Fully Qualified Survivor

jyx95k@aol.com — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:57:18 GMT

My fascination with rock music of the late 1960's/early 1970's, particularily the folkie end of the spectrum, has been a constant for about 30 years. Many is the record I have bought just because someone I'd heard of played on it, or because I read an old review of it and thought I might like it.

One of these was a CD of a record called 'Fully Qualified Survivor' by Michael Chapman, which I picked up second hand from Ben's shop in 1991. I recall only buying it as I thought any record made in 1970 with a song title like 'Postcards From Scarborough' must have something going for it.

I sorted it into a 45 minute running order and stuck it on a cassette for the car, with Traffic's 'John Barleycorn Must Die' on the other side.

That cassette got played to death, but somehow it's stuck with me far more than most of the stuff I discovered at that time. 'Survivor's' gritty, very adult, but still very poetic songs about love, loneliness and memories, together with a good helping of nature, hit a major chord with me.

I gradually found other albums by the man, including his finger twisting debut 'Rainmaker' from 1969, and a great run of records in the 1970's, some of which were only made available again in the 2000's.

He's been as strong an influence as anyone on my own music, songs like 'Station Hotel' (for the lyrics) and 'Mermaid Blues' (for the guitar patterns) on my recent cd are directly influenced by the man.

In all this time though I'd never seen him live. He's 68 now, older than my Mum, has done an incredible amount of boozing and carousing, and a survived a major heart attack in 1990 which left him in a coma for five days. I resolved that I must go and pay homage, and really couldn't resist when I saw a gig advertised in Nottingham in November (he lives on the Scottish borders and doesn't play down south very often at all). What was the double bonus is that a guitarist's forum was announced to take place at a hotel in Sheffield the day after the gig, which MC would be attending and discussing his music. This I couldn't resist.

Packing my big Martin guitar into the BMW I made the second trek of the month up to Sheffield on Wednesday afternoon. I found the hotel at Abbeydale, and managed to make myself at home before heading back down the A61 to Nottingham to try and catch the concert.

Nottingham was jammed solid, and the M1 was appalling on the way back down. After getting lost and getting some brilliant directions off two hoodies in the Co-Op, I located a tiny club called The Maze and wandered in to see what would happen. Feeling the urge to pop out the back for half a cigar, I was minding my own business when I became aware of a spritely gent walking towards me clad in a vintage pair of Levis, an equally aged Levi's denim shirt, a baseball cap, a bomber jacket and a battered pair of cowboy boots. 'Hello Chief' I said, for this smiling person was someone I've spent hundreds of hours listening to but never met. Having been advised I had time to finish my cheroot, off he went, to do whatever Michael Chapman does pre-gig.

The gig itself was wonderful. I recall looking at MC's watch and seeing 10.40pm on it....funny, I thought, his watch is wrong, it can't possibly be that late - but it was, I'd just enjoyed myself so much. He did a lot of recent songs (all very strong), together with a few older songs, and finished with a mesmerising rendition of 'In The Valley' (certainly not about Charlton) complete with unintentional feedback through the otherwise excellent P.A.

Here's a minute of the man in action at the Maze.

Guitars after the show. The electric Gibson is a 1952 model, which Michael had driven from Carlisle to Worthing to pick up in April. It did sound wonderful.

So much for the taster. The main course was Thursday, at the Beauchief Hotel in Sheffield. I'd got in from the concert at 12.40am, MC and friends much later, and there were some quite disheveled looking gents hitting the conference room at the Beauchief.

MC doesn't do workshops, and had had his arm twisted to do this by the very affable Stuart Wiley, a fan turned friend from Chesterfield. Despite him thinking he wasn't going to enjoy it and that he certainly isn't a teacher, we had a fantastic day.

MC had a critical play of several of our guitars, the one he's playing here actually used to belong to him in the 1970's and was brought in by one of the gents attending.

Being the only left handed player in the room meant I got a great spot at the left side of the front of the room, and I got Michael to talk about a lot of stuff from the 1960's - he's quite happy to answer questions he must get asked a lot, and talked fascinatingly about Nick Drake, who he played with, and who, according to MC, was a better guitarist than him. He even oblidged with a brief performance of Nick's 'Which Will', which has shamefully been recently used in a horrible BT advert. He told me about the recording of 'Fully Qualified Survivor' which took all of four days, start to finish, on primitive four track recording equipment (you'd never guess to hear it).

I think I managed to get some good musical stuff from the day, the way he patiently showed us how he arrived at tunings was fantastic, but it was just really great to spend a day in the company of one of my musical heroes, who was more than happy to chat about anything that came up - including his wife's knitting business and how to drive 500,000 miles in a Volvo estate.

MC was very patient with everyone. Far more than I'd expected.

Michael uses a unique system of 'phone numbers' to work out how to write down his songs, he can't read music or get on with tablature.

The man's memory of his songs is amazing. But even he had to stop once or twice to remember how a particular one he'd had a request to demonstrate actually went.

There was lots of jollity and stories, and some really good playing (particularily from the gent in the middle, who seems to have spent most of his downtime for years trying to play this stuff). I don't think I did too badly and really enjoyed myself.

I did get Michael talking about his fairly difficult childhood and his love of Americana. Bearing in mind he was born in 1941 in Leeds, he must have spent many a Saturday morning watching cowboy movies at the pictures. He told me the story of he got his first set of Levi's when he was nine, having traded with a friend for them. His father confiscated them immediately when he got home - the reason - Michael's childhood friend was black. Awful.

A great man, and it was a great priviledge to spend some time with him. Sometimes meeting your heroes can be very depressing (I never went to see John Martyn, and I've never wanted to see Bob Dylan for that reason), but meeting Michael was fantastic, he felt like an old friend by the end of the day. He's playing in Birmingham tonight, then driving that old Volvo back to Haltwhistle for the rest of the year off. And he deserves it.

The Cravatman Chronicle

Fully Qualified Survivor