that the pieces the orchestra they were to perform were going to be as complicated and as difficult to play as they actually were.

In the end after it was done, they played it supremely well for having only one rehearsal. And there was, to a person, every single person in the NSO later complained that this piece was much too difficult to play with only one one rehearsal. But it was received very very well. A dance company has actually choreographed it for another event.

Any new ideas or musical recording studio concepts you’re working on that might involve using your midi?

SP: Yes. What I’m working on right now with the same gentleman that who helped me with the Nashville thing. His name is Ben Lloyd. He’s one of the violinists with that orchestra.

SP: Thirty years ago I read a book called Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky. He theorizes that during the 7th and the 8th centuries a comet passed so close to the earth that it actually brushed our atmosphere. Technology and history tell us that he may have been right. History tells us that two times there’s three days of darkness in Egypt and three days of sunshine in China.

So, basically I’ve come up with an idea for a ballet that takes place on a split level stage. The top level of the stage contains dancers that represent our solar system and the comet. The bottom level of the stage, contains dancers, four primary dancers representing the black, white, red and yellow races of the earth and each of those primary dancers has their village. And the ballet takes place when the comet enters our solar system and begins to dance erratically among all our planets.

And when it starts to dance with earth, the lower stage lights up and the chaos that would ensue from that type of a situation is depicted in dance on the lower stage. And there are two or three different movements that will take place, but I’ve written the first and the third movements already for this ballet. And I’m going to use one of the movements that was in The Events in the Life of a Prince as the second movement. I don’t have a name for it yet. A tentative working title is Sunrise and Sunset.

So there's some focus on different cultural origins?

SP: Yes. Each of those dancers will dance according to the culture they come from. I’m really interested in the split stage. And one of the things that’s really blowing my mind is that when I first came up with this concept thirty years ago, they didn’t have the techniques that they have today to fly people around the stage.

To tell you the truth, I’m kind of seriously thinking that I might like to get Cirque du Solei involved in this as well.

Any new projects under way that you’d like to talk about?

SP: No, the thing I’m working on right now is the new ballet. I’ve moved into that direction. I’m spending all my time on that. I’m just creating. I’m getting to the point where I’m still writing songs, but it’s few and far between.

SP: Now that I’ve got the Godin midi-guitar, I have a chance to trigger orchestral sounds. I met the Godin rep, Bill McDaniels, in Lousville, Kentucky and he told me that they’d wanted to give me a guitar for quite some time. And somehow they found out that I was composing classical music and was triggering orchestral sounds with a guitar. The Godin I'm using that they gave me is aboslutely top of the line! and it tracks faster than I can play!

Is it a prototype?

SP: No, it’s not a prototype. Godin has been making these guitars for several years now. Quite a few prominent guitarists play them. I know Eric Clapton has about four or five of them and there's a guy in Buster B. Jones in Nashville who plays one. They’re absolutely fantastic instruments! To play the neck on this guitar is like you’re touching silk! I mean, it’s just so easy to play. And that’s both their steel and nylon strings.

A lot of your earlier recordings have stood the test of time. Do you continue to enjoy singing them and renewing their spirit?

SP: Yes, I love to renew the spirit. But it also comes down to a bit of a more mundane aspect. The people who come to your concerts want to hear the songs that they love and I will play those songs. The difficult thing for me to do when I play those songs is to try and recreate the specific feeling that was felt the first time the song was ever created. And it’s actually kind of a pretty difficult thing to do!

And I like to keep a balance in the concerts between the songs that people want to hear. The ones they know and love. They pay my rent! And to keep a balance between songs they love and those that are on any new product or CD and brand new material that no one has heard yet.

Related Links
Shawn Phillips
Godin Guitars

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