Link Wray “Barbed Wire”
Objectively I know that, whereas Paul Bunyan and John Henry are folk heroes, Babe Ruth was an actual person. And yet, sometimes I have my doubts. I’ve seen photographs of The Bambino -- hundreds of them. I’ve also seen a bit of grainy film. And I’ve read countless books and articles about the man. But most days, I still struggle to convince myself that that person -- an orphan whose oversized belly was full of hot dogs and beer and whose ankles appear far too small to bear the weight of his top half -- was the greatest baseball player of all time.
My best evidence for his existence might be my paternal grandfather’s claim that, in 1935, he saw The Babe hit three home runs in a single game. The dates and location seem to line up. And I don’t have a great reason to doubt grandpa Sam — except that he did also once claim to have played semi-professional soccer in Russia. Unto itself, that might not seem implausible, but for the fact that he left the old country when he was five years old. So, either grandpa was lying to me or he was an athletic prodigy masquerading as a kindly, Jewish grocer.
Still, I acknowledge that Babe Ruth probably did exist. OK — he definitely did. But that doesn’t mean that I have to believe in Rube Waddell. Though nowhere near as famous as the Yankee legend, Waddell stories are more fantastic than those about Ruth. According to a combination of lore and recorded history, Rube Waddell -- one of the ten greatest pitchers of his time -- would run off the mound to chase firetrucks and puppies. During the offseason, he wrestled alligators. In 1903, a year in which he won more than twenty games and struck out more than three hundred batters, Waddell also saved a woman from drowning, shot a man through his hand and was bitten by a lion. Although the term “rube” -- meant to connote an unsophisticated, country bumpkin -- precedes Waddell’s birth, it’s hard to imagine a greater coincidence. As he’s popularly described, Rube Waddell -- the simple man from rural Pennsylvania -- was the consummate “rube.”
Fred Lincoln Wray had more than a little in common with Rube Waddell. Inordinate talent. Humble origins. A childlike naïveté. And a lifetime of stories so fantastic as to seem apocryphal. According to Link, he and his brothers grew up in a hut with dirt for a floor, and no plumbing or electricity. His father, Fred Wray Sr., suffered as a result of mustard gas exposure during the first World War, while his Shawnee mother, was a Christian street preacher who wore a back brace that Wray claimed was given to her by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
As a boy, Link Wray learned guitar from a circus carnie named “Hambone.” Eventually he played well enough to accompany his brothers Doug and Vernon, in support of their mother’s haunted hymns. In 1950, however, his musical ascent was interrupted by the Korean War. Wray was either fifteen or sixteen or twenty-one at the time, depending on who or what you believe. Upon his return from Korea in 1953, he was bedridden for over a year with both double pneumonia and tuberculosis, the latter of which cost him one of his lungs. While on the verge of death, Wray insists that he both levitated and saw the face of god. Miraculously he recovered and survived to hear a very young Elvis Presley. When Link left the hospital, he could barely speak audibly, much less sing. But, he’d seen the light and heard the voice.
For several years after his bout with death, Link played behind his older brother, who was professionally known as “Ray Vernon.” In the mid-50s, the Wray brothers performed at small time clubs and sock hops around Virginia and North Carolina. It was low stakes, going nowhere affairs, but that was just fine with Link Wray, who was kind of a low stakes, going nowhere kind of guy. Everything changed, however, one night in 1958, when he and the band were asked to play a cover of The Diamonds’ “The Stroll.” Unable to cover the song, Wray simply improvised three leaden chords on his electric guitar. He then repeated those same three chords, over his brother Doug’s skittish beat and through the distortion of an amplifier that he’d intentionally cut up. The effect was something like a heavyweight fistfight exploding into a brief flurry of punches and then returning to a barely contained brawl. It was part joke. Part vamping. Part terrifying. He eventually named it “Rumble,” and it changed the course of Rock and Roll.
Before “Rumble,” guitars were rarely the lead instrument in R&B and Rock and Roll. Guitars played rhythm while saxophones and, of course, singers, performed the lead. Link Wray, however, had no need for vocals, much less horns. Many hyperbolic things have been said about Link, but perhaps none truer than: “What Beethoven did in four notes, Wray did in three." Wray’s early use of “power chords” and distortion, not to mention the sheer volume of his guitar, was a massive inspiration for The Who, The Kinks, Neil Young and Jimi Hendrix. Without “Rumble” there is no Garage Rock. And there is no Punk Rock. Link Wray did not invent “Rock and Roll,” but he probably did invent “Rock.”
Over the course of the next five years, he recorded a series of mostly instrumental singles that served as neater, cleaner foils to Duane Eddy’s instrumental hits. Songs like “Rawhide,” “Comanche” and “Jack the Ripper” were like scores to Westerns, if they were reimagined as Film Noirs, and if the cowboys were the villains. Even today -- decades after Heavy Metal and Hardcore and Punk Rock and Psychobilly -- the guitar on those early singles is shockingly loud. Bass and drums turned down. No singer. Guitar turned up. Way up. More distortion than anyone had ever heard. Link Wray was frightening. And thrilling.
And broke. Wray’s career was primarily mismanaged by his brother Vernon (who went by “Ray Vernon”), who, for many years, had his own ambitions of pop stardom. By the time he was thirty-five, Link had been signed and dropped by several record labels, unable to match the success of “Rumble.” He lived hand to mouth and bounced from marriage to marriage, finding it much easier to fall in love than stay married. Bby the time that The Beatles and The Stones arrived in America, Link Wray’s moment had passed.
Nevertheless, that first half decade of Link Wray and The Wraymen -- from 1958 to 1963 -- is unimpeachable. In the 1990s Epic Records released a cross-label compilation (entitled “Rumble”) of Wray’s best songs from that era. It’s a stunning achievement, twenty tracks that help make sense of everything from Sam Fuller to Sam Houston to Quentin Tarantino. And while Wray’s instrumentals are iconic, it’s his vocals that steal the show. On “Ain't That Lovin' You Babe,” with just a single lung, he huffs and croons his way from Elvis Presley to Iggy Pop to Richard Hell to Lux Interior to Nick Cave. All that, in three minutes.
But unfortunately, all that, in 1964, didn’t amount to much. Dropped by Epic Records and on the wrong side of thirty, he foundered for the second half of the 1960s. Aside from a few compilations, the odd Bob Dylan cover and an unforgettable version of “The Batman Theme,” he mostly receded back into country living. His descent coincided with the rise of Psychedelic Rock, a style that he at least partially birthed, but also one that he deeply distrusted. Link was a Satan fearing son of a God loving mother and, in the music of Hendrix and Cream and The Doors, he could hear a little bit of both forces. Link would drink beer, but he would not touch drugs. And so, for nearly a decade, he stayed far away from the West Coast, all the while fiddling with his guitar and trying to figure out what happens after the rumble fades.
That new sound took years to find. And when it did finally emerge, very few people actually heard it. But, in 1971, Link, his brother Doug, pianists Bobby Howard and Bill Hodges and second drummer Steve Verroca, recorded a series of albums on three track in Ray Vernon’s converted chicken shack in Accokeek, Maryland. Though they sold terribly at the time, the trio of albums -- “Link Wray,” “Mordecai Jones” and “Beans and Fatback” -- marked an astounding, unthinkable step forward for an artist who had been otherwise lost to history. Through loving reissues and reappraisals many years later, we hear a very different Link Wray.
Middle-aged Link had forsaken Elvis for Bob Dylan. But, he’d also tapped into the Gospel of his youth. Most surprisingly, though, he reemerged as a singer. Not a frontman. And not a vocalist. But a front porch howler. The “shack albums” are unlike most anything in the Rock idiom. At times they sound like Levon Helm fronting The Who. Elsewhere, they sound like Crazy Horse, unplugged and without Neil. Decades before anyone described music as “Americana,” Link Wray was absolutely making Americana.
But then, almost as soon as he came back, Link Wray disappeared again. The mid-70s were another fallow period for an artist who had failed as a Pop star, failed as an early Rock star, and now failed as a returning Folk hero. But, unbeknownst to him, there was another, new sound emerging that could be traced all the way back to Rumble. They called it “Punk.”
The volume, simplicity and squalor of Punk owed a lot to Link Wray. And though Joe Strummer and Captain Sensible were obvious acolytes, Wray’s biggest fan resided much closer to home. By the mid-70s, Maryland native, Robert Gordon had relocated to New York City, where he found himself signing at CBGBs, alongside The Ramones and Blondie, with his band Tuff Darts. Gordon was an avowed Rockabilly aficionado, obsessed with Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran and, of course, young Elvis. After Tuff Darts’ short run, right around the same time that The Stray Cats were coming up in England, Gordon refashioned himself as a neo-Rockabilly artist. At the same time, Wray was (still) broke — barely trying to piece back together his sinking career. Robert Gordon came calling at the exact right moment, when Wray needed something -- anything. Between 1977 and 1979, the unlikely duo — Wray and Gordon — released two very fun, kind of campy albums and toured the world, performing for crowds full of mohawks and safety pins.
While Gordon didn’t exactly change the fortunes of Link Wray, their work together amounted to another minor redemption for the guitar icon. And though he’s not often considered a forebear of Punk, his adjacency to the scene and his return to Rockabilly positioned him as the clear godfather of Psychobilly and the Garage Rock revivals of the 80s and 90s. The Cramps, The Birthday Party, The Gun Club, Reverend Horton Heat, Billy Childish and Garage Wolf are only possible because of Link Wray and, to a lesser extent, Robert Gordon’s timely reclamation.
And yet, by the time the 1980s arrived, Link Wray had disappeared again. With the exception of some bargain bin compilations and dubious bootlegs, most of his music was out of print. His brother and sometimes producer and manager, Vernon, died in 1979. His other brother and drummer, Doug, died five years later. By that time, his marriage to Sharon Wray, the mother to three of his nine children, had also collapsed. In his mid-fifties, and unable to effectively function on his own, Wray remarried for a fourth time. Olive Wray (née Polvsen) was a Danish fan and Link’s junior by twenty-five years. Link claims that the new Wray family moved to an island off the coast of Denmark, into the former manor house of Hans Christian Andersen. According to interviews from the time, Link, Olive and their son, Oliver, lived a very quiet, very small, very domestic life, far away from the rumble of Rock and Roll.
In no time, Olive began to take a more active role in Link’s career. By the early nineties, as Wray embarked on his terrific fourth chapter, his wife was operating as his handler, promoter, publicist, manager and tambourine player. In the early part of that decade, he released a series of middling albums, stuck in between his various styles, and full of wide-eyed tributes to his new wife. In America, nobody seemed to know about these releases, much less care about them. In Europe, however, he had become something of a folk hero — a living, breathing talisman connected to the roots of Rock and Punk. He was mythic, like Robert Johnson. But, unlike Johnson, Wray went down to the crossroads and survived.
Sixty-something Link Wray was faster, louder and scarier than his younger self. Whereas “Raw-Hide” and “Rumble” were soundtracks to noirish Westerns, his final performances sound like The Replacements scoring a 1950s drag race. Flanked by a band of much younger devotees, Grandpa Link returned to salvage his legacy. In spite of his indisputable greatness, he’d failed as a pop star. Failed as a folkie. And failed as a proto-punk. So, this time out — his last time out — he opted for all three incarnations. He wore black sunglasses, a leather jacket, a white tank top and a two foot ponytail and a thinning pompadour. He looked as though he’d either lost his mind or that he meant business. Or possibly both.
It was that version of Link Wray that I saw perform in New York City in 1997. It’s my only first hand account of his existence. In front of several hundred sweaty, curious, younger fans, Wray and his band scorched the stage for an hour at Tramps — a once beloved, long since shuttered, lower Manhattan venue. Wray barely spoke. And whatever he did say, I could not understand. He was not a tall man -- maybe 5’7” -- and yet he seemed to tower over his bandmates. They played as fast and loud as any band I’d ever heard, barely stopping between songs. At times, I thought I heard a shard of “Rumble.” Elsewhere, I was certain they were playing the “Batman” theme. There were several moments wherein I was convinced that the band had no idea what song Link was actually playing. But none of it mattered. What mattered was that Link Wray was there. And that he was real. And alive. I think.
Aside from my memory, though, all I really have to confirm my impressions are two studio albums released during Wray’s final, electric run. “Shadowman” from 1997, contains solid, if mostly recycled, versions of older material. Like most of his later releases, though, it’s hard to discern the origins of the album. Only three musicians are credited and it seems to have been recorded in 1995, quickly, in England. It’s loud, heavy in the midsection, and full of reverb and distortion. It’s not breathless, like the band I saw catch fire at Tramps in 1997. But it’s a proud performance from a proud grandfather.
The second record from that era, and the final Link Wray album (as best I can tell), is “Barbed Wire” from 2000. Also recorded in 1995, and also in England, “Barbed Wire” is the more curious of Wray’s final two releases. And by “curious,” I don’t mean “better.” “Barbed Wire” has a patchwork quality, like an artist who is well aware that the end is near, combing through tapes for his last flashes of brilliance. Sonically and stylistically, it has the feel of a hodgepodge compilation more than a cogent statement of any kind. Then again, with the exception of those “shack albums,” Wray was always a singles artist -- a man whose ideas came out in short bursts rather than long essays.
“Barbed Wire” opens as though it was shot out from a cannon, but ends in a heaping mess of rubble. “Tiger Man,” the album’s first track, was originally recorded by Rufus Thomas in the Fifties and then, more famously, by Elvis in his 1968 comeback. Link practically destroys both versions -- speeding, hootin, hollerin and shredding like a man possessed. This is the sound that I heard live in 1997. It’s straight Psychobilly. His voice is as full as one lung can muster and the guitars are as loud as anything The Replacements ever made. If Scotty Moore were less of a gentleman and Elvis had never gotten famous, this is what The King would have been.
Twelve songs later, though, Link and his band are fumbling their way through Bruce Springsteen’s “Fire,” a song that Wray had originally recorded with Robert Gordon way back when. Whereas Springsteen’s version is all about the pulse and the bass, and Wray’s version with Gordon added reverb and tremolo, this live version, recorded in 1997, is overwrought. It’s the last of a trio of covers wherein Wray and his band quite literally sound lost amid the volume and distortion. Their version of “Rumble” -- the song that made Wray famous and the song that he had lovingly rein interpreted for forty years -- sounds rushed and unloved. Then, right before “Fire,” he offers a ponderous, unnecessary version of Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild.” As he approached seventy, the man who’d changed Rock with just three chords, was racing all over the fretboard, gasping for air.
In between the bracing intro and the lumbering finish, however, “Barbed Wire” is an endearing coda to Wray’s discography. It includes a sweet, crooning cover of Elvis’ “Home is Where the Heart Is” just four songs before a completely Punk take on “Jailhouse Rock.” The former is completely acoustic and without a drummer, while the latter is a clattering sprint, held together simply by the gusto of the singer, chasing his hero. By any standard, they are minor Link Wray tracks. But they are critical footnotes.
Of the originals, “Julie Baby” is a wonderful, surf guitar stroll and “Hard Rock” could be the soundtrack to a Wes Anderson scene in which Bill Murray chases down Owen Wilson and hijinks ensue. Meanwhile, the album’s title track lives up to its name. The sharp squeal of his guitar gives way to a knife fight between the rhythm and the lead. It’s somehow both more contemporary than anything he could have made in the 1950s, but also not an evolution on that sound. If anything, it’s the opposite -- a more feral regression.
Compared to his contemporary, Duane Eddy, Link Wray sounded unthinkably noisy in 1958. But, compared to “Rumble,” Wray sounded rickety in 1971. Compared to the “shack albums,” Link Wray sounded packaged when he was with Robert Gordon. And, finally, compared to his dalliances with Gordon, Link sounded unleashed in the Nineties. “Barbed Wire” contains just a little bit from each of those incarnations. Aside from its title track and, possibly, “Tiger Man,” however, there is nothing essential about the record. Though it is his “last album,” it is only “definitive” in the existential sense. In other words, it is obviously not his greatest work. It’s also not his most representative work. But it is “definitive” in that it is authoritative, decisive proof of his existence.
Most everything I knew about Link Wray had been mediated. It was music in the background of movies. It was Wikipedia entries and out of print compilations and third hand quotes and fables. There were times when I even wondered if I could trust my own memory. Had I actually seen him perform live in 1997? Was the man on stage definitely Link Wray? “Barbed Wire” resolved those questions. I was at Tramps that night. It really was Link Wray on stage. He was not John Henry or Paul Bunyan or Babe Ruth or Rube Waddell. He was a half Shawnee man from the country, who made his guitar sound like the devil wrestling with god. I don’t know when he was born. I don’t know how many times he was married or why he’s not more famous. But I know that the young man who made “Rumble” and the older man who made “Barbed Wire” lived several lives before he died in 2005.