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This John Tobler article was originally printed in Melody Maker in 1973, then later in edition 17 of Hot Wacks in 1979. It deals with the release of the album, Five and Dime. The actual transcribed interview that formed the basis for this article is printed in full in the Interviews section on this website.

Living in this God-forsaken, unfair and unpleasant land, it helps me a great deal to think about California. In Los Angeles, it never seems to get very cold - mind you, the natives reckon that sixty degrees is about as low as they're prepared to go without switching on the central heating. So while I mull over the imminent possibility of a power strike affecting my electric typewriter stone dead, I can also mull over the advantages of perhaps living somewhere close to David Ackles.

He's got a great house in Pacific Palisades, a few miles west of Los Angeles, and thereby close to the ocean, although the imminent sea is somewhat unnecessary because of the private pool. There's no need to reflect on the fortunes of over-fed rock stars and the like, because it's not as simple as that. Sure, there are other advantages, like the avocados and limes that grow in the back garden and the frequent visits from several raccoons, fascinating creatures according to David, not least because instead of run-of-the-mill paws, your raccoon has a thumb, rendering him a fascinating sight as he performs almost-human feats which other animals, lacking the extremity, find quite impossible.

The problem is that the 'coons come from a terrifying abyss about twenty feet behind the house, where the earth has crumbled away, leaving a gaping chasm about a hundred yards across, which creeps nearer whenever there's enough rain to wash some earth away. The intention is to get the walls of the fault shored up, but it hasn't happened yet for various reasons.

Not the place to write the sort of songs that David has become celebrated for, and still less the place that you would expect an album to be recorded. "For the first time in my life, I came in with an album under budget and ahead of schedule, so obviously recording it here is the right thing to do. We did all the basic tracks here, and some of the overdubbing as well, and we had so much time - such a luxury."

You mean actually here? "Oh yes, right here, in this room. There was a string quartet right there in front of the fireplace and, instead of that lamp, we had an umbrella hanging up with some some foam inside it, so the drummer had his own little booth set up under that. We had a concert grand piano, guitar here, bass in the hall, then we closed the door to the bathroom hall and used it as a sort of echo chamber. And the control room is in the office around the corner. We really had a wonderful time."

The album in question is David Ackles' latest masterpiece, Five and Dime, the first from a new contract with Columbia, or CBS as we know it here in the UK. Previously, there had been three albums with Elektra, The Road to Cairo in 1968, Subway to the Country in 1969 and American Gothic in 1972. Fairly obviously, not a man who wanted himself over-recorded, yet each one of these albums had received the sort of reviews that couldn't be bought.

Even more strange was that none of them had made the sort of chart dent that both artist and record company would like, the best placing being for a few weeks in the nineties for American Gothic, which is not what you would expect after not one, but three reviews by respected critics, each comparing the record's quality to Sergeant Pepper or something equally outstanding. Wasn't it rather embarrassing to receive acclaim like that?

"Yes, sickening. How can that be? All it is is an album, one record album of a handful of songs. They can only be so good, right? They can't be any better than that. To have people fall down and say 'This is a whole new direction to music' is embarrassing because I can't support that; my music can't support it; nothing can support it.

"I was thrilled that so many people were that enthusiastic and I appreciate their enthusiasm and their faith and all of that, but at the same time, it caused me no end of grief. I knew what the album was worth, and I still know - it's a good album. I'm not putting it down, but it's only an album, only a group of songs. And it would mean doing another album which would have to try to come up to, or even surpass, what I have done. I figured that there was no way I could surpass what I had done in terms of the reviewers, because they had already committed themselves to it being better than peanut butter, so all I could do was go in a somewhat different direction on my own terms, and in the end, I finally had to ignore completely what had gone before.

"I was literally stymied. Within the first few months after American Gothic came out, I couldn't write a song. I'd sit down and start to write, and I'd get the first eight measures and quit, thinking to myself, 'Oh this isn't nearly as good as what was on the last album - that's not going to impress anyone'. I mean, that's just incredible, it's horrible!"

So David signed a new contract, one of the conditions being that he could record, as he put it, "independent of a label in a sense, which meant I could record it here under circumstances which were more conducive to the making of a rather more personal album than the last one, which I wanted."

Listening to the album, there seems to be little, if any, difference in the quality from the telephone-number budget extravaganzas to which we've become accustomed. Why don't more people make their records this way?

"Because they're told they can't. We did the whole thing on a four track machine, which is unheard of. Obviously, we had to transfer it to sixteen when we went into the studio for some of the larger things, but for the basic tracks, you don't need more than four. Indeed, you shouldn't have more than four, because that's the ideal feeling, and you can respond to one another so easily if there are only four of you.

"Also, you have all the time in the world to do it, because they're here, and they're comfortable, and there's no feeling of it being a sterile place, or having any time pressure. Some of the sessions went on till three in the morning from seven at night, and no-one complained because everyone understood the problems, and mostly they were here for the fun of it"

The list of backing musicians on Five and Dime certainly fails to slip easily off the tongue. Presumably they were friends, rather than regular musicians? "Some of them are friends of mine, some are friends of Douglas [Graham, the producer of the album]. They were all people who knew one another, but most of them were not regular studio musicians. The quartet is the Trojan String Quartet from USC, who played at our wedding, as a matter of fact."

Apart from Bruce Langhorne and Red Rhodes on lead and steel guitar respectively, the one name I did recognise was Dean Torrance, who surfing readers will remember as being one half of Jan and Dean. Checking through the song titles, the one he's most likely to be on is Surf's Down, which turns out to be correct. Was there a reason for this spoof on the surfing scene, which this track undoubtedly is?

"I was a surfer once. I still occasionally actually go out with the board and do it, and I will always have tremendous affection for that period because it was funny. It was magic; there was a kind of mystique attached to it and it was still hysterical. It was the first of the long hair and the first of a lot of things that later became adopted into other lifestyles. I think in a sense it was probably the first viable sub-culture for teens. And now I live here and see the ex-surfers still there, still dressing and talking the same..."

It seems odd that Dean Torrance would allow himself to be got at in a song that he was performing... "Yes, but he understood and he thought it was funny. He's singing the high lines. Bruce Johnston was originally going to be on that track too, but he had a cold that morning. We had a great time - Bruce and I sat at the piano, working out different vocal lines for every song on the album, how he would have done it, a la the Beach Boys - and we fell down. It's got to be one of the funniest sessions we've ever done.

"The sad part was that he called me the day we were scheduled to record - we had to do that one in the studio because of the multiple voices - and he had this cold, so that he could barely speak. The low voice on that track is Douglas, the producer, and the trick was to get him drunk to do it, because there's no way a normal person under normal circumstances could hit that note. So it was worth the investment of whatever it was - a fairly largish bottle of brandy. As the day progressed and he got drunker, his voice got lower, to the point where he could finally sing that 'Surf's down' line, really hit it, although he could barely stand!"

Perhaps the most frequent accusations against David's previous albums, inevitably made by those out of sympathy with the sentiments expressed in his songs, is that an Ackles album is somewhat heavy going. "These songs are intended to be much more easy to get into, and I felt that it was time I lightened up a bit and made the album a little more accessible. Columbia didn't suggest that I made things more commercial, for which I'm most grateful."

In fact, Surf's Down is by far the lightest track, but it's certainly not alone in being the sort of track that produces a reaction other than the feeling of despair that non-fans might expect. A couple of what might be called cautionary tales are included - Everybody Has a Story, which quite correctly states that there's always someone worse off than yourself, and Jenna Saves, the story of a poor little rich girl. "I like parables, little morality plays, and I thought it was moderately amusing in its own way, although it wasn't about anyone specific. It's more a compendium of a lot of attitudes."

You also get five love songs, lyrically beautiful as usual, but with the sort of plaintive tune that has become a trademark of Ackles' work. Postcards, he confirmed, was about his stay in England, where the American Gothic album was made, and House Above the Strand referred specifically to his current abode, the strand being the beach. His explanation of A Photograph of You demonstrates, I think, the sort of object or situation which the man feels sufficiently inspired by to write a memorable song.

"It's looking back, although it's not exactly what the lyrics portray. I was going through some effects after I moved here, trying to figure out what to throw away and what to keep, and I came across an old photograph of someone that I had once thought I was desperately in love with and couldn't live without and had managed to live an extra fifteen years since! But it did bring back a sort of keen feeling, so I wrote the song about that feeling, from that standpoint."

Apart from a faintly evangelical song called Berry Tree, the constructive meat of the album comes, for me, in three very meaningful crusading-type pieces, all of which David spoke about at some length. Aberfan was the first one to strike me forcibly, due, no doubt to the fact that it must have been closer to home for me than for the writer.

"I wasn't in England when it happened, but it really appalled me and I was shocked by it. It was one of those thinks that gave me a very strong feeling at the time, and then I very quietly and neatly put it away in a drawer and never thought about it again. Then the facts about My Lai began to come out. I put them together with Aberfan and came up with the same basic problem, which is that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons. And indeed, it's true that in both circumstances the children, who had the least to do with it - the most innocent people - are the ones who are most victimised. The original version of Aberfan introduces the mining disaster and then follows it up with the similar circumstances of My Lai, but I cut the second half because it went on and on into a ten minute polemic and there's no need for that any more. I don't think there's ever a great need for polemics, unless they're disguised - and that was ill-disguised! So I cut the second half and I think that made it a better song."

Mention is made of 116 children and apparently that's exactly the number who died in the disaster. "I had to research it because I wrote it last year, not in 1966 when it happened. There are just so many things you can't use in a song, interesting facts that contribute to your feeling for the place or the period, and I did go there when I was last in Wales."

Run Pony Run at first sight appears to concern the hunting of horses for food. Certainly not a familiar concept to me... Why, particularly, ponies? "It's because of the beef shortage here, when the price of beef went up incredibly beyond the price of gasoline and everyone was turning to horsemeat. People were stealing horses and having them butchered, and horsemeat shops opened up. Within one week, all of this seemed suddenly to come to the surface and there were horsemeat butchers opening up in Oregon and Washington and back East. And the more I saw, the more I got sick by it. I can understand that horses do eventually grow old and die and if you want to then turn them into glue, that's all right, once they're dead. But to slaughter horses for food is appalling. The slaughter of animals for food is appalling anyway, but horses, which are bred for their grace and agility and speed and beauty, to be turned into food - it's a sin. It just got to me, and I wrote the song."

In the song, there's a line about 'cowboys have wings now; they can fly'. Were people actually using these methods? "Yes, because mustangs have been the source of dog food in this country for years and years. They're hunted with helicopters and what have you - it's quite mechanised. They just round them up and slaughter them and make dog food out of them. There are so few wild things left, and you take a wild horse - which to see them in the wild is to understand kinetic beauty, it's incredible, absolutely phenomenal - and then to realise that they're running into dog cans... it's more than I can bear, without writing about it. We did have quite a large mustang population at one time, but it has been steadily depleted and it still goes on."

The final 'message' song on Five and Dime is I've Been Loved, which starts off as a study of old age. "Yes, and it's trying to draw that into the kind of loneliness that we all suffer at one time or another, and the similar reasons that we have for going on and not letting the loneliness destroy us. Also, I do have a grandmother who is not 99, like the person in the song, but 89 and has been in hospital for a year and a half now. It builds up to where you have to write a song about it, because it's a very pitiful situation.

"There's absolutely nothing she can look forward to at all, except more of the same, and that's awfully hard to live with. Every time we go to see her, she's always cheerful and she always has something that she wants to tell you that isn't complaining or anything; it's just what happened. And she always wants to see pictures of whatever you're doing. It's a hurtful situation."

All the explanations you've read may lead you to believe that there's a special need for the artist to explain the meanings behind his songs, but such feelings will be found to be incorrect when you hear the record. Is it harder to write a song that's more easily comprehensible to the listener? "Yes, it's a good deal harder to write simple songs. This is no news to anyone who writes songs, or to the world at large, I think, that the most difficult song to write is that which is simplest in terms of actual words and music - not necessarily in ideas or in depth of emotion or anything else, but that simplifies it to the point of being instantly communicable."

It's obvious to me that Five and Dime has the potential to reach a somewhat wider audience than its predecessors. The only problem as far as England goes is that the famous vinyl shortage may make David Ackles' latest album a borderline case, that is, an album that may not be released here unless a definite demand is established. If that is the case, I feel that many minds will be the poorer.

Go, play with the towns you have built of blocks,
The towns where you would have bound me!
I sleep in my earth like a tired fox,

There is a River: The Elektra Recordings - Review of the pulled album by David Cavanagh in Uncut 122, July 2007.

A mysterious character on the fringes of late '60s American folk music, David Ackles (1937-99) attracted some surprisingly famous fans - Elton John and Phil Collins, for instance - without being in any sense a 'safe' or 'mainstream' artist. Dark as a starless night, Ackles' self-titled 1968 debut is among the most haunting albums in any genre. His third, American Gothic (1972) is conceptually pitched somewhere between an Dyke Parks and Thornton Wilder, a tapestry of a nation woven from the microcosmic secrets and fears of a handful of citizens.

In short, Ackles' songs (which he sang in a grave baritone) offer an experience that is both cinematic and emotional, and he should by rights be better known. There is a River: The Elektra Recordings is an exhilarating chronicle of his four-year stint on Jac Holzman's folk-rock label. The two-CD anthology contains complete remasters of David Ackles and American Gothic as well as the album that came in-between (Subway to the Country), and it also includes 11 unreleased tracks and rarities. One of these, an American Gothic out-take reminiscent of a Baptist hymn, gives this anthology its title.

While Ackles is sometimes compared to Randy Newman, and his gloomier elegies (Blue Ribbons, His Name is Andrew) could be likened - at a pinch - to Tim Rose or Leonard Cohen, he was a versatile writer/arranger, and no comparison really does him justice. We first encounter him on the opening track of his '68 debut (The Road to Cairo) hitching a ride from a stranger. Amid sedate, mournfully descending piano chords, a story emerges. The narrator is returning home to find the wife and kids he abandoned years ago. But as electric guitars sizzle, and organist Michael Fonfara surges like Doug Yule on 1969: Velvet Underground Live, the narrator panics with 22 miles to go, and bails out of the car. ("I can't walk down this road to Cairo; they're better thinking I'm dead.")

Other songs tell similar tales of tight-lipped drifters who've done something harrowing and irreversible, and are ever-doomed to wander America like the living dead, or count out time in solitude. The jaw-dropping His Name is Andrew concerns a man who "works in a canning factory" and "chooses to wait alone for his life to end". Down River is about an ex-convict who's overjoyed to bump into an old girlfriend, until three words, "is that right?" inform us that she has married his former school chum, killing hopes of a reconciliation.

Ackles' follow-up, Subway to the Country (1969), pales next to such a dramatic debut. Much less introspective, even politically satirical in places, it also expands the tonal palette to include horns and strings. Main Line Saloon and Inmates of the Institution (which use a grotty bar and a mental asylum as settings for Hogarthian studies of moral degeneracy) boast peculiar, jazz-inflected arrangements that never linger on one tempo for long. Sadly, there's less to recommend in the album's gospel-flavoured middle section (Out on the Road, Cabin On the Mountain), where melodies tend to be frustratingly predictable. Nevertheless, Subway to the Country is an uneasy proposition when it wants to be. Candy Man is about a disabled war veteran who takes revenge on society by distributing pornography to young children. ("I'm not ashamed; I took their minds as payment due, the healthy for the maimed.")

Ackles befriended Elton John in 1970, after supporting him at the Troubadour in LA. Ackles' third album was recorded in England in 1971-72, and produced by Elton's lyricist Bernie Taupin. Ironically, it's as un-English a music as could ever be imagined. Composed of 11 tragicomic scenes from failing lives (a small-town wife deceiving her husband; a musician having a one-night stand; a Native American exploding in a lethal rage), American Gothic is arranged in a spectacular variety of styles, from boater-and-cane 'show tunes' to blissful country rock. The album's peaks are numerous, with narratives both surreal (Ballad of the Ship of State) and poignant (Waiting for the Moving Van). The sheer musical scope (clarinets, trombones, pedal-steel guitar, Appalachian fiddles) implies a union of Sondheim, Nesmith and The Band. the ten-minute climax, Montana Song, in which a troubled urbanite ventures to a remote rural location to research his ancestors is a shattering experience in sounds and words.

In late 1972, Jac Holzman let Ackles depart for another label, Columbia, where he recorded a fourth and final album (Five and Dime, 1973) before quitting the business to write for the theatre. He died of cancer in 1999. Among the unreleased material on this anthology is a snatch of interview where Ackles talks of a grim time living in New York, which inspired the elegant, pro-ecology title track of Subway to the Country. He sounds exactly like you'd expect: intelligent, deep and caring.

Also intriguing are the out-takes I'm Only Passing Through (American Gothic) and Old Shoes (David Ackles) which recall Scott Walker, of all people, in his jazzier moments. Additional curios include The Road to Cairo crooned in decent French (La Route á Chicago), and a proposed theme for the Jane Fonda movie, Klute (Hold Me in Your World), the anthology's sole banal dud. Otherwise Ackles' quality was, and is, consistently high.

Technical note: the first Ackles CDs, in 1993, carelessly reversed the stereo channels on the first and third albums. There is a River: The Elektra Recordings corrects this error, and all three albums now conform to the original vinyl.