OK, I've zoomed in the pictures of the magazine from the photographer's website (link posted in my previous post) and I transcribed the interview as best I could. I couldn't make out some, or part of the, words, and there are probably some typos in there as well, but hey. It's a draft until Fretboard Journal puts it up on their website. Here goes:
The Art of the Translator
Marc Ribot's interpretative powers
by John Kruth
photographs by Blake Sinclair
THERE'S A PLETHORA of guitarists in the world today, yet very few have forged a voice as uniquely original and immediately identifiable as that of Marc Ribot. Having stretched the vocabulary of the instrument in a myriad of ways, Ribot is one the most in-demand session players of his day; he's interpreted and illuminated songs by Tom Waits, Elvis Costello and Marianne Faithfull, improvised with jazz masters like McCoy Tyner, collaborated with cutting-edge composer and saxophonist John Zorn, and even worked with the late, great beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
Ribot's own projects include Spiritual Unity, an exploration into the repertoire of legendary free-jazz saxophonist Alber Ayler (featuring Ayler's bassist Henry Grimes), as well the genre-bending Ceramic Dog. In the past, Ribot's Cubanos Postizos and Rootless Cosmopolitans have both inspired and confounded listeners by combining jagged sonic fragments of free jazz, punk and tango to create a bold new musical mosaic. His post-punk deconstructions of '60s classics include singular interpretations of George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," Jimi Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary" and the Doors' anthem of spiritual revolution, "Break on Through."
I caught up with the guitarist at his Brooklyn apartment on a chilly December morning. He answered the door sleepy and disheveled. He brewed a pot of powefully strong coffee - to clear his head of the reverberations of last night's gig - and sat down in the kitchen to talk. As usual he'd been burning the candle, not at both ends, but with a blowtorch, in the middle.
Years ago, in the liner notes to 1990's Rootless Cosmopolitans, guitarist/producer Arto Lindsay wrote that "the remarkable thing about Marc Ribot is his inability to do one thing." Ribot's superhuman ??ule of recording dates and gigs (juggling three ?? his own with dates with McCoy Tyner and ?? ??ing tour of Japan) is clear proof of this fact.
The Arsenal
After a sip of Ribot's rocket fuel, we begin to ?? extremely diverse guitar collection.
"These are Wandre's guitars from Italy," ??. "They're amazing." Ribot reaches for his red ?? Cobra from among the many instruments hanging from a row of hooks on his bedroom wall. "Wandre himself came, not from guitar making, but eeither from building surfboards or customizing hot cars."
(Perhaps a little history is needed here. ?? "Wandre" Pioli was given his nickname by his ?? famous luthier. It's a very fitting nickname, ?? meaning "to go in reverse", as Wandre was ?? since childhood. Although compelling, the ?? Pioli's background as a designer of custom motorcycles and surfboards is untrue. He learned his craft directly from his father, not far from ??, "the cradle of luthierie" and birthplace of the ??.
"They have solid aluminum necks," Ribot explains. "The [volume and tone] knobs all go in different directions. There must be some advantage to it. Everything is original about it. Everything about Wandre's guitars came from out of his brain and not the way anybody else did it. It's got a totally original tremolo bar - a very good one, by the way. Probably the best ?? models in the States are owned by Buddy Miles(?). They have three pickups with a little drawer built ?? that you can keep your roaches or picks in, which is important in an electric guitar," he says with a grin.
We then move on to his cherry-red, late-'60s Guild Starfire. "I'm a big fan of aluminum," Ribot says, referring to the bridge. "The Bigsby [twang bar] on this one is original. I've used it on some of the recordings I've done with John Zorn, where he's going for a surf sound. The Starfire is a great, but very underrated guitar. They haven't taken off yet with collectors, so pricewise they're still pretty affordable."
Ribot then points to a funky, solid-body electric adorned with a faux tortoiseshell pickguard. "This Kay," he says, "looks something like a shop project. It's a really raw guitar. T Bone [Burnett] has one, but I haven't been able to get this one to match the rudeness of his."
Next, Ribot reaches for a fretless gourd-back banjo, which he picked up at Retrofret, a loft guitar shop in Brooklyn, where he's acquired a number of instruments. You'll find the banjo listed among Ribot's credits on Tom Waits' albums. "I didn't play this one on the album [Real Gone]," Ribot points out. "I picked up this instrument after I borrowed Tom's and was inspired. He has a cigar-box fretless.
"I don't know who built this thing," he says, flipping the banjo end over end. "This should be a lesson to all you banjo makers out there: Put your ******* name on your instrument!"
He begins to pick the nylon strings in a clunky, stumbling Appalachian rythm that sounds like someone's hilbilly grandpa doing a drunken two-step. "I use an open tuning. I have no idea /what/ it is! I just keep playing with it. I tune all the strings to one or two notes.
"I'm a fake banjo player," Ribot admits. "I wouldn't call myself a banjo player. I use it on recordings. If you put enough reverb on it, it sounds like the poor man's pizzicato string section. My crowning achievement as a banjo player was playing with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on Country Music Television: we did a version of 'Black Dog' by Led Zeppelin. I had a lot of fun that day! Alison is such a gifted storyteller. There were points when we were recording [the Grammy winning 2007 album Raising Sand] that I forgot that I was playing guitar and just listened to her sing." Ribot's distinctive sonic stamp is all over the album, from his slinky banjo on Sam Phillips' sultry "Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us", to his thunderous grunge on ?? Van Zandt's "Nothin'."
At this point, Ribot reaches for his ?? sunburst acoustic Gibson HG-00 ?? and fingerpicks a highly original rendition of ?? Gary Davis' "Death Don't Have No Mercy." ?? view suddenly grinds to a halt; there's nothing ?? listen. Even when interpreting a classic gospel tune, Ribot approaches the tune in a startling way. The chord voicings he employs break ?? into the time-worn melody, while his licks jump with an elastic snap.
Eventually, Ribot walks over to his closet to reveal a mother lode of cases. "There's more downstairs, but do me a favour," he laughs. "Don't give out my address!"
"I use everything, from a vintage '57 Telecaster with a maple neck, to a cheap, piece-of-crap guitar called an Audition, that I played on my solo album Don't Blame Me, one of the better things I did about 10 to 12 years back on the DIW label. I used that guitar a lot in overdub situations."
Has he found any particularly special relationship between certain guitars and amps to create his desired sound?
"[The late guitarist] Robert Quine once told me that 12-inch speakers are good for recording, and I found that it's true, so I use a [Fender] Deluxe," Ribot explains. "Mine isn't vintage, but I made sure I have alnico speakers - an alloy made of aluminum, nickel and cobalt. With the Cold War, those materials became more scarce, so they switched to different alloys. If you want to sound like a guitarist from the '40s or '50s, find an alnico II speaker; if you want to sound like Jerry Garcia, use the latter alloy.
"I'm a big fan of amp reverbs and vibratos. My tech rider calls for working reverb and vibrato, but you'd be surprised how often they don't listen. I don't much pay attention to brand names on pedals and stuff like that. I recently got a Melody Maker that I really like from the early '60s. I like Gibsons that are closer to Fenders. There's a lot of guitarists that make good use of Les Pauls, but for me, I'm so self-conscious about playing one. I mean, millions of guitarists have used that sound.
"To me, the greatest use of a Les Paul I ever heard came from Barthelemy Attisso, the guitarist from a band called Orchestra Baobab, perhaps the greatest underrated guitarist in the world. Check him out - the guy's a genius! He's really doing something."
With so many guitars piled up in the closed, how does Ribot decide what to put in his toolbox?
"Unfortunately I can't bring them all", he ??. "I would if I could. When I was more dedicated, I would try and bring more. But usually, I listen to what the person's after. Marianne's album was ?? very unique; it had a sound. And T Bone Burnett's The True Fake Identity, which features three drummers working in the same room, worked great. These are projects that have an original sound because they're cut in real studios with a large number of musicians and a budget. It's a dying art, because the budgets don't permit it - things are set up at small home studios, like mine, where you can ?? of people, but one at a time. Does that hurt? It's unfortunate."
The guitar tour continues.
"This is a '47 Gibson archtop, which I ?? I mostly use standard tuning, but when I play I like to tune down about a third." Ribot then pulls the humidifier from the guitar's f-hole and stroll over to the kitchen sink to dampen the sponge.
"I gotta get this baby a drink!"
.
