Loudon Wainwright III: 'Even as a kid, I was the proverbial class clown'

Wainwright also has a new album out, called Live In London, which is a document of a residency he had last year at Nell’s Jazz and Blues Bar in Kensington. Its song choices, he agrees, offer a snapshot of his lengthy career, which began in the late 1960s at the tail-end of the US folk boom.

“I guess there’s 21 songs on it and there’s a couple of real oldies from the first couple of albums,” he says. “And then there’s mid-range, mid-career stuff; some new songs that people wouldn’t have heard (before) and more recent stuff – and of course, there’s a couple of covers on the record. A Bob Dylan song, a Peter Blegvad song, a Burt Bacharach song and a Tom Lehrer song, most importantly.”

Lehrer, a singer-songwriter and satirist who wrote pithy, often political songs in the 1950s and 60s, was a particular favourite of his father, Loudon Wainwright Jr, a columnist and editor for Life magazine. Alongside the works of Stan Freberg, an actor, comedian and musician, it was what Wainwright grew up listening to at their home in Westchester County.

“My dad had a great record collection,” he recalls. “Whenever I’m asked about my musical influences I cite that record collection, it was very eclectic and had jazz and some folk, it had a Leadbelly record and Broadway showtunes, and certainly the Tom Lehrer live recordings from the late 50s. I listened to all those records and was very influenced by them.”

He was thrilled to recently meet Lehrer, now aged 96. “He lives in Cambridge, Massachussetts and we’d had an email correspondence and I went to visit him with my girlfriend and we had the most delightful hour. He’s 96 and he’s sharp as a tack, he doesn’t perform any more but he’s very funny. We asked him carefully what’s it like to be in your nineties, you know that old, and he said ‘The great thing about it is there’s much less peer pressure’.”

It was Lehrer’s work that convinced Wainwright that humour could work in songs – and it became his own trademark thanks to numbers such as Dead Skunk, Motel Blues and The Man Who Couldn’t Cry. “I’ve always loved to make people laugh at my shows,” he says. “Even as a kid, showing off in school, I was the proverbial class clown. But it’s also a useful tool in terms of structuring a 75 to 90-minute show. You can do some straight-ahead material and then throw in a novelty song and it kind of provides comic relief and a break and then you can go back to what you were doing before or anything, really.”

Wainwright jokes in the introduction to the song Motel Blues, about groupies, that he would probably get cancelled if he wrote such a track now. He says that back in 1971 the times were not actually “less censorious” than today. “I remember singing Motel Blues right after I wrote it in 1970 or ’71, I was at a radio station in the Mid West speaking to a woman disc jockey and when I played the song, she threatened to castrate me on the air. It’s nice to know that you can still p*** people off.

“It’s a different time now, but you know, nothing has changed, really. Everything’s the same under the sun, as they say.”

The album also includes Wainwright’s interpretation of the Bob Dylan number, Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright. Dylan had been another influential figure on the budding singer-songwriter after seeing him at Newport Folk Festival in 1963 and when he ‘went electric’ two years later “and flipped people out”. He recalls: “I was at that show and witnessed what I guess you could call a dichotomy: some people loved it and some people hated it; I actually kind of loved it.”

With Dylan only five years his senior, Wainwright feels he could identify with him as they are “kind of the same generation”. “But when I saw him with just a guitar affect an audience, I just thought that’s about the coollest thing I’d ever seen,” he adds. “It wasn’t at that point that I had decided to write songs, my original intention was to be an actor, but he knocked me out and it was obviously a huge influence.”

By the time that Wainwright arrived in Greenwich Village with his guitar in 1968, the folk boom “was kind of over – Dylan had gone electric, the scene was a little more splintered than it was in the early 60s” but he still remembers it as an “exciting” time. “Record companies were giving out deals to musicians who played the acoustic guitar and sang their own songs, so it was a pretty exciting time to get into music.”

At times, some of Wainwright’s songs have been self-lacerating and he had never been afraid to write about characters and events within his own family. He says he is aware of his own ridiculousness. “I think we all are, that’s part of the human condition,” he says. “I put our records from time to time, but I think my live performance thing could be the best way to get whatever it is that I do. Everybody’s lives are ridiculous to have that stuff in the show makes sense because the audience relate to it – it’s the power of identification – so if I’m singing about a ridiculous situation or a painful situation or hilariously stupid, funny thing or I’m singing about something that really p***es me off, often those things have the same effect on my audience, so there is a connection and it’s kind of why showbusiness works.”

He sees family stories as grist to the songwriter’s mill. “I’ve written certainly about my kids, my parents, my grandparents, my siblings, the family in general – there’s a song on this new album called All In The Family and another one called I Knew Your Mother, even Be Careful There’s a Baby in the House which is one of the very first songs that I ever wrote is a family song – so the family for me has always been the big deal and a wonderful topic to explore in songs,” he says.

Since the 70s Wainwright has continued to pursue a parallel career in acting, with roles in the TV series M*A*S*H​​​​​​​ and big budget Hollywood films ​​​​​​​such as The Aviator, Big Fish and Knocked Up. He says: “If I’m offered a film role I’m very excited. I don’t really seek any of that stuff but every once in a while I do get an acting job and I love when that happens. I always wanted to be a performer, but it’s a different kind of performance, it’s much more collaborative, you’re working with a director and other actors and a script and a lot of technicians if it’s a television show or a movie, so it’s a very exciting job for me.”​​​​​​​

The singer’s most recent studio album, Lifetime Achievement, hinted at a sense of optimism. He concedes that he’s softening with age. “At 78 when the hell else are you going to soften?” he says, but swiftly adds: “I can still get cranky.”

He’s looking forward to the Transatlantic Sessions tour. “It’s quite a different format for me,” he says. “I’ll be onstage with a lot of other great musicians, some of whom I already know​​​​​​​ – Harry Campbell I’ve worked with before and I’ve met Jerry Douglas, I’ve known Aly Bain, the great Shetland fiddler for 50-plus years – so again, it’s going to be a collaborative thing and it’s going to be fun to perform on other people’s songs and to have them play on mine.”

Wainwright reveals that Douglas, who’s the musical director, asked everyone to pick five songs that might work with the ensemble. “I picked The Swimming Song, which is a song of mine that a lot of people know and would be great with the band,” he says. “We’re also going to do three or four songs from Scotland. Michael Marra, who I knew, he passed away about 12 years ago, but I sing one of his songs called Hermless – or Harmless you could pronounce it if you were American. I’ll play a couple of new songs which people wouldn’t have heard. So it’s going to be a pot pouri, my five picks.”

The Transatlantic Sessions tour visits York Barbican on Wednesday February 5. Loudon Wainwright’s album Live In London is out now. https://www.lw3.com/