Hello and welcome to the show today. I hope you’ve been having a fabulous week. Today’s episode is all about a true master storyteller, the wonderful Ralph McTell.
If you’ve ever been stopped in your tracks by a song that feels like a perfectly crafted short story set to music, chances are you’ve already crossed paths with Ralph’s work. He’s best known for the timeless classic Streets of London, but he spent decades capturing everyday lives with warmth, wit, and a deep sense of humanity. In today’s episode, we dive deep into Ralph McTell’s remarkable journey through the British folk scene, the stories behind the songs, and the experiences that shaped one of the most distinctive voices in acoustic music.
It’s an honest and warm conversation about craft, compassion, and the enduring power of a beautifully written song. So settle in, because this one is for anyone who believes a great lyric can actually change the way you see the world. ♪ Have you seen the old man in the closed down market ♪ ♪ Kicking up the paper with his worn out shoes ♪ ♪ In his eyes you see no pride ♪ ♪ And hold loosely at his side yesterday’s paper ♪ ♪ Telling yesterday’s news ♪ Welcome to A Breath of Fresh Air, Ralph McTell.
Terrific to meet you. How are you? I’m pretty good, actually. You know, lots going on, and very much looking forward to coming to Australia again.
Each time I come, I wonder if it’ll be the last time, and this will be the last time, because of course, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and had surgery and radiology and all that. And then of course, in the middle of all this, my wife took ill and passed away just over a year ago. So if it hadn’t been for music and the affection of the people that write to me and my wonderful family, I doubt that I would still have the motivation to continue.
But I’m actually in a bit of a creative flow at the moment. I’m starting to write again and to value what’s happened to me. And I feel that the may sound odd.
I know I’m no longer auditioning. I just want to get out there and play and share the songs and stories that have been part of my life. I’m feeling very grateful and very fortunate.
Well, they say that you have to have a rollercoaster life to get those creative juices flowing and getting inspiration. Yeah, I just think, you know, humanity needs artist statements, because everyone feels like they can’t change anything. The world is in a bad place at the moment.
There’s no doubt about it. And I accept the responsibility and the privilege of being, I don’t preach on stage, but I just think if we’re reminded of our common humanity through music and songs and statements, then that’s not a bad thing. ♪ She comes riding early in the morning, four to seven ♪ ♪ No one’s ever out at that hour ♪ ♪ With eyes that see her touch the morning fly secretly ♪ ♪ The leaves slow their commotion ♪ ♪ And the great trees gently sway like an ocean on a still day ♪ ♪ And raising plays her voice to the sun ♪ ♪ Who announces the day has begun ♪ ♪ Are they friends or second best friends? ♪ If you wouldn’t mind reflecting on your career for me for a minute, actually it would be a little more than a minute.
You first discovered music, I believe, when you were given a plastic mouth organ from your grandfather at a very early age. Is that true? It was actually Father Christmas who gave me the plastic harmonica and immediately I could play Hot Cross Buns to the amazement of my mum. And thereafter, I became obsessed with the harmonica, the mouth organ, and saved up my pocket money to buy a little mouth organ which lived in my pocket and was with me all the time.
And I could play anything, almost any melody, by hearing it once. And then I wrote my first tune and it was clear that I had some sort of musical ability. Many years I’m going to go fast forward, but I’ll come back.
But I was reading about one of the greatest bluesmen of all time, which was Robert Johnson. And he was so shy, apparently, he actually played facing the other way into the corner of the room. And when I was asked to play my harmonica for my dear Auntie Olive, I had to sit behind a screen and then nothing for many a year until Skiffle came along and then my interest in music and rock and roll started again.
What was it about Skiffle that captured your imagination? The sound of the guitar. I just, what is that? In Skiffle, it was right in the front, this twanging, this joyful twanging and crashing and everything. And I loved the songs, especially Lonnie Donegan.
Things like the Grand Coulee Dam and Rock Island Line were old American folk songs. Well, the Rock Island Line is in the mighty good road. The Rock Island Line is the road to riding.
The Rock Island Line is in the mighty good road. And if you want to ride, you got to ride it like a pirate. You get your ticket at the station on the Rock Island Line.
Then that passed. I couldn’t afford a guitar, but I had a ukulele. And we formed a Skiffle group, me and my 11-year-old chums at school and learned some Buddy Holly songs and a couple of other things.
And then the ukulele took a back seat while all kinds of other things took over my life. I mean, my dad got killed in an accident around that time and I went from being quite a good student to being a terrible student. I joined the army as a boy soldier and then I got out and went back to college and then I discovered two things.
One was that this college was mixed, so there were girls there. And the other thing was music, music. Your first influences were the blues while you were at college, wasn’t it? Yeah, well, it was a cross between Woody Guthrie’s simple guitar styles and then these incredible, usually blind African-American musicians who turned the guitar on its head and were finding chords and sequences of fingerstyle playing, pianistic sounds.
I just, oh, what is going on? And, you know, you look at your guitar and think, all that music is still in there and I’ve got to find out how to play it. And I was devoted to it. Death don’t have no mercy In this land Death don’t have no mercy In this land He’ll come to your house And he won’t stay long You look in the bed And somebody’ll be gone Death don’t have no mercy In this land Death don’t go in any family In this land You say a lot of those old blues guys were blind.
I wonder whether the loss of that sense enhances another sense. I’ve got to say it must do because all the heroes that I have, I can name you three right now, there was Blind Bill Fuller, Blind Gary Davis, who became a reverend, and there was Blind Arthur Blake. And these three men evolved a style independently from each other, although one of them made records, so the others may have heard it.
But the shapes and the chord sequences and everything, those primitive blues, which is the basic 12-bar, these guys could play jazz, they could play ragtime, they could play with syncopated bass lines like a piano. Well, he’ll come to your house And he won’t stay long You look in the bed And somebody’ll be gone Death will leave you standing crying In this land Oh, death’s always in a hurry In this land Oh, death’s always in a hurry In this land In this land Well, he’ll come to your house And he won’t stay long You look in the bed And your mother’ll be gone Death’s always in a hurry In this land You actually studied with Reverend Gary Davis for a bit? No, I met him in Paris when I was busking on the street, and he said, Hey, man, you should come round to my place. We played some guitar together.
And I thought, Do I really want to do this? I’m so glad I did. And he played me a couple of pieces, and my jaw was hanging out. I said, That’s how you do it.
You’ve got to get your thumb working independently of your fingers. And learning all the little bass runs I’d learned when I was playing with a plectrum came in handy. And then you just sit there and do what they call woodshedding.
You just practice and practice and practice. And you couldn’t get the guitar out of my hands. I’ve been playing today.
I play every single day. And where did Wiz Jones come into the picture? Because it was him that actually suggested the name Mattel for you. That wasn’t your real name.
Darren Wiz, he was a legend already. He’s mentioned in Keith Richards’ biography. What happened? Wiz had had a similar kind of Damascus Road moment when he heard a guy called Ida Mansless or Blind Lemon Jefferson or something, and he could play blues and he could play Big Bill Broonzy songs, and everything was right about Wiz.
He had shoulder-length hair when that was certainly not fashionable. He wore a Levi’s. He had a broken-up guitar which was patched up.
And he played on the street. And he hitchhiked down to the south of France with his guitar on his back. And when I came back from copying him, really, hitchhiking around Europe with my guitar and my bundle of chords and a blanket, he noticed my guitar had improved somewhat.
And he invited me down to the West Country where he had some jobs playing in trailer parks and bars and stuff like that. And I joined him and played. And then we found a little folk club, and I got discovered because I played one of my own songs.
From there, I got a record contract. Have you seen the old man in the closed-down market Kicking up the paper with his worn-out shoes? In his eyes you see no pride And held loosely at his side Yesterday’s paper telling yesterday’s news So how can you tell me you’re lonely And say for you that the sun don’t shine? Let me take you by the hand And lead you through the streets of London Show you something to make you change your mind You weren’t known as Ralph McTell at the time, were you? Well, no, I picked that name because he had some posters printed and I’d never seen my name in print before. He said, well, I’ll just put Wiz Jones and Ralph May, which is my real name, M-A-Y.
And I said, do you mind if I change it? And he said, why would you want to change it? I said, well, I don’t think Wiz Jones, Ralph May sounds right, but Wiz Jones, Ralph Dada would sound better. And he said, oh, call yourself what you like then. So I said, Blind Willie McTell, and I thought, just to give Wiz a bit of a credit for giving me the name, I said that he gave me the name, but I took it myself, and he said it was all right.
Blind Willie McTell. Another one, another blind musician was one of my heroes on the 12-string guitar. And when I got my first record contract and I said, can I have my own name back? They said, oh, yeah, what is it? And I said, Ralph May.
And they went, oh, no, no, Ralph McTell is much better. In fact, I’ll tell you the truth, if I have to sign a legal document in my own name, I have to practice that signature because I’ve written McTell for so long on everything from albums to books to signing an Oscar. I forget how to write my own name.
It’s a good plan, actually, because I can check into a hotel and no one knows. Ralph, it was 1967 when you then put out your first album, and that had been arranged by Tony Visconti. It was released in 1968, and it went brilliantly.
Yes, and I don’t know why because we didn’t have a single on it, but it was a mysterious time in my life. I was now married to the girl I met when I was playing in Paris. I had a little boy.
I was just completely lost, really, and there was not many people around in England that could play that Raggedy Blue style. But there was something there. They gave me a second record, and, of course, the second record had Streets of London on it, and really the rest is really history.
That really was the song that defined you, wasn’t it? Yes, I can’t deny it. It’s so funny. The other day I thought, well, I was thinking about my life, because I was talking to other musicians, and I’d like to just say this to all those out there that have just done this with their lives, whether they’ve made money or anything.
If they’ve chosen to play music, it’s a wonderful thing to have done, and not everyone gets recognized. I was one of the lucky ones. Sometimes it’s helpful to have something like a song or a signature of some sort, but it’s what we did with our lives, and I always thought, I said, what if I hadn’t written Streets of London? I would be like these guys that have devoted their lives to music and practice and continue to practice this obsession.
Not just guys, I’m talking about songwriters, and they have every description. If you’ve chosen to do that with your life, then I think that’s a good thing. You don’t expect, and you probably won’t get rewarded for it, but you’ll have a personal satisfaction to know that it was a notable way to spend your life.
In the all-night cafe At a quarter past eleven Same old man Sitting there on his own Looking at the world Over the rim of his teacup Each tea lasts an hour And he wanders home alone So how can you tell me You’re lonely Don’t say for you that the sun don’t shine Let me take you by the hand And lead you through the streets of London Show you something To make you change your mind What drives a musician forward If it’s not to achieve fame and fortune, if it’s not to write the hit I can’t really explain it, but you know, I don’t read music, so I just have to put my hands on the guitar. I know the names of some of the chords that I play. Others I have to ask a proper musician, what’s this then? And they’ll say, oh, that’s got a flattened ninth over a seventh, or whatever it is.
And I say, well, it’s got the voice that I want at that place, so they’ll interpret it for me. And I just think the constant hope, and like you say, every bit of music in the world is in that sound hole somewhere. All you’ve got to do is to pull it out, coax it out of there.
And the way you do that is by constantly practicing, constantly pushing and playing, and in a relaxed state, sometimes when you’re not even thinking, you can make a mistake. And I know several musicians who said, oh, that was an error, but I built the error into a song or into a chord structure. So every now and then you get a little surprise, a happy accident occurs and grows into a song.
And sometimes people like it too.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. How would you weight the two parts, the music, the melody, as opposed to the lyrics? Which is more important? Well, that’s a very good question because in the beginning, I only wanted to be a guitar player.
I only wanted to be able to play good guitar. And when I started to write songs, I thought, well, the song is good. Then, if somebody wants to do it or has said they liked it, and then you think, well, what am I going to say when I’m writing? I was married at 20, just two days after my 22nd birthday.
So I didn’t write endless love songs. I looked at different aspects of being in a relationship. I observed others, and I wrote about different things.
And I suppose with that, you know, it’s difficult to talk about your own work, but there’s always a degree of compassion and humanity, I think, in the songs, or the wishing for it to be there. How can I bear it Knowing you’re there Whilst I’m here and I’m there And I’m nowhere and everywhere Dream of you, baby I dream of you, baby It’s driving me crazy These dreams of you And how can I hope to Do what I’m supposed to When all that I want When all that I need Is just to be close to you I dream of you, baby It’s driving me crazy These dreams of you Now I find, because I’m not geared to making hits in order to get an audience, I’ve got an audience that have stayed with me right from the early stages. I just look for the poetry.
And poetry isn’t just words. The poetry of the singer-songwriter is everything. It’s the tune, it’s the accompaniment, it’s the use of the guitar to emphasize a feeling or to give a mood to the structure, because poetry is a high art where they don’t need music.
It means it’s more obscure because it doesn’t have the wheels on it that carry a song lyric. So the wheels of the music for a lyric. But then the lyrics now take me such a long… They always have done.
But I seek to be poetic. I seek to be poetic now. And I don’t want to write trite things unless it’s really tongue-in-cheek and it’s supposed to be funny.
And I’m not very good at it, but there’s a couple that I’m quite pleased with. But mostly, especially in these times, I’m seeking to go back and to find the humanity in the song without being a preacher or anything, but just let it filter through, sometimes in just one line or a particular chord that will make you a little subconscious gasp or something like that in an accompaniment. If I take you dancing Down the streets to watch you laughing And stop still in the spring night rain Just to watch you smile again Understand I’ll hold your hand a little tight As if by this I’ll stop the night From running into morning light too soon Ice cream and candy balls A Paris moon and Paris stars Can you count the times That we heard the chimes of Notre Dame Across the Seine To remind us sadly once again Time just like a river Will swiftly pass in by This Christmas time, I was persuaded to have a string quartet with me.
Now, that’s okay if you read music, but if I make a mistake or breathe an extra half bar in, I put four other people out of tune, so I’ve never been under so much pressure to get it right. I did, and it was such a success. We’re still getting letters about this Christmas concert that I’m going to look at some of my older songs that don’t have strings and string quartet on them and do them again, and hopefully people will investigate a little bit further into the lyrical side of it and find some of the hidden things in the songs because they’re often hidden, double meaning.
I think people get a lot out of both the tunes and probably more so the lyrics. That’s how you can really make a difference, as you said earlier. In talking about lyrics, tell me a little bit about Streets of London.
Where did those thoughts come from? Well, again, I don’t know what makes some kids more sensitive to other people than other kids. I think it’s because of our dire poverty as we were growing up and not having mum around all the time because she was working in shops or was a charlady. She was a domestic help for people.
We were on very poor money and we didn’t have many things. So my brother and I were street boys in the sense that we could be out, especially on holidays when mum was still at work. The streets were ours and we used to venture much further away from home than we should have done.
And we were blessed in our town of Croydon, which is in South London, of a brilliant street market called Surrey Street which is principally a vegetable street market. But it was full of characters and barkers, as we call them, shouting out their wares and so on. And the Saturday morning pitches was at the end of this road.
And everybody used to go partly for the spectacle and the colour of the street market and partly to go shopping. And it would take us sometimes as long to walk through the market as it had been at the Saturday morning picture show for the kids. And you start to notice characters and you see that there are people poorer than you or people not properly dressed and some odd people.
And then at night when we used to collect the old boxes and fruit would come in and that for the firewood and stuff like that, dragging great piles of boxes home of firewood. And I saw this old boy kicking through the rubbish as if he was almost kicking through the leaves, but he was really looking for bits that had fallen off the cart, like a tomato or a potato, and pick them up, put them in his pocket. And it was an image that stayed with me for a very long time.
And once I’d got him, the other three images in the song quickly came to mind. But the only reason I wrote the song was at that time compassion and political writing were merging through the likes of Bob Dylan and acolytes that were trying to write something like him. And suddenly this thought of isolation, because the song is not about homelessness.
It was the last thing on my mind. The song was about individual people that live in the city or within the city, but are outside it. They’re locked in, you know.
And that was because the guy that I wrote it for had decided that heroin was the way out. And I tried to tell him, I was about 19 when this all started, and I said, you know, you’re just losing all your mates. And he said, well, yeah, I do feel lonely.
And I said, well, you’re making yourself lonely, and then you’re alienating yourself. And then I sort of thought about these other things, and the two things came together. You see them in every city.
They don’t have the nobility of the tramp on the road with his back and his red spotted handkerchief. There’s a nobility to that moving life, but within the city where you’re so cut off and alienated from the people around you, it was an intriguing thing. And I found four characters for that song.
Have you seen the old man in the closed-down market Kicking up the paper with his worn-out shoes? In his eyes you see no pride And held loosely at his side Yesterday’s paper telling yesterday’s news So how can you tell me you’re lonely And say for you that the sun don’t shine? Let me take you by the hand And lead you through the streets of London Show you something to make you change your mind I believe it was initially recorded in one take and re-recorded in 1974 when it did become a worldwide million-seller, and it won you the Ivor Novello Award also. Were you surprised that it did so well? No, I wasn’t really because, can I tell you, I believe that within four days of the album coming out, somebody heard the song in Australia. Now, it had been sung in folk clubs and people had noticed it, but the fact that this song had wings of its own and just got a cover version within about a week and it’s had, I think, the ones we can enumerate, about 400 cover versions registered, but there are thousands of people out there that have sung it and used it, so it just has travelled on its own.
In fact, the great jazz singer Cleo Lane went to the publisher and said, we’re going to do that old English folk song, Streets of London, and the publisher said, well, actually, we published that. It’s a new song by Ralph McTell and I met Cleo Lane and we had a little smile about that. By the time that was republished, you’d already gone to America and you’d been hanging out with your friends that were in the band Fairport Convention.
By that time, you were up to your, I think, fifth album, Not Till Tomorrow. You just kept pushing them out all the time until we get to the song Maddie Dances, which I believe was inspired by, again, more of your friends from Steel Eyes Band. That’s right, dear Maddie.
Maddie Pryor, what a talented, wonderful, unique singer she is. She still manages to be feminine, but one of the chaps at the same time in the sense that she’s always been the only girl in the band, or nearly always. And, you know, it can be rough with a load of geezers on the road and Maddie just weathers it.
She’s learnt all the tricks of the road and she’s just a great person. She still dances, but when she was younger, she had a lightness, like a ballet dancer. I was with Danny Thompson, the great bass player one day.
We’d gone along to see them. And Maddie seemed to be floating around the stage. I went, oh, look at that.
She’s amazing, isn’t she? And I thought, you know, you’d have to be dead or dying not to think, be moved by the grace that Maddie had. And so I wrote that little song about her when Maddie dances. Doesn’t it move you just a little bit And if you watch I think the chances That’ll lift your heart a little bit Oh, well, I mean when Maddie dances Oh, well, I mean when Maddie dances Look at her stepping sure and lightly Oh, I do swear you must believe that If she don’t lift your heart just slightly Oh, well, I mean when Maddie’s dancing Oh, well, I mean when Maddie’s dancing It was at that time then too, I think around 76, when you did do your first tour of Australia as well as the Far East.
Tell me the story around your flagship concert at Sydney Opera House because that really says a lot about you as a person. Well, it was just extraordinary. Can I just tell you that one of the last gigs I did in Australia, the last tour, was in a sheep shearer’s shed somewhere outside of Melbourne.
I said, it usually goes the other way, doesn’t it? It goes from the sheep shearer’s shed to the Sydney Opera House. No, I think the record had started to move and the promoter just took a flyer and said, how do you fancy playing at the Sydney Opera House? And I said, well, what do you think? I said, it was one of the great moments of my life without a shadow of doubt. I don’t remember much about it because I was just in awe.
I guess the Sydney Opera House, for anybody who doesn’t know, kind of holds the same esteem as perhaps Carnegie Hall in New York City. Oh, definitely, definitely. The venue itself is not what I was referring to when I said that shows a little bit about who you are as a person because I believe, and maybe I need to say this rather than get you to say it, was that you arranged for local Australian buskers in Sydney to be given free tickets to your concert that night.
Well, that’s probably right. I can’t remember now. It’s nice to put a bit back, isn’t it? On the last tour, we found out a bloke that does one of the ferries out of Sydney and we knew he was coming, so I dedicated the song to him and it kind of blew him away.
Little things like that mean a lot, you know. Oh, the traveller Moving on the line Behold, I give you I give you the travelling man And he’s very heavy laden With the questions in his burden Low, and I give you the travelling man Can you believe 50 years have passed so quickly? No, I know I can’t. And that’s the other thing about music.
It is a way of cheating time, I think. Sometimes you just cannot figure out where it’s all gone. I think that there was a kind of revolution against worthiness with the punk movement that came out, but gradually music’s found its feet again.
But I’ve got grandchildren. In fact, I’ve even become a great-grandpa in the last… Thank you. Amazing.
I know they want everything at the touch of a button, and that doesn’t happen with guitar or piano or any instrument. You’ve got to be prepared to put the time in, and when I see a kid that’s just locked into it, I think, oh, there’s hope, you know. Because music is pretty instantaneous, and I think a lot of kids think it’s free.
It comes from your phone or wherever. So two of my nephews are into this DJing thing where they do dance music, and I’m just imagining in the old folks’ home, here’s a bit of hip-hop or whatever it is they’re going to be. Let’s all join in with this one.
Oh, really? It’s not exactly, you know, where have all the flowers gone? I pick them every one Oh, when will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn? Where have all the young girls gone Long time passing Where have all the young girls gone Long time ago Where have all the young girls gone Gone for husbands every one Oh, when will they ever learn Oh, when will they ever learn That’s something that everybody should sing along to. Absolutely.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Ralph, tell me about the song Bentley and Craig.
That was another huge one for you. Wow, it was. It’s hard to believe when you… When I sang this abroad, for example, in Germany, where they want to know the detail of everything, they would say to me, I think you got it wrong because, you know, Bentley didn’t kill a policeman.
The other guy killed a policeman. You said they hanged Bentley, and I said, that’s what they did. It was to discourage them.
It was after the war. We can find excuses for the policeman’s attitude and ganging up on this poor kid. Bentley and Craig, the incident happened very near where I live.
In fact, Derek Bentley, the 19-year-old, was, you know, we would say, special needs now. But he had a hero worship for a 16-year-old boy called Christopher Craig. They were young yobs, you know, streetballers.
But Christopher had borrowed a shooter off his older brother who was up to no good. And they went out deliberately to try and rob somewhere. And in the course of this attempted robbery, they were spotted.
The police were alerted. The police turned up. The younger boy who had the gun shouted that he’d got a gun, so the police went back and got rifles out.
They got… managed to capture Derek, and he was under arrest at the time when he’s alleged to have said, let him have it, Chris, when the policeman asked for the gun. And the ambiguity of the statement, let him have it, helped to convince the jury that Derek had inspired the younger man to shoot. It’s now disputed, because I became aware of the case and met the lawyers that were trying to get Derek a pardon, that those words were never said.
And anyway, let him have it, Chris, which was the allegation. Derek only ever called his friend Kit, which is short for Chris. So it was all stitched up by police officers, and one month or two months after the incident, they hanged Derek Bentley at the age of 19.
And his amazing sister kept vigil every anniversary for 40-odd years and never lived to see him pardoned. But he did get a pardon, and I sang for his recommittal at Croydon Cemetery, and I sang that song. Not 52 in Croydon It was bombshite still around from the war November that year, food was scarcely after ration Two boys were bound to Robert’s store Craigie was just about 16 years old Bentley, he was 19 But Craig had a shooter stuck in his pocket Made him feel more like a man Out on the roof of Barlow and Parker Somebody saw them there In a manor of Benton As the police had arrived And when they saw them You can bet them boys were scared Craigie shouted that he had a gun Then he thought about the movies that he’d seen Back at Barlow, Lord If you sign the rifles out and arrive very quick Back on the sea It was heinous what actually happened to those two boys.
I just cannot, honestly, I think every old geezer, and I am now 81, I mean, thinks the world is in a worse state than it was when we came into it. I think it’s part of the old age that you think like that, but God, it is pretty grim at the moment, isn’t it? Absolutely. I know that you’ve been friends with Billy Connolly, the comedian, for a long, long time, and one of the songs that you did was adopted as a theme for his television travelogue.
Are you still in contact with Billy, and how is he today? I spoke to Billy about three weeks ago. He always says, I’m great, I’m great, but then he might say that it’s more of a struggle now, that the illness is heavy, it’s a heavy burden to bear. In respect of his privacy, I’d just say his spirit is indomitable.
He is the greatest living Scotsman, as far as I’m concerned, and probably the most famous Scotsman in the world. He’s unique, he’s a dear, genius friend, funny, still witty, still can do all that stuff, and he’s drawing some paintings now which are really extraordinary and like nobody else. The only thing we really have in common is that we’re both soloists.
He’s a solo funnyman, and I’m a solo singer-songwriter, but we have this feeling, Australia, and I’ve just put it all together with the First Nation definition of everything, which is the dream time. The scent of smoke on desert wind Beneath the southern cross Far beyond where time begins Generations lost I could not be further from you now With both feet on the ground But in the dream time Souls take flight And I am closer to you now If I should lay me down to sleep By forest green or shining lake I could arise to find it gone To take for granted my mistake Yet I could not be further from you now With both feet on the ground But in the dream time Souls take flight And I am closer to you now That song played over the closing credits to Billy’s world tour and later featured on your album Red Sky. Ralph, have you finished that autobiography yet? No, what happened was I got to the point where I met my wonderful wife and I think it then became our story.
So I stopped at 22. But it’s a very big book, I’ve got a lot of memory. But I decided I think maybe if I have a bit more leisure time to write in terms of people I’ve met.
The whole beauty of musicians’ autobiographies is the interplay between the band members who probably hate each other by the time it’s over. I was lucky enough to play with the Everly Brothers and they said, you know, they don’t get on. I said, yes they do, they drive in separate cars.
Yes, I said, if you’d been sharing a microphone with your brother, one microphone for 40 years, you’d be entitled to get in your own car. Bye, bye, love Bye, bye, happiness Hello, loneliness I think I’m gonna cry Bye, bye, love, sweet caress Hello, emptiness I feel like I could die Bye, bye, my love, goodbye There goes my baby With someone new She sure looks happy Usher and blue She was my baby Till he stepped in Goodbye from romance That might have been I think a soloist can’t really write about things as it gets sordid and I don’t fancy going that route. So I just write about characters that I’ve met in my life.
And you’ve met so many. In 2002 you did a tribute to the late George Harrison which would have been his 59th birthday and on that one you appeared alongside Steve Harley from Cockney Rebel and Darren Wharton, Thin Lizzy, Paul McCartney. You’ve met so many of them and had the pleasure to get to know them.
So paint us one picture. What would you say was one of the top highlights? I haven’t really bragged about this but on my last album I wrote a song for a girl called Suzy Rotolo and she’s the girl in the photograph on the front of Bob Dylan’s second album and they’re walking down that snow-bound street it’s called West 4th Street in Jones and they were walking down the street and the photographer took a picture of them and it was the beginning of my maturity, my awareness. I had a girlfriend in the same sort of situation and we were free and it was lovely and Bob had made his first album and this had all his wonderful songs, the beginning of his creative writing being recorded.
And just before I finished the song Suzy died so she never heard it. So I was talking to a friend of mine who said, well I can get it to Bob. And I said, what, you could get him to hear it? He said, yeah.
So he sent it to Bob and Bob Dylan wrote to me. He said, tell Ralph you made an old man cry and that’d do me. That’s the best thing.
That Bob knows my music. I had no idea that he would know what I do and he responded to that song particularly. Amazing.
February 63, the cold would chill your bones There’s a couple walking down the road West 4th Street in Jones Shoulders hunched against the cold They walk through melting snow She smiles for the camera And he affected not to know His hands deep in his pockets His head was slightly bowed All the stuttered nonchalance That the weather would allow Her arms wrapped round him like a shoulder Keeping from the cold Love so warm can melt away What one she had to hold Is there anything left on your bucket list? What do you still need to tick off? I’m working on some songs at the moment. I think that really I want to get Look, I’ll be playing right up to the last day. I’ve got a touch of arthritis in the hands now.
And I think, you know, if you’ve been playing as long as I have you would expect that. But it doesn’t stop me working and playing. But I would, what does tire me is travel time and journeys and I don’t ever want anyone to say Oh, you sounded a bit tired tonight.
I want to have some urgency even though they’re gentle songs. I want them to have a vitality to them given my age and circumstance and my history. I know in my heart this is my last tour of Australia.
I think that I will begin to slow down on the touring. I’ve got a national tour of Ireland in the autumn and I will continue to do sporadic dates. But I think the idea of the touring forever I couldn’t do what Bob does.
I don’t want it to stop. I don’t want the music to stop. I don’t want to stop having ideas to write songs.
I’m not prolific when I think about what some people do but I care very much about every song. So I just want to keep that integrity and keep working. That’s my bucket list really.
Well, you started off this interview saying that your creative juices were flowing strongly again. Yeah. So we can expect some new songs from you, can’t we? Oh, yeah, definitely.
I’ve got about three projects on the go. I must tell you about one. I’ve got a big affection for Ireland and the Irish people as well and I realised, well, my son said to me, do you know how many songs you’ve written that connect you with Ireland? I said, well, no.
He said, we listed them. And then he came up with this idea of getting some of my favourite Irish artists to record them all. And we’re nearly there.
We’ve got one more to do and I hope that will be ready for my Irish tour. Then we’ve got this string quartet arrangement of old songs. Then I’ve got a new album that I’m working on.
So there’s all the bells ringing. I’m a very lucky man. I really do appreciate it.
There’s four who share this room And we work hard for the crack Sleeping late on Sundays Well, I never get to rest It’s a long, long way From clay to here It’s a long way From clay to here It’s a long, long way And it gets farther day by day It’s a long, long way From clay to here When Friday comes around Well, Terry’s only into fighting Ma would like to let her home But I’m too tired for writing Oh, it’s a long, long way From clay to here It’s a long way From clay to here It’s a long, long way And it gets farther day by day Oh, it’s a long, long way From clay to here Do you have one favourite song? The last one I’ve written is usually I think it’s probably the best one. I think the songs you write as a result of a third-party observation are easier to talk about in that sense. I wrote a song called The Ferryman in 1970-ish.
It was from a book by a Swiss-German writer called Hermann Hesse. He wrote several very hippie Bible books that were adopted by the hippie movement. But the one I loved was a short story called The Siddhartha, which is based on the life of the Buddha.
But I took something else from it. I was wrestling with faith and faith belief in things and stuff. And this book, it helped me out so much.
I turned it into a song, and people still ask me to play that. It’s a long song, but because it was somebody else’s idea and I just made it rhyme and wrote a tune, then that’s probably my favourite. Ralph MacTel, thank you so much for sharing your time with us.
What an incredible career you’ve had. Yeah, and I’ve loved talking to you, Kelly, so thank you so much for that. And again, I’m so sorry about losing you.
Why? Oh, it’s tough times, but, you know, I’ve got a wonderful family. They’ve seen me through it. Thank you.
Bye-bye. You’ve been listening to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye.