January 16, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, born in Australia, Tommy Emmanuel fell in love with American country guitar legend, Chet Atkins. The rest, as they say, is history—Tommy explains. We'll be playing his music throughout this story.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we return to our American stories. Up next, a
story from a man many considered to be the best
acoustic guitarist in the world. Interestingly, he's also a member
of the Order of Australia and a Kentucky colonel. Were,
of course talking about Tommy Emmanuel. Here's Tommy's story of
(00:30):
how he discovered music and himself. We'll be playing his
music throughout the entire piece.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
The musician's prayer is beautiful because it says, make me
a hollow read from which the fifth of self has
been blown. In other words, get rid of me and
all my crop, my ego, my pride, my need for acceptance,
or any of that. Get rid of all that and
(01:00):
just make me an open channel. The love that is
in this universe may flow through me through the music,
and it may go out to other people and really
help them in their lives. Looking back on my childhood,
(01:26):
I just want to say that everything that was American
was the best in the world. It was the best music,
the best movies, the best cars, the best clothes, the
best guitars, the best everything came from this country. I
started playing guitar because my mother could play guitar a
(01:50):
bit and she was trying to teach herself how to
play Hawaiian music because it was very popular in the
early sixties in Australia, in Rule Rule, Australia, where we
come from. She wanted me to play rhythm for her,
and she knew I had rhythm in me because when
I was little, she would put my pram in front
(02:13):
of the record player. I'd be screaming my lungs out
and she'd put music on and I'd go straight to sleep.
And then when I was able to walk around and
run around the house, when she put the washing in
the washing machine and pulled the lever at the side
and the machine and ku kuk kuk kum ku kunk kuk,
I came and danced with the washing machine. And sometimes
(02:36):
I fell asleep leaning against the washing machine. So she
knew there was something going on in me that could
only be satisfied by rhythm and groove and stuff like that.
So she got me a guitar when I turned four
and showed me how to put my fingers on the cords.
(02:57):
And she said to me, thirty five years later, she said,
it was like a miracle. I got the guitar in
the morning and in the afternoon, her and I played
a couple of songs together, and she said, I played
the time perfectly, I understood how the song worked, and
we had fun playing together. And she just kept encouraging
(03:20):
me and showing me new chords and new songs. And
then the rest of my family took up instruments and
we became a family band. By the time I was
five and almost six, we were already playing music festivals
and coming out as the emmanual family band kind of thing.
(03:41):
And what we played was music that we heard on
the radio. It was Hawaiian music, instrumental, surfy kind of music.
There was a band from England called The Shadows, and
they were the biggest influence on everybody in those days.
But as a musician, my life really changed when I
heard Chad Atkins.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Here's a turne written by the Las Indios Tabergerius, the
boys from Brazil that found a guitar out in the
jungle and didn't know what it was. They watched it
for a month or so and it didn't explode, so
they took it home and learned to play it. That's
what they said. Anyway, I believe them, juve. They wrote
(04:24):
this stone and it must have one million notes. I've
never counted them. I'm afraid to. I don't think I
could play it if I counted it.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
I knew that that's what I wanted to do. I
wanted to play like that. I'd hadn't a clue what
it was or how to do it. But that's what
changed my life. I knew exactly where I belonged. I
knew that I had to be a concert player. I
had not a clue how it was going, how I
was going to get there. I spent all my teen
(05:09):
years soaking up every record that I could find. I
remember when I turned sixteen, I bought myself Carol King's
Tapestry album. I bought Don McLean's American Pie, Gordon Lightfoot's albums.
People turned me on to Ray Charles and Oscar Pedison
(05:29):
and jazz music, and I discovered Where's Montgomery and people
like that? Right, that was good for me, and I spent,
you know, a good twenty years in the trenches. I
had to play in bands. I had to entertain people
in bars and places where people didn't listen. All that
so I could eat and pay a rent. And I
(05:53):
had songs in movies. I wrote music themes for TV
shows I did. I did game shows, playing with orchestra,
play with a string quartet. I played with a jazz band.
I was a drummer in a band. I was a
record producer. I did everything that you can imagine that
a person can do in my home country. So I
(06:18):
knew that in order for me to be really inspired
and challenged, I had to go where people did everything
a lot better, and that was here in America. I
came to America the first time in nineteen eighty to
visit Cheded Atkins, my hero, and he said to me,
then this is where you belong. You should be here
(06:40):
in Nashville. And I just kept coming back and kept
coming back. Personally, I got into drinking like some of
my family members, you know, took uppers and downers and
all that sort of stuff, and did all that stuff
(07:02):
that most people do until I crashed and burned too
many times. I found a better way to live. I
found salvation. Really. I was raised in the church by
my mother and father, but I never believed in the church,
(07:22):
you know, probably because I met way too many hypocrites.
So I have no desire to be a religious person.
And follow one particular path. When people talk about God,
most people go, oh, I don't want to talk about that,
But you can look at it like this, Okay. So
(07:43):
because I'm a drunk and a drug addict in my
body and in my spirit, I go to God a
group of drunks, or good orderly direction, or the gift
of desperation. There's a few ways of saying the word.
But I had to learn to surrender. I had to
let go of my pride, my ego, which is what
(08:07):
had been ruling me all my life, you know, And
so I had to find a way of believing that
there was a power greater than myself that could restore
me to sanity, to normal. And that's what's happened and
it continues every day. So I definitely have a big
(08:32):
faith in a higher power. And that's the way I
believe it's meant to be. We find out what works
for us, you know, it has to be honest and
it has to be real. So the proof to me
that my higher power is working for me and I
(08:57):
can trust it is the fact that I woke up
this morning. A. I didn't feel like drinking. B I
didn't need to change how I felt. I was happy
in my own skin. I'm happy how I feel today.
I don't need to alter my thinking or my you know.
(09:19):
And that to me is a miracle, because I was
at the point where I would wake up at four
o'clock in the morning and start drinking, you know. Then
I'd sleep again, then I'd wake up at midday and
start drinking again, and I was going to die. That's
where I was at. And it's a miracle that I
(09:40):
survived and that I'm here in such good health today.
There's simplicity in my life now, you know. So I'm
really really.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Grateful, And a special thanks to Jesse Edwards and to
Monty Montgomery for the work on this story, and thanks
to Tommy Emmanuel. And go to YouTube and just google
Tommy's name and just listen to the way he plays
the guitar. It's like nothing you've ever heard. Somewhere over
(10:11):
the Rainbow was my introduction to him at a club
in Nashville, and I couldn't believe what I heard or
saw and have been a fan ever since. And my goodness,
his struggles, he was very open and very frank about them,
with alcohol, with his pride, with ego, and then he
found God, or a higher power as he put it.
And now there's a simplicity, he said, in my life.
(10:33):
And you could hear a piece in his life. Tommy
Emmanuel virtuoso, guitarist and a heck of a storyteller. His
story here an hour American Stories
And we return to our American stories. Up next, a
story from a man many considered to be the best
acoustic guitarist in the world. Interestingly, he's also a member
of the Order of Australia and a Kentucky colonel. Were,
of course talking about Tommy Emmanuel. Here's Tommy's story of
(00:30):
how he discovered music and himself. We'll be playing his
music throughout the entire piece.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
The musician's prayer is beautiful because it says, make me
a hollow read from which the fifth of self has
been blown. In other words, get rid of me and
all my crop, my ego, my pride, my need for acceptance,
or any of that. Get rid of all that and
(01:00):
just make me an open channel. The love that is
in this universe may flow through me through the music,
and it may go out to other people and really
help them in their lives. Looking back on my childhood,
(01:26):
I just want to say that everything that was American
was the best in the world. It was the best music,
the best movies, the best cars, the best clothes, the
best guitars, the best everything came from this country. I
started playing guitar because my mother could play guitar a
(01:50):
bit and she was trying to teach herself how to
play Hawaiian music because it was very popular in the
early sixties in Australia, in Rule Rule, Australia, where we
come from. She wanted me to play rhythm for her,
and she knew I had rhythm in me because when
I was little, she would put my pram in front
(02:13):
of the record player. I'd be screaming my lungs out
and she'd put music on and I'd go straight to sleep.
And then when I was able to walk around and
run around the house, when she put the washing in
the washing machine and pulled the lever at the side
and the machine and ku kuk kuk kum ku kunk kuk,
I came and danced with the washing machine. And sometimes
(02:36):
I fell asleep leaning against the washing machine. So she
knew there was something going on in me that could
only be satisfied by rhythm and groove and stuff like that.
So she got me a guitar when I turned four
and showed me how to put my fingers on the cords.
(02:57):
And she said to me, thirty five years later, she said,
it was like a miracle. I got the guitar in
the morning and in the afternoon, her and I played
a couple of songs together, and she said, I played
the time perfectly, I understood how the song worked, and
we had fun playing together. And she just kept encouraging
(03:20):
me and showing me new chords and new songs. And
then the rest of my family took up instruments and
we became a family band. By the time I was
five and almost six, we were already playing music festivals
and coming out as the emmanual family band kind of thing.
(03:41):
And what we played was music that we heard on
the radio. It was Hawaiian music, instrumental, surfy kind of music.
There was a band from England called The Shadows, and
they were the biggest influence on everybody in those days.
But as a musician, my life really changed when I
heard Chad Atkins.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Here's a turne written by the Las Indios Tabergerius, the
boys from Brazil that found a guitar out in the
jungle and didn't know what it was. They watched it
for a month or so and it didn't explode, so
they took it home and learned to play it. That's
what they said. Anyway, I believe them, juve. They wrote
(04:24):
this stone and it must have one million notes. I've
never counted them. I'm afraid to. I don't think I
could play it if I counted it.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
I knew that that's what I wanted to do. I
wanted to play like that. I'd hadn't a clue what
it was or how to do it. But that's what
changed my life. I knew exactly where I belonged. I
knew that I had to be a concert player. I
had not a clue how it was going, how I
was going to get there. I spent all my teen
(05:09):
years soaking up every record that I could find. I
remember when I turned sixteen, I bought myself Carol King's
Tapestry album. I bought Don McLean's American Pie, Gordon Lightfoot's albums.
People turned me on to Ray Charles and Oscar Pedison
(05:29):
and jazz music, and I discovered Where's Montgomery and people
like that? Right, that was good for me, and I spent,
you know, a good twenty years in the trenches. I
had to play in bands. I had to entertain people
in bars and places where people didn't listen. All that
so I could eat and pay a rent. And I
(05:53):
had songs in movies. I wrote music themes for TV
shows I did. I did game shows, playing with orchestra,
play with a string quartet. I played with a jazz band.
I was a drummer in a band. I was a
record producer. I did everything that you can imagine that
a person can do in my home country. So I
(06:18):
knew that in order for me to be really inspired
and challenged, I had to go where people did everything
a lot better, and that was here in America. I
came to America the first time in nineteen eighty to
visit Cheded Atkins, my hero, and he said to me,
then this is where you belong. You should be here
(06:40):
in Nashville. And I just kept coming back and kept
coming back. Personally, I got into drinking like some of
my family members, you know, took uppers and downers and
all that sort of stuff, and did all that stuff
(07:02):
that most people do until I crashed and burned too
many times. I found a better way to live. I
found salvation. Really. I was raised in the church by
my mother and father, but I never believed in the church,
(07:22):
you know, probably because I met way too many hypocrites.
So I have no desire to be a religious person.
And follow one particular path. When people talk about God,
most people go, oh, I don't want to talk about that,
But you can look at it like this, Okay. So
(07:43):
because I'm a drunk and a drug addict in my
body and in my spirit, I go to God a
group of drunks, or good orderly direction, or the gift
of desperation. There's a few ways of saying the word.
But I had to learn to surrender. I had to
let go of my pride, my ego, which is what
(08:07):
had been ruling me all my life, you know, And
so I had to find a way of believing that
there was a power greater than myself that could restore
me to sanity, to normal. And that's what's happened and
it continues every day. So I definitely have a big
(08:32):
faith in a higher power. And that's the way I
believe it's meant to be. We find out what works
for us, you know, it has to be honest and
it has to be real. So the proof to me
that my higher power is working for me and I
(08:57):
can trust it is the fact that I woke up
this morning. A. I didn't feel like drinking. B I
didn't need to change how I felt. I was happy
in my own skin. I'm happy how I feel today.
I don't need to alter my thinking or my you know.
(09:19):
And that to me is a miracle, because I was
at the point where I would wake up at four
o'clock in the morning and start drinking, you know. Then
I'd sleep again, then I'd wake up at midday and
start drinking again, and I was going to die. That's
where I was at. And it's a miracle that I
(09:40):
survived and that I'm here in such good health today.
There's simplicity in my life now, you know. So I'm
really really.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Grateful, And a special thanks to Jesse Edwards and to
Monty Montgomery for the work on this story, and thanks
to Tommy Emmanuel. And go to YouTube and just google
Tommy's name and just listen to the way he plays
the guitar. It's like nothing you've ever heard. Somewhere over
(10:11):
the Rainbow was my introduction to him at a club
in Nashville, and I couldn't believe what I heard or
saw and have been a fan ever since. And my goodness,
his struggles, he was very open and very frank about them,
with alcohol, with his pride, with ego, and then he
found God, or a higher power as he put it.
And now there's a simplicity, he said, in my life.
(10:33):
And you could hear a piece in his life. Tommy
Emmanuel virtuoso, guitarist and a heck of a storyteller. His
story here an hour American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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