| By Dave Fagence for Dark Star Magazine, March 1979 |
| Carlene Carter's background demanded that she should naturally assume the role that her family has played for so long; with a musical history stretching way back into the dark it could only be expected that she'd carry the family's name into the eighties. Not so obvious was the path she has chosen to tread. With her roots so fimrly entrenched in country music it must have come as quite a shock to her family and friends alike that the lady should stray not only from country musick but from Nashville itself. That in England she recorded with arguably the best band we've known for nearly a year, namely The Rumour, only adds to the fact that she does not see herself following the same road as many of her Nashville contemporaries. |
| DARK STAR spoke to the 'Nashville rebel' last summer while she was on a short promotional visit to England. Carlene was only too eager to explain why she has dug up her roots and expanded what would surely have become a restricted role for a talent such as hers... Dark Star: The Carter Family toured here about eight years ago; were you with them? Carlene Carter: No, I've never been here with them; you're probably thinking of my younger sister, Rosey. Is that Rosey Nix? Uh huh. That's my little sister, she's a real good singer. Going back just a little further; were you aware of the Johnny Cash/Bob Dylan sessions in Nashville? Yeah, because Dylan stayed at our house part of the time. I was only twelve at the time. His wife was the first lady I ever saw nurse a baby. He was real quiet, he never said anything to us, but then again, what can you say to a twelve-year-old kid except maybe, 'Do you want to sit on my lap.' When he left he gave my sister and myself these little hand-painted jewelry boxes. I didn't realise the importance of them at the time. My sister's still got hers but I've no idea where mine is. I guess his wife bought them, he probably had no idea about them, but they were apparently from him. Where you aware of the actual music Cash and Dylan were recording at the time? I went to a few sessions, but really I only knew what was going on from the dinner table. But from what I understood they were pretty terrible. They used to have these parties at our house where everyone would sit around and pass a guitar around and everyone would sing a new song. I remember one night when Dylan sang 'Lay Lady Lay' and Joni Mitchell sang 'Both Sides Now', which was already known, Graham Nash sang 'Marrakesh Express' and James Taylor was there singing 'Sweet Baby James'. All these people were there. It must have all seemed strange at the time. Actually it wasn't strange at all, it seemed real normal. So you weren't overawed by all thse people dropping by all the time. Well, I was to a certain extent, but to me musicians weren't strange abnormal pople because my parents and all my family were musicians. so people who weren't musicians seemed abnormal to me. The only time I was ever shocked was when Steppenwolf came to our house. They just decided they wanted to meet John. I looked out of my bedroom window and this big black limousine pulled up and all these hairy yobs started pouring into the house. When I was fourteen I fell in love with Eric Clapton's piano player, Bobby Whitlock. They played on John's TV show and I thought he was the neatest guy, but I was so scared of him and Erick that I never even said hello to them. Did you feel it could hold you back rather than help you, being one of the Carter family? Well, there's no way it could really hold me back, but at the same time, the only way it can help me personally is by background, like watching them all the time, what they have done and everything. Musically, there isn't much they have done for me as far as I'm concerned; career wise, absolutely nothing. Did you feel you could have been typecast? That's it. I was real determined to be Carlene Carter and not June Carter's daughter. They're still my parents but as far as everything else goes, they're just my parents. They're great musicians at what they do but what I do is not the same thing. Someone asked me if they were gonna be on my record and I tried to think of something they could do 'cause I thought it would be really neat having them on my record. But there was no place on the whole album where there was anything for them to do, so it didn't happen, it just wasn't their scene. Dave Edmunds was going to produce the whole album at one stage, wasn't he? Yeah, we went into the studios and did some stuff together but it wasn't far enough into what I wanted my whole LP to sound like. There was a lot of real good stuff we did, he had some great ideas but I had some things I wanted to do that weren't coming out of that group of people, so in order to remain friends I felt we should stop working together. He's one of my best friends so there are no hard feelings there at all. You cut Rodney Crowell's 'Never Together But Close Sometimes'... Yeah. Rodney and I are friends. He came over with me at the beginning when I was working with Dave but he left before I stopped working with Dave. Rodney and I came over with about ten songs that we'd worked out together and that was the only one that ended up on the album. Was Rodney going to be on the album? The tracks that I did with Dave, Rodney played and sang on. |
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