“You can learn to do this with your own two hands!”: The stinging rebuke Chet Atkins gave John Fahey over unfounded accusations
Chet Atkins may have been known as the Country Gentleman, but even he wasn’t one to let unfounded claims about his guitar playing slide.
In a recent interview with Guitar World, Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler reflects on his time working with the fingerstyle legend – and recalls the one time he ever saw Atkins genuinely annoyed: when fellow guitarist John Fahey suggested he relied on double-tracking to pull off his intricate playing.
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“I only remember him being slightly put-out once, when John Fahey said he’d been double-tracking. Chet was not pleased by that,” says Knopfler. “And he wrote to whatever magazine it was and said, ‘You can learn to do this with your own two hands; you don’t need double-tracking.’”
While Atkins wasn’t opposed to multi-tracking in his own recordings, Knopfler notes that the musician only used it when “doing something even more complicated.”
“I mean, Chet liked multi-tracking too, of course, but only if he was doing something even more complicated,” he explains. “But he could play Yankee Doodle and Battle Hymn of the Republic at the same time.”
The two guitarists formed a bond in the late ’80s that eventually led to their Grammy-winning 1990 album Neck and Neck. Their friendship grew with informal jams in Atkins’s office, where the musician’s modest tastes often surprised Knopfler.
“I remember, Chet Atkins gave me a [call]. Because we were both pickers in that sense – but, of course, Chet was otherworldly,” he says. “I used to go round to his office and hang out, and I’ll never forget, we once played and sang the song Kentucky all morning.”
“Chet had such facility and knowledge, and yet what he wanted to do was play Kentucky – which has two chords – all morning long. He’d say to me, ‘You’re pretty good, but you’re no Mark Knopfler.’”
“He always had good jokes,” Knopfler continues. “You know, you’d get to the end of something and he’d go, ‘Very educational.’ And then he’d say, ‘A little below above average.’ Or something like that. Very dry.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
