Tommy Emmanuel first hit the road as a guitar player at the age of six.
His family had formed a band called the Emmanuel Quartet. One of his brothers played lead guitar, one drummed, a sister played slide guitar, and Tommy played rhythm guitar. He’d begun playing at the age of four, and after he and his siblings made national TV in their homeland, Australia, their father decided it was time to take this act on the road. He bought two station wagons, packed the family up – there were six kids total – and took off across Australia on a tour that ended up lasting five years.
They played anywhere and everywhere. Once on the road, they changed the name of the band – “People thought we were some kind of pastoral string quartet,” Emmanuel said – and became The Midget Surfaris. Frequently, the family traveled with circuses, literally as the sideshow.
“It was all part of the circus. I guess we must have looked like circus freaks when we were kids – standing up playing music, putting the guitars behind our heads, three of us playing one guitar. Every trick in the book we could come up with to try and entertain people. That is where we came from,” said Emmanuel in an interview last week.
Looking back at old photos, an unusual thing stands out. Emmanuel had extremely large hands. He played a full size guitar by the age of 5.
“I had abnormally big hands for a kid,” he recalled. “I am better proportioned now, but when I was a kid my hands looked gigantic – so obviously, that is what I was meant to be doing with them.”
Emmanuel found out even more exactly what he should be doing with his hands at the age of 8 when he heard Chet Atkins on the radio for the very first time. The song was called “Windy and Warm” and it just about picked the little kid with the big hands right up off the ground.
“I’ll never forget it as long as I live,” Emmanuel said. “It was so exciting….It was a moment that lit a fire under me.”
Atkins had developed a style that saw the famous Merle Travis – a groundbreaking player a generation earlier who’d used his thumb and index finger of his right hand to create separate bass and melody lines – and raised the ante. He used two and sometimes three fingers and made the guitar do things it’d never done before. It sounded like more than one player. To Emmanuel, it sounded strangely familiar. He felt he knew this guy, Chet Atkins – the music seemed to speak directly to him.
“Because my desire to play in that way was so strong, I literally almost wore myself out just trying to do that and figure it out. I couldn’t get anyone to help me because everyone assumed it was a recording trick and that you couldn’t really do that,” he said. “People actually tried to discourage me from going that way because they said it couldn’t be done. You don’t say that to a person like me, because I’ll go and do it. I am a very determined person.”
He unlocked the secret. The enormously difficult trick was to train his thumb and the fingers of his right hand to operate independently of each other and figure out a way to position his hand so he could reach the low bass notes and the high melodies. “And then to get that groove right in the pocket and make it swing,” he said. “That took a lifetime to get all that right. I’m still working on it.”
When Emmanuel was 11, tragedy struck the Midget Surfaris. The kids had been agitating to get the Fender electric guitars that were all the rage at the time. Their father, a former coal miner, finally said he’d go into town and check out a band that was using Fenders to see if he liked the sound.
“He said goodbye to us and went into town and was watching the band and had a heart attack and fell down dead on the floor,” Emmanuel said. “So we ended up travelling a little bit longer after he passed, but we had to settle down.”
It was the end of the circus. The family settled down, and all but he and his brother Phil eventually ceased playing music. Emmanuel gave guitar lessons to adults and saved up money to buy a Gretsch guitar like his idol’s. He also sent Atkins a letter telling him how much his music meant to him and noting that he, too, was a guitar player. One day he came home and his mother, Virginia, told him to put his bags down and go look on his bed. There he found a brown envelope that contained a signed photo from Atkins and an appreciative note. “I didn’t realize anybody in Australia knew me,” Atkins wrote. “I was thrilled.”
It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Atkins kept tabs on the kid’s progress from afar for many years. Emmanuel did a little bit of everything – he played drums in his brother’s rock band, Goldrush, and became an ace session guitarist for Australian bands such as Air Supply and Men At Work – until finally in 1980 he was able to make his pilgrimage to Nashville to meet “the Country Gentleman.” They began playing guitars together within minutes of meeting, and would eventually record together and become close friends.
Emmanuel would launch his own solo career and become known as one of the greatest living guitar players (Acoustic Guitar magazine has called him “…one of the most gifted artists of our time.”). Shortly before Atkins death in 2001, he let Emmanuel know that it was his responsibility to carry on the tradition that began with Travis and was furthered by Jerry Reed and Atkins himself.
“He made it very clear to me I had an obligation to fulfill, and because I was young enough and strong enough, that I better get out there and take this music to the world,” Emmanuel said. “He said, ‘I have done the best I can in my life. It’s over to you now, and you better get on with it.’ He was very adamant that this is what I am supposed to do. It seems to me that is my destiny, whatever it is.”
Now, through the magic of YouTube, wherever Emmanuel travels, whether in China or Russia or Redondo Beach (where he headlines the opening night of the Los Angeles Guitar Festival July 2), he finds kids who have been studying his hands and his music and are ready to carry on that tradition. “It’s a wonderful thing,” he said. “That’s how it gets handed on.”
Emmanuel has staked out his own territory as a guitarist. His shows contain the most rousing two hours of solo acoustic guitar now occurring in the world. In his hands, the guitar is not only a rhythm and melody instrument, but it is also a small percussion section (the finish is worn off his guitars from their use as drums and he is also known to bounce his forehead off the microphone to create a percussive pop). He is also a prolific and innovative writer – his song “Initiation”, for example, is a nine minute epic that somehow manages to turn the guitar into a didgeridoo and fly across the Australian outback. He is frequently called the “Wizard of Oz” for very good reason, and his viscerally energetic performances are the stuff of legend.
But perhaps most striking of all his qualities is the pure exuberance that comes across in every note he plays.
“I am an entertainer, you know – I am in the entertainment business, and I do my best to give the audience a really good time and use whatever I can to take people’s attention from whatever their problems are,” Emmanuel said. “They need to get some relief, and I just continue doing what I’m doing and it seems to really work that way. I play, and people get happy. Not a bad job.”
“I am dedicated and diligent with my instrument and everything, but I’m just flying my kite, you know?” he added. “I’m having fun, and I’m not looking for any stinking glory. I’m looking to have a good time and do a good job and that is what makes me happy. And if that is what makes me happy, that’s what is important, because life is too short not to be happy.”
The Los Angeles Guitar Festival is July 2 (acoustic) and July 3 (electric) at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center. See laguitarfestival.com for more info. ER
