STEELEYE:
THE FOLK WHO PLUGGED IN
By Jerry Gilbert
© Sounds
6 Dec 1975
'Now we six' was a title conveniently borrowed from A.A. Milne to acknowledge that in 1973 Steeleye Span had finally decided to add a drummer. Today it has a a dual purpose - for it's just six years since Ashley 'Tyger' Hutchings succeeded in, putting together a band capable of producing "a good English sound in the traditional idiom."
By the end of 1969 the band had been christened by friend and adviser Martin Carthy, who had lifted the character Steeleye Span from Percy Granger's Horkstow Grange. They recorded 'Hark! The Village Wait' with their manager / producer Sandy Robertson and with its release imminent and the folk world showing more than a cursory interest in its outcome, Steeleye prepared to play their first gigs in the spring of 1970.
It was an interesting situation. Only months earlier Tyger Hutchings had quit Fairport Convention, having masterminded the folk-rock prototype Liege & Lief. As he disappeared into the shadows to from something of a mental breakdown, his plans for joining forces with the Irish band Sweeney's Men (Andy Irvine, Johnny Moynihan and Terry Woods) fell through. But a late night discussion at the 1969 Keele Folk Festival on the possibilities of amplifying folk music brought Tyger into contact with two young revivalist singers from St Albans - Tim Hart and Maddy Prior.
Whilst Irvine and Moynihan were very much committed to a life on the road - the former wandering around the Balkans and the latter nearer to home - Terry Woods took up an offer join Steeleye Span and also introduced his wife Gay, a fine singer and musician. The decision to bring in a drummer was deferred - or as Tyger put it: "The main problem is getting hold of someone who is sensitive to our music,"
The union was formed in Tyger's flat one November day and in the spring of 1970 Steeleye Span were launched in fairly conventional fashion. Die-hard folkies swore that it was sacrilege to play the songs of their heritage with electric instruments whilst the more open minded welcomed the band's empiric approach since at that time, the revival was falling flat on its face.
Then a curious set of paradoxes altered the entire shape of Steeleye before they had undertaken those first concerts. Immediately after 'Hark! The Village Wait' had been completed for RCA, Terry and Gay went off to form The Woods Band as a result of friction in the studios, notably with the other "duo" - Tim and Maddy. "Technically", said Tyger, "the group broke up for about a fortnight and everyone just drifted apart". But in the meantime Tim approached Martin Carthy, seeing him as a possible catalyst in bringing about a regrouping of Steeleye Span, and a month later Peter Knight, classical violinist turned folk fiddler, completed the line-up.
At the time no-one seemed very willing to confirm rumours that Martin had joined the band - understandably since British's
top revivalist singer had sworn a vow of independence since his traumatic break up with Dave Swarbrick. Nevertheless news of such magnitude was bound to leak pretty fast through the London folk grapevine. Anyway, Martin made it sound very matter-of-fact: "I was right at the height of this thing about never joining a group when Tim rang up and said 'Do you want to join the Steeleye?' and I said 'Yes, alright'."
But if Steeleye's launch had been a potentially explosive situation then Martin Carthy was the man who set alight the blue touch paper - at least so far as the folkies were concerned. Many failed to see why the champion of the revival, who enjoyed a near idolatry following, had lent his name to the propagation of electric folk music, nor could they understand why, that doyen of the folk movement, A. L. Lloyd was condoning and even supporting the new direction.
Members of the English Folk Dance And Song Society dissociated themselves, denounced such heresy, held late night discourses culminating in the highly volatile Loughborough debate of 1971, but the situation was nothing near as portentous as it seemed. Some simply thought that an endorsement of electric music by such eminent revivalists unquestionably gave status to 'the folk process'.
As the precursors of a new movement Steeleye found the silent majority quite happy to support their crusade (which at the time it undoubtedly was). Gradually they extended their appeal further by embracing the 'I don't know much about folk, but I sure know what I like 'variety'.
Significantly, the 'folkies' wrath was directed more at the garrulous and controversial Bob Pegg, who from an equally extreme folk background (editor of a traditional folk journal, student of folklore in Yorkshire) had taken the direct route to rock with a wild, cacophonous band called Mr Fox.
Through the heady debates of '7l Martin Carthy maintained an understandably low profile. At Keele in '7l he listened patiently for several hours while the temperature rose and then coolly administered the death blow with a typical 'different strokes . . .' dictum that seemed to placate a thousand, irate purists in five seconds flat.
It was indicative of his role in Steeleye as a whole. He once said that the reason why he never had misgivings about electric music was because he never regarded it as any great step or progression. "I'm one of these animals who is anti-progress so I have to adjust to it on a different level and in a different way, which is to say that so long as you can accompany a song the instrument don't make a ha'p'orth of difference. "With such a statement Martin continued his policy of political abstinence.
Steeleye was indeed an odd beast in those days. Hypocrisy was rife as folk promoters vied to have Steeleye headline their contribution to the year's calendar of folk festivals and Tim especially realised the hastening need to get right away from a contracting folk scene (and consequently their own detractors). "If you're a career musician the folk scene is a nowhere place you realise just how small the pond is,"
Still, by the end of 1971 the band could scarcely be said to have joined the ranks of the super groups because their sound was often erratic - they had yet to conquer the delicate problems of sound balance and on top of that Tim Hart and Maddy Prior would be away working their own gigs as would Martin Carthy whenever Steeleye came off the road.
This initial concept was an idealistic move to preserve a freshness in the individual approach to the band but it wasn't long before this backfired and was often rightly interpreted as a symptom of under-rehearsal.
Tim: "It all became so diversified and there just wasn't any direction for the band apart from just coming together and playing together. There was no career feeling about it - you just did it because you enjoyed it and because it was a fun thing to do. We never had that feeling of actually going anywhere - we played the gigs because we were committed to them but really it was just a coming together of solo musicians."
Tim clearly believed that it would be as easy for Steeleye to be accepted for playing 'Steeleye music', as it had been for Fairport. Right at the inception he had commented that "the public won't think of it in terms of traditional folk music so much as the music played by Steeleye Span."
Ultimately it was the individual visions from within the band that caused Steeleye Span to split down the middle. Martin Carthy, for all the highs he gave to the Steeleye repertoire, was never more than a self-contained unit within the band - even his transposition from acoustic to electric guitar was a direct one, and his tight, stylised, finger-style approach gave little scope to open up the arrangements.
And yet the latter part of 1970 and the whole of 197l were good years for Steeleye. 'Please To See The King' came out in March 1971 - the first album to feature both Peter Knight and Martin Carthy and largely because the material from the first album had been buried along with the group, 'Please To See The King' was generally regarded as the group debut.
With its beautiful hessian sleeve it seemed to tie up all the individual strengths in an album of popular folk songs that were already making their mark as dynamic stage numbers - 'The False Knight On The Road', 'The Female Drummer', 'The Blacksmith', 'Lark In 'The Morning'. . . It was a much more imposing and slightly less formal album than the quickly forgotten 'Hark! The Village Wait', but you won't find Tim or Maddy making any apologies for that first album and I daresay by now it is a collector's classic.
Tyger said at the time: " A lot of people might find this hard to believe but I find it the most enjoyable to listen to of all the albums I've played on and that includes the Fairport albums. Some of the tracks are very good and the general feeling of the album is what I enjoy listening to most of all. The new album is a good document of the music we've been making for the past six months and that's about it.
'Please To see The King' was the band's first attempt to really popularise the music, and 1971 was certainly a year for the dissenters to stand up and be counted. With Martin and Tyger plugging in and Tim and Peter at least looking as though they'd walked right out of the rock world. To many the purity of Maddy's voice was the only redeeming feature.
Gradually new material crept into the repertoire - still following the well prescribed demarcation line laid down by Tyger. 'Gower Wassail', 'When I Was On Horseback' and 'Captain Coulson' became stage favourites but when Steeleye started playing their version of 'Skewball' the eyebrows raised even further.
The new album was finished in the summer of '7 I and the title was typically Tyger's - 'Ten Man Mop Or Mr Reservoir Butler Rides Again'. Another opulent presentation which came out of B&C's short-lived Pegasus label. The recorded sound quality and overall spontaneity of the album was stronger than on its predecessor even if some of the song arrangements were less memorable. In the event 'Ten Man Mop' became little more than an academic exercise since by the time it was issued at the end of 1971. Steeleye Span had undergone what looked to be another terminal rift.
Ironically the blame can be laid at the feet of further experimentation, although it was hardly manifest on that particular record. After a hectic year and prospects of an American tour looming they attempted an already successful fuse folk/rock formula with the world of drama. Keith Dewhurst wrote a play called 'Corunna' specifically with the band in mind and after a successful season upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre plans were hatched to move on to the Young Vic.
It was time for Tyger to get off. He simply didn't want to proceed with the band. It had outgrown his original concept and the prospect of further touring was an added strain.
"I don't have any particular thoughts about getting our music to a wider audience - we are thinking purely along one line of traditional music and we'll be carrying on as we have been", he had stated significantly in an earlier interview. He had also constantly registered his love for English Morris tunes and the vast opportunities for exploitation. Fittingly it was his own band the Albion Country Band in the company of Chingford Morris Men that were later to induce yet further nuances to the electric revival.
This move was far more predictable and understandable than the Martin Carthy bombshell which followed almost immediately. As the story goes Martin wanted to replace Tyger with a multi-instrumentalist whilst Tim was adamant that another bass player should be introduced. It hardly seemed to necessitate the showdown of all I time but once the decision had been made Tim looked relieved.
"We were starting to go round in circles. The thing is Martin and Tyger had a musical policy which was largely the musical policy of the band. As a result Peter and I had never really come out in the band and that's why I wanted a bass player - because I always felt the direction was inside the band and hadn't really been given the chance to come out".
Tim's beliefs were borne out in October/November 1971 when they took Peter around on their own gigs - primarily to bring in some added income. The driving power was there alright - but would there be another Steeleye for them to prove their point? With the two helmsmen gone no one rated the band's chances of survival. Hutchings and Carthy were totally irreplaceable, they were told . . . but anything as rigid as Tyger's bass playing or Martin's heavily stylised guitar work were far from Tim's mind.
The transition was a Surprisingly easy one. Guitarist Bob Johnson had worked as a duo with Peter Knight and they were just beginning to gain some recognition when the latter joined Steeleye, leaving a fairly tacit understanding that at the first opportunity he would draft in his old oppo. "The real reason I joined was because I loved Maddy's singing." Bob demurred. "If Tim and Maddy had left I wouldn't have joined."
Rick Kemp's arrival requires more qualification before their roles in the band can be put into perspective. Rick had worked for years as a bass player with guitar extrovert Mike Chapman, and latterly he had shared the limelight in a pretty even distribution of talents. His own wizardry matched that of Chapman and his chord work and counterpoint playing had earned him a name as a bass virtuoso. But when this stint came to an end Rick was very much at a loose end, trying in vain to get his own thing together (though he did work sessions with Tim and Maddy, I recall).
He was looking round for a gig when Sandy Robertson, Steeleye's manager, stepped in.
It would be easy to underplay or dismiss Robertson's role in the formative years of Steeleye. As a young, eclectic folk producer he looked like being the obvious successor to Joe Boyd as folk/rock producer supremo when the latter went back to the States, and the fact that his promise was never really fulfilled can largely be put down to bad luck.
He had his finger on the pulse of the English contemporary folk scene and by 1969 was producing/managing acts such as Keith Christmas, Shelagh McDonald, Andy Roberts and Liverpool Scene with a good deal of success. To achieve his own personalised fusion of folk and rock he often used musicians from the excellent Mighty Baby, and if not all his experimentation's worked then it wasn't for the lack of ideas. As far back as 1971 he was turning people on to the Great Speckled Bird and the joyous guitar sounds of Amos Garrett, which endeared him to me for life.
But ultimately his dual role as producer/manager probably worked against him - certainly in the case of Steeleye this duality began to clash more and more and because most of his contacts were within the incestuous net of the English business, he was not sufficiently resourceful to catapult Steeleye out of the constricting folk world and into a bigger market.
Maybe if he'd signed a production deal with a bigger record company some of the onus would have been lifted, but at the time B&C were of similar status in the record company field as Robertson was in the management stakes. Robertson continued to work hard on the groups behalf but it became increasingly obvious that they were heading up a cul-de-sac, and that much needed first American tour just didn't come together.
This was OK, of course, so long as Tyger was around. For Steeleye wasn't particularly ambitious - a band with a direction, yes, but a band with a career, doubtful. Yet by the time 'Ten Man Mop' came out at the end of 1971 the new heavyweight Steeleye was already flexing its muscles.
Tim: "Tyger and Martin felt they had to question WHY we were doing a certain thing instead of just doing it and seeing whether it worked. It's a lot more live musically and a lot freer now." Martin worked out that particular spate of gigs and quit.
"He should have stayed and I can't figure out why he left - but in the end it was a relief," recalled Tim. The new band started rehearsing immediately, pooling their collective resources at the Irish Club in Eaton Square.
It must have been a fairly disparate bunch of musicians that turned up for that first rehearsal - Bob desperately trying to reconcile his pop rock background and love of American country music with his equal admiration for the Steeleye vocal sound and poor old Rick Kemp still scarcely able to believe that he'd found a regular gig and nipping up to Cecil Sharp House during lunch breaks to check out what was wanted. ("Er. . . I don't know much about the tradition, I'll have to play differently but Steeleye are bound to change a bit . . ."). It was the understatement of the year.
In deliberately steering clear of 'replacements' and introducing a greater rock element, Steeleye effectively hammered the final nail into the folkies' coffin,"we all agree somewhere around The Byrds," said Tim rather doubtfully.
The early months of 1972 were fairly traumatic as the band sensed that this could be their last opportunity of breaking into the big time.
They parted company with Sandy Robertson and were taken on by Jo Lustig, a dynamic London based American who had moulded Pentangle and Ralph McTell into headlining folk acts. To prove that he could do the same with Steeleye he promptly took them from B&C to the prestigious Chrysalis label. By June they'd made the most important move of their careers and were promptly sent into the studios to produce their own album with Sound Techniques engineer Jerry Boys.
The new band emerged with Kemp and Johnson heading in psychologically opposite directions - the latter gradually allowing his ideas to come through, introducing a few country licks here and there but generally occupying a back seat while the former tried desperately to hone down his style, discipline the looseness, apply a little formality to his extrovert nature.
Any secret passions these two might have had were to find an immediate outlet, for at the end of July the band were set for their second starring role - again collaborating with Keith Dewhurst and Bill Bryden in an Edinburgh Lyceum presentation of Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Kidnapped'. It was an attempt to get the Scottish National Theatre Company off the ground and it was a challenge that Tim Hart took up characteristically, breaking down the barriers with the actors, writing and rewriting certain parts of the music and even suggesting that the show be recorded for a possible budget album.
It was fairly predictable that as the only man who didn't occupy a front position in Steeleye, Tim Hart's role as a musician should be questioned, But as a catalyst and steadying influence he proved to be vital and despite an overtly 'traddie' voice, born of a fairly academic introduction to folk music, he was probably the most progressive and open minded of all the musicians.
Often it was he who held the lifeline between the band and their source of material and often their existence at all In a blend of electric instruments it was fairly inevitable that his fine dulcimer playing, would be invariably lost or confined to his work with Maddy on the excellent 'Summer Solstice' album, for example.
In the Summer of 1972 Steeleye still had time for such diversionary activities as stage plays but their work schedule from October ensured that they had acted their last role. In September 'Below The Salt' was issued giving the band a fairly unique position of having four albums on different labels. They toured the UK and before Christmas embarked on their first Stateside tour supporting Procol Harum.
That year they had introduced an entire new repertoire of music to their audience, and consequently played safe by putting their new live set on record. Some of the inclusions were questionable although many stage favourites emerged.
One of these was 'Gaudete', Bob Johnson's first tentative move to take the band off at a tangent, Maintaining that he always had an ear for the commercial, he presented a 14th century Latin chant to be sung acapella, and with Maddy's beautiful voice positively echoing round the auditoriums in Britain and America, Steeleye were on a rather exquisite winner.
Chrysalis gave that song three lives - it failed in the Christmas season of .72, went top twenty the following year, and in a futile attempt to make it into a sort of 'White Christmas' perennial it was even put out a third year.
By now Steeleye were finding that their acting experience cut against the grain when it came to maintaining a rigid musical policy and America must have suffered a certain culture shock, hearing 'Gaudete' - which singularly threatened to break the band Stateside first time around - in the company of 'Rag doll' and say 'Truck Driving Man'.
The band's appeal was definitely growing. Backstage at Birmingham Town Hall I remember Slade's Jimmy Lea coming by to pay his respects, whilst in the States, Maddy turned the farcical situation of a second billing to the J.Geils Band to her advantage by dancing off the podium straight into an Academy of Music auditorium, heavy with dope, leaving six thousand pot heads wondering whether they weren't hallucinating rather than enjoying a nice innocent little buzz.
The writing was very much On the wall. "I'd heard 'Gaudete' done in a church and it hit me like a ton of bricks," Bob recalls today. "It struck me as rock & roll immediately. I mean if anybody sung it I'd like it because it's so evocative." He'll also tell you that there's at least one musician in each of the top bands that have registered their love for Steeleye's music - Keith Emerson, Rory Gallagher, Ian Anderson for instance. Their appeal, it seems, has become universal.
"When I joined the band it wasn't so much a shortage of material the band were suffering from as relying on me because it seemed at that point as though the traditional songs couldn't be done as satisfactorily as they can now. The most complete songs were mine but that's only because I complete them on my own whereas everything else is worked on by all of us.
" At the same time I've never been the leader - I just felt that I had the solution to electrifying folk music, and I felt obligated to push that even at the expense of some opposition and knowing that it would take a long time to knit together, which it is just now starting to do."
Johnson probably received Dutch courage in his early ventures from Rick Kemp. "When we joined the band it was a challenge, everybody was excited and it was the first big step because it was the first time that 24 carat electric musicians had come in", Bob went on, "Rick and I liked each other's playing instantly which I've not found in. other bands, so it was immediately strong. We're both heavy handed, powerful musicians and we pounded more. "Tyger had been much more delicate and Martin played as he would have played anyway only plugged in; so we are very aware that electric music had been OK because it was them who had plugged in and no way was it a question of 'suddenly it's rock and roll!'
"'Below The Salt' was a very mild album - we were careful not to rush in. I remember doing the rock solo in 'King Henry' and thinking how lucky I was to get away with it, Yet when Peter and I were playing folk clubs the arrangements were actually very similar to the way I think now.
Bob insists that he had never inflicted anything upon Tim and Maddy and that initially he had been totally overawed by the whole concept (and misconception) of Steeleye.
"The reason I was so frightened is because the people seemed obliged to pay homage to some Godlike institution rather than just thinking 'we're a band'. I was frightened working out , Alison Gross' and wondering whether it would be accepted but then I realised it was the audiences that were trying to hold things back and not the band.'
For Bob Johnson the mission had now changed. It was now "50 per cent wanting people to hear those stories and songs and the other 50 per cent strengthening our identity as a band - a rock band who draw on traditional influences for their lyric content. Still it's funny the people don't see we have an in credible love for those songs."
" The inclusion of 'Alison Gross around the beginning 1973 was probably the main catalyst in turning Steeleye into 'heavy' band. 'Cam Ye O'er Frae France' was another that appeared on the next album 'Parcel Of Rogues' and 'Wee Wee Man' should have been third. "That song and later 'Elf Call' turned out totally unsatisfactorily at the time they were done because they were too far ahead - they came too early, I mean 'Elf Call, I had in my head as a real disco single . . . but it couldn't be done then.
Two months after 'Parcel Of Rogues' had been released Steeleye Span predictably added percussionist Nigel Pegrum, who had been with the ill-fated band Gnidrolog, Pegrum was brought In presumably because he could fulfil a dual role, crashing cymbal and bass drum work on the one hand and some mellifluous flute on the other.
"I tried for some time to get a drummer and when it seemed right to the whole band we did so", admitted Bob. "The great thing was that nobody cared what other people thought and it was nice to have something to fall back on instead of having to fill in all the time though really it was nothing more than just adding a metronome.
"You see the reason I kept pushing the rock side was because I honestly felt that it was the band's point of survival and that by pushing it hard at least I knew it would be represented."
Nigel Pegrum made His live debut with the band in Ireland and recorded debut on 'Now We Are Six' (which is where the story came in). The album introduced several other notable if not significant facets, with Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull acting as production consultant, David Bowie playing a mean alto on a tongue in cheek 'To Know Him Is To Love Him' and even an appearance from a junior school choir on the title track and, yes, 'Tinkle Twinkle Little Star'.
But there was very little humour about the rest of the material, powerful and sombre, 'Edwin', '700 Elves' and 'Two Magicians' And of course 'Thomas The Rhymer', so nearly a follow up smash to 'Gaudete'. Without wishing to over emphasise the point Mr Johnson's clever re-workings had contrived to produce the strongest batch of songs yet assembled on a Steeleye album.
Bob: " A lot of our mythology came from the Danes but a lot of it got lost. They're all about elves, witches, goblins, giants and trolls and they're all still in their pure form - that's where Tolkein got a lot of his inspiration from.
"At the same time there are only four or five such songs in the Child Ballads so what I tend to do is , . . I always take a powerful line around which I write the chorus, for example '700 elves from out the wood and foul and grim they were'. Apart from that there was no bowdlerisation - I used a powerful minor melody because it's a grim story and needs powerful rock chords.
"It just seems the most natural medium for that kind of ballad - not tinkling guitars. It's just pure fluke that someone like myself happened to have in his influence a combination of traditional melody and an upbringing of rock and roll and modern music - if you didn't have one or the other you couldn't do it.'. Sounds easy doesn't it?
Since Rick and Bob's arrival, Steeleye had scarcely put a foot wrong, Whilst they played a series of near perfect concerts manager Jo Lustig performed a remarkable public relations exercise on the band, building an aura around them which helped to maintain their quaintness in Britain and strong underground/cult appeal in the U.S. - even down to the point of putting the band alongside Peter Sellers, who played ukulele on the 'Commoner's Crown' album.
An even greater achievement 'was getting Steeleye their own BBC television series which was not only a major commercial breakthrough but also managed to preserve their music it was a wonderful selling England campaign. Robin Denselow summing up Steeleye's success in * 'The Electric Muse' noted that it could have happened to other folk bands if they had been as daring or well-managed. Steeleye were the only good band in Britain that concentrated entirely on folk material and everything they did was handled with complete professionalism".
Rock influences, which earlier had manifested themselves as little more than nuances, were now becoming more pronounced though still, as Denselow correctly assesses, "the Fairports back in 1969 had been far noisier and brasher".
But one of the less appealing aspects of being a big box office draw is that your time is in, constant demand. Maybe Jo Lustig made his first error of judgement in sending Steeleye Span out on a world tour embracing an arduous U.S. tour and a scandal story in Australia after papers misguidedly ran banner headlines saying that the band had promised a night of sin as first prize in a competition. As Tim put it "At the end of that lot we declared ourselves insane".
By going west they had not found the fortunes they had been anticipating and on finding further tour schedules lined upon return, they decided to call a halt. Bob and Peter, whose family ties were stronger than the other members of the band, were particularly adamant that if immediate commitments weren't cancelled the band would split.
The result Was that 1975 kicked off with a somewhat less than satisfactory album ('Commoner's Crown') a split with Jo Lustig, whose three year contract with the band was about to expire.
"We've been working all the time and not thinking about the music - the album's good musically but it's not a progression for the band, it's like a restatement of what we said before", said Tim at the time.
Nevertheless the album was a commercial success and was highlighted by what was fast becoming patent Bob Johnson ballads - 'Demon Lover', 'Long Lankin' and 'Little Sir Hugh'. Watery graves and savage butchery.
While the rest of the band paused to draw breath, Tim Hart followed a succession of business contacts that eventually led him to Tony Secunda, who had successfully managed top pop bands of the sixties such as the Move but who had kept well away from the top echelons of rock in the seventies.
The band's decision to be managed by Secunda was greeted with scepticism as was their decision to introduce another Tim Hart discovery - Mike Batt - to produce their next album. Thus far, both moves have been unquestionably successful, and All Around My Hat' has enabled the band to step another rung higher up the ladder.
Tim: "It's like .. . if you're going to get someone in like Tony Secunda or Mike Batt, you've got to give them something to work with, not tie one hand behind their back. We've always been far more open minded than people have given us credit for, and if the various changes hadn't happened along the way the band wouldn't be where it is now."
Bob: "The product must speak for itself and the reasons for using Mike Batt have nothing to do with Wombles or hits, it's just that he's one of the few English style arrangers around today who can produce beautiful string arrangements in a style that suits what we do - we knew that because we'd listened to the three album Wombles set which Tim had. All he could have done wrong was drown us completely but in the end he was so conscious that we had to encourage him and he was worried that his name on the album would detract from our sales.
"Mike listened to 'All Around My Hat' and said it sounded like something he would have done, whilst another interesting point is that someone thought Peter had played the break in, Remember You're A Womble' long before we met Mike.
"So people who have criticised us for selling out will be most unhappy to know that we thoroughly enjoyed doing every song and arrangement on the album.
Yet the most gratifying thing for Bob - particularly with, 'All Around My Hat', soaring up the singles chart was the monolithic change in the group's attitude. "When Maddy sang the traditional melody of that song we all went .'6/8 Boogie" instantly and we did exactly the same with 'Hard Times Of Old England'. It made me deliriously happy because as a communal thing it meant we could do justice to the electric instruments and the mode of entertainment we've chosen. Nothing is predictable anymore but at the same time not a note of 'All Around My Hat' was rewritten'.
It's easy to complete this article on an optimistic note but more beneficial to end it on a challenging one - it is also a faithful reproduction of the way my interview with Tim and Bob ended, highlighting the almost contemptuous way the band have moulded and monopolised their own market.
"There is enough talent in the folk scene for a dozen bands as good as us to throw out a bit of opposition - Hedgehog Pie, for instance and it would be an incredible threat to composed pop music. Ever since we started we've led it on our own and even Fairport aren't playing folk now', remarked Tim.
Bob pondered for several seconds. "You know, with a bit more opposition," he mused, "we might have got where we are now a lot quicker.
* "THE ELECTRIC MUSE" (Methuen Books)
Part Two
A CHRONOLOGY OF FACTS & OTHER INFO