“ He has lived all his life in this fire ”: the tragic story of the singer “lost” jackson c frank | Music

THirty years ago, when the music writer Jim Abbott tried to find the folk singer “lost” Jackson C Frank, he had no idea what he would find. All he had to guide him was a council of a former Frank’s partner to go to a housing in Queens, New York, where he was told that he lived. When he finally got there, the man he saw had nothing to do with the Frank he was waiting for. “All I had to do was his 1965 album cover when he was much younger and looked quite dashing,” said Abbott. “It was the 90s when he was much heavier and he looked really grumpy.”

The place where Frank lived “was populated by drug addicts and prostitutes and, for any reason, had this gigantic sand pit in the middle of the hall that you were to walk. It is very difficult to be surprised, ”said Abbott. “This did.”

Anyway, he sought and maintained a close friendship with Frank, initially inspired by his love for the only album that the artist never released during his lifetime. An eponymous work, Frank’s album was produced in the mid -1960s by a young Paul Simon, presented works of guitar from Al Stewart and included obsessive ballads that the musician wrote who were covered at the time by folk icons such as Sandy Denny (from which he was briefly out), Nick Drake and John Renbourn. When it was released, Frank’s album barely sold but, as it happened with so many artists once neglected, its songs were disinterested during the Youtube era leading to covers of artists such as Laura Marling, John Mayer and Counting Crows, as well as their use in popular television series such as this is us, and films also widely seen. In 2014, Abbott wrote a book on the life and music of the artist entitled Jackson C Frank: The Clear Hard Light of Genius.

Now, Frank’s heritage has a chance to be discovered by a whole new audience through the first documentary on his life, by the French director Damien Aimé Dupont, entitled for one of his most expensive songs, Blues directs the game. As told in the film, the story of Frank stands with the most painful of the many condemned musicians, filled with stories of intense physical pain, persistent, horrible diagnostics, an accidental shooting which left him blind with an eye, as well as periods of homelessness. Frank’s story and music were so convincing in Dupont that he continued the film, even if the funds were rare and the artist’s images, who died in 1999, were very limited. Only an 18 second flash of Frank Performing silent film survived. In addition, there was a serious language problem: Dupont barely spoke English when he started the project. “I took lessons for the film,” he said, laughing at an zoom interview in which he was helped by a translator.

As the documentary tells, the horrors of Frank’s life started when he was only 11 years old. The significant damage caused an accumulation of calcium in his body which distorted his joints, which doctors tried to remedy by breaking the key bones several times. “You can imagine the incredible pain that caused – especially for a young boy,” said Abbott.

The pain was not only physical. Frank, who escaped the fire by a window after trying to help other children, felt intense guilt so that they could not save them more. It is a surprisingly mature response to such a horrible event. “In his head, he was much older than the other children,” said Dupont. “But he had no psychological help to face all of this. So, in his mind, he has lived all his life in this fire. ”

A rare bright point during the eight and a half months, he spent recovery at the hospital arrived when a music teacher brought him an acoustic guitar, which he taught him to play. Following his injuries, Frank developed eccentric fingers that gave him a unique texture sound. His song also had a distinction, defined by his dulcet tones as well as his ability to communicate an inner life of deep pain and empathy. Some of the songs he started to write reflected the horrors he faced when he was a child, including the yellow walls, which referred to the hospital where he stayed. “No one knows me in the morning / No one sees me pass by,” he sang. “And if I listen to while no one answers / the winds can echo a farewell.”

Frank also wrote an ode called Marlene, named after his girlfriend who died in the fire. An overwhelming verse expresses his guilt about survival, interpreting the box he later developed as his punishment. “Although the fire has burned his life / It left me a little more / I am a paralyzed singer / and that evokes the score,” he sang.

At the end of his adolescence, Frank worked as a journalist at the Buffalo News and attended the Gettysburg College, but in 1962, he abandoned. A year later, he received a huge insurance payment due to his injuries. Equivalent to more than $ 1 million today, he has chilled money on cars and expensive guitars, leaving him shortly after a short time. “He thought it was blood money,” said Abbott. “He didn’t want it.”

At the beginning of 1965, he went to London with his girlfriend looking for adventure. Soon, he came across a folk stage in full swing centered at the Soho Club Les Cousins, populated by key musicians such as Bert Jansch, Ralph McTell and Sandy Denny. Other artists have resumed his songs, including Paul Simon, who recorded Blues Run The Game with Art Garfunkel in an outing, and Denny, who cut you never wanted me and Milk & Honey in overwhelming versions. Shortly after Denny met Frank, he encouraged him to leave his daytime job as an infirmarian to sing full time. Later, she wrote a disturbing song about her entitled Next Uping Around, who alluded to a strange and haunted man from Buffalo. Decades later, Adam Duritz of Counting Crows became obsessed with the Blues who run the game, making sure to include its version in many live shows of the group to date. “It’s a perfect song,” said Duritz. “The melody is fantastic and there is no word wasted in the lyrics. This song has become a large part of my life.”

Duritz heard the song for the first time through the Simon & Garfunkel version, not knowing that in the mid -1960s, Simon and Frank were not colleagues, they were also roommates for a while. Although Simon & Garfunkel’s first album has already released at that time, he has not yet succeeded, which has inspired Simon to try to settle as a solo artist in London. He quickly raised enough tilange to produce Frank’s album for Emi, but the project seemed disturbed from the start. Al Stewart, who played the guitar during the sessions, said in the documentary that Frank was so embarrassed in the studio, he could not sing or play a single note. He and Simon had to accept not to look at him before he could play. Once the ice is broken, however, it cut the whole disc in three hours. (Simon refused to be interviewed for Abbott’s film or book).

In London, Frank’s behavior has become more and more erratic, marked by paranoid explosions and angry jealousy attacks. Abbott thinks that his mental problems come directly from his childhood experience, a vision shared by Frank’s mother. “She always said:” Her problems started with this fucking fire “, he said.

When he recovered just after the event, he had spent a little time in a coma. According to Dupont, “its temperature has increased to more than 40 degrees [celsius] What some say could have been the origin of his schizophrenia. (In the twenties, Frank received a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia).

After Frank’s album bombed, he retired to New York, near Woodstock, where he got married and had two children. His first, a son, died one day after his birth. Her second, a girl, is still alive. Over time, Frank’s behavior has become so anti -social that his wife threw him and, according to many sources, she then told their daughter that her father had died. Her daughter has since refuted this story, according to Abbott. Anyway, the two had no relationship after his childhood.

At the end of the 1970s, Frank became a public nuisance, struggling aimlessly in the neighborhood, sometimes naked. At other times, he sported a cape and a sword and resulted under the name of Lochinvar. In the 80s, Frank moved to New York to search for Simon in vain. During the next decade, he lived in the streets of the city. One day during this period, shots broke out between two competitors and Frank was taken in the middle, costing him one eye. Despite the risks of street life, Abbott says that Frank did well by begging. “He went out in the morning with a cup and at the end of the day, it was full of money,” he said. “He could probably have been talking about the people of their mortgage if he wanted it.”

After following Frank in 1993, Abbott was able to bring him back to the north of the state where he found a shelter in various boarding schools and hospitals. Despite the many problems with Frank, Abbott described him as a committing and charismatic friend. “You can sit with him over 10 different days and talk about 10 different subjects,” he said. “He seemed to know everything.”

Over time, however, Frank’s basic cognition has decreased. One night, Abbott took him to see a show near Woodstock by his old friend John Renbourn, and although the two spoke, Frank then told Abbott that he did not know who he had spoken to. His behavior brought him out of several installations in which he remained before finally ending up in the Massachusetts where, at 56, he died of combined pneumonia and a heart attack.

The point that can be a large part of its history, Dupont says: “Jackson still managed to leave his imprint in the world.”

Better still, it seems to expand. “Today you can find Jackson’s songs in more and more movies and television shows,” said Abbott. “In this sense, he is very here.”

• Blues directs the game: The Strange Tale of Jackson C Frank Tours in certain American theaters of May 4, including these places with the following British dates