I once interviewed him in Minneapolis, around 1976. It was between sets when he played at the Whole Coffeehouse. It was my first radio interview. I made up a list of people I thought might have influenced him, including Etta Baker, Gary Davis, and others, and asked him what he thought about all of them. He said, "they're mostly dead." Kind of shut down the interview for me. But it perked up then because this weird emcee guy kept coming in and haranguing Fahey in a nasty way to get back on stage. Fahey, popping some aspirin, complaining of headache, told me while the guy was out that he hated Minnesota. Said the last time he was there some high school wrestlers beat him up in a motel for complaining about their noise at 2 a.m. Then the emcee guy came back in, and I was shocked to see him hiding a small pocketknife with one hand while hassling Fahey. I couldn't tell if Fahey could see the knife at all, and was wondering where this was going. Fahey just yelled at the guy to beat it, and left to go play again. Played a great second set. Brad Sondahl http://pages.about.com/bsondahl
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