David Ackles - American Gothic
David Ackles - American Gothic (Elektra Records, 1972). Photograph by Paul McDermott.
A few words on David Ackles’s American Gothic, taking in Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Elektra Records, and digging for secondhand records in Dublin.
For a few years (roughly between 2011-2014) I used to go to the weekend Dublin Flea outdoor market at Newmarket Square off Cork Street in Dublin 8. There was a great record stall there that had amazing bargains. I regularly found gems in their “3 for €10” box and there was always great records in the €5 crates.
I picked up Moby Grape ‘69 (the third Moby Grape album and the band’s first after the departure of Skip Spence), Cheap Thrills (the second studio album by Big Brother and the Holding Company, the band’s last album with lead singer Janis Joplin), Buffalo Springfield (an incredible 2LP compilation released on Atco in 1973), Crazy Horse (the band’s debut album from 1971) and All Together Now by Argent (the third album from Rod Argent’s post-Zombies band which features the incredible “Hold Your Head Up”) all in the “3 for €10” boxes.
“3 for €10” vinyl finds. Photograph by Paul McDermott.
I found clean copies of the Mary Chain’s Psychocandy, The Sugarcubes’ Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week! and Mayflower by The Weather Prophets all unbelievably for €5 each. Every week there were 80s Indie gems and classic rock LPs at reasonable prices.
Then the stall owners got a whiff of the “vinyl revival” and on one particular Sunday morning every record had been repriced to a minimum of €10, with some of the previous €5 LPs now priced at a ridiculous €20+ . I stopped going. The market eventually closed around the time a whiskey manufacturer moved into the Square and redeveloped the building previously home to the Dublin Food Co-op. Another part of the city gentrified.
One of those vinyl gems I picked up for €5 was American Gothic the third album by singer-songwriter David Ackles released by Elektra Records in 1972. I first came across Ackles’ name in an Uncut article years earlier but I had never heard his music. The sleeve is in very good condition with only minor edgewear and the vinyl is in excellent condition, it still has its original lyric sheet and on closer inspection I saw that this was in fact a white label Elektra Radio Promo copy. Finding stuff like this was always the joy of digging through crates of records on a bitterly cold Sunday morning.
“Radio Station Copy”. American Gothic - centre label. Photograph by Paul McDermott
American Gothic was produced by Bernie Taupin, Elton John’s long-term collaborator, and the strings were conducted by Robert Kirby, best known for his work on Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter. A young Hugh Jones, who would later go on to produce albums by The Teardrop Explodes, Simple Minds, Echo & the Bunnymen, That Petrol Emotion and others, was on engineer duties for the recording sessions.
Ackles was from Illinois and had studied at the University of Southern California. He came to the attention of Jac Holzman’s Elektra Records in the mid 60s and his debut album, the eponymous David Ackles was released in 1968. ‘The Road to Cairo’ from the album was covered by Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger And The Trinity which led Elektra to re-title Ackles’ album as The Road to Cairo and reissue it in a new sleeve in late 1968.
His second album, Subway to the Country, followed in 1969. Melody Maker wrote in Jaunary 1970: “A second beautiful album by singer/writer/pianist David Ackles, composer of ‘The Road to Cairo’. His is a distinctive voice in an overcrowded field, warm and mature but touched with the sadness and occasional bitterness of a loner who has spent years on the road. He avoids the facile philosophising and obscure imagery of many of his contemporaries.”
The connection with Bernie Taupin came after Ackles had shared a bill with Elton John at The Troubadour in LA in September 1970. Elton was taken by Ackles, telling Melody Maker: “He’s much bigger over here (UK) than he is in America. But it’s the same with Tom Paxton and Tim Buckley - they’re not so big in their own country as in other countries.”
Just over a year later in October 1971, Bernie Taupin was interviewed by Record Mirror prior to his departure to the US to accompany Elton on another US tour. Record Mirror wrote that Taupin was looking forward to, “a meeting with his “favourite artist”, David Ackles, whom he will produce later this year in Britain.”
“Producing Ackles will be the next main thing for me to accomplish,” Taupin told the music paper. “If he wants to do something a certain way then I won’t stop him, so that I don’t think I’ll have a particularly dominant role in the studio. I’ve learnt about studios and recording from all the Elton John work, so I’m not completely ignorant of what the basics are.”
American Gothic is a quintessential American record, steeped in American imagery but it was recorded in London at IBC Recording Studios where The Kinks, The Who, Cream and others recorded. On the back sleeve of American Gothic, Ackles explains: “It is now two years since the last album... I’ve been living in England for part of that time in a house in the country with apple trees and swans and a river running past the back porch. It seems like you get a sharper perspective on your own country when you’re away from it, so the time has been a great help in a lot of ways. This album is a result of distance and peace and a lot of patience and kindness from a lot of friends.”
In the liner notes of the 2000 reissue of the album Bernie Taupin told Richie Unterberger: “Why go to England to record an album so steeped in American imagery? He always said to me that in order to get a perspective of your own country, you have to leave it. I believe that’s very true. He certainly encompassed it in that record.”
American Gothic by Grant Wood (1930).
American Gothic takes its name from the famous 1930 Grant Wood painting of a farmer standing beside his daughter in front of their farmhouse. The farmer holding the pitchfork represents hard labour and the farmer’s daughter dressed in a colonial print apron suggests domesticity. Ackles parodied the painting on the back of the album’s sleeve with his wife Janice.
Janice and David Ackles. Detail from the back sleeve of American Gothic. Photograph by Paul McDermott
American Gothic was critically acclaimed upon release in July 1972. Cashbox, the influential American music industry trade magazine, wrote: “Two years have passed since David Ackles, one of our premier songwriters, has done an album. But the wait has been well worth it for in American Gothic Ackles has come up with his greatest effort to date. His songs are really indescribable and in anyone else’s hands they would not fit as closely as they do on this superb collection. Eleven new songs all offering a unique glimpse of genius. Ackles is back with vengeance!”
Billboard were no less effusive in their review writing: “Ackles and producer Bernie Taupin have meticulously fashioned an album rich in detail that lends itself to visual interpretations. Each song is a delicate wisp, a musical portrait of small town USA. Consistently memorable cuts include “Blues for Billy Whitecloud” (arranged big bandy circa 1940), “American Gothic” (done in playlet form) and “Ballad of the Ship of State” (a soul-searching statement about the war).”
“The album of the year” declared Chris Van Ness in his review of the album for The Los Angeles Free Press, a quote that used by Elektra in press adverts to hype the album’s release. A few weeks after the album’s release Ackles played a gig at the Bitter End in New York and Cashbox reviewed it enthusiastically:
“Elektra’s David Ackles is a cult figure just now coming into his own. His latest American Gothic LP has been heralded as “album of the year” by a very impressive list of critics (and to think it’s only August!). Many of the tunes in the set were reasons for this accolade - the top-hat-and-cane of his “Oh! California”, the naked truth and painful honesty of “One Night Stand” and the beautiful ballad (a rather commercial one too, his latest single) “Love’s Enough” to cite only a few highlights. Ackles performs solo on piano; the somber Kurt Weill aspects of his music have recently been tempered with some new-found satisfied-mindfulness which allows his patter to seem much more entertaining now amidst the heavy situations he elucidates. No one can sit through one of his performances and not be totally taken with the powerful insights and distinctive delivery of Ackles.”
American Gothic didn’t perform as expected and it would be the last time Ackles recorded for Elektra Records. Ackles would record one more album, Five & Dime for CBS Records in 1973. In the 1970s he wrote music for TV and in the 1980s returned to USC to teach music theatre. Ackles died in 1999 at the age of 62.
American Gothic is definitely worth checking out, for me it’s up there with Lou Christie’s Paint America Love and Paul Siebel’s Woodsmoke and Oranges in the lost classics pile. It’s also without doubt one of my greatest cheap vinyl finds.
Brian Mathieson’s description of Ackles in his obituary for The Independent sums it up perfectly: “The title track of American Gothic said in four minutes what it took David Lynch a complete television series to describe. He then went on to produce a series of vignettes that summed up life in his home country in the late 20th century.”
American Gothic (back sleeve) (Elektra Records, 1972). Photograph by Paul McDermott.
Further Reading: Ptolemaic Terrascope has an interview with Ackles from 1998 here.