Peter Stampfel, freak-folk pioneer: 'I burned with desire to shove this into the face of the world'
Banjo and fiddle player, comic-book aficionado, music buff, cartoon-voiced singer, prolific songwriter -- Peter Stampfel was on the groundfloor of a couple of major musical movements (folk-rock, punk) in the ‘60s with the Fugs and the Holy Modal Rounders. He’s been going strong ever since, working the fringes of folk and outsider rock ‘n’ roll with iconoclastic verve and a scholar’s appreciation for music of all kinds (not for nothing was he asked to contribute a fine essay to the reissue of Harry Smith’s landmark “Anthology of American Folk Music”).
Stampfel, born 71 years ago in Milwaukee, grew up in the Midwest before moving to New York City, where he hung out in the early ‘60s as the folk scene grappled with its new identity in the rock ‘n’ roll era. In a typically wide-ranging discussion, he brought his musicologist’s taste and wry humor to bear in surveying his career:
On his role as one of the reputed “godfathers” of the freak-folk movement that has produced Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Vetiver, among others: “People say the Holy Modal Rounders (Stampfel and mercurial guitarist Steve Weber) started this movement, and I find that annoying. I mean, where did we get it from? The people on the Harry Smith anthology are the main suspects. They also included Spike Jones, Jimmy Durante, anybody that is a little bit off base in approaching American music. When people get involved deeply in traditional music, they come under the influence of the ancestors. In some cases, as with Baby Gramps, he’s been virtually swallowed by them. He has adapted an entire persona based on traditional music, and he is in that persona 24-7. As opposed to rock ‘n’ roll groups like Kiss, who do the equivalent of what the whites did in the 19th Century when they did minstrel shows. They “blackened up” as they said, and there would be this personality change that allowed them to be this more free, loose, goofy personality. The persona the Kiss guys adopted is something that is only for the stage, and then it’s put aside. But in extreme cases, as in folk’s interaction with its ancestors, it takes over. That’s not a bad thing. When I heard the New City Ramblers in 1956, I heard what came before bluegrass and found it more interesting than bluegrass. Same with the Harry Smith anthology. It was so great, and yet I thought if I didn’t start doing this music it would be gone. I had this duty to play it, to carry the torch for this kind of music into the future. I was an idiot for thinking that, but it gave me the fire to start playing and I have never stopped.”
On when he realized the rock ‘n’ roll and old-timey music could go together: “It was an epiphany. When I first saw Bob Dylan carrying his guitar case around New York, I thought he looked like a New Jersey hood who thought if he carried his guitar case he could get (women to sleep with him). Then I saw Dylan play at Folk City. I was outside the club and couldn’t hear a note, but seeing his hands move on the guitar through the window, I could do tell he could really play. I saw him at a hoot night a couple weeks later and heard him sing “Sally Gal,” this old folk tune, and he had the whole traditional thing down, but his phrasing was really rock ‘n’ roll-based. I thought never the twain shall meet, but he put them together and the result was glorious. I realized these two things, folk and rock ‘n’ roll, were one amazing possibility.”
On the animosity between folk and rock ‘n’ roll camps in the early ‘60s: “In the New York folk clubs after hours people would hang out and play Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry songs. Everyone was exposed to rock ‘n’ roll but it wasn’t always cool for the bohemians to like it. It was thought to be stupid, hood music, for delinquents. But I was listening to radio in 1962 and realized this stuff was amazing. People used to talk about the fact that rock ‘n’ roll got bad in the late ‘50s and didn’t work again till the Beatles came along (in 1964). But the Beatles were an effect not a cause, because in ‘62 you had the girl groups, Phil Spector, Motown. The bohemian line was this is a piece of (junk), and anything popular was automatically crap. Then the Beatles came along being more popular and better than everyone. No one could say that anymore. They had long hair, they used bad language (laughs). Obviously the affinity with bohemia was automatic with the Beatles, and the idea of folk-rock became inevitable.”
On the Fugs as the first punk band: “They were. The Fugs in 1964-65 actually anticipated punk by at least 10 years. They demonstrated that all you need to be a rock ‘n’ roll band is an attitude and abrasiveness. Technical skills were totally unnecessary and could even possibly (ruin things). They were writing all these crazed sex and drug songs and I thought, ‘This is great! What you guys need is a backing band.’ My instantaneous feeling was this must be encouraged in every possible way, so Weber and I joined the band. This was when Lenny Bruce was getting arrested for saying (four-letter words) on stage. They were ground zero for punk, but we didn’t have that term back then. I thought of it as ‘smut rock,’ the idea that you could say all these things in songs that you couldn’t say on the radio and that nobody said in rock ‘n’ roll even. I was an extremely pro-obscenity, pro-pornography person (laughs). It was like a cause. I burned with desire to shove this into the face of the world. One of Weber’s amazing lines from 1966 was, ‘I want to touch them as strong as they touched me.’ Everyone, every kid feels like they’ve been kicked by the world. Alright, you want a kick? I’ll show you a kick!
On making better records later in his career than he did in his youth: “Most of my peers were people who were musical whizzes as teenagers. It came fast and easy to them. When that happens, the person tends not to value it. I had to work and work and work to become the musician I wanted to be. It took me decades. One reason I’m better now than then is that I was so mediocre back then. In the ‘60s I noticed how many people did great stuff on their first record or two, and how quickly they weren’t as great anymore. The pattern of brilliant youth, and burning out, followed by hack work. Rock ‘n’ rollers tend to just do original stuff, and creatively, the artistic impulse is to crawl up your own (butt) and disappear. I always felt it necessary to do cover songs to hold off that phenomenon of becoming less and less interesting.”
On his prolific recording pace: “I work during the daytime for my wife, who’s a publisher. And thank God I do, because we need the money. I am one of the 10 percent of people in their 70s who is working full time. Our retirement plan is to work till we drop dead. So I have no reason to stop. In fact, I have an incentive to not stop playing and recording.”
greg@gregkot.com
Peter Stampfel: 8:30 p.m. Saturday at the Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $10; 773-227-4433.
Peter Stampfel is the Uncle Dave Macon of our generation. Wonderful he'll be here.
Posted by: EdS | September 15, 2010 at 02:19 PM
Great piece, Peter is a national treasure.
Posted by: PaulK | September 15, 2010 at 07:03 PM
Greg, do you have the Peter Stampfel & The Bottlecaps album from 1986 on Rounder?
It's a great lost work, never got released on CD, but it's got some of my favorite Peter Stampfel songs on it.
Stampfel and the Fugs also get credit for inventing "anti folk" long before anybody else on the Lower East Side started using the term!
Greg replies: Yes, I do have it. Great album!
Posted by: Jim Testa | September 17, 2010 at 09:59 AM
Maybe you can do a piece on Peter's musical friend Michael Hurley. Michael takes Peter's approach even further, and has been a true master for approaching 50 years
Posted by: Kevin | September 19, 2010 at 07:16 AM
Peter: Rock on, Remember 1974 at Rounder Records . .. we served you rice and you gave me my first mandolin lesson. Now I'm famous!!! Not. But Smithsonian reissued my old women's band's album (Folkways People/s Music), HURRAY! and some HBO show might use it.
Check out my web site for a photo of Rounders with me (lasted 9 mo.) back in the day. Also a not really tell all blog of my diary from then. Is your wife/boss Antonia? Rock on to her too! Most of my old pals are either dead or in recovery of some kind. You sound fabulously smart & sane.
marciadeihl.com
Posted by: Marcia Deihl | September 19, 2010 at 05:04 PM