MARC RIBOT
Meet the daring sonic chameleon (and a guitarist for Tom Waits, The Black Keys and others) whose playing has taken in rock, free jazz, classical, hardcore punk, Cuban music and more.
Experimental New York guitarist Marc Ribot made his reputation early with his pioneering work on Tom Waits’s 1985 album Rain Dogs. He’s since gone on to make music under his own name, with his avant-garde outfits such as Ceramic Dog, and his long-rolling CV as a sideman includes stints with Fred Frith, John Mellencamp, The Black Keys and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.
Ribot can also count fans from all parts of the musical spectrum, Kirk Hammet cites him a guitarist who rocks his world. “His playing is way outside,” says the Metallica guitarist, “but it works because his sense of melody and swing pulls it back in.”
Tom Waits and Steve Earle were among the artists on Ribot’s politically charged latest project, Songs Of Resistance 1942-2018.
You were a teenager during the Summer Of Love. What was your first band called?
Mirage, then we changed it to Love Gun. We were four pimply white kids in a garage in the suburbs of Newark playing Green Onions by Booker T. & The M.G.s and In The Midnight Hour by Wilson Pickett. Then songs by Cream, Vanilla Fudge, Iron Butterfly…
How did your relationship with the guitar evolve from there?
When I really love something, I try to find out where it came from. So I pretty quickly understood that there’s this guy called BB King, who Eric Clapton got a lot of licks from. That was great for me because
I was never the fastest guitarist, and BB and Chuck Berry taught me that if you could play with economy then you didn’t have to be.
You’re an influential player. Do you ever hear a guitar part and think: ‘That sounds familiar!’?
Every now and then I hear another guitarist playing terribly and then citing me as an influence! For some maybe I’ve been a gateway to a larger past. By the time I was recording, I’d heard Clapton and Hendrix but also Django Reinhardt, Hubert Sumlin, Duane Eddy. Part of the freedom of playing is the freedom to access the past, and to alter it. You could play an old blues lick, but with a certain effect that couldn’t possibly have existed when that lick was first recorded. There’s all these other things you can play with other than just the notes – loud or soft, hi-tech or lo-fi, European or South American. All these things are important and create new levels of meaning. It’s a musician’s job to do that.
With so much political turmoil in the world your album Songs Of Resistance couldn’t have been more timely.
Part of the idea was to get great artists from many different parts of the music scene to come together to do something. I was also modelling the idea of a popular front: we can work together, make music together and make politics together to end this bad situation.
When someone asks Marc Ribot to play on their record, what do you think it is that they are after?
I have no idea. I’m just glad when they do. Out of nothing but helping the drums or the bass, my parts somehow emerge. It’s a beautiful process.
Listen to this: Way Down In The Hole (Tom Waits, Frank’s Wild Years, 1987)
“Part of the freedom of playing is the freedom to access the past, and to alter it.”