The O-town Scene - Oneonta, NY
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/30393
Continued from Page 20 One element of music in the ’60s that I think made it so special was the spirit of sharing that went on between musicians, both within and between genres, and you’ve even cited John Coltrane [the legendary jazz tenor saxophonist] as an influence on certain aspects of your guitar tone. Do you think that communal energy is the reason the music from that era is so unique, and why it is still so influential for artists today? Well, there are some other people who inspired me, and they weren’t all necessarily fellow musicians. In terms of music, I was inspired first by Elvis Presley, and later by Bob Gibson and Pete Seeger. And there were so many others. There was really a commu- nity of folk musicians, and part of that mentality included coming together when you were playing at the same places, playing in the same towns. And everybody hung out together. Today’s music culture is so digitized and based around online networking that it seems as if the urge to connect personally and casually like that has faded away. Do you think that those communities still exist at all for young musicians of this genera- tion? It’s hard to say, because I haven’t been around enough young musicians to witness that. I think that, like you say, the cross-pollination has shifted to people sending messages on the Internet. Mp3’s, online collaborations, that sort of thing. It’s a very fragmented culture. Having lived within both eras, do you think that the non-musical elements, the technology of daily life and the way we interact as a society have affected the music we produce? Well, that’s also hard to say. It’s a pretty philosophical question (laughing). I think that, since there are more people out there, you’ve got more competition and less camaraderie between musicians. There are tens of thousands of people competing for the same things, the same listeners, and it’s not quite as friendly as it once was. What do you mean by “not quite as friendly”? It’s really just the matter of camaraderie. The more people there are competing, the more that gets lots in the mix. So would you say that, back in the old days, it was kind of like you were looking out for each other? Because I don’t know of too many instances of that happening these days. Yeah, that’s pretty much what it was about. I used to hang out with John Sebastian, for instance, back in the early ’60s. We’d hang out at coffee houses, and we’d share things, like, say guitar chords, songs, stories. It was a lot of fun. And then this leads me to think about the spirituality of the music culture. I know that people have probably asked you millions of questions about the psychedelic mentality of the ’60s, but how much of that spirituality has to do with the fact that, like you say, this is something you’ll never retire from? And was any of it just the psychedelics, just superficial? No, I think it was very real; it’s just something people got in touch with back then more than they do now. The world became more material- istic during the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. I guess some people now are sort of looking back to search for spirituality, but it’s just not like it was in the ’60s. It was special, and that’s partly because we were trying to make sense out of what had happened in terms of the hypocrisy of certain aspects of mainstream culture: the social issues, the author- ity figures; we threw everything out the window and put things back together for ourselves. _ Sam Spokony John Sebastian of The Lovin’ Spoonful will perform with McGuinn in Oneonta on Sunday. April 28, 2011 O-Town Scene 21 Contributed