For David Michael Gordon Graham [1940–2008]

He can’t play the seminal guitar today.

Can’t sing or yell, amphetamine voiced,

in low Dutch, or in rich county accents,

at a restive crowd. Davy Graham is dead.

If his body, made ashes, is to be scattered

on the fallow fields of England, to prepare

for a Michaelmas day bounty, it is in order,

please make it so: Davy Graham is dead.

Where his soul - one owner but probably

in need of repair - has gone, who knows?

God may have moved in a mysterious way.

I can only answer: Davy Graham is dead.

We will not inter his music with his bones,

sounds he created with such enormous skill,

his recorded essence will ornament our lives,

this, his tribute, his monument our thoughts.

Davy Graham is dead.

Sic transit gloria mundi

Thus passes the glory of the world.

End Note:        David Michael Gordon Graham was born in Hinckley, Leicestershire, in the English midlands. As a child he learnt piano, informally, and harmonica. He took up the guitar at the age of twelve years and fell under the spell of folk guitarist, Steve Benbow; he had travelled widely with the army and played in a guitar style greatly influenced by Moroccan music.

Davy Graham came to the attention of guitarists through his appearance in a 1959 Ken Russell TV film Hound Dogs and Bach Addicts: The Guitar Craze, in which he played an acoustic instrumental version of Cry Me a River. During the 1960s he released several eclectic albums with music gathered from all around the world. His acoustic guitar solo Angie, [or Anji] written when he was nineteen and named after his then girlfriend, appeared on his debut recording in April 1962. The tune spread like wildfire through a generation of aspiring guitarists. Over the years, many established musicians have recorded it.

Davy Graham was a consummate performer but always unpredictable; his behaviour on stage sometimes attracted criticism and his lack of regard for the conventions of responsibility and reliability alienated concert organisers and audiences alike and became a serious barrier to his commercial success in the music world.

A much-quoted incident that contributed to his reputation for irresponsibility occurred when he abandoned a tour before it started. In the late 1960s, when he was booked to tour Australia his plane stopped for an hour in Bombay, where he left it with little explanation and spent the next six months wandering through India. This begs the question: was this the act of a free spirit or the demonstration of the artist’s contempt for his audience?

By the end of the decade and the release of the unquestionably eccentric album ‘Hat’ it was clear that he was experimenting with hard drugs: cocaine, LSD and opium. He gave up work, or work gave him up, and slipped into obscurity and poverty. He later described himself as having been ‘a casualty of self-indulgence’ he could have easily added to that ‘and of self delusion’.

 During his period in the wilderness, he taught acoustic guitar and undertook charity work for various mental health charities. Graham married the American singer Holly Gwinn in the late 1960s and recorded the album ‘Godington Boundary’ with her in 1969, shortly before their marriage broke up.

The albums continued, sporadically, All that Moody [1976], The Complete Guitarist [1978], Dance for Two People [1979], Folk Blues And All Points In Between [1985], Playing in the Traffic [1993], The Guitar Player ... Plus [1996], After Hours [1997].

In 2005 the BBC produced the radio documentary ‘Whatever Happened to Davy Graham?’ In 2006, he featured in the BBC Four documentary ‘Folk Britannia’. In the two years prior to his death he worked closely with singer-songwriter Mark Pavey, they released ‘Broken Biscuits’ in 2007. Returning to the stage to play live, he worked once again with guitarists and friends including Bert Jansch, Duck Baker and Martin Carthy. These concerts were characteristically eclectic, with Graham playing a mixture of acoustic blues, Romanian dances, Irish pipe tunes, South Africa songs and Bach.

Although Davy Graham failed to achieve great commercial success, he has proved to be remarkably influential. He has inspired many folk revival artists and fellow players including Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Paul Simon, Jim Jarvis and several generations of British, Australian and American guitarists. Fairport Convention, Pentangle and Steeleye Span also, from time to time, show his influence.

Columnists and others frequently and simply describe Davy Graham as a folk musician. This limiting appellation does not tell the whole story. It does not do him justice nor does it recognise the range and styles of his chosen music. The powerful influences of Blues, Jazz, and Middle Eastern music are evident throughout the great body of his life’s work.

Davy Graham’s final album, ‘Broken Biscuits’ consisting of originals and new arrangements of traditional songs from the global song stock marks a poignant milestone in the history of a ‘Complete Guitarist’, he was diagnosed with lung cancer early in 2008. He took his final curtain call and left the stage on 15 December that same year.

SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI – Sydney NSW © Dermott Ryder