John Wesley Harding: Confessions of St Ace

Do you remember Wes Stace, Ben? You must do. I think it may even have been you that told me the rumour that Stace never did a proper application for entry to Cambridge, but that Christopher Ricks argued his case solely on the basis of an essay Stace wrote about Bob Dylan. There were so many rumours — mostly, we thought, Stace's own self-mythologising — such as the one that he'd been on stage with Dylan in Berlin. I believe that was fiction, but his photo gallery features pictures of him with Bruce Springsteen, Rambin' Jack Elliot, John Prine and Pete Seeger, showing that he's remained slightly star-struck.

My main memories of Stace at university were him singing Love me, love me, love me, I'm a Social Democrat (a song he'd written for GLC benefit gigs) at student grant demos in 1984, and he directed a stage adaptation of The Trial in which Lou had a small part.

So Wesley Harding Stace took the stage name John Wesley Harding and moved to America. After university, I was barely aware of his music career until LD Beghtol (of Flare and assorted other bands) recommended this album on the Stephinsongs email list in Autumn 2000. In his review of the album for Time Out New York, LD wrote "though references and semi-quotations to everyone and everything from ancient mythology, Bauhaus and Dylan Thomas to Spencer, Blue Nile, Pet Sounds and Bob Dylan are much in evidence, Harding has achieved what all over-literate, ambitious collagists strive for: integration and synthesis."

Over-literate it certainly is, and sometimes that's OK, but my reservation about this album is that it's also over-polished. I don't know if that reflects the requirements of the American market, but it feels like all the rough edges have been rubbed off and the grain of the songs is no longer audible.

As an accompaniment to the album, JWH produced some Notes towards a clarification of the Confessions, including lyrics and their analysis. St.Ace is obviously a wordplay on Stace (during his undergraduate years he apparently went through an Italian-American period when he liked to have his name pronounced 'Stacchi'). I see that last year he published his first novel, which has been well reviewed.

MusicBrainz entry for this album