John Townes Van Zandt (March 7, 1944 - January 1, 1997), better known as Townes Van Zandt , is an American singer-songwriter. He is highly respected for his poetic and often heroic songs. In 1983, six years after Emmylou Harris first popularized it, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard covered the song "Pancho and Lefty", reaching number one on the Billboard country music chart. Much of his life was spent on visiting dive bars, often living in cheap motel rooms and shanty huts. For much of the 1970s, he lived in a simple hut with no electricity or phone.
She suffered from a series of drug addiction, alcoholism, and was given a psychiatric diagnosis of bipolar disorder. When he was young, the now discredited insulin shock therapy wiped out most of his long-term memory.
Van Zandt died on New Year's Day 1997 from cardiac arrhythmias caused by health problems stemming from substance abuse for years. The revival of interest in Van Zandt occurred in the 2000s. During this decade, two books, a documentary (Be Here to Love Me), and many magazine articles about the singer were written.
Video Townes Van Zandt
Biography
Early life
Born in Fort Worth to a wealthy family, Van Zandt was the third grandson of Isaac Van Zandt (leader of the Republican Republic) and nephew of Khleber Miller Van Zandt (a major in the Confederate armies and one of Fort Worth's founders). Van Zandt County in east Texas was named after his family in 1848.
Townes' parents were Harris Williams Van Zandt (1913-1966) and Dorothy Townes (1919-1983). He has two brothers, Bill and Donna (1941-2011). Harris is a corporate lawyer, and his career requires families to move several times during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1952, the family moved from Fort Worth to Midland, Texas, for six months before moving to Billings, Montana.
On Christmas of 1956, Townes's father gave him a guitar, which he trained while wandering in the countryside. He will then tell the interviewer that "watching Elvis Presley October 28, 1956, the appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show is the starting point for me to be a guitar player... I just think that Elvis has all the money in the world, all Cadillac and all the girls, and all he does is play guitar and sing It makes a big impression on me. "In 1958 the family moved to Boulder, Colorado. Van Zandt will remember his time in Colorado with pleasure and often visit him as an adult. He will then refer to Colorado in "My Proud Mountains", "Colorado Girl", and "Snowin 'on Raton". Townes is a good student and active in team sports. In elementary school, he received a high IQ score, and his parents began to take care of him to become a lawyer or senator. Afraid that his family will move again, he voluntarily decided to attend Shattuck School, in Faribault, Minnesota. He received a score of 1170 when he took the SAT in January 1962. His family soon moved to Houston, Texas.
The University of Colorado at Boulder received Van Zandt as a student in 1962. In the spring of the second year, his parents flew to Boulder to bring Townes back to Houston, apparently worried about the binge drink and episodes of depression. They took him to Texas Medical University Branch in Galveston, where he was diagnosed with manic depression. She received a three-month shock-insulin therapy, which erased her long-term memory. After that, her mother claimed "the greatest regret in her life is that she has let the treatment happen". In 1965, he was accepted into the University of Houston pre-law program. Soon after he tried to join the Air Force, but was rejected because of the diagnosis of the doctor who labeled him "an acute manic depressive who has made minimal adjustments to life". She quit school around 1967, after being inspired by her hero-singer-writer to pursue a career in playing music.
Early musical career
In 1965, Van Zandt began playing regular performances at Jester Lounge in Houston for $ 10 per night. After Jester closes, he begins to regularly perform (and sometimes live) at Sand Mountain Coffee House. At Houston clubs, he meets fellow Lightning Hopkins musicians, Guy Clark, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Doc Watson. The repertoire consists mostly of cover songs written by Hopkins, Bob Dylan, and others, as well as original novelty songs such as "Fraternity Blues." In 1966, Harris Van Zandt encouraged his son to stop playing blankets and write his own songs. In 1968, Van Zandt met songwriter Mickey Newbury in a Houston coffee shop. Newbury persuaded Van Zandt to go to Nashville, where he was introduced by Newbury to the man who would be his old producer, "Cowboy" Jack Clement.
Among the main influences of Van Zandt is Texas blues man Lightnin 'Hopkins, whose songs are a constant part of his repertoire. He also cites Bob Dylan and Hank Williams and varied artists such as Muddy Waters, The Rolling Stones, Blind Willie McTell, Tchaikovsky, and Jefferson Airplane as having a huge impact on his music.
1970s
The years between 1968 and 1973 would prove to be the most productive of Van Zandt's era. She released six albums over a period of time: Demi Song of the Song , Our Mother the Mountain , Townes Van Zandt , Delta Momma Blues , High, Low and In Between , and Final City of Van Zandt . Among the songs written for this album are "To Live Is To Fly," "Pancho and Lefty", and "If I Needed You". These songs will eventually raise the status of Van Zandt into an almost-legendary circle in American and European songwriting.
In 1972, Van Zandt recorded a song for the album titled Seven Come Eleven , which will remain unreleased for years due to a dispute between his manager, Kevin Eggers, and producer Jack Clement. Eggers either could not or refused to pay for studio sessions, so Clement erased his master cassette. However, before they were removed, Eggers sneaked into the studio and recorded a rough mix of songs onto the cassette. Tracks from failed Seven Come Eleven failures will appear in The Nashville Sessions .
In 1975, Van Zandt performed prominently in the documentary film Heartworn Highways with Guy Clark, Steve Earle, Steve Young, Gamble Rogers, Charlie Daniels and David Allan Coe. His film segment was shot in his damaged double house in Austin, Texas, where Van Zandt was shown drinking whiskey directly in the middle of the day, shooting and playing with weapons, and performed the song "Waitin 'Around to Die" and "Pancho & amp; Lefty." both Cindy and her dog, Geraldine (a large, intelligent half-open wolf), are also featured in the film.
In 1977, Live in Old Quarter, Houston, Texas was released. The album featured Van Zandt solos at a 1973 concert before a small audience, and less produced more complicated than many early recordings. The album received positive reviews, and is considered by many to be one of the best albums ever released by the songwriter.
In the mid-1970s, Van Zandt split from his old manager, Kevin Eggers. He found a new manager, John Lomax III (grandson of renowned folk music historian John Lomax), who founded a fan club for Van Zandt. Although the club was only advertised through a small ad behind a music magazine, Lomax soon began receiving hundreds of fiery letters from around the world written by people who were touched by Van Zandt. Several letters illustrate how the material often serves as a support for those dealing with depression. In 1978, the singer fired Lomax and hired the Eggers. He immediately signed a contract with a new label Eggers, Tomato Records. The following year, he recorded Flyin 'Shoes ; he will not release another album until 1987's At My Window . Despite critical acclaim, he remains a cult figure. He usually plays in small places (often to a crowd of less than fifty people) but starts moving toward playing larger venues (and even making multiple television screens) during the 1990s. For much of the 1970s, he lived outsiders outside Nashville in a heated zinc-roofed hut, plumbing or telephone, occasionally appearing in the city to play shows.
1980s-1990s
Some of Van Zandt's compositions are captured by other artists, such as Emmylou Harris who, with Don Williams, has hit No. 1. 3 countries in 1981 with "If I Needed You," and Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, the couple taking "Pancho & Lefty" became number one on the country charts in 1983. Van Zandt had a small cameo appearance in the video for the song the. In his last years he noted less frequently, his voice style and singing changed partly because of his lifestyle and alcoholism. However, he continued to write songs, such as "Marie" and "The Hole".
According to Susanna Clark, Van Zandt declined repeated invitations to write with Bob Dylan. Dylan is reported as a "big fan" of Townes and claims to have all his records; Van Zandt admired Dylan's song, but did not care about his celebrity. The two first met when there was a chance outside a costume shop in the South Congress of Austin district on June 21, 1986. According to Johnny Guess, Dylan then arranged another meeting with the songwriter. The drag in Austin was closed because Dylan was in town; Van Zandt drove his bike into a sheltered area, after which Dylan climbed into the vehicle and asked to hear him play some songs. In May and June 1990, he opened for Cowboy Junkies during a two-month tour of the United States and Canada, which exposed him to a young generation of fans. As a result, he wrote the song "Cowboy Junkies Lament" for the group, with a verse about each band member.
Death
Van Zandt continued to write and perform throughout the 1990s, although his output slowed down over time. He enjoyed some calm during the early 1990s, but actively abused alcohol during the last years of his life. In 1994, he was hospitalized for detox, during which time doctors told Jeanene Van Zandt that attempting to detect Townes again potentially killed him. He grew weaker during the mid-1990s, with his friends noting that he seemed to have "wilted."
In early 1996, he was contacted by Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley, who told Van Zandt that he was interested in recording and releasing an album for him on the Geffen-funded Ecstatic Peace label. Van Zandt agreed, and the session is scheduled to begin in Memphis in late December of that year. On December 19 or 20, Van Zandt fell down the concrete ladder outside his house, injuring his hips. After lying outside for an hour, he drags himself inside and calls his ex-wife Jeanene, who sends Royann's friends and Jim Calvin to examine her. He told the couple that he had suffered an injury when getting out of bed, and refused medical treatment. They took her back to their house, and she spent Christmas week on their couch, unable to get up even to use the bathroom.
Determined to complete the album he plans to record with Shelley and Two Dollar Guitar, Van Zandt arrives at the Memphis studio driven in a wheelchair by road manager Harold Eggers. Shelley canceled the session due to erratic behavior and drunk by the songwriter. Van Zandt finally agreed to enter the hospital, but not before returning to Nashville. By the time she agreed to receive medical treatment, eight days had passed since the injury. On December 31, X-rays revealed that Van Zandt had a fractured left neck fracture on his hip, and several corrective surgeries were performed. Jeanene tells the surgeon that one of the rehabilitation doctors in the previous town told him that detoxification could kill her. The medical staff tried to explain to him that detoxifying "long-term alcoholics" at home would be wrong, and he would have a better chance of recovering under hospital supervision. He ignored this warning, and instead checked Townes out of hospital for medical advice. Understanding that he was likely to drink soon after leaving the hospital, the doctors refused to prescribe painkillers.
When Van Zandt was examined at the hospital the following morning, he began to show signs of DT. Jeanene rushes to take her to her car, where she gives him a bottle of vodka wine to keep away the resignation. He then reports that after returning to his home in Smyrna, and giving him alcohol, he becomes "clear, in a really good mood, calling his friends on the phone." Jim Calvin shared marijuana with him, and he was also given about four tablets of Tylenol PM.
When Jeanene spoke on the phone with Susanna Clark, their son Will noticed that Townes had stopped breathing and "looked dead", and warned her mother, who was trying to do CPR, "shouting her name between breaths". The towns of Van Zandt died in the early hours of the morning of January 1, 1997, at the age of 52 years. The official cause of his death was a "natural" cardiac arrhythmia. He died 44 years into the day after Hank Williams, Sr., who has been the influence of songwriting.
Two services were held for Van Zandt: one in Texas, mostly attended by families; and another in the big Nashville church, attended by friends, acquaintances, and fans. Some of the ashes were placed under the headstone in the Van Zandt family plot at Dido Cemetery in Dido, Texas near Fort Worth.
Maps Townes Van Zandt
Personal life
Relationships
Van Zandt married Fran Petters on August 26, 1965; a son, John Townes "J.T." Van Zandt II, born to them on April 11, 1969, in Houston. The couple divorced on January 16, 1970. He would later remarry, changing his last name to Lohr. She started dating Cindy Morgan in 1974 and married her in 1978. Townes and Cindy became foreigners in the early 1980s, and divorced on February 10, 1983 in Travis County, Texas. They have no children together.
Van Zandt's third and final marriage was to Jeanene Munsell (born February 21, 1957). They met on December 9, 1980 in a memorial to John Lennon. When Dorothy Van Zandt was seriously ill knowing that her son had impregnated Munsell, she told him, "You will do the right thing and honor the baby." He immediately divorced his second wife and married Munsell on March 14, 1983; their first child, William Vincent, was born ten days later. Another child, Katie Belle, was born February 14, 1992. Van Zandt and Munsell divorced on May 2, 1994. However, the two remained close to the death of Townes, and Jeanene was an executive on her property.
Around the time of their separation in April 1993, Jeanene persuaded the musician to sign the rights of publishing her entire catalog of backs and record the royalties to her and their children. The only source of income for Townes after this point is the money received from the concert engagement, and even then, Townes often visits his ex-wife and "give all his money into his pocket." After their divorce in 1994, his worldly treasures were listed as GMC Trucks 1989 with seashell shells, a Honda Shadow 1984 motorcycle and a 22-foot Starwind boat called Dorothy; he also retains a sole proprietorship of his family's heritage of "ownership in the right to lease oil and minerals."
At the time of his death, he had initiated a long-distance relationship with a woman named Claudia Winterer of Darmstadt, Germany. The two met in November 1995 during a concert in Hanau, Germany. Van Zandt told some friends that he was planning to marry Winterer, but the two had never been officially involved.
Dependency
Van Zandt was addicted to heroin and alcohol throughout his adult life. Sometimes he gets drunk on stage and forgets the lyrics of his songs. At one point, heroin habits were so strong that she offered Kevin Eggers the publishing rights for all the songs on each of her first four albums for $ 20. At various points, her friends saw her shoot not only heroin but also cocaine, vodka, and mixed rum and Coke. At least on one occasion, he shot heroin in front of his son J.T., who was only eight years old at the time.
As a result of Van Zandt's constant drinking, Harold Eggers, Kevin's brother, was hired as a tour manager and a 24-hour boardman in 1976, a partnership that will last for the rest of the singer's life. Although the musician was years older than him, Eggers later said that Van Zandt was "the first child." His battle with addiction made him treated for rehabilitation almost a dozen times throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Medical records of his time in recovery centers showed that he believed his drink had been a problem sometime around 1973, and in 1982 he drank at least one pint of vodka daily. Doctors' records reported: "He confessed to hearing voices, most of the sounds of music", and "Influencing is dull and mood sad, judgment and insight disrupted." At various points in his life, he was prescribed to take Zoloft antidepressants and mood stabilizer lithium. The last and longest period of tranquility during his adult life was a period of about a year in 1989 and 1990.
Legacy
Legal issues for the job
In the years after Van Zandt's death, former label manager and owner, Kevin Eggers, released 14 new and unreleased material albums previously unreleased by the singer, all without the consent of his real estate (represented by Jeanene Van Zandt and his three children). Eggers claimed a 50% interest in Van Zandt's eighty songs. After nearly ten years of legal battle, the court sided with the plantation, issuing "compensation against the Eggers, restraining him from reproducing or distributing one of Van Zandt's songs."
It was revealed through this process that Van Zandt's annual income in the years before his death had risen to more than $ 100,000, largely thanks to the royalties collected from his songs covered by Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Merle Haggard, Cowboy Junkies, and other major music stars. After Van Zandt's death, his road manager, Harold Egger, released a video and audio recording of the songwriter's concert. A non-court settlement in 2006 granted conditional control on Van Zandts from recordings held by Harold Eggers while Harold retained 50% ownership of seven albums and some royalties for the remaining recordings.
On October 21, 2008, a number of Van Zandt's personal items were auctioned at The Northside, Akron, Ohio, with the benefit of Wrecks Bell, a close friend and bandmate who inspired the song "Rex's Blues". Bell is half the owner of a nightclub in Houston where Townes recorded his album Live at Old Quarter . He now has a "new" Old Quarter in Galveston, which is uninsured and destroyed by Hurricane Ike.
In music
Van Zandt has been referred to as a cult musician and "songwriter songwriter." Musician Steve Earle, who met him in 1978 and considers Van Zandt a mentor, once called Van Zandt "the best songwriter in the whole world and I will stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that." The quote was printed on a sticker displayed on the In My Window box, much to Van Zandt's displeasure. In the following years, the quotation was often quoted by the press, many of which left Van Zandt and Earle embarrassed; in 2009, Earle told New York Times , "Did I ever believe that Townes is better than Bob Dylan? However he later concluded at the end of the same article that, "As a songwriter, you will not find a better person." Earle has championed the songwriter on several occasions: his eldest son, Justin Townes Earle, also a musician, was named after Van Zandt. Earle wrote the song "Fort Worth Blues" as a tribute to the singer in the late 1990s, and in 2009 released an album titled Townes , featuring all the covers of Van Zandt's songs.
Its Texas impact stretches farther from the country. He has been cited as a source of inspiration by renowned artists such as Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Thomas Guthrie, John Prine, Lyle Lovett, Chelsea Wolfe, Scott Avett of The Avett Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Nanci Griffith, Cowboy Junkies, Vetiver, Guy Clark, Devendra Banhart, Norah Jones, Robert Plant & amp; Alison Krauss, The Be Good Tanyas and Jolie Holland, Rowland S. Howard, Josh Ritter, Gillian Welch, Garth Brooks, Simon Joyner, Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes, Caleb Followill of Leon Kings, Laura Marling, Andrew Adkins, and Frank Turner. The folk musician Shakey Graves praised his fast and rhythmic pacing style, a guitar played partly because of Van Zandt's influence.
In 1994, Israeli singer David Broza appeared with Van Zandt during the writers at the Round concert in Houston. When Van Zandt died, he left a shoe box full of unreleased poems and lyrics with a request for Broza to organize them into music. The resulting album is Night Dawn: Unpublished Poetry of Townes Van Zandt .
In 2012, Van Zandt was appointed into the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame.
In July 2012, Neurot Records released a three-way split album as a tribute to Van Zandt featuring Neurosis singer/guitarist Scott Kelly, Steve Von Till and doom/stoner Scott legend "Wino" Weinrich.
On June 18, 2015, Van Zandt was inaugurated into a second-year ceremony at the Limelock Hall of Fame Austin City, along with Asleep at the Wheel, Loretta Lynn, Guy Clark, and Flaco Jimenez. Gillian Welch inaugurated Van Zandt by telling stories of how she came to an early show in Nashville and how she has improved her confidence in writing sad songs.
In movies and television
Van Zandt's Roadsongs album version of The Rolling Stones' "Dead Flowers" was used during the last scene of the Coen Brothers 1998 film, The Big Lebowski . The song is also included in the movie soundtrack. Since his death, Van Zandt's recordings have been licensed by his family for use in a number of film and television programs, including the Stepmother < Six Feet Below , In Bruges > Calvary , Gila , Grass Leaves , Seven Psychopaths , Deadwood , Breaking Bad , True Detective and Hell or High Water (Dollar Bill Blues), Recently his book " Buckskin Stallion Blues "has been featured in Three Outside Ebbing, Missouri Balls in the original recording and cover by Amy Annelle.
In the movie Country Strong Austin Statesman describes Beau Hutton's character as the next "Townes Van Zandt". 2012 documentary Low & amp; Clear , revolving around Van Zandt's son, JT, fishing for a steelhead in British Columbia with Xenie, his fishing buddy, featuring Van Zandt's "Dollar Bill Blues" and "My Proud Mountains" songs.
Movies and books
In 2004, the film Be Here To Love Me recorded the life of the artist and his musical career, released in the United States. It was very well received, earning 94% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Georgia Christgau from Village Voice called the documentary "sympathetic but honest." Eddie Cockrell of Variety called the film "a dignified and tumultuous outlook on the unusual life, difficult career and lasting influence" of Van Zandt.
A biography, entitled To Live's To Fly: The Final Ballad, the Great City of Van Zandt by John Kruth, was released in 2007. It received mixed reviews, with Weekly Publishers bewailing that "Kruth's efforts are reduced by strange first and third person narrations in turn, strange transitions and text filled with quotes... more insight into why - than countless stories of how - will make this bio more valuable be read.. "
In April 2008, University of North Texas Press published a biography of Robert Earl Hardy about the songwriter, titled A Deeper Blue: The Life and Music of Van Zandt Townes, which took over eight years of research, including interviews with Mickey Newbury, Jack Clement, Guy and Susanna Clark, Mickey White, Rex Bell, Dan Rowland, Richard Dobson, John Lomax III, brothers and sisters Van Zandt, cousins, three ex-wives, and many others. This book has been described by Kirkus as "a sharp, clear and sharp portrait."
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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