Loudon Wainwright III: ‘I had issues with my parents’

We mean this in a good way, but if there is a more self-centred songwriter than Loudon Wainwright III, we have yet to encounter them. You know his offspring (Rufus, Martha, Lucy) and if you are a fan of Rufus and Martha, you will also be aware that the family dynamic has in the past been often less than harmonious. These days, however, there is calm in the Wainwright household.

“I’m still trying to make sense of it all,” says the man who has used songwriting as therapy more than most.

“I’m a grandfather now, I’ll be 70 in September, so family is still a fascinating subject for me. To see this new crop of kids in the family coming along is exciting. That said, I certainly haven’t figured it all out. The older I get, the more intrigued I become in what happens, and why and what caused it. Trying to get to the bottom of all of that is what’s most interesting for me.”

Loudon Wainwright III started his music career in the late 1960s. Like most male singer-songwriters in the 1970s, he was dubbed “the new Bob Dylan”, but quickly sidestepped that tag by releasing a series of albums that mixed humour with direct honesty, and satire with seriousness. Come the 1980s, he was well known on this side of the Atlantic as the resident, topical singer on UK comedian Jasper Carrott’s BBC show Carrott Confidential.

Despite his public profile as a satirical songwriter, however, Wainwright's core fans were aware of his issues with family – specifically his father and his children. That has reached a conclusion of sorts with Surviving Twin, a one-man show that he is bringing to Kilkenny Arts Festival this month. It is essentially both memoir as theatre and a realignment of parental issues, and he describes the show as a "posthumous collaboration".

“My father died in December of 1988,” he says. “He was a journalist who wrote for Life magazine, which was a big deal in the US and beyond for many, many years. He had a column in the magazine called The View from Here, and he wrote about politics, current events, but he also wrote about personal things – his own father, his childhood, his family and so on.”

Reading material
Wainwright says that, because he was a "rebellious, snot-nosed kid . . . the son of the famous Life magazine writer, and that was annoying", he didn't bother reading his father's work. Six years ago he was playing a show in rural Maine. Overnighting in quaint, cabin-like accommodation, looking around for reading material, he chanced upon a bunch of old Life magazines.

“I picked up one, and wouldn’t you know it, but there was my dad’s writing in it. The column, written some time in 1972, was called Another Sort of Love Story, and it was about having to put down the family dog. It’s a beautiful piece of writing, and it moved me, I have to say. And, of course, I knew the dog. I knew the writer. After that, I proceeded to source all of the columns, some online and some in libraries. Eventually, I’m sure I read all of them.”

At this point, a theme emerged, and so began the notion of Surviving Twin.

“I thought it might be interesting to take some of my songs and combine or connect them with some of his column writing. A lot of them were about current events, so unless you were living in the time of the Lyndon B Johnson administration, a lot of it doesn’t mean that much. Yet it was skilfully written. He had a real style to his writing. It’s impressive.”

He wouldn’t be the only Wainwright to have issues with his father, but he’s proud of the creative lineage of the family.

“Oh, it’s a wonderful thing. There is a literal kinship. In the case of my own kids, their mothers were performers, so you have that genetic component in the mix, too. To quote Sonny and Cher, the beat goes on.”

What about the famous Philip Larkin poem, This Be the Verse, where the jazz-loving poet warns of being messed up by parents? In the context of his own upbringing, does he give those lines any weight?

“I do agree with it, and while I won’t say that my parents f***ed me up, I certainly can be f***ed up, and that – aside from the pleasant things like creativity, talent and good hair – has also been passed on. But, yes, that Larkin poem has always struck me as being on the money.”

And what about being older and wiser? Has he made peace with himself and the memory of his father?

“I think so. My father has been dead for over 25 years, and then my mother passed away in 1997. You could say I had issues with both of them. At times my relationship with my father was quite contentious, and I certainly wouldn’t characterise us as having ever been close, which is a great pity and something I regret.”

“I think he regretted it, too, but that’s part of the thrill of doing Surviving Twin: we seem to be getting along better now than we ever have.”

 Loudon Wainwright III's Surviving Twin makes its European debut as part of the Kilkenny Arts Festival at the Watergate Theatre on August 12th, 13th and 14th

LOUDON’S LOT: FAMILY SNAPSHOTS

The songs on Loudon Wainwright III’s 12th studio album, History (1992), were written following the death of his father in December 1988. But the album is about more than just his fractious relationship with his dad. Songs such as Sometimes I Forget directly address loss, but the song A Father and a Son tackles his own failings as a parent to his own son, Rufus (“Maybe it’s power, push and shove, maybe it’s hate, probably it’s love”). Another track, Hitting You, is an apology to his daughter, Martha (“Long ago I hit you, we were in the car. You were crazy in the back seat, it had gone too far. And I pulled the auto over and I hit you with all my might. I knew right away it was too hard and I’d never make it right”).