Loudon Wainwright III - Does Humour Belong In Music?

 

by Stuart Penney

The title of this piece comes to you courtesy of Frank Zappa who released a live album of that name in 1986.  Comedy in pop / rock is a notoriously difficult trick to pull off and few are able to marry the two successfully.  It’s one thing to write brilliant, comedic lyrics, but quite another to match them with high quality original songs ("Weird Al" Yankovic, I'm looking at you).

In my experience there are just a handful of artists who have consistently found the sweet spot between dark, caustic humour and great songwriting / musicianship.  Heading the list every time is Zappa, of course, closely followed by Randy Newman at his 70s/80s peak.  And then, we have Loudon Wainwright III.  He may be a tad less celebrated than the other two, but in the pantheon of tragicomic songwriters LWIII (as we shall call him) is right up there with those giants of disdain and acerbity.

I’ve been infatuated with Wainwright and his music for more than half a century.  His songs have regularly made me laugh and cry (mostly laugh, now I think about it) and every one of his 30-odd albums is uniformly excellent, often peppered with flashes of genius. 

He’s an engaging and hugely entertaining live performer too, and while it sounds an unlikely comparison, I often think of him as Frank Zappa with an acoustic guitar (but with a much friendlier disposition and the smut level dialled way down).  But how did this fascination with LWIII begin?  Come with me now as we travel back to the early 70s. 

After Bob Dylan withdrew from public life following his mysterious 1966 motorcycle accident, it sparked all kinds of crazy rumours and crackpot conspiracy theories.  One such tale claimed Bob had died and been replaced with a lookalike.  Even though Dylan soon returned to the recording studio he kept a much lower profile than before.  His voice was different and, apart from the occasional live appearance (eg Isle of Wight Festival in 1969), he would not tour again until 1974.  That was more than enough solid “evidence” for some that the “old Bob” was gone forever.  

So, in a move which, at this distance, can only be described as bizarre, if not a little desperate, the US music industry and the rock press began the search for someone to fill the void.  The hunt was on for what they insisted on calling the “New Bob Dylan.”  Presumably that meant they were looking for a candidate who played acoustic guitar, wore a harmonica rack around their neck and delivered self-penned deep and meaningful songs in a wheezy, Dylanesque voice.

Names pulled from the Woody Guthrie-style denim fisherman’s cap included (but were not limited to) Elliott Murphy, John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn, Tim Buckley, Steve Forbert and even Bruce Springsteen.  But of all those worthy troubadours there was only one man who had the wit, wisdom and self-awareness to write a song about the entire sorry business and that was Loudon Wainwright III.  Here’s a lyric extract from “Talking New Bob Dylan” which appeared on his 1992 album History:

Out of commission, had a motorcycle wreck

Holed up in Woodstock, with a broken neck

The labels were signin' up guys with guitars,

Out to make millions, lookin' for stars

Well, I figured it was time to make my move

Songs from the Westchester County Delta country

Yeah, I got a deal, and so did John Prine, Steve Forbert and Springsteen, all in a line

They were lookin' for you, signin' up others

We were "new Bob Dylans" your dumb-ass kid brothers

Well, we still get together every week at Bruce's house

Why, he's got quite a spread, I’ll tell ya, it's a twelve-step program

Interviewed by Melody Maker in late 1970, Wainwright said "Every time I see myself compared to Bob Dylan I cringe.  I'd like them to stop, but there's nothing I can do about it."  Far from being comfortable with the new Dylan tag, Wainwright preferred to describe himself as "a post psychedelic aristocratic beatnik."

I first encountered LWIII around the time of his 1971 second album.  The songs on Album II - especially “Motel Blues,” “Saw Your Name In The Paper” and “Plane; Too” - were funny and sardonic in equal measure and they really resonated with me.  Best of all was the tender “Be Careful There’s A Baby In The House.”  Almost 50 years later I made sure this beautifully observed song took pride of place in a Spotify playlist marking the birth of our first grandchild. 

Then there were the succinct yet jocular album titles themselves.  His 1970 debut Loudon Wainwright III was followed by Album II and, as sure as night follows day, we saw Album III in 1972.  Led Zeppelin were using a similar pithy numbering technique with their LP titles at the same time, but Loudon had a distinct advantage over Jimmy Page and co – that surfeit of Roman numerals actually formed part of his name. 

Ed. Note: In what must have been a marketing man's fever dream LWIII and Led Zeppelin actually appeared side by side as the opening tracks on the 1972 UK sampler LP The New Age Of Atlantic (Atlantic K20024).  Zeppelin’s “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do” was followed by Loudon’s “Motel Blues.”

Except possibly on his somewhat earnest debut album, Wainwright didn’t really sound much like Dylan and all comparisons would evaporate in later years as his songwriting matured and his voice became sweeter and more melodic.  He didn’t look like Bob either, being several inches taller and built like an American footballer.  But he had a similar unkempt, ragamuffin image and his songs were quirky and confessional.  Did I mention many of them were also very funny?  

In 1973 he scored his first and only hit single with “Dead Skunk,” a banjo and fiddle-driven country flavoured track lifted from Album III.  This eulogy to roadkill is probably still his biggest and best-known song to this day.  Milestone or millstone, for better or worse, it’s his very own “Stairway to Heaven,” if you will:

Take a whiff on me, that ain't no rose

Roll up your window and hold your nose

You got your dead skunk in the middle of the road

Stinkin' to high heaven.

I suspect the first line quoted above sailed right over most AM radio listeners’ heads.  Used by LWIII to imply “smell,” “Take a whiff on me” was a clever pun borrowed from the title of a much-covered American folk song of that name referencing cocaine use.  The first recorded version from 1930 was titled "Cocaine Habit Blues" by the Memphis Jug Band, but it was Lead Belly who brought the song to prominence.  In the UK there was a 1961 sanitised version by Lonnie Donegan titled “Have A Drink On Me.”  A decade later Mungo Jerry covered Woody Guthrie's version of "Have A Whiff On Me" on their "Lady Rose" EP and the record was banned from radio airplay by the BBC.   

As the years went by, he continued to release high quality albums on a regular basis (with the occasional foray into TV or movie acting - eg M*A*S*H).  Times and tastes may have changed but I always found time for the latest LWIII release: Attempted Mustache (1973), T-Shirt (1976), I’m Alright (1985), History (1992), Recovery (2008, in which he re-visited some of those early songs) and the rest.  Unlike many artists of his era, his songwriting only seemed to improve with age.

I had never seen him play live, but that changed in the mid-90s when he toured Australia on the back of the album Grown Man (1995).  In the interim much had happened in the Wainwright world.  Together with his first wife, the wonderful and sadly missed Kate McGarrigle (1946 – 2010), Loudon was now part of an impressive musical dynasty with their offspring Rufus Wainwright (b.1973) and Martha Wainwright (b.1976). 

His fractious relationship with his children proved a rich source of inspiration for songs.  These included “Hitting You” (1992), “Rufus Is A Tit Man” (1975), “Pretty Little Martha” (1978), “Five Years Old” (1983), “Your Mother And I” (1986) and much to Martha’s chagrin when she discovered it was written about her, “I’d Rather Be Lonely” (1992).  In retaliation the kids wrote their own Loudon-inspired songs, notably Martha’s “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole” (2005) and “Dinner At Eight” by Rufus (2003).

Over time LWIII’s albums had grown from sparce, solo recordings into extravagant full band affairs.  That was all very well, and it suited the material he was writing.  But for the pure, undiluted Loudon experience, just one man and his acoustic guitar will always be the only way to go.  And this was how I saw him perform at the intimate Fly By Night club in Fremantle, Western Australia.

Australian 7" EP 1973

Basically a converted Nissen hut, the (sadly now defunct) Fly By Night was laid out a little like Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in London (albeit, with a capacity of 500, twice the size) with tables up the front and standing room only at the back, so early arrival ensured a prime spot at a table within touching distance of the stage. 

Over the two-hour set we saw a textbook LWIII performance: the idiosyncratic face-pulling and bizarre tongue-waggling, the hail-fellow-well-met anecdotes, the perfectly timed ad libs and continuous banter with the crowd.  Plus, of course, we got all those wonderful songs, many of them chucklesome, others tender to the point of heartbreaking: (“Dead Skunk,” “Road Ode,” “Your Mother And I,” “The Swimming Song,” “Men,” “April Fool’s Day Morn” etc).  His voice was stronger and more flexible than I remembered and his guitar playing (still with that ubiquitous Martin D-28), while fairly rudimentary, suited the material perfectly.  

He was still cracking jokes and joshing around when he came back out after the encore to mingle with the fans.  Most of the audience had already drifted away, leaving just a handful of die-hards.  “Ah, my people!” he boomed with mock braggadocio as they offered up items to be autographed.  The wisecracking and congeniality continued to the very end.

Before leaving I asked him to sign my treasured original vinyl copy of Album II.  It was the same one I’d had since first discovering his music in 1971.  It was the record I owned back when he was still in the race to find the “New Bob Dylan.”  And that, my friends, was quite literally a lifetime ago.  

As for the somewhat rhetorical title of this essay.  As long as the high-quality music in question includes a healthy dose of satire, irony, pathos and sarcasm (not necessarily all in the same song), the answer must surely be an emphatic "yes."

 A Spotify Playlist To Explore

The Ultimate Nick Drake Rarity?

 

How did an impossibly rare Nick Drake vinyl LP turn up in a tiny Australian outback town? Stuart Penney tells the story.

Nick Drake’s records have always been somewhat elusive.  In fact, until the digital age arrived, and music became freely available to all, his vinyl LPs were invariably hard to find and generally quite expensive, too, even as reissues.  Why was this?  Let’s put it down to that old cliché supply and demand.  Except, unfortunately for Nick the demand didn't arrive while he was around to enjoy it.

In July 1969 his debut Five Leaves Left was released to modest interest from the folk music community, but widespread indifference from the general record buying public.  Initial sales of that LP can only be described as woeful.  I’ve heard it said that just 400 copies of the first pressing of FLL were sold in the weeks after release.  That number sounds a little low even for the most willfully obscure niche artist and I’d guess a couple of thousand copies is probably closer to the mark, certainly during Nick’s lifetime.  But then, on the other hand, that low figure could explain the crazy prices we see today, with pink label original copies regularly changing hands for £1,000 or more online.

Poor sales notwithstanding, Five Leaves Left had one important thing in its favour: it was on the Island label.  Since diversifying from Jamaican music and soul into white boy prog, psych, blues and folk around 1967, it’s probably fair to say Island had released barely a bad album.  Just about everything on Chris Blackwell’s label was worthy of investigation back then and Nick’s debut surely gained a following wind from groundbreaking releases by his Island stable mates John Martyn, Traffic, Jethro Tull, Free, King Crimson, Cat Stevens and the rest, even if it didn’t necessarily translate into sales.  If any UK record company could lay claim to the handle “trademark of quality” at that time, surely it was Island.

Sales wise, Drake’s final two records Bryter Layter (1971) and Pink Moon (1972) fared little better than his first and a reluctance to play live certainly didn’t help matters.  To his credit Blackwell refused to delete the albums despite the poor sales.  Then, following Nick’s death in 1974, the Island boss vowed that the three LPs would remain on catalogue as long as he had a say in the matter.

All of which brings us to my own copy of Five Leaves Left.  Although I never owned a first pressing of the LP in 1969, I knew people who did, and we fell in love with Nick’s hypnotic songs, unique guitar style and his voice like warm molasses.  Robert Kirby’s haunting string arrangements on four tracks were the icing on a delicious cake.

Naturally, as fully paid-up wannabe “heads” my pals and I were also acutely aware of the nudge-nudge nature of the album title.  It was a reference to the insert found towards the end of each packet of Rizla cigarette rolling papers, warning users they had “only five leaves left.”  Despite being scarcely able to stump up enough cash for a ten-bob deal between us, this surreptitious reefer reference made us feel like we were somehow part of Nick’s impossibly hip gang.

 

I watched over the years as those early, original Nick Drake vinyl LPs rocketed in value, even after the CDs became available.  It seemed that a combination of the always collectible Island label and the desire to own an original piece of Nick’s legend had driven prices into the stratosphere.  How we wished we’d had the foresight (or, indeed, the wherewithal) to buy a dozen copies in 1969.

By the mid-80s I was living in Western Australia and had started my own second-hand record store, stocked with thousands of LPs I brought over from London.  As luck would have it, 1985 was the perfect time to open such an enterprise in Australia.  Collectable records were starting to become big business in Britain, with Record Collector magazine taking its first faltering steps and record fairs popping up everywhere.  But the boom had yet to take off down under, especially in the sleepy west coast city of Perth.  So, for a few years I had the rare vinyl field almost to myself, especially as so many people started to jettison their LPs in favour of the newfangled CD format.

One day I received a call asking if I would be interested in buying a large record collection.  The LPs were located about a two-hour drive east of Perth in a small country town with a population of (according to Wikipedia) just 725.  It transpired that following a divorce, the owner had moved to the east coast a decade earlier, locking up the house and its contents.  Now he had decided it was time to sell up.

I was given the keys by his ex-wife and drove out to take a look.  The scene which greeted me was like something from a Stephen King movie.  The house looked virtually abandoned.  The electricity was disconnected, so the place was dark and gloomy, with everything covered in a decade’s worth of dust and cobwebs.

The furniture was old and threadbare and there were torn and dirty bedsheets covering the windows as makeshift curtains.  And there, taking up all available floor space in every room (bathroom, toilet and an outbuilding included) were thousands upon thousands of records.  When I counted them later it turned out there were around 8,000 LPs and almost as many singles.  It took three trips with two cars and a box trailer to take them all back to Perth over a couple of weekends (see photo below).  It was the kind of score every record dealer dreams of.

I won’t bore you with too many details of the collection, but you name it, and it was probably there: all the early UK Elvis LPs on HMV, both unfeasibly rare Blossom Toes albums and clean original copies of every conceivable 60s collectible album, including items by the Artwoods, Davy Graham, the Zombies and countless more besides.  And there, almost unnoticed amid the tsunami of rare and desirable items was a UK copy of Five Leaves Left.

Apart from a few dozen choice items which I still have, I sold most of the collection over the years.  But I kept the Nick Drake LP simply because it wasn’t in the best of condition.  For a start the sleeve was in two halves, so I assumed it was damaged and therefore unsaleable.  That was not the case, but thankfully I didn’t know any better at the time.

It proved to be a good move because since then it’s been identified as an advance promo copy of Five Leaves Left sent out to reviewers and the like with the sleeve (front and back) in two separate pieces, or “slicks,” which are slightly taller than normal.  Other differences include the Island box logo and catalogue number on the back cover.  This appears in black on all regular released copies but is printed in green ink here and is the only known Island release to use this colour typeface.

 

The matrix number in the runout grooves is also the lowest one ever seen for this release:

Side One: ILPS 9105 A//2 111.  Side Two: ILPS 9105 B//2 113

On side one the tracks “Day Is Done” and “Way To Blue” are reversed on the label and sleeve.  The album actually plays “Way to Blue” followed by “Day is Done.”  On subsequent pressings this error was corrected on the label, if not the sleeve.

On my copy the pink Island label (with its Witchseason logo) has faded almost to white.  Whether it was always like this or has faded due to exposure to the sun, I can’t say.

So, what I initially thought was a damaged and virtually worthless item was in fact correct and incredibly rare.  I’ve no idea how many were made like this, but I’ve only ever seen a handful for sale online, so I’d estimate no more than 50 copies were produced.

As I write (January 2024), only one copy of this item is currently for sale on Discogs with an eye-watering asking price of £6,000.  That figure may seem crazy and who knows if it will even sell at that price.  But such is the collectability of Nick Drake and the pink Island label today I'm sure it will find a good home eventually.

Would I part with my copy?  Well, I do also have back-ups in the form of the CD and an early 70s vinyl pressing on the Island pink rim palm tree label (even that is a £150 item in nice condition), so yes, I probably could live without the original.  Maybe I should take it on Antiques Roadshow, assuming their pop culture expert has even heard of Nick, that is.  But then again, perhaps I’ll hold onto it a while longer and see where the price ends up five years from now.

Footnote:

In early 2024 esteemed music journalist and broadcaster Danny Baker announced he was about to sell his massive personal record collection.  In the Nick Drake section of the online auction catalogue Danny added this comment:

"The night before my records were carted away by [auction house] Omega - four men, five hours in the shifting - my son came round and I asked him again if there were any final records he wanted for himself. He said no. Then, after a minute or so, he said, “Actually Dad, I haven’t ever had a good copy of Five Leaves Left.  Do you have a spare?”  Well I didn’t have a “spare” but I did have the mint original.  So I gave it to him.  That’s why it’s not here and there’s a grand I’ll never see again.  Likewise my signed copy of John Martyn’s Solid Air.  I taught that kid well..."

The first of several loads of records packed and ready to go