Weer een post in een lange rij van posts… Allemaal met als uitgangspunt de ‘Unpublished Bill Clifton interviews’ zoals Kees Jansen, Bert Nobbe en ikzelf het in 2004 bedachten. Dit specifieke deel heeft wellicht de grootste geografische spreiding van allemaal… We beginnen met de Amerikaanse ambassade in Manilla, de hoofdstad van de Filipijnen. We eindigen met het feit dat Bill Clifton weer teruggaat naar Engeland. We sluiten deze post af met het gegeven dat hij Tineke ontmoette; de vrouw waar hij in 1978 mee trouwde. En voordat ik het vergeet… Ik vond ook nog een mooie opname van Bill Clifton uit de periode dat hij weer terug in Engeland was… Veel plezier met luisteren en lezen (andersom mag ook natuurlijk).
Returning to England
Transcriptie:
And I had somebody in the American embassy in Manila [who] asked me to talk to some of the Hajji’s at Zamboanga, which were the leaders of the Muslim groups, if they would meet with him. Well, this was the man that I didn’t even remember I had known him. He was from Charlottesville, Virginia where I’d spent many years as a student and also working for… as a stock broker. Well, he knew me from Charlottesville and he asked me one day, when I was at the embassy for other reasons, if I would speak to the Hajji’s down in Zamboanga and ask them if they would meet with him. I said: ‘Well, you know, when do you want to set up the meeting?’ And he said; ‘whenever they want to meet with me’. And I said: ‘You tell me when to come’. So I went… it turned out he was the CIA man for the American embassy there. Which I knew when I left there and I went down…
Not the moment you met him? Yeah, not at the moment I met him but I knew that when I left there and when I went down to Zamboanga and started to running into some of these Hajji’s that I knew, the Muslim leaders. Well the first two I talked to said: ‘What does he want to talk to us about?’ I said: ‘I don’t have a clue, didn’t ask him, you know’. They said: ‘Well, find out’, and I said; ‘Okay’. So I got in touch with him and I said: ‘What do you want to ask them?’ And he said: ‘I want to ask them how many guns they have, what type’. And I said: ‘Don’t ask me to do that’, I said, ‘I’m not going to ask them to do that and I’m not, I’m a-political. I’m part of the Peace Corps and I’m not going to do that’. But the fact that the embassy chose to use the Peace Corps in that way also bothered me tremendously. So it was not an experience which I found useful in my life. And when I came back to England I found it hard to get work. Part of the reason I found it hard to get work was I found out that the general impression was that: ‘Well, Bill Clifton is part of the American bureaucracy. I mean he went out there as one of the higher ups; he didn’t go as a volunteer. He went as an administrator for the US government, you know. So he’s probably part of the CIA too’. And I found it very difficult to get work.
So you returned back to England? I did. And I didn’t think it would be hard to get work but I found it very difficult to get work right away. And when I’d left there I had a radio program going every Saturday night. I did a live program on Saturday nights called ‘Cellar full of Folk’. And when I left there it was changed to ‘Country meets Folk’ and it was taken over by a man who had been doing children’s programs primarily. And here we go with names again; I’m having a hard time. He did a lot of television, don a lot of radio and I first met him he was the back-end of a horse on one of the children’s programs. They had a…
Yeah, yeah… He was a singer but he was, at that time he was the back-end of a horse.
With somebody [else] in the front end and… Yeah, and with somebody at the back of it, with the sheet-type thing. And we were having lunch at a break and I’d been doing a song or two and he came up and began to sing ‘Little white washed chimney’, right next to me. And I thought: ‘who is this guy? I mean he sat on the back-end of a horse there and…’. Wally Whyton was his name. He’s passed on now but he’s the person who took over that ‘Country meets Folk’ or he took over my ‘Cellar full of Folk’ and made it ‘Country meets Folk’. He was very successful. So when I came back there was no need for me to do that, I mean, Wally was still doing a great job and that was that. So I didn’t have any immediate success with BBC or even finding club work. There was just nothing available right away. Which I had thought there would be but it took me a while to find out that the rumor was that I was somehow connected with the United States government and could be trying to use my job, going out and singing in folk clubs, as a way to get Information, or I don’t know what they thought.
Well, in that time and era it wasn’t so farfetched was it? No, it wasn’t so far-fetched but it certainly hurt.
Yes, I can imagine. And for me. I mean, I’m really a-political and, you know. When I joined the Peace Corps, or when I offered to join the Peace Corps, they said: ‘Well, we need to get some information for security purposes, you know. You need to give us three references, personal references’. And I said: ‘Okay’. I said: ‘Mike Seeger’ and two other people. And the guy who I was going to replace was looking at the list and he said: ‘This guy isn’t related to Pete Seeger, is he?’ I said: ‘He’s his brother’. He said: ‘Can you put somebody else down there instead of him?’ I said: ‘No.’ ‘No’, I said, ‘That’s the name I want on there’. I said: ‘Mike knows me better than anybody else’. And I said: ‘I want his name on there’. I said: ‘If that’s a problem then I have a problem with the Peace Corps. So let’s have that problem right at the beginning. And I won’t go, and that’s that’.
How long did you stay in England after that? From ’66 till ‘70, ’67 till ‘70 I was in the Philippines. And when I came back in 1970 in stayed in England until ‘76, really, I guess. Well, when I met Tineke, and Tineke and I were married in ‘78 but we were together in ‘76 and I didn’t stay in England much after that.
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