MICHAEL CHAPMAN INTERVIEW FROM 2012

“In all of my life you know I’ve done no man no wrong and yet to some that is the only mortal sin” — Michael Chapman, “Aviator”

A few weeks ago, UK folk guitarist Michael Chapman passed away at the age of 80.

My first exposure to his music was somewhere in the 90s; a CD re-issue of the third album he would release for Harvest records, Fully Qualified Survivor from 1970. I recall the opening track “Aviator” starting out with a looping bassline that slowly built into a flourish of strings. And then Chapman’s voice kicked in. It sounded hammered by booze and cigarettes yet was as genteel and soothing as any other British folkie’s vocal work. Across the song’s sprawling nine-minute duration, he delivered what seemed like the ultimate, late-night-minded-stream-of-consciousness statement which vented regret toward former lovers’, addressed the plight of the environment and the joys and sorrows of bohemian life. I was immediately hooked and hunted down what other releases I could find by the man.

I eventually got a couple chances to speak with Chapman. One was an interview for WPRB that might be lost to time and the other was for an article in the Philadelphia Weekly promoting some dates he was opening for Bonny “Prince” Billy in 2012. Although that article seems to have vanished from the internet, the interview conducted for it still remains in my big, fluffy cloud of information and fanzine scans that hovers above us all.

Here is the interview in its entirety. Enjoy. Thanks Michael for the music and the stories and for liking the Average White Band over the New York Dolls. Rest in peace.

Tony Rettman: What led you to playing guitars?
Michael Chapman: Girls! You can ask any guitar player in the world – whether it’s John Fahey or Eric Clapton – it’s girls. Guys with guitars had better-looking girls than I had. I saw some friends of mine who left school a year before me and they came back to visit with a guitar each and a girl each and they were pissed as rats and I thought ‘That’s for me! That’ll do!’

What was the initial influence on your guitar playing?
Big Bill Broonzy. You could actually get Big Bill Broonzy e.ps’ in the record shops in Leeds and he just sounded like he knew everything. He came over here with his country boy blues singer shtick but he was such a good player you could overlook it. You didn’t see guitar players. They weren’t on TV. So I started to play like Big Bill Broonzy with a flat pick, which was impossible. I didn’t know he used his thumb and his finger. Just like how I heard a record and didn’t know there were two guitar players on it, so I tried to play like I was both. Which is probably why I ended up playing as weird as I do, I suppose. 

I was in at least five bands all the way through college. The guitar had to pay for my education. I was teaching at a college of art in Lancashire. I had given up playing for three years except for the occasional Jazz gig I did. I got out of teaching before I did any more damage.  I was bumming around in Cornwall. It was raining and I didn’t have enough money to come into a club, so I said I’d play and they gave me a job for the rest of the summer and I’ve been at it ever since. Basically, it was a sheer accident. I’m a great believer in letting things happen and I’m not good at plans. I’ve only made a few plans in my life and they’ve gone tits up, so I don’t do it anymore. I’ve always had confidence in me self. I knew I could play because I was playing Jazz, which is the highest form of guitar playing, so I knew I could get away with it. I’ve never been so keen on my voice. 

If you wanted to get known nationally, London was the place to be. There was the Troubadour, The Three Horseshoes, but especially there was Les Cousins. I went down and begged and they let me on. If you played Cousins and had your name headlining there in the folk club gig sheets in the Melody Maker, that would get you better money in the rest of the country. It seemed like a slow process, but it wasn’t. In a few years, I got a record deal. 

Who were some of the guitar players on the scene back then you were impressed with?
Al Stewart is a much better guitar player than he lets on. My personal favorite would be Ralph McTell because he was in his ragtime phase at the time. He’s the best ragtime player in the world. He just has that feel for it. 

Did coming down to London get you the deal with Harvest?
Getting on Harvest didn’t have anything to do with playing in London that actually happened in Cornwall. They had a talent scout down in Cornwall called David Dearlove. Harvest was a bunch of shits. It was still EMI and all these retired cornels couldn’t stop tinkering with the hippies down in the basement. They wanted Harvest to be the equivalent of Elektra in the states. When I signed with them, I told them I had already designed the sleeve and it was a gatefold. And they said ‘Oh no, we’re not doing that’. I said ‘If you want to compete with these guys, you have to do it properly. And on American cardstock, not this thin stuff we use in England’. We couldn’t get the American cardstock because there were no machines in England that could fold it. But I ended up getting everyone on Harvest gatefold sleeves by sticking my neck out and being a nasty little bastard. Malcolm Jones was the head of it and he did his best but he was running up against a brick wall all the time because these people basically didn’t trust us. We were down in the basement smoking dope. 

The thing with Harvest was we were pretty much a family. We were all mostly managed by Blackhill Enterprises. They had Edgar Broughton, Bridget St. John, Kevin Ayers, Third Ear Band, etc. All these people that were coming up with this left-field stuff. Getting into the office was easy, but it was hard to get out due to all the dope being smoked. 

What are some of the gigs from back then that stick out?
One of the festivals that sticks out is playing Pink Pop twice in Southern Holland. To walk out on your own with an acoustic guitar in front of eighty thousand people is a buzz, I’ll tell ya that for sure. 

What were the ’80s like for you?
I was drunk. My wife calls that era ‘Michael Chapman: THE MISSING YEARS’. I was a bit of a mess, but it’s par for the course with musicians, isn’t it? I had a heart attack and that straightened me up a bit. 

Chapman with No Neck Blues Band. Photo: John Ruscher

How did you gain a new audience in the ’90s?
I gained a new audience from CDs. When CDs came out, all my stuff got re-issued. Since all the vinyl was liked fried eggs, all the people that bought it the first time around re-bought it on CD. Then their kids were going ‘I wonder what me dad’s been buying. Who’s this guy Michael Chapman? Let’s stick him on! He’s alright! Oh shit, he’s playing ‘round the corner next week, let’s go down and see him’. So that’s how that started off originally.  It started off in America with people like Thurston Moore and Keith Connolly from No Neck Blues Band. Jack Rose and Glenn Jones were telling people about me and then John Allen saw me play at the Half Moon in London. 

What was your tour of America in the early 70s like?
On the tour I did of America in 1971, the only thing I didn’t get was shot. I didn’t get paid, I didn’t get fed and I didn’t get shot. It was a nightmare. It was so bad that I bottled out. I was supposed to be on for eight weeks and on the fifth week I just got on a plane home and said ‘Stuff it’. I was staying in an empty house in Cornwell with a girlfriend. All we had was a telephone and a mattress. The phone rang. It was a friend of mine calling from Holland. I told him I had just come back from America and it was bloody awful. I really have to rethink my life. He said ‘Oh, I guess you don’t want to tour with the Everly Brothers then?’ I asked when does it start. He said tomorrow afternoon. I said I’ll be there!

What is it like where you live in Northumbria?
I think they’re trying to encourage tourism, but they ate the last one. True story: The last public hanging in Haltwhistle Market Place was an 18-year-old girl and she was hanged for the crime of March Treason. Basically, she was hung for marrying a Scotsman. It was only last week! Basically, I’m just the guy who lives up the road. I do one big charity fundraiser event for me wife every year and that’s about it. I live in the middle of nowhere, but I’m 40 minutes away from an international airport. It couldn’t be better. Ever since I lived here, all my friends are farmers, miners, and truck drivers. The nearest musician is Maddy Prior. We came for a look around 42 years ago and we’re still here.