Geoff Young, Dec 2020. Background– painting (detail) by Morgan Bulkeley, called 'Facing Heroes.' Photo by Lillian Anderson.
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His Apprenticeship Never Occurred to Me While I Was out Surfing
I want to thank Bob Dylan
Not only for the songs and movies
But for the March 1978 Playboy interview
In which he tells how he got turned on to folk singing
He was fifteen years old
He owned an electric guitar, he loved Elvis
And then he heard Odetta’s first record
He learned every song on it
Proceeding to Harry Belafonte and The Kingston Trio
Uncovering more & more as he went along
Until finally he was doing nothing
But Carter Family and Jesse Fuller songs
At 19, the discovery of Woody Guthrie’s music
Opened up a whole new world
And like a bullet shot from a bow he entered it
Somehow I always figured that Zimmy was born
With the complete history of blues and folk
Just taped to his lungs
That when he breathed the songs came naturally to life
With the likes of Leroy Carr, Blind Willie McTell,
Leadbelly, Bill Monroe, and Muddy Waters
All harried bluesmen in dark caverns playing for drinks
Living from one clean white shirt in a cardboard suitcase to the next
As if Bob never had to read Kierkegaard or even sheet music
Or woodshed for endless teen hours
In order to strum axe and blow harp
At the same time, remembering
All those words, distorting voice for chorus after chorus
As if he never had to drive himself nuts
Just to write the songs in the first place
After twenty years, he said, I’m still using
Those same three chords, the ones Odetta played
And thanks for admitting it, Bob
I mean about Harry Belafonte
And The Kingston Trio, too
Jesus, we could be brothers!
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Born in 1944, Geoffrey Young grew up in San Diego. After a Fulbright year in Paris, he worked at La Galerie Sonnabend for a spell. In 1982 he moved from Berkeley to Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Over a thirty-year period, his small press, The Figures, published more than 135 books of poetry, art writing, and fiction. ◙ Recent books of his poetry and drawing include Pivot (2020), and Asides (2020). The trilogy: Alibi (2019), Sauce (2018), and Sight Unseen (2018) exist in small editions. ◙ For twenty-seven years he directed the Geoffrey Young Gallery, which closed as of Christmas, 2018. Over the years Young has written catalog essays for more than a dozen artists. [For more on Geoffrey Young, click here.]
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