As a young man, he believed that by the age of 25 he would be dead. However, there was little in the life of Loudon Wainwright III, son of a Life editor, to suggest it. “I wanted to make a record with voice and guitar that’s not just a recording, it’s a document,” says Wainwright today of the 21-year-old Wainwright. Those were the fabulous first three albums in the early ’70s. Then he made about thirty more records, which are also documents, did not become popular, but could give an acoustic guitar concert in every coffee house and then went on to be the father of Martha and Rufus Wainwright, especially Rufus, and the godfather of Judd Apatow.
Undisguised and shameless
Now Wainwright is happy to be 75 and of course he wrote a song about it, “How Old Is 75?”. “Lifetime Achievement” is a kind of sequel to his big life concert, which can be seen on Netflix. Wainwright only needs a banjo (as on “Hell”), a fiddle (on “Little Piece Of Me”) or no instrument at all (on “One Wish”) to perform his whimsical folk vignettes. As always, it’s about family, about duration and transience, about travel and home – and above all it’s about Loudon Wainwright III.
After last employing a jug band, this time he uses only a few musicians – but the songs with brass and pedal steel guitar naturally have more grit and poison than the somewhat bony acoustic presentations. “Lifetime Achievement” is a record for the community that hears Wainwright’s songs like the journal entries they are. The chronicler reports about everything unabashedly and shamelessly like Samuel Pepys, because everything is material to him. You look into the heart of the songwriter. There is no persona here, but the man himself. As a wandering singer, galling ironist and self-confessed egocentric, Loudon Wainwright III is a giant – and as a cool 75-year-old an example.
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