Growing up in rural Australia, Tommy Emmanuel believed that everything great came from America. The music, the movies, the cars, the guitars. As a young boy learning to play guitar in a family band, he became captivated by the sound of American country music and, in particular, the playing of guitar legend Chet Atkins. Hearing Atkins for the first time gave Tommy a dream that would shape the rest of his life.
That dream eventually carried him across the Pacific and into Nashville, where Atkins became both a mentor and a friend. Along the way, Emmanuel built a reputation as one of the world’s greatest acoustic guitarists, battled addiction, found faith, and discovered a new sense of purpose. In this candid conversation, Tommy shares the remarkable story of music, perseverance, redemption, and the American influence that helped transform a boy from the Australian outback into an international guitar virtuoso.
📖 Read the Transcript
Lee Habeeb (00:10):
And we return to Our American Stories.
Up next, a story from a man many consider to be the best acoustic guitarist in the world. Interestingly, he’s also a member of the Order of Australia and a Kentucky Colonel.
We’re, of course, talking about Tommy Emmanuel.
Here’s Tommy’s story of how he discovered music—and himself. We’ll be playing his music throughout the entire piece.
Tommy Emmanuel (00:38):
The musician’s prayer is beautiful because it says, “Make me a hollow reed from which the pith of self has been blown.”
In other words, get rid of me and all my crap—my ego, my pride, my need for acceptance, or any of that. Get rid of all that and 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, 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 bit, and she was trying to teach herself how to play Hawaiian music because it was very popular in the early 1960s in rural 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 of the record player. I’d be screaming my lungs out, and she’d put music on and I’d go straight to sleep.
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 went “ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk,” I came and danced with the washing machine.
Sometimes 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 things like that.
So she got me a guitar when I turned four and showed me how to put my fingers on the chords.
She said to me 35 years later, “It was like a miracle. I got the guitar in the morning, and in the afternoon, you and I played a couple of songs together.”
She said I played the time perfectly, I understood how the song worked, and we had fun playing together.
She just kept encouraging me and showing me new chords and new songs.
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 appearing as The Emmanuel Family Band.
What we played was music that we heard on the radio. It was Hawaiian music, instrumental music, surf-style 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 Chet Atkins.
Chet Atkins (04:03):
“Here’s a tune written by Los Indios Tabajaras, 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.
They wrote this tune, 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.”
Tommy Emmanuel (04:39):
I knew that was what I wanted to do.
I wanted to play like that.
I 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 no clue how I was going to get there.
I spent all my teen years soaking up every record that I could find.
I remember when I turned sixteen, I bought myself Carole King’s Tapestry album. I bought Don McLean’s American Pie. I bought Gordon Lightfoot’s albums.
People turned me on to Ray Charles and Oscar Peterson and jazz music, and I discovered Wes Montgomery and people like that.
That was good for me.
I spent 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.
I did all that so I could eat and pay rent.
I had songs in movies. I wrote music themes for TV shows. I did game shows. I played with orchestras. I played with string quartets. I played with jazz bands.
I was a drummer in a band. I was a record producer.
I did everything you can imagine that a person can do in my home country.
So I 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 1980 to visit Chet Atkins, my hero.
He said to me then, “This is where you belong. You should be here in Nashville.”
And I just kept coming back and kept coming back.
Personally, I got into drinking, like some of my family members. I took uppers and downers and all that sort of stuff.
I did all that stuff 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, 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.
Because I’m a drunk and a drug addict in my body and in my spirit, I go to God—a Group Of Drunks, Good Orderly Direction, or the Gift Of Desperation. There are a few ways of saying the word.
But I had to learn to surrender.
I had to let go of my pride and my ego, which is what had been ruling me all my life.
So I had to find a way of believing that there was a power greater than myself that could restore me to sanity.
And that’s what’s happened, and it continues every day.
So I definitely have a big faith in a higher power.
That’s the way I believe it’s meant to be. We find out what works for us.
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 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.
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.
Then I’d sleep again, then wake up at midday and start drinking again.
I was going to die.
That’s where I was at.
It’s a miracle that I survived and that I’m here in such good health today.
There’s simplicity in my life now.
So I’m really, really grateful.
Lee Habeeb (09:50):
And a special thanks to Jesse Edwards and to Montie Montgomery for the work on this story.
And thanks to Tommy Emmanuel.
Go to YouTube and search Tommy’s name and listen to the way he plays the guitar. It’s like nothing you’ve ever heard.
“Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was my introduction to him at a club in Nashville, and I couldn’t believe what I heard—or saw—and I’ve been a fan ever since.
And my goodness, his struggles.
He was very open and very frank about them: alcohol, pride, ego.
Then he found God—or a higher power, as he put it.
And now, “There’s a simplicity in my life,” he said.
You could hear the peace in his voice.
Tommy Emmanuel—virtuoso guitarist and a heck of a storyteller.
His story, here on Our American Stories.
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