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Peter

Peter Knight

Like an incredible number of contemporary rock musicians Wakeman to Darryl Way, Peter Knight is a former student of the Royal Academy of Music who decided not to continue his studies. But while most of the others quit because they didn't plan to continue a classical career, Peter turned down a very attractive offer to continue his studies under one of their leading professors because he didn't see any future for himself as a musician at all.

He came from a musical family and his father Frank was a danceband guitarist who also played mandolin, which Peter took up at the age of eight. But instead of becoming a musician the youngster got a job selling musical Instruments - which was when he got the bug for collecting old and valuable instrument which still infects him.

At the same time, though, the folk scene was beckoning gradually. I used to to go to Borehamwood folk club to here people like 'Les Bridger' he recalls, Those were the days of 'Cocaine Blues' and all that sort of thing." And then came one of those insignificant things which can be the turning point of anyone's life, unimportant though they may seem at the time. A friend played, him a recording by the great Irish fiddler, Michael Coleman.

"I had some Dave Swarbrick and Martin Carthy records and I really thought Swarb was fantastic, I was very impressed. But when I heard Coleman I thought that if I could achieve anything like that sort of lilt and could understand the feel of that music, than that was what I wanted. I put Dave Swarbrick in the cupboard and started listening to people like Coleman and Bobby Casey and Jimmy Power as well as a lot of flute players. That was my first introduction to any form of folk music, but at that time it wasn't specifically English folk music that I liked."

Then he met Bob Johnson who lived close by and after they had been jamming one day - it was in the kitchen over a saucepan of steaming curry that Peter was cooking, he remembers - they started to play in the clubs.

He quit his job and lived with hardly any music work on the proceeds of selling the musical instruments he'd acquired during his years in the shop. "It was a chicken-and-egg thing really. Should I wait until got an offer or should I actually leave and then try and get work? I decided to leave. I'd been going a year without work when Tyger Hutchings phoned me up one day and asked me to join Steeleye."

"Apparently Martin Carthy had been to see some,gigs that Bob and I had done but whether that had anything to do with it or not I do not know. I'd also done a BBC gig with Maddy. I was shocked to find out how many professional musicians knew of me on the strength of those gigs I'd done with Bob. So my advice to anyone who's working in a store and who knows they're good and wants to become a professional musician is leave, just get cracking, get around. It just doesn't work the other way."

Despite his early admiration Dave Swarbrick, Peter Knight has a very distinctive style - or styles. At times he plays straight folk fiddle, funky in the laid-back, unobtrusive way of a traditional musician. Other times his classical training shows through. And more and more, these days, the new influences of rock begin to show, In which the various textures of mandolin or violin are exploited to the fullest. Using electronic devices like wah-wah pedals. It is interesting to note that Swarbrick is also opening up to similar influences, with quite different results.

Peter's influence on the band has grown since he joined them, to the extent that the harmonies on "Parcel of Rogues" were completely devised by him. "When I first joined the band I didn't exactly know how to accompany songs and I didn't have many ideas about arrangements." He says, "I learnt a lot at first from Martin though we clashed a bit harmony-wise. I had a huge row with him a few days after I joined the band on a point of harmony which just boiled down, really, to either you like it or you don't, there are no rules involved."

"Then I started showing more of an interest in the songs and their arrangements. When I asked Bob to join and then we got Rick, after Martin and Tyger left, those songs we worked out like, Spotted Cow, were basically my arrangements because I was the only one who could come up with something quickly enough. We had only three weeks to get a whole set together, which is not much time."