BRUCE LANGHORNE DYLAN’S MISTER TAMBOURINE MAN
Many years before he inspired ‘Mister Tambourine Man, Bob Dylan’s most celebrated invocation of the muse , guitarist Bruce Langhorne actually attempted to build “a magic swirlin’ ship” of his own.
“When I was 12 I built a rocket and of course I knew nothing about rockets. I had a friend whose dad was a photographer so I asked him to get me some magnesium, which he did. I filled the rocket and tried to launch it out of the family apartment house window in Harlem. I got it back just over my shoulder and it blew up, I was lucky it didn’t blow up in front of my face.”
When Langhorne, one of the unsung heroes of the 60s folk movement, greets me outside his home in Venice California I feel the three half digits on his left hand salvaged after the explosion.
Those fingers were responsible for the remarkable guitar style that illuminated Dylan’s ‘Bringing It All Back Home’ album. Bruce’s light but flowing touch also shone on countless recordings by Fred Neil, Gordon Lightfoot, Tom Rush, Hugh Masakela, Buffy Sainte Marie and others.
But back in Harlem in 1950, when his mother arrived to witness the devastation in the family home a career in music seemed a long way offer. The would be rocketeer was temporarily blinded and blood was rolling down his face after being pierced by a metal shard,
“My mother was horrified but being a smart ass kid I said at least I won’t have to play classical violin anymore, ” Bruce recalls with a hearty chuckle.
It was only thanks to sophisticated plastic surgery, then being pioneered in wake of the Korean War, that Langhorne’s stubs and finger joints were saved. He unbuttons his shirt to show me the scars where his fingers were grafted onto his chest to allow the skin to grow back. But after spending a few hours in company it becomes clear the accident was just part of what made Langhorne’s him different. As a black man in the largely white world of the folk revival Bruce was a singular figure with a musical background – classical, Gospel, blues and Latin - that defied classification.
Although he turned 66 last May in person Bruce still possesses all the sort of qualities familiar from his playing - intelligence and humour, poise and playfulness. Parked outside the home he shares with his actress wife Janet and several dogs is a van he has customised for sleeping on a cross country road trip to attend the opening of The Experience Music Museum’s Bob Dylan’s exhibition.
The museum features the battered Martin acoustic he played on ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ and Langhorne will give a talk at the opening. But his life is certainly not centred around the Dylan industry, he is currently working on three books, is a purveyor of the fine salt free Brother Bru Bru’s hot sauce, lectures on African and Hatian music and makes his own music (“more black, West Indian and African than in the past”) on his website.
This week with the release of his soundtrack for his pal Peter Fonda’s 1971 cult western The Hired Hand his multi instrumental talent can be heard in all their deft glory.
Langhorne’s parents separated when he was in his teens, his father went to teach in Washington at the black Howard university and he stayed with his mother, the chief librarian in Harlem.
“My mum always played classical piano I started taking violin lessons when I was 9 or 10 but I was never really into it. The neighbourhood I grew up in was black and Puerto Rican so there was congas being played in the street and I got one. At 17 a friend got a guitar and I got really interested in it, at first I didn’t want anything with 6 strings I wanted a tipple, a west Indian instrument with 4 strings ,but I couldn’t get one.”
Inspirsed by BB King, Brownie McGhee and Roebuck “Pops” Staples he began working as a busker in Provincetown Cape Cod an artists resort where he’d play guitar where his painter friend would sketch the crowd and present them with paintings.
By the time Langhorne first saw Dylan at New York’s Gerdes Folk City Hotenanny in early 61 he was the musical partner of the club’s MC Brother John Sellars and a regular accompanist with Cisco Houston, The Clancy Brothers and Peter, Paul and Mary.
“My first impression of Bob was – what a terrible voice, I didn’t really start to appreciate him until sometime after I started working with him. I started realising this guy is a really good poet and appreciated the fact that he had such will, such a sense of direction.
“I worked as an accompanist because I always thought I had nothing specific to tell the world and I was always happy to help other people. With Bob the reason he was such a phenomenally successful writer and singer was because he had a great telepathic ability to do songs that other people could tune into. I think the reason I’m a good accompanist is that I have empathy and I can really tune into what people want to get across.”
This is apparent on Bringing It All Back Home, the songs sound as if they are being heard and played for the first time. Langhorne chuckles.
“Well…that’s because that’s just what it was - a bunch of studio guys hanging around ready to latch onto Bobby’s telepathic thread. He’d start singing and everybody would jump in, it was just amazing. I tend to not develop hierarchies I either like people or I don’t, after the Bring It All Back Home sessions I don’t know that I particularly liked Dylan or put him on a pedestal but I had to recognize his unique ability to zoom in on his intention. And he just happened to be communicating telepathically with some of the most empathetic musicians in town.”
It wasn’t until 1985, in an interview included on the ‘Biograph’ retrospective, that Dylan named Langhorne as the inspiration for ‘Mr Tambourine Man’
“I thought it might have been about Brother John Sellars because he played tambourine. I played a tambourine but it was massive, Turkish and had jingles on it. Bob may have seen me play it in the Village I used to play pied piper, just walk the streets and have people following me and dancing, like Hare Krishna before Hare Krishna. I’d take it with me whenever I went on the road, it always got people dancing and stuff.”
The song has one of the most remarked on drug references of the 60s, was there a nod of recognition in the studio when Dylan sang My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip ?
“I didn’t think much about it but it was ok if it was about that mescaline or pot - why not? Acid? Sure. I had friends who took acid everyday for 3 years and they were friends of mine, their brains worked a little differently but it was ok a permissive era contrasted to now.”
Recognition of Dylan’s a political and poetic voice coincided with Langhorne’s growing militancy, a stance he later modified.
“It was a period of great enfranchisement for black people in America, interracial dating, black and white considering each other equal. But I put on some blinders I felt I had to take sides and become a black activist. I was married to a black girl, a classically trained dancer who couldn’t get work. We were on the streets and taxicabs wouldn’t stop for us.
“I was playing music with white friends but I’d talk to people like Joan Baez who was a friend and totally for peace I wasn’t I was like well if we have to take guns in the street I’ll do it. But that’s not my nature as I got older and looked at it I had to say – no it humanity not white or black first. That’s where I’ve been ever since.”
In the folk versus rock wars precipitated by Dylan’s decision to go electric Langhorne was on the side of the progressives. Although he has no memory of Pete Seeger taking an axe to the electric cables when Dylan took to the stage at the 1965 Newport festival he recalls a fight between Dylan’s manager Al Grossman and archivist John Lomax.
“An actual physical fight and they were both big guys, Dick Farina and I broke it up, it was so out of the context of the folk movement it had to be broken up. There was the old school and the new school, even when Dick Farina started using the Dulcimer as a rhythmic instrument Jean Richie, the queen of the mountain dulcimer, got really foffended. My attitude has always been that musicians should use whatever tools are availabale. If Mozart was alive today he’d have Protools and an apple G5, innovative musicians have always done that. Look at the post war Chicago electric blues guitarists I’m sure they experienced people saying what is that too.”
Langhorne was disappointed when Dylan took up with The Hawks, later The Band, but it was honourable parting.
“Bobby sat down in a café with me in The Village after he met Levon and The Hawks and said I hope you don’t take offence at this but its just so good for me to play with a group that have been together for a long time, rather than have to pick out individuals and hope it works.
“I have to admit at the time I thought I was Bob Dylan’s guy but that was false expectation and I will always respect him for sitting down and explaining to me personally.”.
They worked again together on the Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid soundtrack in 1973 and last met 4 years ago in the Santa Monica coffee bar Dylan owns.
“I went along with my father just before he died, my father had been an English Professor and I thought he would like to meet one of our foremost young poets. Bob came out to say hello and of course my dad hadn’t a clue who he was.”
Langhorne laughs again. Outside there’s a soothing water feature and an avocado tree in the garden, inside stringed instruments and photos from his past hang on the wall. The atmosphere is pleasantly Bohemian but hardly opulent, a true musician he was never interested in fame or fortune, just the joy of collaboration and making the most of his abilities.
“The injury forced me not to be a virtuoso so I did a lot more thinking about what I loved in music and how it worked. My total musical quest has always been – and still is - to distill the essence of music.
“Take the music for The Hired Hand its really simple, concerned with distilling the time and place it represents. I’ve written all sorts of music but that’s the music I prefer, folk music – the basic aesthetics of the music of man. It’s what I’m into.”
The Hired Hand soundtrack album is out now.
