SPAN: A LOGICAL DEVELOPMENT
By Karl Dallas
© Melody Maker
25th Mar 1972
When a band loses its leader and then one of its main singers in short succession after each other, you can expect something of a change of direction when the two missing members have been replaced.
But, apart from an almost completely new repertoire, that's not what's happening with Steeleye Span, who have now started working without the departed Ashley Hutchings and Martin Carthy and with their replacements, Rick Kemp bass, and Bob Johnson guitars.
But though Johnson is a somewhat more percussive guitarist than Carthy - though he admits to having been influenced by him - and Kemp has a slightly more adventurous approach to the instrument than Hutchings' rock-solid keeping it down to basics, you could close your eyes and imagine that nothing, really, had changed, during Steeleye's life so far, after all, Ashley's bass playing has developed in the direction of what Rick is doing now.
When the band started, he played very simple, tonic-and-dominant stuff, giving them a solid foundation that would normally be provided by the non-existent drummer. Rick still performs this function to a certain extent. During one song, the first time I heard the new band together, he played a long succession of repeated notes which caught me out for a moment and had me looking round for where the drummer had come from, It sounded so like a bass drum roll.
The departure of a strong solo singer like Carthy, of course, has a much more profound effect and while neither of the newcomers are soloists of anything near that calibre, they are both very respectable singers indeed, giving the band's vocal ensembles a strong five-part harmony more powerful than anything the old band had. To hear them work on a song like "Rosebud in June" is to realise that the prolific vein of folk-based polyphony opened up by the Copper Family and mimed so well by the Watersons and the Young Tradition is still providing fuel for some really fiery music.
As well as making this stronger contribution to the vocal sound then his predecessor, Rick is also a very fine songwriter. In fact, during one of their earliest concerts, when they shared the bill with the Johnstons at Hornsey Town Hall, the Irish group did one of Rick's songs. Formerly playing bass with Michael Chapman, before he decided to become virtually a one-man rock and roll band.
Rick had been playing sessions for about four months before he was asked to join Steeleye. Bob Johnson had been in a duo with Steeleye fiddler Peter Knight before Peter joined Steeleye, and so when Martin announced he was going to follow Ashley out of the band, he was a natural choice as a successor.
I asked them if there's been any question of the band folding completely after Carthy left. "Not for a moment," said Peter Knight, " though if Rick and Bob hadn't been available we might have found it harder to get things back together with a break. We also thought of asking John Kirkpatrick to join us at about the same time, but he had other plans."
It is tempting to regard Peter as the strongest musical influence within the band, now its founder has gone, but personally I think this would be a mistake. True, on stage he does seem to dictate quite a lot of the musical action, directing the band from behind his fiddle or mandolin in a manner reminiscent of Leon Russell's direction of Joe Cocker's band in Mad Dogs and Englishmen. But to think this is to fall victim of the same ego-trip fallacy that insists on believing that the parts of any band are greater individually than the whole thing is together.
And while it is possible for a co-operative band to get on to a star trip, a basic strength begins to show which transcends all manner of personnel changes. "Tell me" demanded Tim Hart, turning the questions on to me for a moment, "how much of a difference do you notice compared with the way we used to be?".
A little further along the same lines, I told him. A logical development. He grunted with satisfaction. "Good," he said. "We don't want people to think we're on to a revolutionary new track, just because we've got a new repertoire and two new members." What happens if they get requests for old numbers? "We can always compromise with a jig, or one of Maddy's songs she does just with Peter, like "The Wee Weaver",' but if that's our worst problem, then we haven't got any problems."