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Fairport Convention
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Fairport Convention are an English folk rock and later electric folk band, formed in 1967 who are still recording and touring today. They are regarded as the most important single group in the English folk rock movement. Their seminal album Liege and Lief is generally considered to have launched the electric folk or English folk rock movement, which provided a distinctively English identity to rock music and helped awaken much wider interest in traditional music in general.
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Fairport Convention are an English folk rock and later electric folk band, formed in 1967 who are still recording and touring today. They are regarded as the most important single group in the English folk rock movement. Their seminal album Liege and Lief is generally considered to have launched the electric folk or English folk rock movement, which provided a distinctively English identity to rock music and helped awaken much wider interest in traditional music in general. The large number of personnel who have been part of the band are among the most highly regarded and influential musicians of their era and have gone to participate in a large number of significant bands, or enjoyed important solo careers. Since 1979 they have hosted the Cropredy Festival, which is the largest such annual event in England. Individually and collectively the members of Fairport Convention have received numerous awards recognizing their contribution to music and culture.
History
Origins
Bassist Ashley Hutchings met guitarist Simon Nicol in North London in 1966 when they both played in the Ethnic Shuffle Orchestra. They rehearsed on the floor above Nicol's father's medical practice in a house called "Fairport" and lent its name to the group they formed together as Fairport Convention in 1967 with Richard Thompson on guitar and Shaun Frater on drums. After their first performance at St Michael's Church Hall in Golders Green, North West London on 27 May 1967, they had their first of many line-up changes as one member of the audience, drummer Martin Lamble, convinced the band that he could do a better job than Frater and replaced him. They soon added a female singer, Judy Dyble, which gave them a distinctive sound among the many London bands of the period.
The first three albums 1967-9
Fairport Convention were soon playing regularly at underground venues such as UFO and The Electric Garden (later to become the Middle Earth Club) After only a few months they caught the attention of manager Joe Boyd who secured them a contract with Polydor Records. Boyd suggested they augment the line-up with another male vocalist. Singer Iain Matthews joined the band and their first album, Fairport Convention, was recorded in late 1967 and released in June 1968. At this early stage Fairport looked to American folk and folk rock acts such as Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and The Byrds for material and inspiration. The name "Fairport Convention" and the use of two lead vocalists led many new listeners to believe that they were an American act, earning them the nickname 'the British Jefferson Airplane' during this period.
After disappointing album sales they signed a new contract with Island Records. Before their next recording Judy Dyble left the band and was replaced by Sandy Denny, a folk singer who had previously recorded as a soloist and with Strawbs. Denny’s distinctive voice, described by Clive James as ‘open space, low-volume, high-intensity’ is one of the characteristics of the two albums both released in 1969: What We Did On Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking. These recordings marked the growth of much greater musicality and song-writing ability among the band. The first of these featured the Thompson penned 'Meet on the Ledge', which became their second single and eventually the band's unofficial anthem. The second of these albums featured a guest appearance by Birmingham folk fiddler Dave Swarbrick on a recording of 'A Sailor's Life', a traditional song brought to the band by Denny from her folk club days. The recording of this track marked an important turning point for the band, sparking an interest in traditional music in Ashley Hutchings that led him to detailed research in the English Folk Dance and Song Society Library at Cecil Sharp House; this theme would become the basis for their next, much more ambitious, recording project.
These two albums began to gain the band wider recognition. Radio DJ John Peel championed their music, playing their albums on his influential BBC shows. Peel also recorded a number of sessions which were later released as the album Heyday (1987). They enjoyed some mainstream success when they entered the singles charts with "Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language version of Bob Dylan's "If You Gotta Go, Go Now". The record just missed the top twenty, but secured the band a slot on Top Of The Pops, Britain's most popular television pop music programme at the time.
Inventing electric folk
On 12 May 1969, on the way home from a gig in Birmingham Fairport's van crashed on the M1 motorway. Martin Lamble, aged only nineteen, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson's girlfriend, were killed. The rest of the band suffered injuries of varying severity. The band nearly decided to disband and Matthews left, eventually to form Matthews Southern Comfort. However, when they had recovered Dave Mattacks took over drumming duties and they returned to the studio to work on their fourth album Liege & Lief.
Usually considered the highpoint of the band’s long career, Liege and Lief was a huge leap forward in concept and musicality. The album consisted of six traditional tracks and three original compositions in a similar style. The traditional tracks included two sustained epics ‘Tam Lin’, which was over seven minutes in length, and ‘Matty Groves’, at over eight. There was a medley of four traditional tunes, arranged, and, like many of the tracks, enlivened, by Swarbrick’s energetic fiddle playing. The first side was bracketed by original compositions ‘Come all ye’ and ‘Farewell, Farewell’, which, in addition to an inner sleeve based on Hutchings’ research, explaining English folk traditions, helped give the record the feel of a concept album. ‘Farewell, Farewell’ and the final track ‘Crazy Man Michael’, also saw the full emergence of the distinctive songwriting talent of Thompson that was to characterize his contributions to the band and later solo career. The distinctive sound of the album came from the use of electric instruments and Mattacks’ disciplined drumming with Swarbrick’s fiddle accompaniment in a surprising and powerful combination of rock with the traditional. The entire band had reached new levels of musicality, with the fluid guitar playing of Thompson and the ‘ethereal’ vocal of Denny particularly characteristic of the sound of the album. As the reviewer from Allmusic put it, the album was characterized by the ‘fusing [of] time-worn folk with electric instruments while honoring both’.
A few British bands had experimented with the use of electric instruments with traditional English songs, (including Strawbs and Pentangle), but Fairport Convention was the first English band to do this is a concerted and focused way. Although this is often referred to today as folk rock, the bands and press of the time used the term electric folk or English folk to distinguish it from more American inspired music. The descriptions are now often used indiscriminately or forgotten, however, Fairport Convention’s achievement was not to invent folk rock, but to create a distinctly English branch of the genre, which would develop alongside, and interact with, American inspired music, but which can also be seen as a distinctively national reaction in opposition to it.
Liege & Lief was launched with a sell-out concert in London's Royal Festival Hall late in 1969. It reaching number 17 in the UK album chart, where it spent fifteen weeks.
The 1970s - time of change
Dave Swarbrick, having made a major contribution to Liege and Lief, now joined as a full member, but there were disagreements about the direction of the band in the wake of this success. Ashley Hutchings wanted to explore more traditional material and left to form (among many projects) arguably the only two groups that would rival Fairport for significance in English folk rock Steeleye Span and the Albion Band. Sandy Denny also left to found her own group Fotheringay. Dave Pegg took over on bass guitar and has been the group's one constant every since, in an unbroken membership of over three decades. The band made no serious attempt to replace Denny, and, although she would briefly return, the sound of the band would now be characterized by male vocals.
Despite these changes the band produced another album Full House (1970) which was remarkably successful as a project. Like its predecessor, it combined traditional songs, including a powerful rendition of ‘Sir Patrick Spens’, with original compositions. The latter benefited from the writing partnership of Thompson and Swarbrick, most obviously on ‘Walk Awhile’ which would become a concert favorite. Despite the loss of Denny the band still possessed four vocalists, including the emerging voice of Nicols and Swarbrick, whose tones and would dominate the sound of this period. It was favorably reviewed in Britain and America, drawing comparisons with The Band from Rolling Stone Magazine who declared that ‘Fairport Convention is better than ever’. The album reached number 13 in the UK Chart and stayed in the chart for eleven weeks. The same year the band released a single 'Now Be Thankful' and made its American debut, touring with Traffic and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young..
In the recurring pattern, soon after the album’s release Thompson left the band to pursue other projects and eventually his solo career. This left Simon Nicol as the only original member and Dave Swarbrick emerged as the leading force in the band. In 1970 the members and their families had moved in to The Angel, a former pub in Hertfordshire and this inspired the next album Angel Delight (1971) the band's first to chart in the US, peaking at number 200 on the Billboard 200 and their only top ten album in the UK. The next project was an ambitious folk-rock opera developed by Swarbrick, based on the life of John 'Babbacombe' Lee, ‘the man they couldn’t hang’ and released with the title Babbacombe Lee (1971). The concept format, originally without clear tracks, excited considerable press interest and it received good air play in the United States where it reached number 195. A version was produced by the BBC for TV in 1975 with narration by Melvin Bragg. These two albums were also notable as the first time the same Fairport had recorded consecutively with the same line-up, but inevitably stability did not last: Simon Nicol left early in late 1971 to join Ashley Hutchings’ Albion Band and he was soon followed by Mattacks.
Only Pegg and Swarbrick remained and the following few years have been dubbed 'Fairport confusion' as a bewildering sequence of band members came and went, but by 1973 Mattacks had returned and two former members of Sandy Denny's Fotheringay had joined the band, Denny's Australian husband Trevor Lucas on vocals and guitar and American Jerry Donahue on lead guitar. From these line-ups the band produced two studio albums: Rosie, notable for the Swarbrick penned title track (1973) and Nine (1974), the ninth studio album by the band. The last of these contained writing contributions by Lucas to five of the nine tracks, which together with Donahue's country influences and outstanding guitar pyronechnics gave the album a very distinctive feel.
Denny rejoined the band in 1974 and there were considerable expectations, artistic and commercial, placed on this lineup. Denny was featured on the album Rising for the Moon (1975), which became the band's highest US chart album when it reached number 143 on the Billboard 200 and the first album to reach the top one-hundred in the UK since Angel Delight, reaching no 52. During the Rising sessions, Mattacks was replaced by Bruce Rowland and, despite the relative success of the line-up, Lucas and Donahue left the band, as did Denny in 1976. She died aged 31, in 1978, of a cerebral haemorrhage after falling down a flight of stairs.
Rowland, Pegg and Swarbrick fulfilled their remaining contractual obligations to Island Records by turning what had originally been a Swarbrick solo effort into the album Gottle O'Geer (1976) under the name 'Fairport' (as opposed to Fairport Convention) with various session players and production by Simon Nicol, who subsequently rejoined the band. They then signed up with Vertigo, but record sales were declining and after producing two of four contracted albums, The Bonny Bunch of Roses (1977) and Tipplers Tales (1978), Vertigo bought them out of their contract. It is claimed by members of the band that this was the only recording money they had seen up to that point.
The Cropredy era 1979 to 1985
By 1979 the mainstream market for folk rock had largely disappeared, the band had no record deal and Dave Swarbrick had been diagnosed with tinnitus which made loud electric gigs increasingly difficult. Fairport decided to disband. They played a farewell tour and a final outdoor concert on 4 August in Cropredy, the Oxfordshire village where Dave and Christine Pegg lived. The finality of this occasion was mitigated by the announcement that the band would meet for a reunion.
No record company wanted to release the live recordings of the tour and concert, so the Peggs, founded Woodworm Records, which would be the major outlet for the band in the future. Members continued to take part in occasional gigs, particularly in Festivals in continental Europe, and after a year they staged a reunion concert in Cropredy which became the annual Cropredy Festival. Over the next few years, it grew rapidly and emerged as the major mechanism for sustaining the band. The Peggs continued to record and release the Cropredy concerts as 'official bootlegs'. These were supplemented by New Years gigs in minor locations including the Half Moon at Putney and the Gloucester Leisure Centre. In 1983 the magazine Fairport Fanatics (later Dirty Linen), was created: a testament to the continued existence of a dedicated fan base..
The remaining members pursued their own lives and careers outside of the band. Bruce Rowlands gave up the music business and moved to Denmark and as a result Dave Mattacks returned as drummer for Fairport’s occasional gigs. Dave Pegg was the first of several Fairporters to join Jethro Tull which gave him well-paying steady employment. Simon Nicol had teamed up with Dave Swarbrick in a highly regarded acoustic duo, but this partnership was made difficult by Swarbrick’s sudden decision to move to Scotland, where, from 1984 he began to focus on his new project Whippersnapper.
In 1985 Pegg, Nicol and Mattacks found that they all had some free time and an available studio belonging to Pegg. They decided that they needed some new material to add to the catalogue that had been suspended in 1978. As Swarbrick was unavailable, the selection of traditional tunes was more difficult than for past albums and there was a need for a replacement fiddle player and some vocals. Pegg and Nicol took over arranging duties on an instrumental medley and the band turned to sometime Albion Band members: jazz and folk violinist Ric Sanders and singer-songwriter Cathy Lesurf. They also had the help of ex-member Richard Thompson. Thompson and Lesurf contributed songs and took part in the recordings. Also important to the album was Ralph McTell who contributed one song and co-wrote one track each with Nicol and Mattacks. The former, ‘The Hiring Fair’, would become a stage fixture of the future Fairport.
The resulting album Gladys' Leap (1985) was generally well received in the music and national press, but caused some tension with Swarbrick who refused to play any of the new material at the 1985 Cropredy Festival. Nevertheless the decision to reform the band, without Swarbrick, was taken by the other three remaining members. Ric Sanders was invited to join, along with guitarist, composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Maartin Allcock. Nicol, with his developing baritone voice, took over the main share of the vocal duties. This line-up was to last eleven years, the longest period of membership stability in the band’s history.
Years of stability 1986 to 1997
The new band began a hectic schedule of performing in Britain and the World and prepared material for a new album. The result was the all-instrumental Expletive Delighted (1986). This showcased the virtuosity of Sanders and Allcock, but perhaps inevitably was not popular with all fans. This was followed by the recording In Reel Time (1987) which managed to capture the energy and power of the new Fairport on stage, despite the fact that it was recorded in the studio with audience reactions dubbed on.
In this period the band were playing to larger and larger audiences, both on tour and at Cropredy, and it was very productive in terms of recording. Fairport had the considerable composing and arranging skills of Allcock and, to fill the gap created by a lack of a songwriter in the band, they turned to some of the most talented available in the contemporary folk scene. The results were Red and Gold (1989) the Five Seasons (1990) and Jewel in the Crown (1995), the last of which was judged ‘their bestselling and undoubtedly finest album in years.’
At this point, with Mattacks busy with other projects, the band shifted to an acoustic format for touring and released the unplugged Old, New, Borrow Blue as ‘Fairport Acoustic Convention’ in 1996. For a while the four-piece acoustic line-up ran in parallel with the electric format. When Allcock left the band, he was replaced by Chris Leslie on vocals, mandolin and fiddle. This meant that for the first time since reforming, the band had a recognized songwriter who contributed significantly to the band's output on the next album Who Knows Where the Time Goes (1997), particularly the rousing ‘John Gaudie’. By the time of the 1997 thirty-year anniversary Festival at Cropredy, the new Fairport had been in existence for over a decade and contributed a significant chapter to the history of the band.
The modern Fairport 1998 to the Present
In 1998, Dave Mattacks moved to the USA and Gerry Conway, took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records: The Wood and the Wire (2000) and XXXV (2002). Then for Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label: Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the USA and Canada, and staged a major fundraiser for Dave Swarbrick at the Birmingham Symphony Hall.
2007 was the band’s fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album, Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the Liege & Lief album live at Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of Dave Swarbrick, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Simon Nicol and Richard Thompson, with singer-songwritter Chris While taking the place of Sandy Denny. Footage of the Festival, although not the Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD. The band's first 'official' YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with Lulu, Jools Holland, Seth Lakeman, Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and Frank Skinner.
Public Recognition
Fairport Convention have received increasing recognition of their importance in the mainstream media. They won the coveted ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ at the 2002 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. In the same year Free Reed Records, an independent label, released Fairport Unconventional, a four-CD boxed set of rare and unreleased recordings from the band's 35-year career. At the 2006 Folk Awards they received an award when their seminal album Liege & Lief was voted 'Most Influential Folk Album of All Time' by Radio 2 listeners. At the 2007 awards they received an award with the late Sandy Denny for ‘Favourite Folk Track Of All Time’ for ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes?’.
Band members
The current line up of Fairport Convention is:
- Simon Nicol (guitar, lead vocal): 1967 - 1971, 1976 - present
- Dave Pegg (bass guitar, mandolin, backing vocal): 1970 - present
- Ric Sanders (fiddles, occasional keyboards): 1985 - present
- Chris Leslie (fiddle, mandolin, bouzouki, lead vocal): 1997 - present
- Gerry Conway (drums and percussion): 1998 - present
The following musicians have been members of Fairport Convention:
- Ashley Hutchings (bass guitar) 1967 - 1969
- Bob Brady (piano) 1976
- Bruce Rowland (drums) 1975 - 1984
- Dan Ar Braz (guitar) 1976
- Dave Mattacks (drums, keyboards, bass guitar) 1969 - 1972, 1973 - 1975, 1985 - 1997
- David Rea (guitar) 1972
- David Swarbrick (fiddle, mandolin, vocals) 1969 - 1984
- Iain Matthews (vocal) 1967 - 1968
- Jerry Donahue (guitar) 1972 - 1975
- Judy Dyble (vocal, autoharp, piano, recorder) 1967 - 1968
- Maartin Allcock (guitar, mandolin, keyboard, vocal) 1985 - 1996
- Martin Lamble (drums) 1967 - 1969
- Marc Ellington (guitar, vocals)1970
- Paul Warren (drums) 1972
- Richard Thompson (guitar, vocal) 1967 - 1971
- Roger Burridge (fiddle) 1976
- Roger Hill (guitar) 1972
- Sandy Denny (vocal, piano) 1968 - 1969, 1974 - 1975
- Tom Farnell (drums) 1972
- Trevor Lucas (guitar, vocal) 1972 - 1975
Discography
- See Fairport Convention discography
See also
- Music of the United Kingdom
External links
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