McTell Us A Story – Ralph McTell

Ralph McTell takes Simon Heptinstall by the hand

He wrote and sang one of the best-known British folk songs of all time, has been a pivotal figure in British folk for 45 years and was one of the main reasons I took up playing guitar as a teenager (the other was inevitably to do with girls). Now I’m a grey-haired middle-aged writer with a ridiculous collection of eight guitars cluttering up my office. So I tell Ralph McTell that he is to blame.

“I’m so proud to hear that!” he laughs in the familiar deep baritone boom. “It’s great to hear I may have inspired someone to start playing. More people should be playing the guitar.”

With his own 65th birthday arriving in December 2009, one of the godfathers of British folk is certainly showing no signs of swapping his guitar for a pipe and slippers. I was granted an exclusive interview with McTell for FolkingCool just as he starts a hectic UK tour (see www.ralphmctell.co.uk for full dates). He was spending a morning working on “polishing”14 new songs for a rare studio album to be recorded in the new year (his first since 2001).

“You’ve continually got to renew in this business,” says McTell. “I’m proud to be a small part of the New Folk Movement. The level of folk musicianship has never been higher in this country. I love the general brio and enthusiasm of young musicians, although I’m still waiting for the great songwriters to emerge.”

McTell describes himself as a guitarist first, songwriter second, and “never a singer”. “When I write I get the ideas for tunes first on the guitar or piano and they give me the idea of a sentiment. Then the words come last.”

Nevertheless he is best known for one song. Streets of London was originally recorded in 1968 in one take by McTell on guitar and vocals. More than 40 years later it has become such a middle-of-the-road standard that many were shocked when McTell revealed recently to The One Show’s Myleene Klass that the song was originally going to be called “The Streets of Paris”. He wrote it when he lived in Paris in the sixties by busking. “I reworked it for London but it would not have been written if I’d not been in Paris,” he said.

McTell confesses he feels “a little bit weird” that the song was written when he was part of an alternative folk underground but it has now become a mainstream pop song. “I would have liked it to be a bit more left field,” he says. “But lets hope that it’s thought of as a pop song that at least makes people have a think. I’m reconciled to the fact that it will be the only song of mine that’s ever played on the radio.”

Streets of London has been covered by more than 200 different artists, won an Ivor Novello Award (“it’s not on my mantelpiece… it’s on my windowsill”) and sold millions of copies around the world. Streets’ cheesy familiarity often overshadows McTell’s amazing career. The singer-songwriter from London has played on the same bill as Hendrix at the Isle of Wight Festival, topped the bill at Montreux Jazz Festival, presented two folk series on Radio 2, and worked on several TV children’s programmes (because his hero Woody Guthrie had written lots of songs for children). He has also written songs for Skol TV adverts, TV theme tunes and a specially-commissioned evocation of the life of Dylan Thomas in words and music broadcast on BBC, that he refers to as his “grown-up work.” His two-volume autobiography has also been widly-acclaimed.

“I’m still working as hard as ever on new songs,” he says. “My criteria are still the same. Is it original, is it worth saying, is it poetic but short and punchy? I rarely tick all those boxes but I believe that if you record something it should be as good as you can do.”

Although he is “delighted” to be recording a studio CD again, McTell says he is always drawn back to playing live. “One of the nicest things you can do in life is being on stage performing,” he told us. “I was chatting to Tom Paxton about this a few days ago, and he’s in his seventies. We agreed that we didn’t set out on the road to arrive anywhere. It’s the Romany inside. The road just goes on and on. He still loves it… and I do too.”

Simon Heptinstall