MY LIFE IN MUSIC
Marc Ribot
Tom Waits’ go-to guitarist on his journey through blues, punk, jazz and beyond: “The musicians are caught up in a ritual”
PHOTO: EBRU YILDIZ
INTERVIEW: SAM RICHARDS.
WILSON PICKETT
“Land Of 1000 Dances”
ATLANTIC, 1966
“…Midnight Hour” was one of the first three tunes I learned with my junior high school band, Love Gun. We were very ambitious 15-year-olds! “Land Of 1000 Dances” worked to get people into a dancing frenzy. It’s about dancing, it’s self-referential. But there’s something about it that transcends itself. On Horses, Patti Smith quotes an entire verse of “Land Of 1000 Dances”, and she was also somebody who was aiming for this ritual hallelujah. That said, Wilson Pickett was not a nice man. I toured with him for a month in 1982 and I witnessed him and his bodyguard being violent with members of the band. I escaped through my ability to play country music licks on guitar.
ALBERT AYLER