Great Guitarists Of The Western World No. 1: LEO KOTTKE

Great Guitarists Of The Western World No. 1: LEO KOTTKE

Ed Ward

Leo Kottke is playing the guitar. He’s been playing the guitar, sitting on the bed in this airport motel in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for some forty-five minutes, stopping here and there to check what he is trying to do. An idea appears, is played with, and then seems to be locked into place in an overall structure. Where to go from here? A couple of chords are tried, in various positions, to try and make a smooth transition from this first idea to another that was kicking around in the thematic material about fifteen minutes ago. It’s a transition that’s got to be both tricky and smooth, because it Isn’t particularly natural, harmonically speaking, but it obviously - to Kottke, anyhow - has to be made.

A series of steps is constructed, a rhythmic overlay is created, syncopated and difficult, so after blocking the chords out, Kottke does it slowly, then quicker and quicker. Finally it all seems to be in place: first the original theme, then the transition and awkward rhythm harmony number, then the new idea, a sort of blazing synthesis of all three to act as a coda, and Leo Kottke sits there, head bent, listening to that last beefsteak-rich 12-string chord disappear into the depths of his guitar. sheepishly. Sure, here I’ve finally been able to see and hear with my own perceptual equipment just how this virtuoso picker and composer makes those organic-sounding, fluid guitar pieces sound so easy and natural when in fact they are really complex - and he thinks I’m bored. As a guitar player, as a student and critic of music, and - not quite incidentally - as a Leo Kottke fan, it would take a lot more than that to bore me.

Suddenly his head snaps up. “I hope I’m not boring you,” he says

Pizxa Swamper Kottke Guru?

One of the things that’s bothered me recently is the astounding number of guitarists - and on/y guitarists - flocking around this Sri Chinmoy character: John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell (for a while), Carlos Santana, and even that little guy from Mandrill. I decided I’d ask Kottke - easily on a par or better than the above-mentioned - if he could explain it. “Do you have a guru?” I asked. He smiled, “When people ask me that, I usually come up with a snappy answer.” “Hmm, that’s not very snappy... Well, look, why do you think guitarists are attracted to this Chinmoy character, anyway?” “I think guitarists, most good ones, anyway, have a mother fixation. They’re usually very mother-oriented, they were raised by their mothers - I know I was - and these gurus are just the thing for them.” When I pressed the guru issue further, the name Frizz Fuller, a swamper at the Pizza Towers in Los Angeles did emerge, although in connection with brilliant, schizophrenic, unknown songwriters. Still, you never can tell.

In fact, I went into this whole story sort of expecting to be bored some of the time. Listening to Kottke’s music, you would rather expect that he is somewhat withdrawn, shy, quiet, and, as befits his virtuosity, pretty inarticulate and little concerned with much outside the immediate sphere of his playing.

Hoo hah! Maybe some guitar wizards are like that, but not Leo Kottke. In fact, the only time he’s like that is when he is just about to go on stage. “You know anyone else who gets owly and sleepy before going on stage?” he asks just prior to opening a show for Procol Harum in Chicago. “Owly?” I ask. “Yeah; you know,” and he acts... owly. As the time to get on stage draws nearer, he hands two guitar stands to a stagehand. Custom made, they look like artificial walking aids with their steel tubing and rubber padding. Then he sets about tuning. Shocking! He’s using a tuning fork. Not only that, it’s taking him about as long as it would take me.I don’t exactly have a wooden ear, but surely one would expect Kottke to tune quicker than most mortals, not to mention to have - or have developed - perfect pitch.

Plus, there are two twelve-string guitars in question here, both tuned to distinctive Kottke tunings, which I dare not repeat here. One is a neat Martin, which survived an auto accident along with its previous owner, but was all smashed to hell. Wizard guitar repairman John Lundberg of Berkeley decided that it merited repair, though, and designed a unique cutaway design into it. “Lundberg’s incredible,” says Kottke. “He won’t give you your machine back until it’s perfect. ” The other guitar is a Bozo - I swear. It’s pronounced “Bozho,” and it’s named for its maker, a Czechoslovakian guitar craftsman from Chicago who now lives in Florida.

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Kottke himself lives in Minnesota, and spends a lot of time at home with his wife, Mary, and their two kids, Sara Ann, who is three (sample quote: “Oh, Daddy, please don’t sing!”) and Joseph Otto, one. He spends his time at home working on the house, playing with the kids, writing tunes, and hanging out with friends. He’s been playing guitar for sixteen of his twenty-eight years, learriing from records and just plain noodling around. He’s never worked with a band, mainly because no band can really follow him. (Actually, he did put in an appearance with a friend’s band many years ago at an obscure Minnesota bar, but the reaction of the uncomprehending drunks was enough to swear him off the experience.) Once given to comparing his voice to goose flatus, he now says “I used to think I couldn’t sing, but now I know I can.” He can. I still think he sounds like Frank Sinatra, at least a little bit.

The best thing about Kottke is that he has somehow managed a nearly-impossible task. He has taken his art, as uncompromising as it is, and turned it into a saleable commodity. In Grand Rapids, where he did a concert in the gym at Aquinas College on a night when another rock attraction was appearing in town, he managed to fill the hall with some 800 fans who whooped and hollered their way through the concert in a genuine show of appreciation.

I like Kottke’s stuff, but I hardly consider my taste mainstream, and yet not only can he sell out a concert in Grand Rapids, but he can get a standing ovation from a Procol Harum crowd in Chicago and be mobbed backstage by kids wanting to know everything from what kind of strings he uses to what records he listens to these days (“John Williams - a classical guitarist with a really liberal idea of what is ‘classical.’ ”). Even when one of the more audacious fans picks up the Bozo without asking (without asking!) and starts playing it, Kottke is gracious about it all, requesting that he roll his sleeve down because the finish around the top is wearing off. The guy noodles for a while, puts it up, and walks off. “Can you imagine that?” Kottke muses.

Kottke’s fans are everywhere, too -Gary Brooker of Procol Harum likes him well enough to try and get him a spot in their set everytime they play together. The number is the closing one, “Power Cut,” featuring a blazing Kottke solo and a surprisingly fine drum solo. Kottke kicks the piece off, a little faster than they’re used to, which serves the dual purpose of keeping the band on its toes and avoiding the kind of stodge Procol Harum has a decided tendency towards. Ariel Bender worships Kottke in a way that only somebody who knows he’s good can revere somebody he knows is better than him.

What keeps him good is practice. A technique which strikes, picks, and strums guitar, stings with the complex precision of an IBM Selectric ball, does not come out of thin air, and the constant practice has developed his hand and wrist muscles to an incredible extent. He suffers from occasional tendonitis, in fact, because “when I come to a locked door, for instance, I just keep on turning the knob, and that can really fuck you up.”

But it’s hafd to imagine anything that can stop Kottke from playing his guitar.