“A visionary who creates his own dark American mythology with archetypal symbols and classic riffs,” the US American Rolling Stone once praised the singer, guitarist and songwriter Chris Whitley. “Whitley is clearly a troubled mind – five parts old-fashioned religion, five parts dirty sex and ten parts guilt and suffering. “Nick Cave would probably kill to be him,” wrote The Independent.
He was extremely highly regarded by colleagues such as Dave Matthews, Daniel Lanois (who helped him get a record deal with a major label), Iggy Pop, John Mayer and Bruce Hornsby, and his followers adored him – the large audience should have heard Chris Whitley (despite a major label). Deals early in his career) never find. We take a look at the life and death of a unique singer, guitarist and songwriter who ultimately felt like he had failed.
Chris Whitley: His beginnings
Christopher Becker Whitley was born on August 31, 1960 in Houston, Texas. His father was an art director in corporate advertising, his mother a sculptor and painter. Whitley had two siblings: a brother named Dan, who was three years younger than him, and a sister named Bridget. Whitley grew up in Houston, Texas, but the family later moved to Connecticut.
In 1971, his parents separated, and Whitley and his siblings lived an unsettled life with their mother from then on – the family lived in hippie communes in Mexico, Oklahoma and Vermont, among other places.
Chris Whitley started playing guitar at the age of 15. He once told Rolling Stone about his early influences: “I grew up with Johnny Winter, and that’s why I was interested in The National. But I was more into the rural electric blues, like Howlin’ Wolf’s Smokestack Lightnin’ and the one-chord sound of early John Lee Hooker. And Elmore James, although it’s not about the guitar, I love his singing. I’ve never had a stylistic relationship with the blues, and I’m no longer interested in it because it doesn’t seem to be vital to me since Jimi Hendrix.”
Learning by writing
As Whitley emphasizes, he learned to play the guitar primarily while writing songs. “My playing has been influenced by the things I heard as a child, but I make up all my own chords and there are rarely solos in my pieces – I’m not like a blues guitarist who takes a solo like Clapton or Stevie Ray or BB King plays. I never do that. If there’s an open break in a song, it’s not a clean solo, but more of a texture, a simple slide thing, or a bunch of noise. I think as a child Jimmy Page’s influence was very strong because he played the guitar in such a structured way. “It was a lot more about how the guitar sounded than where the solos were and stuff,” the website quotes “allthingschriswhitley.com“ the musician.
New York and the encounter with Daniel Lanois
In 1977, Whitley moved to New York and began busking. After a few years in the US metropolis, he spent a few years in Belgium, where he played with the bands Kuruki, 2 Belgen, Nacht Und Nebel and Alan Fawn. After six years he moved back to New York. There it was a fateful encounter with the Canadian producer and musician Daniel Lanois that helped his career move forward. Lanois heard Whitley at a live concert and was impressed. Lanois helped him get a record deal with Columbia Records – and Whitley worked on his debut album.
The debut album “Living With The Law”
Chris Whitley’s debut album Living with the Law was released in 1991 and contained three singles with the tracks “Living with the Law”, “Big Sky Country” and “Poison Girl”. The album was produced by Malcolm Burn, who also worked on the mix. Burn, a close confidant of Daniel Lanois, played on the album himself and recorded it with engineer Mark Howard. Recordings took place at Daniel Lanois’ Kingsway Studio in New Orleans.
“Living With The Law” certainly attracted attention, but Whitley himself wasn’t entirely happy with it as he felt it didn’t quite capture his essence. “I think, [das Album] is very listenable and I like the way it sounds. It doesn’t really sound like me, at least not completely. It has elements of me, but it’s not quite who I am. I feel like the record is a lot more torturous than it sounds, honestly,” he explained in an interview with “Times Picayune“. The pictures that the album drew were “too cute for what the songs are actually about,” it says.
Chris Whitley: More albums and end of major deal
It would be four years before Whitley followed up with album number two. “Din of Ecstasy” was different than its predecessor, more noise-heavy, rougher, more grunge than pure singer/songwriter music. It wasn’t a big commercial success – nor was its successor “Terra Incognita” in 1997. Whitley was then dropped by Columbia Records. “I was so naive to think I could just make records and I forgot that it’s a marketing world and (music) is a commodity. It’s not about being as creative as possible. Unless you want to be dropped,” Whitley once said.
Without a major label contract, Chris Whitley released the remarkable album “Dirt Floor”. Whitley recorded the album live onto a two-track analog recorder over the course of two days. His father’s barn served as a studio and was recorded using a single stereo ribbon microphone. The album was released on the small independent label Messenger Records. “Dirt Floor” showed Whitley’s purist blues side with great pieces like “Scrapyard Lullaby” and “Wild Country” – rough, impetuous and highly dynamic.
An album every year
Whitley remained an indie artist for the rest of his too short life and released a long player every year until his death: “Live at Martyrs’” in 1999, the great covers album “Perfect Day” in 2000, “Rocket House” in 2001, 2004 “Hotel Vast Horizon”, 2005 “Soft Dangerous Shores” and posthumously 2006 “Reiter In”.
Moving to Germany
In 2001, Whitley moved to Dresden – because his girlfriend Susann Bürger lived there. Bürger helped him get concerts in Germany. With Heiko Schramm (bass) and Matthias Macht (drums), Whitley found a band with whom he recorded, among other things, the great album “Hotel Vast Horizon”. Unfortunately, Whitley’s alcoholism worsened in Germany – especially the death of his mother in 2004 caused Whitley to resort to the bottle more and more.
Whitley’s personal life and his early death
During his time in Belgium, Whitley married the musician Helen Gevaert, with whom he had a daughter. Trixie Whitley is also a musician and is pursuing a solo career. She also played with Daniel Lanois in his project Black Dub. The marriage to Gevaert ended in divorce in 1995.
After four years in Germany, he undertook what turned out to be his last tour of the USA in 2005. A return for more shows in the USA that same year had to be canceled: Whitley was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.
How desperate and depressed Whitley was at the end of his life is shown in the documentary “Dust Radio,” which was never officially completed but can still be seen on YouTube. Whitley gave his last interview to filmmaker Jonathan Mayor. The setting is sad, Whitley sits on a mattress in a barren room, visibly drunk. He repeatedly takes a sip from the bottle, he coughs, swears, and throws his guitar quite violently on the floor. “He was very depressed,” Mayer recalled to Loudersound.com, continuing, “At the same time, Chris also had a side that didn’t fade – an immense potential to see beauty in art and the future. As bad as it was, his creativity and fighting spirit were unbroken. It was a difficult situation. He drank a lot and didn’t have many options. He felt that he had tried very hard to do something very well and that he had sacrificed a lot for it. I don’t think he ever made music to be financially successful, but he felt betrayed, not by anyone in particular, but by a world in which that could be a reality.” A few weeks after the interview, on March 20th . November 2005, Chris Whitley died at the age of 45.
Daniel Lanois: “I will always remember his beauty”
“Chris is an example of one of the things that appalls me about the record industry – and unfortunately it is an industry. How can a talent like him go relatively unnoticed? Few singers have their own personality, and Chris is his own person through and through. Honestly, I feel more passion for his music than my own. I am critical of my music. “But I have a fervent, religious devotion to the magic that Chris creates,” US superstar Dave Matthews once enthused about Whitley. His friend Daniel Lanois wrote in Paste Magazine after his death: “Chris Whitley, my friend since 1988. The deep soul with which he was blessed is the soul that challenged him on his life’s journey. I will always remember its beauty.”