Peter Lang

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #123 (April/May 2006)).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Peter Lang

The Power of Expression

by R.J. Pales

When Peter Lang returned from a six-week East Coast tour in December 1980, he had $600 less than when he started. He also had just won drawn-out contractual disputes with two record labels and had seen his close friend, the lawyer who had helped extricate him from those contracts, die suddenly of a heart attack. Demographically programmed radio had become the norm, pushing Lang's esoteric guitar style off most airwaves. In addition, his then-wife had given him an ultimatum a year earlier: continue flailing away in the music industry or raise a family. He promised her if things didn't pick up, he'd quit.

Emotionally drained, Lang kept his promise. He put his guitar in the closet for the next 18 months and went looking for a job. "Everything that had to do with the business had turned to poison," Lang said of the days surrounding his departure from the music business.

Twenty-one years later, Lang returned to the music business and released two albums to critical acclaim. He rediscovered his reason for playing and performing in the first place: to process his experiences and connect with others. "Music has been the only constant in my life," he reflected. "Relationships come and go, children grow old, parents die, but the music has always been there."

Lang's gift lies in expression. He projects an emotional force in his playing more similar to Beethoven or Tchaikovsky than to anything mainstream today. When he talks, it is with a wisdom about his craft that can only be attained only through living and learning. It is these experiences, and his ability to express them, that have brought Lang back into public consciousness.

[cover #123]