Townes Van Zandt
Townes Van Zandt (born March 7, 1944 in Fort Worth , Texas , † January 1, 1997 in Smyrna , Tennessee ) was an American musician and singer-songwriter . He is considered to be an important style-forming forerunner of alternative country and the newer singer-songwriter scene within country music .
Life
Townes Van Zandt was born into a wealthy Texan family who had been in the oil business for several generations and was named after one of the state's 254 counties . He was a descendant of Isaac Van Zandt , a prominent leader of the Republic of Texas and the early state of Texas. Van Zandt grew up mainly in the Texas cities of Fort Worth and Midland as well as in Boulder , Colorado . Due to the frequent moves of his parents, he also lived temporarily in Billings ( Montana ), Barrington ( Illinois ) and in Minnesota . As a teenager, he was sent to boarding school to be prepared for a career in American football and the military . He also played baseball and was active in wrestling . But here he was an outsider and had his first more intensive experiences with some intoxicants. He started sniffing glue, which resulted in his being clinically pronounced dead once and losing almost all of his front teeth. After he dropped from the 4th floor to see what it felt like, he was given inpatient psychiatric treatment for three months because of suicidal tendencies. He was diagnosed with schizophrenic psychosis and manic depression , which ruined his planned career in the military. In 1964 he was given combined electroconvulsive and insulin shock therapy, which he said had erased his childhood memories.
Townes Van Zandt began playing guitar at the age of nine after seeing Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show and being fascinated by the effect he had on his sister and her girlfriend. During his law studies at the University of Houston , he gave his first concerts in various folk clubs in the city from the mid-1960s. Here he met musicians such as Jerry Jeff Walker , Blaze Foley and Guy Clark , with whom he was lifelong friends. His wife Susanna became his soul mate and confidante until his death. He opened for Doc Watson and Lightnin 'Hopkins . In the apartment that his parents paid for him and his then newly married wife Fran Lohr, he set up his first recording studio in a walk-in closet.
In 1966, Kevin Eggers signed him to Poppy Records in Nashville . In 1968 his first album For the Sake of the Song, produced by Jack Clement and Jim Malloy , was released . With Waiting Around to Die it contained the (according to his words) first "serious" original composition. By 1972 he recorded five more albums that had little commercial success. In Houston, the young Steve Earle was one of Van Zandt's protégés and friends. Earle took care of the hut, in which Van Zandt led a hermit life from 1975 to 1977 and dedicated himself to the breeding of Morning Glorys . The friendship was severely disrupted when Van Zandt challenged his friend to Russian roulette . Regardless of this, Earle named his son, who was born in 1982 and later also hit the singer-songwriter career, after his mentor Justin Townes Earle . Following this time, Van Zandt moved to Nashville and released the live double album Live at the Old Quarter Houston, Texas , which was recorded in 1973 and, according to many fans, contains definitive versions of many of his most famous songs. In 1978 another studio album, Flyin 'Shoes , was released, which is considered the best of its later phase. The title track is one of Van Zandt's best-known songs.
In the first half of the 1980s, cover versions of his songs Pancho & Lefty ( Merle Haggard & Willie Nelson ) and If I Needed You ( Emmylou Harris & Don Williams ) hit the US country charts. He continued to tour, but didn't record his eighth studio album At My Window until 1987 . Several live albums followed, some of which were only released in Europe. In 1994 his last studio album was released, No Deeper Blue , which was recorded in Ireland with Irish musicians.
Townes Van Zandt was married three times and had three children. His son from his first marriage, John Townes (* 1969), is now following in his father's footsteps as a musician. Children from his third marriage to Jeanene Van Zandt, who divorced in 1994, are his second son William Vincent (* 1983) and his daughter Katie Belle (* 1992).
Van Zandt never made it beyond his cult status to a major commercial breakthrough, even if other musicians had success with cover versions of his songs. This was not least due to the fact that he was manic-depressive , drug-dependent and, until recently, alcohol-dependent . However, he published and performed until his death. His last European tour, on which he also performed in Germany, took place in November / December 1996. Townes Van Zandt died on New Year's morning 1997 of a heart attack as a result of serious hip surgery and delirium tremens . He died exactly 44 years to the day after his idol Hank Williams and was 52 years old.
music
Van Zandt is used by representatives of the Texan singer-songwriter scene, such as Nanci Griffith , Lyle Lovett , Mickey Newbury , Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore , as well as by representatives of the alternative country , such as B. Gillian Welch , named as an important and formative influence. He toured with the Cowboy Junkies , for whom he wrote the song Cowboy Junkies' Lament , and Lucinda Williams dedicates the piece 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten to him in her concerts . In 1973 Doc Watson covered one of his songs ( If I Needed You ). The song was also recorded by Emmylou Harris in 1977 and made known to a wider audience. In 1982 country stars Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard recorded Van Zandt's song Pancho and Lefty . In this version he made it to number 1 on the country charts. Van Zandt's name became well known in the country mainstream and he got appearances on renowned television shows. According to his family, he was relatively little interested in success.
Since the 1990s, musicians from other styles, such as u. a. the Tindersticks , Mudhoney and Norah Jones , songs recorded by him and Pancho & Lefty sometimes appears on Bob Dylan's setlist .
One of Van Zandt's most important influences, along with Hank Williams and the early Bob Dylan, was the Texas blues musician Lightnin 'Hopkins , who died in 1982 and whose pieces he also played in his concerts. Therefore, categorizing Van Zandt exclusively as a country musician does not do him justice - which is true for most of the great songwriters of the genre. His openness to influences beyond country music is one of the reasons he is seen as an essential precursor to alternative country. Another reason are the rather gloomy themes and the sometimes depressive mood of many of his songs, which were thus hardly commercially exploitable for the Nashville country industry, but which exert a great fascination on a younger generation of musicians who strive for authenticity .
His fingerstyle play and also his flat picking were accomplished, but were never in the foreground and always served the song. When he played the blues, the influence of Sam Lightnin 'Hopkins on his guitar style was evident.
When Townes Van Zandt was in good shape, he was the master of small, intimate gigs. Not only his songs, but also his stories and anecdotes, the sometimes rough jokes and puns made many of his concerts unforgettable evenings for the audience. This was also true when the number of viewers sometimes did not exceed a handful - and many of them already knew not only the songs but also most of the jokes and anecdotes.
In the US he performed regularly with Guy Clark, mostly in clubs and bars in Texas where he played for a small but loyal fan base. However, he also toured through clubs all over the USA and especially in the 1990s through Europe, where music lovers had become increasingly aware of him since the late 1980s. The aforementioned live album Live at The Old Quarter Houston, Texas reproduces the typical atmosphere of one of his gigs from 1973.
Townes Van Zandt was modest and rather shy in his demeanor. His often dry humor was central to his shows. In addition to light and humorous songs, bittersweet, dark and melancholy love songs were always part of his program. These include u. a. For the Sake of the Song and Tecumseh Valley , which he wrote with the stated intention of writing a folk song. The song If I Needed You , which u. a. Julia Roberts sings in the 1998 film Side by Side (original title: Stepmom ) and which was also used for the soundtracks of the films Crazy Heart (2009) and The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012), Van Zandt wrote while she was sleeping - he wrote down the text from memory one night after waking from a dream in which he had sung it.
Quotes
- "There are only two kinds of music: There's the blues, and there's Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah." - Townes Van Zandt
- "[A] woman in the audience yelled out, 'Don't you know any happy songs?' Townes said, 'Ma'am, these are happy.' "- John Herndon
- “I don't think my songs are all that sad. I have a few who are not sad - they are just hopeless. ”- Townes Van Zandt
- "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that." - Steve Earle
- "I've met Bob Dylan and his bodyguards, and I don't think Steve [Earle] could get anywhere near his coffee table." - Townes Van Zandt
- “I met Townes when I played drums with Steve Earle in 1973 and 1974. Townes was successful, had some good albums out. I thought he had a great house with some fancy cars out front. When we get there, we see an old trailer with no windows, no furniture, a mattress in the bedroom, a couch and a couple of chickens running around. That's when I knew it was about the music. ”- Drummer Leland Waddell on his first meeting with Townes Van Zandt, who lived in a decrepit trailer in Clarksville with his wife Cindy.
- "I think of Townes Van Zandt as being the greatest folk song writer that my native state of Texas ever gave birth to. […] There are some of us songwriters who are just lyricists, but Townes Van Zandt was definitely a poet. ”- Nanci Griffith
- "He's not really a country singer, you wouldn't call him a blues artist, he's not quite a folk singer, he doesn't exactly write pop songs, so what is he? He does not fit neatly into a category and to me, that is what sets him apart as a great artist. "- Steve Shelley, Sonic Youth
- “I was booked for this gig 30 years ago.” - Guy Clark at his friend's funeral.
Discography
Albums released during his lifetime
Posthumously released studio albums
Posthumously released live albums
Compilations
Tribute albums
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Filmography
- Heartworn Highways. Documentary, Snapper / Catfish, 1981/2003, with Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark , David Allan Coe and Steve Earle .
- Passacor. Feature film (Roadmovie), Germany, 1993, soundtrack: Townes Van Zandt; Directors: Alaric Hamacher, Bernd Reufels, Stefan Sarazin.
- Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt. Documentary with Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson , Kinky Friedman and Emmylou Harris ; Director: Margaret Brown, USA 2005.
swell
Books about Townes Van Zandt
- John Kruth: To Live Is To Fly , 2007
- Robert Earl Hardy: A Deeper Blue , 2008
- Brian T. Atkinson: I'll Be Here In The Morning , 2012
- Martin Wimmer: I'm the new Hilmar and sadder than Townes , 2016
Audio sources
- Interview with Larry Monroe on Townes Van Zandt: Documentary (Normal CD 211)
Web links
- Be Here To Love Me - A Film About Townes Van Zandt in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Townes Van Zandt Central (English)
- Townes Van Zandt Blue Sky Homepage (English)
- Townes Van Zandt at Allmusic (English)
- Townes Van Zandt at laut.de
- Townes Van Zandt on Myspace
Individual evidence
- ^ Michael Corcoran: All Over the Map: True Heroes of Texas Music . University of North Texas Press, 2017, ISBN 978-1-57441-668-8 , pp. 77 ( google.de [accessed on August 12, 2020]).
- ^ Anthony Decurtis: Rocking My Life Away: The Ghost of Townes Van Zandt . In: Rolling Stone , January 25, 2002
- ^ John Herndon: For the Sake of the Song. The musical legacy of Townes Van Zandt . In: Acoustic Guitar . No. 53 May 1997, ISSN 1049-9261 or 1044-9261, p. 39.
- ↑ a b c d e Be Here to Love Me , the film by Margaret Brown
- ^ Nancy Griffith: Interview on National Public Radio (AU audio file), Jan. 2, 1997
- ^ Adam Sweeting: Keeping quiet for the sake of a song . In: The Guardian (UK), January 1997.
- ↑ madman.com
- ↑ Review on allmusic.com
- ↑ blowthescene.com
- ↑ Passacör in the lexicon of international film
- ↑ Documentary about Townes Van Zandt: Sad Troubadour on Spiegel Online
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Van Zandt, Townes |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American musician and singer-songwriter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 7, 1944 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Fort Worth , Texas, USA |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 1, 1997 |
| Place of death | Mount Juliet , Tennessee, USA |