A couple of months ago Tymon Dogg was wandering down a street in New York. He'd just played a gig at a club in Greenwich village and was sauntering along, fiddle under arm, when he bumped into Mick Jones of The Clash.
Jones recognized Tymon as being an old mate of Joe Strummer's and feeling sociable and/or bored, invited him back to the hotel for a beer. They swapped stories, bought drinks, and Jones eventually got round to asking... could Tymon actually play that thing?
Play it? You mean play it? Play the fiddle? Yeah, said Mick, a tune like.
So Tymon let him have it, thrashing his violin like Grappelli on speed, and hollering across the hotel room in that scrawny howl that'll grip the nation if the nation stops panicking and listens. That day in New York in blew Mick Jones head off.
A day later Tymon Dogg was marched into a studio to holler for posterity, backed by assorted Clash and Blockhead members.
At a small flat of the Edware Road in London, Tymon plays me a rough mix of the track, "Lose This Skin".
I couldn't tell you what it was like. "Bizarre" is only half the tale. It felt like the downward thrust of a rollercoaster, wild and seemingly out of control, but exhilarating. The word is that the Clash wasn't to use it on their next album with Tymon as an honorary member.
Yeah well, I wasn't at all Tymon should go on the folk page either. But everyone reckons complacency and staleness is the folk scene's biggest hang-up right now, so it could probably use the cultural shock. And what's more - for perverse reasons, I suspect - Tymon actually wanted to be on the folk page.
His music is uncategorizable, pretty much indescribable. But he spent the year or so prior going to New York (where he spent most of the Eighties) playing around a bemused folk scene and acquiring a vigorous affection for it. The fact that it's currently so unfashionable is enough to endear it quite strenuously to Tymon. That's the sort of bloke he is.
He's a small thin guy as warm as a bubble bath, his animated chatter instantly infectious.He's hardly been interviewed before, but not because he hasn't been asked. He seems governed to a great extent by whim - he went on a whim to America without any gigs or prospects of any. He says it seems right for him to talk to me now. He says ys it also seems right to him to get some British gigs now, and the clubs would be foolish to overlook him. The folk scene needs him (or totally off-the-wall originals like him) probably a lot more than he needs the scene.
He writes conventional enough songs, you know love songs with verses and choruses and stuff like that - it's just the frantic way it's dressed up that's so thrilling.
Undoubtedly he's not everyone's bowl of rhubarb crumble, but right now I can't think of any other folk artist, fringe or otherwise, likely to pull in the young audiences that clubs so crave. And while the folk scene blew it with Costello, it would have something to crow about should Tymon's strict scruples, integrity, self-respect and plain old whimsy ever allow him to accept mass success of the type the Clash connection threatens to provoke.
Tymon's loathe to discuss his history, and if it were as boring as most artists, I wouldn't press it. But there's plenty worth recounting, so here's a brief resume.
He comes from Lancashire and took up piano as a kid, turning to guitar when he was 14. He played soul in local youth clubs, left school as soon as he could "and that was it - I never really thought about anything else but music."
A friend sent some of his tapes down to London and the next thing he knew he had a contract with Pye and a single. That was when Paul McCartney discovered him.
The single, "The Bitter Thoughts of Little Jane", created as much excitement as Arsenal defending a one-goal lead, but McCartney somehow picked up on it and wanted to rerecord it for Apple. This was at a time when Beatlemania was peaking and Apple potential power and influence looked to be on a par with the White House. Tymon said ta very much, but no.
"It just didn't seem right", says Tymon off-handedly, "I was writing new stuff and I didn't want to do that song again. It was only a matter of months, but when your 17 a few months can be a long time. I did do one or two things with McCartney, but when I realized Apple was just another commercial project, I walked out. All they seemed interested in doing was produced twee male versions of Mary Hopkin.
"I think McCartney's a nice guy and all the rest of it, but I didn't want to spend my youth jumping to attention just for fear of not having pennies in my pocket. I learnt then that if you get involved with other people, do it on your own terms. People that work with McCartney seem to end up looking like him, and I knew I would regret it if I stayed. The idea of being rich and famous and having no self-respect has no appeal."
Next the Moody Blues discovered him, and took him on a massive concert tour. Threshold put him in the studio and released a single which did nothing. Justin Hayward was recently interviewed on Radio 1, and picked out his favourite records - Tymon's was one of them.
"He said something like, 'Oh this guy walked out on us - he preferred to be a busker' which wasn't quite right because up to that point I hadn't been a busker at all."
That was 1969, and Tymon was still in his teens. "I think it was soon after "Threshold of a Dream" was number one and they suddenly leap from bedsitters to big houses in Cobham. We had nothing in common - I was completely alone, dossing on people's floors, and they were sorting out mortgages and talking about Aston Martins. It was a completely different scene. So I left."
He drifted along, always writing, getting gigs where he can, busking where he can't, travelling around, living in India for a while. Somewhere in the early stages he made the switch to violin with startling results the curious frenzy with which he attacks the instrument is part of his utterly unique frenetic style.
A couple years ago, he produced his own album for distribution among friends, financed from money paid from damages following a false charge of assault on the police. He spent three days in Brixton because of the charge (which he believes was brought because he had a beard shaved down the middle) but he reckoned it was worth it to get the album done.
He started playing seriously in folk clubs in 1976. Which, you'll recall, was the year punk threw up it's spikey head. Hanging out with Strummer and the 101'ers, you might have Tymon would have been embroiled by it. After all, punk surely embodied the ideals he voiced when he walked on McCartney and the Moody Blues...
"Yeah, a lot of nice things came up with that but happening the way it did, punk was so easy to control, to sell-out. It was a far too simple remedy, all the stuff about hippies stink, y'know attacking another uniform. I just like people."
He always felt an affinity for folk music. Always liked Tom Rush, Bert Jansch, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon, and fancied the intimacy of folk clubs. It was in part, he admits, his impulse not to conform and flew in the face of the mood.
"I don't mind at all if people say I'm a folk singer. A title like 'rock 'n roll star' sounds boring. Straight away you see pictures of guys with guitars down to their knees and all this macho crap. It was okay for the Fifties - it was a celebration of sexual independence and had it's place. But I see rock 'n roll like traditional music. Woody Guthrie was going round in the Fourties and Fifties , Ledbelly and all those guys, and rock 'n roll is almost as old. It's because it's loud and aggressive that people don't think of it as old.
"I liked the initial energy of rock 'n roll, but at the beginning of the Seventies something happened to rock music and a lot of inspiration was kicked out. All the stuff about being a success came in.
"Last year I went up north, played a lot of folk clubs in County Durham and North Yorkshire, anywhere I could reach in my car and afford to play relatively cheap. A lot places I played for free, no trip, no label, no nothing, I really like that idea. And people really listened - I'm sure they're fed up with all these fads and fashions, and a lot of people are leaving the scene because of it. Not just musicians, but record buyers too.
"The mere fact that people can be interested in me proves that people aren't in it on a fashion level."
Such a philosophy should get its dues. Back in London, Tymon's still involved with the Clash, and has been working with Ellen Foley (Mick Jones's girlfriend) who's recording a couple of his songs for her next album. And then, possibly, a Tymon Dogg album, though he's not signed and perfectly happy to keep it that way.
"I've nothing against success", he says, shocked that I should consider it. "I'm not in love with the idea of failure as an alternative, it's just that real success is completely different to the general impression. If I write a song I want to get it to as many people as possible. There's a difference between doing that and being commercial. Some of the songs that make it should be charged with forced entry..."
He plans to go back to New York in the autumn and wants to do a record and some gigs in the meantime. He's elusive, but catch him if you can - you'll be riveted if not enthralled.
(©1980, Melody Maker).
