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Review and audio interview with Brian Naylor
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NPR, Review and audio interview with Brian Naylor >>
British guitarist Justin Adams says he was not a huge Led Zeppelin fan growing up. So while he was honored to be invited to play on former Zep frontman Robert Plant's new album and supporting tour, he didn't feel particularly intimidated by it. And he certainly didn't feel like his mission was to merely ape Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. "If I did have to do a Jimmy Page imitation, I'd have a lot of difficulty," he tells Brian Naylor for Weekend Edition Sunday.
Page might feel the same way if the roles were reversed. Adams has been called "Britain's answer to Ry Cooder," and even if the comparison isn't precisely accurate (Adams says it isn't), it shows the general regard for the man's abilities.
Like Cooder, Adams is steeped in the blues, and in music from around the world. That also gives him something in common with Page and Plant, who experimented with elements of Middle Eastern and Celtic music atop their blues base.
Adams listened to a lot of blues as a boy. Then, traveling around the world with his diplomat father, he was introduced to local music in places such as Jordan and Egypt. "I got used to those Islamic scales," he says. "It became natural for me to mix different musics together."
His album Desert Road, just released in the United States, shows his particular interest in North African and West African music, from such places as Mali and Morocco. Its mix of African and American-blues textures often sounds like something West African guitarist Ali Farka Toure might have produced.
The desert means a lot to Adams, and not just in a geographical or even a symbolic sense. In the city, he says, it's all "input and stimulation" but in the desert "all that is stripped away. You're forced to kind of look inward, in a way. That's where all the interesting stuff goes on."
Previous Coverage
A 1999 Morning Edition interview with producer Nick Gold about Ali Farka Toure
A 1994 Fresh Air review of two albums featuring Ry Cooder, including his collaboration with Toure on Talking Timbuktu 07/28/03 >> go there
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