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BY BARBARA CHARONE
NASHVILLE-
"Ever since I started cutting records I've gone through identity
hassles," Linda Hargrove said. "My singing isn't traditional country but it's
not pure rock & roll. I don't like labels but I'd rather be labeled a country artist
even though I was raised on rock & roll. Rock people say I'm country and country
people say I'm rock. Here I am saying, well, what am I?"
Linda Hargrove is representative of a new wave in country music, made by a
generation of pickers weaned on Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones. In the same breath
she'll cite Pete Townshend and Hank Williams as influences. A singer/songwriter, Hargrove
came to Nashville to learn the country craft.
"I just got fed up, rock & rolled out," said the 25-year-old
musician. "The earthier and simpler the music, the better. I grew
into country after I got here. I mean I used to think C&W was all cornbread and
bouffants but there are so many creative people here, you've just got to find your niche
and tap into it."
The man responsible for helping her find her niche was steel player Pete Drake.
Upstairs over his studio, the office walls are lined with artifacts from his career.
There're pictures of Pete and George, Pete and Ringo, Pete and Dylan as well as awards.
Drake, who's done much to strengthen the bonds between country and rock, seemed a natural
for giving this new music a professional push.
"I'll tell ya what Dylan did," Drake said. "He put the pedal
steel in pop music. I have cut with just about everybody from Elvis to Joan Baez and they
would never accept the steel guitar. Nashville Skyline cinched it. I'd go play a show and
the kids wouldn't say 'what is that thing?' They knew."
"The Dylan material drove Hargrove away from Florida rock bands to
Nashville.
"The first album I ever heard Pete play pedal steel on, even before I
came to Nashville, was Dylan's. It just knocked me out!"
Arriving in Nashville, Hargrove discovered it wasn't the paradise she had
hoped for. Hard times followed until Sandy Posey decided to record one of her songs.
Sitting in at the session was Drake, who expressed interest in her material, as he had
just established a production company geared to young C&W artists. After receiving
offers from prospective producers interested only in female companionship, Hargrove was
pessimistic.
"I'd been tossed around so much that I thought it was just another
offer. Men in the music business just didn't take women seriously. They assumed all you
wanted was a husband but I wanted to play," she said.
"I've produced a lot of names," said Drake, "but to help mold
and develop music-then you've really done something. All I try to do is bring the best out
of my artists."
"There're not too many women I respect in this business because they let
other people run their careers," Hargrove said. "Sure I let Pete direct me
because he's my producer but I don't let him shape my life. He'd never tell me what to
wear or how to act."
Ex-Monkee Mike Nesmith met her while he was in Nashville looking for songs to
cut on Garland Frady for Elektra's short-lived Countryside label. He heard her play and
sing and offered her a round-trip ticket to California to play on the album. While there
he took her to the Elektra offices.
"We went into this tiny room with only one electric guitar and no
amplifier at all. The sound was absolutely terrible. I played two songs and when it was
over they said, 'What do you want?'"
"Linda really wants to be a country artist," Drake said, "but
with her first album she didn't know what she wanted to do. She had worked with a rock
band but after playing to country audiences, she decided that was the way she wanted to
go. Linda had never heard much country music till about three years ago. Her melodies were
great but her lyrics . . . well I'm a hillbilly and I couldn't understand most of them so
I started taking her to recording sessions so she could hear writers like Tom T. Hall.
It's awfully hard for Linda to write a simple three-chord song 'cause she plays so much
guitar. But I'm glad she doesn't 'cause there's a big difference with this new music. Most
of your country songwriters can't play but three chords."
By the time her second album was recorded, Hargrove headed straight for country,
"I can really see this year being the year of young country music.
Nashville is definitely warming to it; even the more established artists now accept
us."
Hargrove thinks it's third-generation country but Drake just calls it music.
"I'm sure this new music will appeal to a rock audience because it
already has. But the bad part of the music business is the country, pop and R&B
charts. There should be only one chart because there're only two kinds of music, good and
bad. When a country record sells over 100,000 records, it suddenly becomes a pop
record."
"But you can't overplay country music," she said. "The
important thing is the song. Country music is very real but I think this new music is even
more real. It's not about how life could be or should be-it's about how life is."
Copyright
Rolling Stone 1975
Permission Pending |
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