John Fahey
John Fahey
John Aloysius Faheywas an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who played the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitive Guitar, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the self-taught nature of the music and its minimalist style. Fahey borrowed from the folk and blues traditions in American roots music, having compiled many forgotten early recordings in these genres. He would later incorporate...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth28 February 1939
CountryUnited States of America
So when people ask me how good I am, I usually cop to being brilliant, even better than that, but short of genius.
Regarding fame, fortune and Oregon I do wish I had more money.
Someone once said that war is God's way of teaching geography, but today, apparently war or even the threat of war cannot adequately teach geography,
I know many inferior guitarists who are very proud of the fact that they are as good as they are, when in fact they are only moderately good.
Geographic illiteracy impacts our economic well-being, our relationships with other nations and the environment, and isolates us from the world.
In the music I was composing I was trying to express my emotions, my so called negative emotions, which were depression, anger and so forth.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that I am playing emotions and expressing them in a coherent public language called music.
The other thing in composition is opening up the unconscious.
Being worshipped is a horrible experience.
More American young people can tell you where an island that the 'Survivor' TV series came from is located than can identify Afghanistan or Iraq. Ironically a TV show seems more real or at least more meaningful interesting or relevant than reality.
But I say these things in an objective dispassionate manner because, you know, and I can't explain why, but being one of the greatest guitarists in the world simply is not very important to me.
I had a big background in listening to classical music and I started trying to compose, like I was playing the guitar but I heard an orchestra in my head.
Well folks, that's about it for the show tonight.
Well I was on the one hand, the more I played the guitar the more I began to really love the guitar and to love virtually any kind of music that anybody played well on guitar.