True North, his remarkable new record, finds him returning to the same themes of weariness, wisdom, and whimsy that have punctuated his whole catalog, but this time there is a true kind of bittersweet heaviness to all of it. He was in this for the long haul from the moment he put down his art teacher day job and picked up the guitar as a talisman. Michael lived hard and lived fast, but even back in the early naive days of Harvest Records-in the chaos of the ‘70s-he wasn’t flying the flag of rock burnout. I met Michael at a time when he proudly, gleefully was wearing the badge of “veteran,” but it’s telling that as a young man he was already referencing himself as a “fully qualified survivor,” or that he was singing about how “an old man remembers” in 1970. (All the while, navigating the English countryside in his old Volvo station wagon, gig to gig-two guitar players separated by a couple generations but united in our mutual fascinations. We would recount our mutual love for things like the book Blue Highways and the film Heaven’s Gate, and he would regale me with tales of opening for Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and the like. It was just the first of many moments like that with Michael-strange and humorous anecdotes from rock history punctuating a never ending flow of friendly conversation about everything in life. So, I thought with a bit of amazed admiration, THAT is how Mick Ronson and David Bowie started working together. ‘I know this bloke from Hull who’s a gardener, but a really great player named Mick.’” He then chuckled, and fell silent again for most of the ride. I remember telling him when he needed a guitar player. “Space Oddity” came on the radio as we sailed through traffic and Michael spoke up for the first time that morning. We were sharing a taxi in Paris to the train station, about to embark on a two week tour of England together, having only just met the night before at a gig. Memory has a way of hazing over, especially when it involves the roving lifestyle of touring musicians, but I have a clear recollection of the first real conversation I ever had with Michael Chapman.
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