Sid Griffin has long been a familiar, if unlikely, figure along the cherry-blossom lanes of Hampstead. He's a civil southern gentleman - a one-time Long Ryder who still dreams of the Bluegrass State. By night, in venues up and down Britain, long-time fans come out to see him, eager to relive those glory indie days when the Long Ryders were the hottest band around. And he'll oblige, topping off his recent material with a blasting rendition of Looking for Lewis and Clark.
Of course, that's not all he does. Now married to musician Kate St John and with a baby, Esther Mae, driving him to delightful distraction, Griffin does a bit of journalism for the English music press and continues to plough on, from his most unlikely base, with his very own new American music.
The current album, Western Electric, is his most assured work since the Long Ryders days. But the Long Ryders it certainly ain't, and imported samples and dance beats have added new dimensions to the more familiar sounds of steel guitar and mandolin. It's a rare mix - a mysterious genre of cosmic Americana inspired by a visit to Louisville - not only the hometown of Muhammad Ali, but also the birthplace, in 1955, of Sidney Albert Griffin.
"Now it's just another American suburb," he says, "although when I was a kid it was horses and cows and the whole thing. And it was the Bible Belt too. The `heathens' were on the east coast in places like New York and Boston, or on the west coast in places like San Francisco and LA - Baghdad by the Bay and Sin City. It was absolutely no drink, although my parents, being from Kentucky, drank Bourbon! That's just because we make Bourbon in Kentucky. And they'd go to the racetrack too because we race horses in Kentucky. But as for going to Las Vegas, or Atlantic City, or Reno or Taho, they'd rather die! It's an odd state. It turns out people like Hunter S. Thompson! Funnily enough, my mother, who is the most born-again, Ronald Reagan Republican you could ever meet, actually knows Hunter S. Thompson. He calls her Mrs Griffin."
The word is that one third of Americans attend church regularly, but in the Bible Belt that figure rises to two thirds. The churchgoing Griffins were Southern Baptist and it was young Sid's Saturday duty to learn a lesson from the Bible which he would then regurgitate at Sunday school the following morning. After that it was church proper, and then a huge family meal where, naturally, bourbon was sipped by the elders. These days, his views on religion are typical of those raised so intensely within the church. "A lot of it I believe," he says, "and a lot of it I don't." But for all its strictness, Jack Daniels and horse-racing weren't the only wordly pleasures to be tolerated at the Griffin place.
"Well, there was a lot of acoustic bluegrass in a place down the street a couple of blocks. It was a neighbourhood bar and, as a little boy, my dad took me there. And one time he took me to see Ernest Tubb and my interest in music just grew out of that. And so when The Beatles came along, it wasn't odd for me. Unlike a lot of other people, by the age of five and six, I had already been to a show and I had heard grown people play music. So it wasn't a great step just to hear music played by younger people. Back then I thought it was all just one big ball of music. But when I got older I can remember boys on the basketball court saying how country music was really bad, silly and red neck and I couldn't figure out why. So I didn't ask and just went along with it, in the way that boys do. But Ernest Tubb was wonderful and I can still see him now!"
As a sick child, Griffin was spending rather too much time in hospital. It was inevitably a boring and frustrating time, but his reward came (and lightning struck) when his uncle arrived with a present of The Byrds' album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. It was a revelation, and so began his lifelong obsession with the group and with Gram Parsons in particular. A bowl haircut and sideburns were to follow as Griffin began to explore the possibilities of his favourite American music. He is now probably the leading authority on The Byrds and the various branches they perched on, and he is also the man who wrote the book on Gram Parsons.
"I just flipped for it because it was all one package - country, long hair and rock 'n' roll. And so my parents bought me a guitar which cost $12. To this day they say if they'd known what was going to happen, they'd never have bought it. We formed a primitive band and did a lot of Creedence Clearwater Revival songs, and I remember I did my first paying gig at 15."
That bowl haircut made its first European appearance when the Long Ryders first arrived in Europe as the next big thing. And, as a hairstyle, it was more than a little unnerving for audiences who didn't quite get The Byrds reference. To those curious and uninitiated, the Long Ryders looked like they had hailed from some particularly scary rural part of America - a sort of loud, guitar-playing cross between the James Gang and The Waltons. It worked too, and they were for a time the coolest band around. Along with the Replacements, they were tipped to be the next REM, having been given the vital imprimatur of the US college radio crowd. There were two number-one singles in the alternative charts and two number-one albums.
"The Long Ryders was formed," insists Griffin, "because England was turning out all these horrible bands, which were popular in America and were certainly popular in that Anglophile Heaven which is Los Angeles. There was Heaven 17 and Duran Duran and Haircut One Hundred and the Human League. They were terrible! They were terrible, but they all had hits in America. So bands like Green on Red and the Long Ryders and the Blasters were all formed because we thought that if we didn't form the bands who were going the play the type of music we wanted to hear, then it was all going to disappear. We believed that if someone didn't start playing gutsy, American guitar stuff, then it was over!"
THOSE wild Hollywood days with Los Lobos, the Long Ryders and the Bangles - typically all on one the bill - is a far cry from Sid Griffin's current gigging schedule. His band the Coal Porters have been working very, very hard indeed and there hasn't been an ounce of glamour in it. And they keep going. As a city, London holds many frustrations for Griffin and he openly considers himself as a struggling artist - it is all the more bewildering, then, that he doesn't make it easier for himself and round up the old gang from the West Coast. He thinks about it, too, and perhaps some day he will. But suddenly, despite the difficulties, he has now come up with perhaps his best work yet. Western Electric is a recording he sees as something of a left turn.
"I realised something with the Coal Porters. You can't take those guys (one Scottish, one English and one Irish) and expect them to play my Byrds-meets-Springsteen-meets-Long Ryders music. Its not realistic. It's like I play mandolin, but you can't take me to Cork and throw me in a session and expect me to play Irish music. You can learn elements of it, but you're never going to quite have it. So that's why we made this turn with Western Electric. What the Brits and the Irish are famous for is taking the music from America and putting a spin on it. So that's what we did. I think it's the way to go. And there's absolutely no way some of my old friends are ever going to use dance beats and samples. So now we have changed the rules, and they're going to have to catch up on us! As long as we keep it in a groovy hard-hitting context with guitars and good songs and emphatic vocals, then we're laughing."
Western Electric from Western Electric is on Munich Records