On the 1st January 2004, the Radio 4 Desert Island Discs programme (where the interviewee is questioned about their life and is asked to select their favourite songs to take to a desert island) featured Emmylou Harris. It turned out to be a fascinating insight into this wonderful singer/songwriter’s life and career. This is that interview, and I can’t think of a better way to starting this new year of music.

When and how did the music start?

I received a guitar for my sixteenth Christmas and my grandfather had bought it in a pawnshop for $30.

So you taught yourself did you?

Oh yes. Nobody in my family was musical and I didn’t really have any friends who were into music or making music. I had a book entitled ‘Introduction To Folk Music Parts 1 & 2‘, and I would listen to the records and just as long as it was three chords, and maybe a minor, I could kind of figure it out.

So that was the fashion, but there was a deeper reason for not liking Country…

Country was somehow politically incorrect. It was like ant-integration, it was anti all the things that folk music represented, which was kind of odd because really when you think about the South and the unions and the poverty, and all that stuff (if you go back to Woody Guthrie and his music), it was all about the common man and poverty…

But somehow Country music was connected with that conservative Deep South and racial prejudice…

Yes, that was associated with it and plus I just didn’t get it, it sounded wrong to me. It was at a time when Joan Baez who was singing these chillingly beautiful crystalline songs about murder and injustice.

So you thought that Country music was sort of Hicksville did you?

It didn’t interest me at all. And obviously there was that stigma because we right in the throws of a huge change in the United States in racial relations.

You were born in Birmingham, Alabama and must have seen that kind of racial prejudice…

Well, it was interesting. I left Birmingham when I was six, my father was in the Marine Corps and we were transferred out and even though we still lived in the South in North Carolina in off-base housing with people from all over, it was a cultureless kind of existence…

So there was a level of integration…

Well, yes there was and there wasn’t. I’m sure that there were still a lot of pressures but basically there was integration. It was only when I went back to visit my relatives in the Deep South that I would see the water fountains and restaurant rest rooms with notices saying, ‘No Coloureds.’ And I would think to myself, ‘That’s very odd…’

**page*



Your second record?

I chose The Staple Singers and when they sing together it is one of the most righteous and beautiful sounds that’s ever been created. There’s an incredible simplicity to their records. So this is a very popular Gospel song but their arrangement of it is pretty extraordinary. It’s called Uncloudy Day.

We mentioned that hardship informs the work of Folk and indeed of Country music. You had quite an eventful childhood. Your father was a Prisoner of War at one point wasn’t he…

Yes, my father was in the Korean conflict and he left when I was five. He was shot down and we did not know… he was ‘Missing in Action.’ I was standing next to my mother when she got the phone call, we only had one phone and it was in the hallway on a little telephone table. I didn’t know why I was standing by her when she got that call but I could tell that something was wrong. So I asked what was it? She said, “Your father is missing in action.” I didn’t know what that meant of course but I knew I might never see him again. And so it was imprinted on me like a brand.

How long was he gone?

I think it was a total of sixteen months. I’m a bit hazy on the details but because he was a senior officer in the camp they put him in a box and tortured him to get him to talk, and give information. It was a small box where you couldn’t stand up and he was in total isolation for a long time. And he went down to about 120 pounds and he’s a tall man. But apparently he had a little square of cloth about the size of a quarter of a handkerchief. And I guess he must have had a needle as well because he did needlework on this piece of cloth and that helped him a lot through his isolation. He didn’t know if he was going to be killed, also not knowing what your breaking point is…

Tell me about being a teenager. You kept yourself to yourself rather. And you were quite a beauty (you still are…). There you were, quite a looker, could have had all kind of guys…

I never could navigate those waters. I never could understand the social strata of high school. I had some good friends. One of them was like the most popular girl in the school. She was a beauty queen and she was very sought after, and she lived on the street with me, and we were very close. And so I was the girl that guys would call to find out how they could get in good with Carol. And I would say, ‘forget it, you’ve already blown it…’

You sat home playing your guitar or listening to the radio, but in the middle of all this you wrote to Pete Seeger, one of your great Folk singing heroes and said, “I want to do it…” I mean how did you know that’s what you wanted to do?

Well, the more I got into music, the more it seemed to resonate with me. But I had no experience, I never had hardship, I never had to get out of my seat and move to the back of the bus… And I thought I didn’t have any credibility or understanding of that…

So was it a long letter you wrote?

Well, it was a long, frighteningly badly handwritten, just pouring my heart out to him.

Did he reply?

Yes, he did reply. God bless him. I met him years later and he remembered the letter. He basically replied that life would come to me whether I wanted it to or not. He also gave me a few things to do - just to keep me busy… kinda ‘We’d better do something with this girl before she implodes!’

**page*

Record number three?

I picked The Band by The Band and I just love this track because it makes me happy. It’s called Up On Cripple Creek.

When you got signed what did you play?

They gave me some records by one of their artists, a very young, pretty girl who had some popularity at the time. I couldn’t follow that formula. Once again, I was blissfully ignorant and really thought that I could follow my own path.

At that point it seemed to be slipping away didn’t it. I mean you were still singing, but you got married, you had a child…

Well it did. At that point, as Pete Seeger had pointed out, life came and tracked me down and I found myself pretty soon a single mother, struggling to make a living.

It must have felt a bit like the end of the world…

It did. It was like my life was over, I’m twenty-three and my life was over. I’ve had my shot and now I have to hook again, raise my child and give up singing because obviously I can’t make a living at it. But, oddly enough, Washington DC was a very good area for people to do their own music and plus I had these two wonderful people, my parents, that were twenty-five miles away and that were also parents to my daughter. My big break really came with meeting Gram Parsons. But I would never have hooked up with Gram Parsons if it hadn’t been for my daughter, because I was working in a club in DC and some people who were in a band (The Flying Burrito Brothers) came in and heard me. They went off to the next town about fifteen miles away to do a show at which Gram Parsons (an original member of that band, and he also played with the Byrds) showed up just to hang out and visit. He told them that he was going to make a solo record and he was looking for a girl to sing duets with him. They told him that they had just heard this girl in DC but didn’t know how to get in touch with her. My babysitter was a big music fan and she went to all the big rock shows and she always got backstage. She overheard the conversation (this is a true story…) and she went up to them and said, “I know how to get in touch with her.” The next day I got a call from Gram Parsons and the rest is history…

Before more history, record number four…

Record number four is by two women who from the first time I heard their voices (on their first record), they moved me. I’ve never heard anything quite as lovely, as dark and light at the same time. It’s so absolutely stunning in its beauty and melody that I just wanted to share it with your listeners.

That was Kate and Anna McGarrigle, and Talk To Me Of Mendocino. So Gram Parsons came into your life, and you said that ‘he gave me voice.’ How can you characterise his influence on your career, it’s everything isn’t it?

Yes, it is. I had a pretty voice, I could sing songs by a lot of different women singers but I think there was just something missing. The only word I can think of is ‘focus.’ Somehow, singing along with Gram seasoned my voice and honed it

But he was trying to create something different wasn’t he - Country Rock without hurting either one of them…

He didn’t like that term. It implied something that was a fusion that was lesser and perhaps watered down. What he did create was totally unique and I think it had to do with his lyrics as much as anything. You can read between the lines and you can also put your own meaning into it, which is different from traditional Country music, ‘You broke my heart and I’m gonna sit at this bar…’ But on the other hand everyone can relate to that also…

But it brought you to Country music…

Oh yes. He also brought me to the real stuff, the 100% proof, the harmonies, the simplicity of voice…

Why did you think it did that?

It could have been instinctive, it could be that I was an incredibly late bloomer. The point is that it really did happen and I wasn’t just mimicking. It happened to me and was as real as one of those spiritual awakenings. Like it seems that God appears to them. It was that dramatic for me. I heard with different ears.

**page*



Record number five…

Neil Young has always been an artists where I just close my eyes and pick almost any of his records. This is (and who knows why?), The Emperor Of Wyoming.

Gram Parsons was from the South, from a well-healed family. He developed a taste for the high life. He’d done drugs…

Well, I think unfortunately he was one of these people that had to have money every year. His father killed himself when Gram was ten. Gram never really talked about this and I learned about a lot of this after his death. His mother drank herself to death when he was in his teens. I think it was a difficult thing for him, and he was extraordinarily sane considering all he had gone through.

But by the time you were singing with him, he was clean…

I know that he had stopped doing drugs but he was drinking. I was very naive about that stuff. He seemed to be doing really well and even seemed to have stopped drinking. But a lot of it was that we just sang all the time and there was work, and I think work is a great balm.

And you made two very successful albums…

Yes, well they were successful on an artistic level and he could have gone on to do a lot more. But it was not to be. It was only a short period of time, perhaps a year…

It was a terrible thing that there it is beginning to happen and then he dies of an overdose… You must have been devastated…

I was. It was like having your arm amputated and it was so sudden. And I really (perhaps this was naïve) thought that Gram was out of the woods. I didn’t know enough about drug and alcohol abuse to realise what a dangerous place he was in. His body just gave out

So suddenly, having thought you were set for this great singing career. Then it all disappeared. Were you in love with him?

Oh well, we were not lovers. I’ve said this countless times but people still prefer the other story. I think if he had lived, we probably would have had a relationship. But the timing was all wrong so there was that to this situation where I think where I was just at the point where I was realising just how much he meant to me, and then he was gone…

It’s an amazing thought but he’s actually been dead longer than he lived…

Believe me, you think about that sometimes when you get to a certain age… yeah, it’s very strange to have to have lived as long as you have…

But so much of the music that you recorded after he died, even more recent music, has been influenced by him hasn’t it?

Well of course, everything is influenced. When you have a very powerful influence, it’s obviously going to cover everything you do. I think that he’ll always be part of me. Just like anything that’s happened to you and knowing someone who has meant a lot to you. You’ll always carry that with you. How can you ever discard that? It becomes a part of who you are.

Your next piece of music…

The next piece of music is from a Bruce Springsteen album, and I just love the imagery that this conjures up. This is called Mansion On The Hill.

Bruce Springsteen, one of the many collaborators you’ve performed with over the past three decades. But what you have achieved in that time is to bring together those two sections of the audiences that Gram Parsons wanted to bring together. The Rock and the Country, a fusion. You can’t tell one from the other now. Is that your greatest achievement?

I think I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve got fans that don’t think about categories. It seems like there are more and more people whose record collections include an eclectic range of music.

**page*

But your local radio station in Nashville… I gather their definition of country music in the nineties moved away from you…

Oh yeah, I’m not played on Country radio at all. They kind of figured that I’ve either died or moved away… I mean I tried to play the good girl scout there for a while and for a time I thought it was my fault; that I wasn’t making good records. Or maybe had to work a little harder. And we consciously tried to make some good country songs that we thought would have a chance on the radio. We were then told they were too traditional which means that they didn’t listen to them… So I thought, ‘Well, I don’t need this…’ and the record company was very good and said, ‘Look, we don’t know what to do. We’ve tried everything and it’s not you. So you do whatever you want and work with whoever you want to work with and we’ll do the best we can.’ And I told them that I would like to do a record with Daniel Lanois. Behold, as it turned out once again a higher power was at work and decided that it should happen…

So this was WRECKING BALL?

Yes. It brought me into a whole other world of sound and rhythms.

And much of it written by yourself, and a totally different sound from anything you’d ever done before…

Oh yeah, completely different, and yet songs which were not alien to me, but done in a different landscape, and brought out different things in my voice, and took me to a different place. But I didn’t have to become a different singer. I just discovered a different gear.

And did that do the trick? Did your audience come back to you?

My audience never really left me, radio left me. I have an audience that always zig and zag with me. I’m living proof that you can be an artist without radio. It’s the people that count.

Record number seven, and here’s the man…

This is a clip from the album. An extraordinary song, with brilliant production, and I think very soul-stirring. This is The Soul Maker by Daniel Lanois.

Emmylou, you have two daughters and had three husbands, but now you live with your mother. Your best friend in all of this obviously…

She is. She’s just an extraordinary person. My father died very suddenly ten years ago and gradually she came to live with me. She has a way of nurturing and taking care of things without interfering. I think it’s a quality that not a lot of people have.

You’ve had your chances, you’ve had your heartaches but, as you’ve said, you’ve also had a lot of good fortune. But now you’re going to be cast out to a desert island with only your memories for company, has your country music taught you to be philosophical - could you cope through your music?

Whatever your situation, I think you have to make the best of it. And if that’s the situation then I hope that I would be able to deal with it. I have a family tradition to keep up…

It wouldn’t stop you swimming for it I’m sure…

I’m not much of a swimmer, unfortunately. I think I’d have to try to build a raft. The heavens have looked down on me with fortune over my life so it would be a bit mean of me, and small of me, to just starting pitching a fit then because of not liking where I have found myself. Do you know what I mean? Didn’t someone say, ‘Character is something you do when no-one’s watching‘?

Last record…

This is a record that my dear friend Linda Ronstadt turned me on to at around 1973. It’s a women’s chorus of folk music, called The Music Of Bulgaria, an original 1955 recording. The sound of these women’s voices…I don’t know what they’re saying, but it brings me down to earth and close to heaven.

And now if you could take only one of those pieces of music with you…

Oh God! This is hard since I’ve fallen in love with all of them all over again. I think I would take Anna and Kate McGarrigle. And I’m probably going on the fact that I know them and they are my friends, and somehow they would be there with me…