“I am sentimental about my childhood - not my own
particular childhood, but the civilisation which I grew up in and which is now,
I suppose, just about at its last kick”
“Coming Up For Air,” George Orwell
This is a quietly bitter record. Ray Davies put this
together at the tender age of 25 whilst battling with the insecurity of his
role as breadwinner for both family and band. He was recovering from a
breakdown, adapting to fatherhood and in career limbo due to an American
touring ban, which had The Kinks reduced to playing the Northern cabaret circuit.
The songs bear witness to the psychological unravelling of a British subject, mirroring the decline of the Empire itself with Davies drawing on his own family
for inspiration. But somewhere along the line, the archetypal affection for his
subject matter got lost. In fact the sweet hummable tunes and chipper delivery
make the lyrical desperation at the heart of it, all the more harrowing. The
political stance is ambiguous but as a summary of the first 69 years of the 20th
century, it stands as an eviscerating portrait of working-class servility. And it makes me think about my own family.
From a childhood smothered in the fag-end “Land of hope
and gloria, land of my Victoria”, Arthur miscomprehends his future.“I
was born lucky me, in a land that I loved”. Job, family, methodism for the
straight and narrow, “Scenes from the Afghan War” ‘tween skits at the Pally for
entertainment. But in a heart-beat, the military drums of “Yes Sir No Sir” establish
a life routine exercised on the shiny wet parade ground of school and barrack. “Stop
your dreaming and your idle wishing, you’re outside and there ain’t no
admission to our play”. An angry and pivotal song, it reads like a
manifesto of oppression. I think of my Dad’s Dad and his first trip from home in 1915.
Train from Oldham Mumps to Milton Haven, vomit filled boat to Channel fort , training
in weapons of mass destruction, application in Flanders mud and blood. “Give the scum a gun and make the bugger
fight and be sure to have deserters shot on sight, if he dies we’ll send a
medal to his wife.”My Grandad was buried alive on the Western Front but
dug himself out in time to witness the Canadian’s amphetamine charge at Vimy
Ridge. “Some Mother’s Son”, recounts heartbreaking sacrifice. “One soldier
glances up to see the sun and dreams of games he played when he was young”One
minute it’s cowboys and Indians in the rhododendron bushes of Alexandra Park, “…a
second later he is dead”.
Moving on into the post-war, we’re in the bread and circuses
of consumerism, courting in a rented jalopy, “Drivin’” to adventure, in…
Potters Bar. Forget, forget, forget. Like a thunderbolt “Brainwashed” deviates
from any semblance of the universal to directly address the condition of our
eponymous hero, punning on his genuflecting, carpet fitter profession. “Look
like a real human being but you don’t have a mind of your own. Yeah, you can
talk, you can breathe, you can work, you can stich, you can sew but you’re
brainwashed. Yes you are, yes you are. Get down on your knees!”.
In 1934 my Grandad was on his knees, convalescing on the
dole and my 4 year old Dad went with mother to visit the cotton mills of
Massachusetts. This was no holiday, it was reconnaissance for escape. It didn’t
happen. Arthur contemplates a similar still-born fantasy in “Australia” where “nobody
has to be, any better than what they want to be”, where “nobody has a
chip on their shoulder”, where “…everyone walks around with a perpetual
smile across their face”. The song starts in playful style like the Terry Gilliam-esque
artwork on the sleeve, but the aboriginal sounds and tooting jazz soon turn it into
an end of pier nightmare. There is no crock of gold. The crumpled Thomas Cook
pamphlets, salvaged and smoothed out on Whitehall desks, selecting Australia as
test site for the Bomb. A future destination for the airmen sent like lab-rats into
the atomic clouds billowing over the vaporized atolls.
Arthur reaches the summit in an alternative “Shangri-La”
somewhere in one of those suburbs that spread like gravy over the Nation’s
tablecloth. “Put on your slippers and sit by the fire, you’ve reached your
top and you just can’t get any higher”. It’s the emotional and musical peak,
with urgent strummed guitars, tinkling harpsichords and lyrics hammered out
like last rites. “You need not worry you need not care, you can’t go
anywhere”. You can’t go anywhere!
In short fashion the Second World War breaks out and as “Mr
Churchill Says”, “ gotta fight the bloody battle to the very end”, withthe conflicterupting in a surreal barrage of raga-rock. Post-war
austerity follows and the raucous pantomime of “She Bought a Hat Like Princess
Marina” parades working class pride in the face of adversity. In the interval, Palestine
and Mau-Mau on the newsreels, for the main feature, “The Dambusters”. Then coming
up for air Arthur reflects on his “Young and Innocent Days” indulging in a
nostalgia, that seems not what it used to be.
In “Nothing to Say”, the albums grinds towards it’s close
with a glimpse of the isolation of age. I think of my Dad and his Dad, I think of
us all watching the football, their shared hope in the Unions, their local pride and their
stoicism but I also think of their strangely distant and jarring communication.
For Arthur, his son is on his own aspirational path. “I’ll have to go soon cos
I’m getting bored, I gotta be home early to see a good play”, and I think of my Dad’s transcendence of both his parents and his class.
By 1969 Britain had effectively become an archaic vessel in receipt of American culture, so it is strangely appropriate that the title track concludes as a
country-style hoe-down. Davies had been commissioned to write the album for a
Granada TV play, but it never got off the ground due to funding issues. The album
was thus delayed and on release unfavourably compared to the heavy sounds of the day. “Shangri-La”
was issued as a single but found no takers. Like the country The Kinks were suddenly out of time. But the lifting of the American touring ban opened up new horizons
and like my Dad's speculative journey in 1934, The Kinks set sail in search of a new land of “hope
and glory-ia”.
As I
see it there seem to be two distinct versions of the Small Faces, principally
defined by the drugs on the scene at the time: the first was of the
pill-popping mods, all sharp suits and punchy, tight 3 minute maximum singles;
the second being the more acid-tinged psych rockers with their rather more
adventurous outings, culminating in their 1968 magnum opus, Ogden’s Nut
Gone Flake.
Along
with the Stones’s At Their Satanic Majesty’s Request, Ogden’s was
one of the LPs most obviously directly influenced by Sgt. Pepper, moving away
from the hamster wheel of the singles production line and taking time in the
studio to create an LP that was more than just a collection of hits, B-sides
and fillers, rather a cohesive work in its own right. In fact for me, this LP
has much more in common with the Beatles’s trailblazer than Satanic
Majesty, and it’s a much stronger album because of that, despite its
failings.
From
the instant the needle is dropped on the opening title track, we’re in business:
the wonderful flanged organ sounds incredible, the lush strings add warmth and
tone without dominating or softening the groove set by Kenney Jones’s rolling
drumming and Marriott’s psych fuzz guitar. Once that overture is finished,
we’re presented with one of the finest Small Faces songs in Afterglow; and
Mac’s Hammond is as much the star of this as Marriotts’ incredible voice:
soulful, driving, spine-tingling stuff. My only gripe here is that they ditched
the fade out/return of the alternate version in favour of the abrupt edit
point, but kept it on the following track Long Agos and Worlds Apart. It’s
awesome on the former and rather superfluous on the latter. But I’m nit picking
here, what a song.
Unfortunately
with Rene and Lazy Sunday we hit the principal weakness of the LP, as with Sgt.
Pepper: the music hall gubbins. Whereas When I’m 64 and Mr
Kite!were vaudeville, these are pure Lionel Bart, with Marriott back in
his Artful Dodger persona, complete with East-aaah End-aaah thumbs-in-weskit
urchin posturing-aaaah. What a shame that Lazy Sunday should be the hit from
the LP… As Mac put it once in interview, it’s “rootie tootie too, oh what a
load of bollocks”.
Luckily there’s a bone fide gem
tucked in between the tracks that close side 1, the magnificent Song of
a Baker. It’s huge, strident, funky and one of my favourite songs of all
time. The guitar gets a little lost in the mix at times, but my God – what a
belter. Who’d’ve thought you could rock out that much to water, flour and salt?
I also love that on the (mimed) Colour Me Pop TV appearance,
Marriott wipes his mouth mid-solo. He’s SLAVERING, goddam it… and with good
reason, so am I.
Side
two is the more ‘out there’ concept work, with Stanley Unwin providing some
utterly charming Lear-like nonsense/hippy narration. There’s a childlike charm
to the story, but it’s underpinned by a heavy sound as in the second part
of Happiness Stan, and the out-and-out rocker Rollin’ Over:
Richie Blackmore spent many years ripping off that riff with Deep Purple, he
should pay them royalties. The Hungry Intruder might’ve been
written by Pete Townsend; at times The Journey sounds like an
ancestor of 90s Madchester; and Mad John has a weird folkie
feel, mixed with early Bowie (if you can imagine him singing “eye-diddly-eye-dye”). Happy
Days Toy Town reprises the music hall sound, but this grates less than
before as it works better as the conclusion to the fairytale, and Unwin wraps
it up beautifully with a bit of Huckleberryfickleticklemyfinglode.
Glorious.
Ogden’s is
a genuine psych masterpiece and we must forgive its few minor faults; it’s 3/4
of the band’s finest hour (Marriott’s would arguably come the following year,
with Humble Pie’s magnificent debut) and the real mystery is that Marriott
dissolved the band in order to work on more “serious” music, when evidently he
himself was responsible for the album’s more frivolous moments. Figure that one
out… anyway, we should be thankful that this exists.
Oh, for
a niblode of some mincey meaty! Stay cool, won’t you?
(GC)
With this album you jump into the past and have a nice break from
your routine :) it’s simultaneously relaxing and exciting. An album that could
have definitely been played at Woodstock, or maybe it was?! “Ogden’s
Nut Gone Flake” is excellent, it nourishes my old soul! But not difficult
to listen to at all. It’s a mix of rock and psychedelic style, and also very
romantic :) Now I know where the ‘Holy Drug Couple’ band was inspired from :)
(MS)
The lights drop, the projector whirs and the space fills with the
booming bass and phased organ of Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake.
On screen we’re at Oldham Athletic’s Boundary Park football ground
where small faces press hard against the car windows, creaking from the weight
of the roof slowly caving in. From inside The Small Faces pop group stare back in
horror, beneath them wheels spinning impotently, sinking deeper and deeper into
the boggy turf. Fighting their way out, four silhouettes bolt past the corner
flag and out into the brick terraced streets racing headlong into a panorama of
factory chimneys. A publicity stunt gone awfully wrong, dreamed up by awful men.
But as The Small Faces wound their way back to London in 1966 they were escaping
more than just the clutches of manager Don Arden and Oldham Chairman Ken Bates.
Soon The Beatles manager was dropping into their communal flat in
Pimlico proferring sugar cubes dipped in acid. “It’s all too bootiful”
they sang, stuffing the “bennies” away in a bottom draw like worn-out toys. By
the time the manager of the Bee Gees was dissuaded from persuing his interest in
them…round about the time he found himself dangling from a 5th floor
Cavendish Square window…the band was already committed to new horizons. And as
though stepping out of the black and white world so they broke with the
thuggish Arden and the Decca factory for the brash technicolour charms of the
newly created Immediate Records where for a spell everything was possible. On Carnaby
St. today there is a small plaque above a sports shop immortalising where Arden
and the Small Faces "worked"' together. On either side are plaques to
the famed John Stephen and Lord John boutiques, where the band had charge accounts
where they were "paid" in lieu of wages. One can only wonder how handy
all those three button candy stripe jackets came in 10 years later as singer Steve
Marriott struggled with alcohol and mental illness and bassist Ronnie Lane battled
with the early onset of multiple sclerosis. Across the road is a megastore
dedicated to selling product by their friends and rivals The Rolling Stones.
Immediate
was the brainchild of the Stones former manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who hustled
in his own particular way taking The Small Faces on as a virtual house band for
a grandiose project which attempted to replicate the magic dust of Phil Spector
and Brian Wilson on New Oxford Street. The band’s reward this time in
lieu of wages being the provision of copious studio time at the state of
the art Olympic studios in Barnes. If you listen to recordings from this time
you can hear Steve Marriott’s throaty voice as though leaking though the walls
into other people’s records. The Stones “In Another Land”, Traffic’s “Berkshire
Poppies”, Chris Farlowe’s “My Way of Giving”, Billy Nicholls “Would You Believe”,
The Easybeats, The Herd… At one early morning session Hendrix dropped in from
next door, enthusing Marriott to wake up the engineer under the guise that a
Small Faces session was evolving. After driving through the night he was not
impressed to find a stoned Marriott surrounded by sundry roadies jamming incoherently
Their sound changed as a result of this move with much of the
power of their furious super charged Booker T mod-soul diluted into rather understated
stoned pop which whilst uniformly good is a little thin in its sound. But there
is a lot to like not least Here Comes the Nice the most explicit drug
song by anyone at the time to ever gain a commercial release and I'm Only Dreaming
with its wistfulness erupting into passages of soul shouting frenzy. Marriott
had this in him in spades. The stereo version of I Feel Much Better is a
curious schizo-wonder with its chipmunk do-waddy-daddy chorus suddenly ripping
into monophonic proto-heavy metal towards the fade. In truth Marriott’s throaty
soulful voice was far more suited to the rock than the pastoral where the intensity
was given over to acoustic guitars, flutes and Georgie Fame’s brass section of Eddie
Tan Tan Thornton and Harry Beckett. The difference is particularly noted
when they did rock out, such as the ramped up raves Don’t Burst My Bubble,
Wham Baam Thank You Maam and the grandstanding Tin Soldier. When The
Small faces play in this style you hear a bridge between Ray Charles and Led Zeppelin
and it serves as a reminder that this is the same band that delivered the
seriously heavy records they made in
65-66. It's a little too simplistic to view their Decca period as mono and Immediate
as stereo, indeed caution should be observed when listening to the music of
most bands in 1967 as stereo took hold. But the fact is The Small Faces sound
so much more complete in mono...until that is their ambitious album release Ogden’s
Nut Gone Flake (yes we finally get there).
This album is a stereo delight in particular the first three songs
where the instruments pan around the ears with skilled engineering from Glyn
Johns who’d soon helm the Olympic records made by The Stones when they realised
what they were and a little later The Who when they finally realised Who they
were. The instrumental interchange in the Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake title
track sets things alight, with the modest dabs of fuzz guitar giving way to strings,
one part David Axelrod, one part Jean Claude Vannier, before drifting into George
Martinesque Blue Meanie orientalisms. Afterglow of Your Love follows
with its teasing club singer croon, shocking abruptly into proggy organ
progressions that bounce around between the ears. If the first track was a mini
symphony for heavy bass and drums then this is a full blown duet for organ and vocal.
PS- PS A little rudimentary Audacity use enables a grafting of the mono
single fade onto this superior stereo mix. Long Ago’s and World’s Apart is
background colour, almost programme music to revisit the innocent Itchycoo hash
dream drift.
As the teenage Steve Marriott elbowed out other hopefuls to appear
as The Artful Dodger in Lionel Bart’s first staging of Oliver, his dad was
running a pie and mash stall in Poplar, whilst mum worked at the monster Tate
and Lyle plant on the Thames. With its syrup tin logo of a rotting lion
consumed by bees, the factory was pilloried as something of a knocking shop due
to it being the best paid centre of female employment for the East London dockside
community. All these things and none may explain the germination of Rene
which is essentially the end of a long line of SF tunes that hang together as Ian
McLaglan keyboard wig outs. I like this song far more that I should and I think
it stems from my Northern aloofness that regards cockneys as being far more
hilarious than they can ever hope to realise. Even now I occasionally plant my 'arris
on a no. 30 to 'ackney Wick whilst ruminating that Chas and Dave really were
more than just the sum of their parts. In Rene Marriott delivers a
number of fruity couplets about the said waif, including her illegitimate
offspring residing “in coal sheds double locked”. Double locked? And
then she’s “Groping with a stoker from the coast of Kuala Lumpur”, and we
listen to an extended knee trembler against the dock wall, with the oohs and
ahhs coitus, interrupted by passing liners booming their horns from rumbling distorted
guitars. It’s an extended dirge into the heart of darkness going nowhere, a
wonderous anti- climax spent upon the fallow ground.
In North London only the Kinks come close to this with their 7
minute long Australia epic. Setting sail with chirpy mickey mouse voices
extolling the virtues of post war emigration the song breaks down as boredom
and doubt set in via a malingering (trad) jazz-rock freak-out over the duck
pond of the Indian Ocean. These songs come from the uncharted backwaters of
British psychedelia in all its multi layered forms and distinctions. They are
what make this strain so peculiar and interesting. Reaction to parental post
war obsessions, a playful rebellion with class, the appropriation of old musical
forms and a mind-bending aural approximation of what happens when a thought
extends long beyond reason. But behind it all playful unpredictability.
1968 suddenly allowed the more pop conscious groups to stretch out
nurturing a maturing culture of musicianship based on competition and shared bonhomie.
Around nocturnal sessions at after-hours clubs Beatles and Yardbirds rum and
coked it with other Animals cross-fertilising their influences. It’s there in
the Hey Joe bass-line of Song of a Baker, a very 1968 rocker with
lyrics reflecting Ronnie Lane’s new found interest in mysticism, an interest shared
with Who guitarist Pete Townsend that would lead them to collaborate through
the 1970s on devotional projects to guru Meher Baba. For Townsend the irony of the
nothing is everything mantra would be his inspiration for the mother
lode of Tommy, yet both bands sat on the precipice in this period. For The
Who Tommy would make them, for The Small Faces Ogden’s would break them, the single Lazy Sunday acting
as their swan song. Structurally it's a far better song than its over familiarity
has made it and I particularly love the way Marriott reverts to a straight
delivery after the dumdidumdidoo dumdidumdidoo section and the in-joke
soul chorus snatch of Satisfaction. The Who actually tried to mirror
this unlikely hit with their White City anthem Dogs and that year saw the
bands touring together both home and abroad. This is immortalised in their joint
appearance that November in a Paris TV studio miming away to a group of Paco Rabanne
models. Against the playback Keith Moon is captured air drumming behind his Who
successor Kenny Jones beneath a caption retitled Not Gone Flake.
Not yet
Perhaps side two’s fusion with gobbledygook is a remnant of the
still born Carry On Psych-Out project sired by Sir George Martin during
the Beatles in Rishikesh downtime. A studio extravaganza that would feature a
number of archaic guest artists from the world of light entertainment it was to
employ the little known Felius Andromeda (of Cheadle Heath Delusions / Meditations
fame) as backing band but their contribution only extended as far as Harry H
Corbett’s Flower Power Fred. Roy Hudd delivered Sir Rhubarb Tansey,
whilst Peter Cook and Dudley Moore were given a 7-minute slot re-working the L.S.
Bumble Bee into a segue with Bedazzled. The album reached the sleeve
design stage but Sid James unfortunately only got so far as putting on the
outfit.
Some stellar names dropped out and ended up being replaced by youngbloods
Rodney Bewes and Bill Oddie who plugged the gap with Meter Maid and Harry
Krishna respectively. But ultimately it was Lance Perciful who brought the
whole thing to a close when tapes were leaked of his after hours session coaxing
out a b-side for The Maharaja of Brum. Even Spike Milligan found it’s
racial satire more than a little beyond the pale. It certainly makes his own acid
dream Purple Aeroplane a somewhat limp affair in contrast. As things
went pear shaped Stanley Unwin was drafted in to ad-lib the night away until
the plug was well and truly pulled. But at Olympic Steve Marriott was listening
behind those paper thin walls.
No this is not true I don’t think (but the songs are). It’s all gone
a bit hazy here. Please listen to side two and make up your own mind about Ogdens
Beano Pigtail. Does anyone have any jaffa cakes?
I dedicate this piece to the late Tim Brooke-Tayor who I last heard on Sorry I Havn't a Clue where the panel were invited to do rude things with Pop group names. His contribution being "The Small Faeces"
(JF)
Musicians
individually and collectively at the top of their game. A great sound, a great
listen
I didn’t like the Stanley
Unwin thing and think it was a bad idea for such talented musicians to give
over so much time to it. Never really understood psychedelia but when I listen
to this record I get two things – the influence from rock and roll of the past and
the future influence this album seems to hold – e.g Paul Weller’s early solo
albums like Wildwood. But what it
ultimately leaves me with is Englishness. This is very evident throughout the
record in the writing if not the musicianship, which has an up tempo bluesy
feel particularly with the prominent organ sound
(JS)
Ogden's Nut Gone Flake
Nice woozy mellotron /bass
heavy instrumental.
Afterglow
Sputtering verse with majestic
over the top chorus. Placed together they are effective and passionately
delivered, but after the music stops I can’t remember the tune. A bit over
blown. Perhaps a good example of how the music doesn’t quite capture the mood
of the subject matter.
Long Agos And Worlds
Apart
Musicians they definitely are,
and as such they are chasing both a form and sound but their lyrics and
delivery don’t seem to be as much a part of the process. This song reminded me
of another song, and I couldn’t think what it was called until I re listening
to Afterglow. Has a a trick ending where it pretends to fade out then comes
back for another minute of wig out.
Rene
Comedy girl focused narrative
sung in the style of Chas and Dave, with a bit of a hint of the Pink Panther Theme. Another song straining to ditch the lyrical content for the mellotron
instrumental break with added harmonica.
Song Of A Baker
Troggs-esque intro that
settles down to a narrative verse which is flattened by an over blown chorus.
Much more guitar driven, which in its day must have sounded charming but the
solo sounds a bit pedestrian today. Maybe im going deaf from hammering out
viking coins at the mock forge but the vocal mix sounds too thin and needs
warming up.
Lazy Sunday
An obvious influence on Blur’s Park Life. A splendid period piece. I haven’t done my detailed bio check on the
band but they sound like posh boys pretending to be working class, (ED. Wrong, wrong, wrong) just like
Blur, but their complex musicality defeats this charming ruse, with the skilled
tempo and key change at the end which is pure McCartney.
Happiness Stan
Huzzah for Stanley Unwin,( but was he also operating the vocal processing for the recording?)
These boys
are clearly classically trained musicians slumming in the sub-culture and
casting out into early prog for a new direction, because they want to be The
Who. Tin can production values.
Rollin' Over
A guitar/piano driven stomper
The Hungry Intruder
A flower child song, sounds a
bit like a pastiche, but its the real deal, lots of pixie flute and complex
strings. But again impressive as it is can I remember the tune? Adults
pretending to be children.
The Journey
My ear drobes haven’t quite
recovered before this mellotron pantomime began. Sounds like a piece of
background music as Austen Powers runs down a street in Amsterdam not wishing
to stare but unable to help himself. Lyrical element ends to long instrumental
wig out. But the Austen Powers image hasn’t completely vanished. This doesn’t
sound like flying on the back of a giant talking fly.
Mad John
Guitar folkesque song with a
bit of mandolin in the style of early Jethro Tull/Fairport, narrative but with
not enough conviction, it sorts of gives up on itself. Stanley Unwin is getting
a bit irritating and my dangly wants to kick his ass until he shuts up.
Happydaystoytown
An early version of look on the
bright side of life. A reprise of Lazy Sunday.
Overall this was released in
May 1968 and shows a band fragmenting, throwing everything they”ve got into the
melting pot in the hope something will stick. Months later King Crimson
released In the Court of the Crimson King. Both albums feature musicians first
with lyrical content tagged on as an afterthought. Both albums indulge the
audiences with long instrumental sections. Both albums are composed around a
variety of styles by virtuoso musicians. The Small Faces album has been trapped
in its own aspic, it attempts to be a ground breaking mind expanding album, but
its roots and influences as clearly visible in its construction. As genre has
shifted it has trapped the efforts into a period piece. The Crimson effort on
the other hand still sounds fresh, because it remains a pioneer in its sonic
voyage of discovery. Its not really a fair comparison but I hope it explains
the difficulty I had rendering a fair opinion of this piece. I heard it, I
Listened to it but Iv’e almost completely forgotten it, with the exception The Hungry Intruder. That song’s danglies have stayed with me
This is an imaginary album that may have come out in 1967.
Pop
music has a terrible inbuilt weakness of destroying itself through over-familiarity. The constant and cynical repackaging of music served up as random
compilations to recoup the investment of record companies, is a particular curse
of the industry. Exposed to constant replay, individual songs lose meaning in
their contextual association with inappropriate company. In short it loses it's power. Yet when done right, a collection of songs carefully sequenced to aid an overarching theme can occasionally rival good fiction or film. The medium is relentless and in a concentrated 40 minute
sitting, there can be fewer more intense artistic experiences to achieve so
much whilst demanding so little effort. At it's best it envelops us.
This stereo double album compilation by The Kinks, may or may not
have been prepared for foreign territory release in the mid '70s.
Either way the oil crisis and copyright problems with the sleeve design
sidelined it until this copy with hebrew text on the
label surfaced at the end of last year. Had it been widely distributed it would have
joined a multitude of other such releases to seemingly milk the band's 60's
heyday. Yet look again and you can see it is so much more.
Rich Man Poor Man appears to have had it's source in an original and previously
lost all embracing theme that pre-figures the arc of concept albums The Kinks released from the late 60's onwards. The period was marked by relentless touring that took a physical and mental toll on the band. Poor management by upper class chancers with severe cash-flow problems exacerbated the pressure on the band to deliver hit after hit and Ray Davies found his visionary ambitions frustrated with each song either rush-released as a self-serving single, b-side or album filler.
The songs reflect what he was witnessing close at hand. The class inequalities were bursting through the veneer of swinging London and we can clearly see why he would return again and again to the recurring theme of innocents abroad. The Kinks like many other bands were regarded as no more than walking pound signs created to keep a small army of users fed and clothed. As the years passed Davies would become more explict in calling this out, but in 1966-67 this anger was largely supressed behind a facade of elaborate metaphor and satire. I would argue that had this record been
released at the time it would have greatly altered our perception of The Kinks and
seen them ranked on an equal footing with the progressive long-play output of
their Beatle and Beach Boy peers. As such it's a remarkable discovery.
RECORD ONE (36 mins)- a sharp tongued
pantomine set to music hall rhythms mocking the rise and fall of old money from
school, office and discotheque. The fortunes of the protagonist collapsing
through a conspiracy of govt. policy and poor English weather, leaving
him adrift from both family and class.
The first side follows the fortunes of a single character, a
certain David Watts, "head-boy at the School, ...captain of
the team"whoseimmense
superiority is recounted in
detached third person by a narrator we imagine machine-gunning from the School
roof in Lindsay Anderson's "If...". "He is so gay and
fancy free.."he spits "... and I wish all his
money, belonged to ME". But the old money stays with the old money, as
made evident in the summer '65 song A Well Respected
Man which acts as a touchstone for the whole concept. This was the first
song released by The Kinks to reveal the inner sardonic mind of Davies who
affects a sneering vocal to the following priceless couplet, "And he plays the
stocks and shares and he goes to the Regatta, he adores the girl next door,
cause he's dying to get at her".And on this record, as though it was always meant to be, the final strummed
chord miraculously segues into the opening strummed chord of an
alternate Dedicated Follower of Fashion, breathing new life into Davies
great misappropriated anti-swinging London anthem (see my RAY DAVIES-Spring 1966 entry).
Then amongst the subterranean-set, the drums poundng like an impending coronary, our narrator
encounters the cast-off Little Miss Queen of Darkness, a waif like Jane Asher in "Alfie", burnt-out "cause the only boy she
had, went and cooly stepped aside" by... a now far too
randy Dandy rampaging across the Mayfair nightlife. Here the
underside of the swinging City is laid bare in all it's debauched futility.
Our privileged toff dragged over the coals in the accusatory rave-up, House in the
Country ,"Well he got his job when drunken Daddy tumbled down the
stairs, from that very day this boy has more than had his share."It ends side one with a sense of hubris...for those whom the God's would destroy. And,"One
of these days I'm gonna knock him off his throne", sings his old
classmate. It's like a promise.
The guitar reverses into Side Two like the beginning of the
end because "He went and spent all the money that he had, because
he had a heart and not a head”. The net result, his Most
Exclusive Residence for Sale. An alternate version of Afternoon Tea follows the
downward spiral, switching the narrative to first person. It's references to an
absent tea-room tryst under starry skies, signalling a delusional descent in
both ambition and libido.
"The taxman's taken all my
dough" sums it all up, Sunny Afternoon or not, with his property
loss ill-compensated by forced inertia 'neath changeable sunny skies, the future is bleak. Lazy Old
Sun is like that chilly moment as we watch the cloud cover the ground before us
and we wait for it's inexorable shadow to roll over our spot. The song is a woozy nod
to the downer brought on by too much excess whether material, chemical, sunshine or
...booze. An inspired shift back into Pop, the third person Mr Pleasant though arrives like an unwelcome guest. The chirpy upbeat mood clashes with the bleak truths like something out of Dickens. And even Mrs Pleasant has gone. "Wintertime is
coming, all the sky is grey, summer birds aren't singing since you went away" closes the End of The Season curtain like an
old show tune at the end of a rain-lashed pier. "I just can't
mix in all the clubs I know”he moans, “Now Labour's in, I have no place
to go". And so part one ends. The swinging snapshot of the Capital
city now forced to look into itself.
RECORD TWO (35 mins)- a parallel world
on the other side of town under the same grey skies where the stakes
are so much higher. Characters break free and fall under the City's wheels,
before blissful redemption awakens them to the life-affirming realisation of
the wonders they've always had. Even if it's not that much.
Side three opens with studio chat into a short instrumental run-through of Waterloo Sunset that drifts straight into the
profound Autumn Almanac. "This is my street and I'm never gonna
leave it and I'm always gonna stay here.." sings a proud everyman until the mysterious inner workings of the mind are revealed like an actor's split-second expression, "because
the people I meet seem to come from my street and I can't get away... the
street is calling me. Come on home!. Hear it calling me, Come on home!".
And Billy Liar is left at the train station as Julie heads off for the
streets of gold. The London bells introduce us to the Big Black Smoke and
immediately we consider her fate, as told by a bristling stentorian voice, "Well
she slept in caffs and coffee bars and bowling alleys and every penny she ha-a-a-d,
was spent on purple hearts and cigarettes". The words bowling
alleys spat like a blasphemous rebuke from the pulpit. Rosy Won't You
Please Come Home follows the lament of her abandoned mother, whilst Too Much on
My Mind may be the song of them all. A study in mental anguish where to these people, human choice and happiness are forever at the mercy of chance. But smile, smile, smile as long as you've a lucifer to light your Harry Rag eveything's ok. And at the beginning "Susie
and Johnny were happy... earned enough to pay the rent" but these
new characters are introduced to bring us back into the circling kitchen sink of it all. It's Davies most Marxist scenario. The Situation Vacant reading like a death notice for Johnny's broken dreams,“Susie’s
separated living with her Ma" and "little Mama’s satisfied”. The fourth song on the side to contemplate the happiness or otherwise of a Mother.
Inevitably
side Four finds us in Ken Loach territority on the aptly named Dead End Street. A trad jazz coda plays over the fade
like a New Orleans funeral parade, before a thunder crash empties the streets with
apocalyptic portent. “The reckoning was beckoning, they’re living to their doom,
there is no hope, no reasoning, thisRainy Day in June”. And “…everybody
felt the rain”. Everybody, Johnny, Joe, Tom and Susie, like Rosy before her, free from Mama again but in the mire. Like a miracle Susannah’s Still Alive, but only because we see her breathing
and its all too true that it “Doesn’t matter what she does, she knows that
she can’t win”. The harpsichord waltz of the Two Sisters, whichDavies wrote about himself and his brother, introduces two more characters to the mix, “Sybilla looked into the mirror, Priscilla looked into the
washing machine”but through an unexpected moment of grace (in the maisonette), the mood is transformed,“Priscilla saw her little children and then decided
she was better off than the wayward lass that her sister had been”. And that's all it took to return to the beginning and this is my street and This is Where I Belong. It'sa blissful mini anthem of hope and it seems to circle back to Record One and the "house upon a hill" character, now "with no place to go".And at the end of it
all we are made to understand that the bright London lights shine with illusion and as they recede back into the darkness, a glorious Waterloo Sunset lights up Terry and our Julie, who we leave to their life of simple pleasures.
On reflection the whole thing is a synthesis of the 60's cinematic working class dream, re-channelled by a writer in the thick of it. It's tuneful, simplistic and at times quite moving. It also breathes new life into songs you thought you knew. Try and track down a copy (or make your own). It's a great enveloping listen.
The fourth album Liege and Leaf by Fairport Convention in 1969 featuring
Sandy Denny is perhaps the most successful of the fusions of rock music and
British folk traditions. It directly transposed songs from an English folk
tradition to a rock idiom to immediate acclaim. However in some ways its
successful fusion perhaps highlighted some of the major difficulties of this
British genre which made this a singular or one off phenomenon within rock
music.
British folk music often invoked notions of middle class “Englishness”
often based on the academic propensities of folk musicologists seeking to
historicise its traditions while linking it to a selective range of historical
cultural texts that had recorded its oral forms. In contrast contemporary
Irish, and to a lesser extent Scottish, folk music were rooted in the politics
of inequalities and marginalisation that gave it an immediacy that evoked
contemporary experience whether the shipyards of Glasgow or the troubles of
Northern Ireland. There were more radical traditions of music fostered by the
unions and working mens’ halls in England that championed the experience of
working people but their voices were muted or marginalised in the mass
consumption of folk music as it developed as an industry in the 1950s. This was
compounded by the ways in folk traditions were policed such that, for example,
Bob Dylan’s move from acoustic to electric met with fierce opposition from the
Newport festival fans in 1965. In England in 1966 there was a similar defining
of musical boundaries at the Manchester Free trade Hall where Dylan was
famously reviled as “Judas” by a disgruntled British folk music fan.
Seminal to the development of rock music was the utilisation of the
flexible 12 bar idiom derived from African American blues music, in its rural
and urban forms, mediated by the forms of rock and roll of Little Richard and
Chuck Berry that challenging the racialised distribution of music in the USA.
Inspired by Dylan’s shift to rock and the impetus he contributed drawn from other
musical genres such as the Oklahoma derived narratives of Woodie Guthrie that
challenged establishment hierarchies, British musicians looked to their own
folk traditions as a resource in the development of British rock. However many
of these rock musicians shaped by their middle class nostalgia of a lost rural
Britain rather than the impact of a hundred years of industrialisation were
constricted by the fashioning of musical tropes of an archaic England that sat
uneasily with the rebellion and the progressiveness of the nascent rock genre
at that historical moment. It often resulted in a fey or arch idiom with
antiquated musical forms that did not fit with the 12 bar blues structure,
although these works were consumed by some middle class audiences.
And yet…… Fairport Convention took this route consulting with the
archives of the British Folk Society by Regents Park but also harrowed by a car
crash that killed their drummer and a girlfriend. The shared trauma lends an
emotional edge of loss and poignancy that re-invigorated the lyrics while the
musical transpositions simplified and ruthlessly struck out the musical
archaisms to offer an emotional clarity that cut to the core.
(PS)
Do I get to
bang on about how amazing 1969 was again? Well if I must… Not content with
releasing one great album that year, Fairport released three. THREE!
What
We Did on Our Holidays, the wonderful Unhalfbricking and
the cornerstone of British folk rock that is Liege and Lief.
Replacing
original vocalist Judy Dyble, Sandy Denny gave Fairport power, a clear
direction and a sense of identity that was previously lacking. With a stronger
voice than Judy’s, she allowed the group to have a louder, rockier sound – and
thus British Folk Rock was properly born.
What We Did on
Our Holidays still had the tinges of the West Coast sound
played through an English filter… then The Band’s seminal Music from Big Pink
was released and made Fairport reassess their American leanings, as they
couldn't compete with that – they had to redefine themselves and record music
that was truer to their roots. Country fan Ian Matthews left to form Matthews
Southern Comfort and fiddle virtuoso Dave Swarbrick took more centre stage, particularly
in the traditional A Sailor’s Tale on Unhalfbricking;
the twin-pronged fiddle/guitar attack of Swarb and Richard Thomson had been
forged.
After the
tragic loss of drummer Martin Lamble in the M1 crash in May 69, the survivors
collectively mourned their losses and found that they needed the band as
something to cling to, a way to deal with the situation. So they ‘got it
together in the country’ (Hampshire, actually) and the result was the
game-changing Liege and Lief, their first album totally dedicated
to British folk songs. None of your cable-sweatered, finger-in-the-ear, beardy
hey nonnying here though… this is the perfect mix of rock and folk music, with
beautifully searing, clear-as-a-bell vocals from Denny and lovely interplay
from Swarb and Thompson.
The LP’s
opener Come All Ye sets the electrified folk stage perfectly,
like a call to a sumptuous feast; but Reynardine is arguably
the standout track here, as hauntingly beautiful as the previous LP’s Who
Knows Where the Time Goes. Stunning. The traditional Matty Groves starts
out like a fairly standard folk number, until the mad proggish noodling comes
in and it’s an absolute blast after that. Farewell, Farewell closes
the side in more reflective mood with Thompson lyrics to a traditional melody.
The Deserter starts side 2 as a genteel waltz
until the protagonist’s court martial briefly makes it a more regimented 3/4;
then the Swarb tour de force that is Medley storms in, drinks
all your grog and breaks up the furniture in the melee; Tam Lin has
a nicely irregular 3, 3, 4, 3 time with Denny’s vocals flowing gracefully over
the top; Crazy Man Michael is an original composition, but
could easily be another traditional arrangement.
The whole
experience of the LP feels like an old painting in a modern frame. Inside the
gatefold sleeve are pictures of long-lost folk figures such as Pace-Eggers,
Morris Dancers and notable folk music historian Cecil Sharp, among others;
clearly the message here is that your heritage should be remembered, even if
you embrace that of others.
Ashley
Hutchings and Denny left soon after the album’s release (to form Steeleye Span
and Fotheringay respectively) and Fairport never truly regained the magic they
managed to capture; Full House from 1970 has its moments, but
its predecessor is where it’s really at. Oft-copied, never equalled, Liege
and Lief is majestic. And quintessentially British.
(JS)
This is an album of tensions, both positive and
negative.On one hand the band present novelty in the form of amplified
electronic music in a popular American rock style, on the other the album
celebrates an interpretation of English traditional folk music, that in a sense
has informed elements of the American tradition. The musicians also present a
tension between individual musical virtuosity and the discipline of
de-individualising their personal musical contributions to meld into the
gestalt, fit for the purpose of being a commercial rock band. The third
observable tension is the tension between embracing the popular as championed
by the commercial charts, with the music the band enjoyed playing/ listening
to. Liege and lief is often hailed as the definitive performance of the band in
studio, but in reality it was a moment of individuals, suspending their
individual creative egos momentarily to work together to produce a moment of
beauty before rushing away from each other to try something else with lesser
effect. In genre terms it is often described as the definitive English folk
rock album, and can be identified to have spawned hundreds of imitators, even
though there were many treading this ploughline before them and many, many
after them. Whilst guest vocalist Sandy Denny gets much of the credit for the
traditional folk dimension, she was supported by Hutching's academic research
in Cecil Sharp House on one hand, and the raw folk that courses through the
veins of Dave Swarbrick’s fiddle playing. Supported by Mattacks, Thompson and
Nicol, it was an impossible alchemy not to transmute base metal into gold. The
album made money but not enough to bind the band into a second album. As the
band fragmented its members formed Fotheringay, The Albion band, and Steeleye
Span, who continued to plough the same furrow, if in a diminished form.
Come all ye - A fantastic opening track, a loose
rolling ramble into the possibilities of the new ensemble, the discipline to
play a coherent song is barely held together, Thompson’s Nicol’s and Swabricks
musical individualism is highly detectable, whilst Mattacks and Hutchings hold
it all together. The overall sound as it is though is of the male musicians
standing around Denny in the centre, queen of all she surveys, the lyric whilst
simple, is well within her range which allows firm command. Original
composition
Reynardine- A loose and rather over-ornamented
version of the traditional Renardyne, this is an example of where the
individual musicians should have been kept in check, its starts at 11 and
climbs to thirteen in regards to wild improvisations, and it could do with a
bit more pace in my opinion. Denny’s vocal here has become the standard
interpretation, but the song would work better at say Matty groves pace, except
in that it precedes Matty groves on the album. Personally it feels a tad
indulgent, overly slowed down to make way for the stomper that follows. Denny
voice is a bit too thin in timbre to carry this off.
Matty Groves- A traditional border ballad, which
Denny’s vocal commands well, the band is disciplined here but the material
demands a full eight minutes to spit it out. The tune is not good enough for
eight minute, and the lyrical content illustrates that it is not a feminist
dance classic in a traditional or a novel sense. Denny’s vocal works better
here but Swarbrick is buried too deep in the mix until released by Thompson’.s
mid song wig out.
Farewell, Farewell- A disciplined Thompson song,
with a good focussed Denny vocal
The Deserter- A traditional song , which binds the
band together into the classic folk band they are, Thompson, Nicols and
Swarbrick in their proper place . Denny is just about perfect in this one,
rising from an interesting vocalist to being an essential one.
"Medley"I. "The Lark in the
Morning”, II. "Rakish Paddy”, III. "Foxhunter's Jig”, IV. "Toss
the Feathers" -Swarbrick’s price for band membership, a proper folkie
stomp that can be repeated and elongated to any length by musicians of this
calibre, it's just a shame that Swarbrick is buried a bit deep in the mix.
Tam Linn- Another example of the traditional and
rock elements bound together in perfect harmony by Denny whose vocal style
works better in the staccato than in the legato style she adopted for
Reynardine. It goes on a bit and could accommodate a bit more pace
towards the end. Swarbrick is subdued in the mix, and an alternate mix
could make the song much wilder and fairy like.
Crazy Man Michael Orignal composition, great Denny
vocal, the bands individual virtuosity is here contained and great song,
despite the occasional olde English inflection.
(MS)
“Think about stories
with reason and rhyme
Circling through your brain
And think about people in their season and time
Returning again and again”(Nick Drake)
“Liege
and Lief” is not an obscure album. In fact it may be considered the “Citizen
Kane” of UK folk-rock recordings; the shining pinnacle, the benchmark for all
other entries to be compared against. Curiously this in itself has made it and
the band that recorded it slip into the realms of the neglected and unheard.
Perhaps
it’s a little bit too revered to be listened to? Easy prey for Norma
Waterstone’s fiddle playing daughter to once remark that there was more to the
UK folk movement than “Liege & Lief”. To be fair there is more, or at
least therewas back then when the movement
consisted of a broad coalition of emerging and overlapping styles. This album
and those of the other heavyweight act Pentangle, influenced a multitude of
folk-rock bands. Special mention should be made of The Trees two brilliant
LP’s, the first few by Steeleye Span, Forest, Fresh Maggots and the one-off
Fairport offshoot Fotheringay. But there were copious singer songwriters too,
covering similar territory like John Martyn, Steve Ashley, Roy Harper, Mick
Softley, Nick Drake, Al Stewart and Bridget St John. Traditionalists, Martin
Carthy, The Waterstons, Anne Briggs, Shirley Collins upped their sound to a
lesser or greater extent to meet the changes. Then there was the hippy end of
the spectrum with the (Scottish) Incredible String Band, (Irish) Dr Strangely
Strange and the poppier cross-over musings of Donovan. And of course a number
of the rock bands such as Family, Jethro Tull, Traffic and Led Zepellin were
also playing songs within the genre.(Sandy Denny of Fairport guests on Led Zep
IV) And…there’s Comus, Dando Shaft, Heron, Mellow Candle and great stand-out
songs…Shelagh McDonald’s “Dowie Den of Yarrow”, Keith Christmas’ “Forest and
The Shore” and future West End chanteuse Julie Covington’s “My Silks and Fine
Array” etc, etc…the list is long.
But
the fact is the folk-rock movement never really advanced beyond
this album. There were many attempts to follow the template but very few single
albums so perfectly captured such an evocative and cohesive sense of mood over
a 40 minute sitting. So many things coalesce around it, around the people who
created it and around the time it was made.
The
opening song “Come All Ye” with its fiddles and drums is like the triumphal
march of Heralds leading an army into battle. It’s the Fairport’s “Sgt Pepper”,
introducing the listener to an experience aiming “To
rouse the spirit of the earth and move the rolling sky”.
It’s the song to kick-off any compilation of folk music from this period. The
rock element is most evident when the LP reaches Appalachian tune “Shady Grove”
appended to a 17C murder ballad, re-titled “Matty Groves”. Halfway through it
transforms into an instrumental jam showcase for the locked groove of fiddler
Dave Swarbrick and guitarist Richard Thompson; the latter taking his
improvisations into Jerry Garcia/ Jorma Kaukonen territory. In fact the riff of
this tune brings to mind a touch of Jefferson Airplane’s chorus to the
contemporaneous “’Volunteers”. (The summit of Thompson’s guitar ramblings would
be his spell-binding “Sloth” on Fairport’s next LP)
This
was the fourth release by The Fairport Convention and the culmination of an
ever progressing sequence of recordings. They’d formed in a house called
“Fairport” at the opposite end of the same Fortis Green Road in Muswell Hill to
that of The Kinks. By 1968 the latter were creating their own somewhat more
proletarian take on pastoral idyll’s with their “Village Green” album. (The pub
that overlooks the still-standing house with its “Fairport” sign, has recently
been renamed “The Village Green”). Fairport’s early goodtime jug-band songs and
covers of contemporary Americana was a tad too respectful but once Sandy Denny
joined, the band found a vocalist who was more than a match for their maturing
musicianship. And they started to write quality originals. The anthemic “Meet
on the Ledge”, the sweet sitar-tinged “Book Song”, brooding “Genesis Hall” and
the wonderfully ominous “Autopsy”. Denny also brought a soon to be folk
standard in “Who Knows Where the Time Goes” as well as broadening the palate
with an encouragement to bandmates to explore traditional arrangements like
“She Moved Through the Fair” and the sea-shanty psych-out of “A Sailor’s Life”.
On
an earlier LP the magical madrigal-like “Fotheringay” always brings me back to
those shivery Saturday mornings on the sofa watching those short histories
about castles with jarring zoom lenses to the battlements, swelling war noises
and soothing Patrick Allen-types recounting the fate of doomed kings and
queens. My face pressed against the cool window panes, eyes staring out into
damp northern mornings, torrential afternoons and whole weekends lost to heavy
moor-mist. From the back room drifted the Clancy Brothers and Tom Paxton and on
TV Toni Arthur was always chirping away with a song about a bloody frog. There
was a lot of folk in the background in the early 1970’s. I would have first
picked up “Liege & Lief” the only way you could back then via trips to the
library on Saturday mornings, finger-tips nicked by the too tightly packed
plastic sleeves in the cramped record dept. Like rose thorns hiding their sharp
secret, we bled to discover unheard Beatles songs left off the bodged tape
recordings fed to us by our busy father. When I finally heard the full ”White
Album” it was like gaining access to a secret room in my bedroom that had
always been there but one that had been hidden from me. A childhood measured in TDK C90’s.
But
the firm connection to listening to folk-music for pleasure only truly emerged
from my subconscious during my cathartic mid-teens. One late-night I caught a
TV viewing of “The Wicker Man” introduced by a sinister looking carnival barker
frothing at the mouth about the secrets he was about to unfold upon us. When
the song “Corn Rigs” played over the opening credits of that old horror film it
seemed to suddenly awaken all sorts of ancient thoughts lying dormant in me.
Pagan horror then connected back to that musty old volume of British Folk
Mythology in the glass book cabinet in the front room that I’d spend years idly
poring over. I reflected on the spectacular mountains and pine forests I’d seen
on those dark Scottish summers spent holidaying with the family. I even
discovered that Toni Arthur had been on the fringe of the occult herself,
recording a 1971 album called “Hearken to the Witches Rune”.
“Liege
& Lief’s” second song “Reynadine” take us deep into those sinister woods
with the unsettling electric violin of Swarbrick taking us off the mossy path
straight into horror. Adapted from an ancient morality tale the story shape
shifted itself at the turn of the 20th Century to tell the tale
of a maiden’s seduction by a werefox. Swarbrick gives a similarly creepy
performance on the Martin Carthy version of the song recorded the previous year
(“Prince Heathen” LP). On the inside of the gatefold sleeve there were photos
of olden ceremonies or were they in fact drawings…or were they doctored photos?
It was hard to make out. And I studied that back sleeve and long considered the
significance of the curious wooden head and the final line from “Tam Lin”
"Oh, had I known,
Tam Lin,"she said,
"what this night I did see
I'd have looked him in the eyes
and turned him to a tree"
“Tam
Lin” is an elephantine epic that twists and turns it’s dark fairytale text
between passages of West-coast influenced guitar rock jamming. It’s a very
dramatic reading and one given space to unravel its mysterious story. See more
of this on my post below which considers Ian McShane’s unlikely contribution to
folk horror http://frombetweenthecracks.blogspot.com/2011/11/film-ballad-of-tam-lin-director-roddy.html
But
the purple and cream cover of this 1969 classic shows a group compartmentalised
in neat boxes, a symbolic message that their togetherness as a band was all but
over. In the spring of that year a car crash had killed both the drummer and
the girlfriend of Richard Thompson leaving the rest of the band deeply
traumatized. Thompson’s two songs that close each side are inspired by those
events one about her and one seemingly about himself. They were barely out of
their teens when all this happened. The heartbreaking “Farewell Farewell” acts
as a sweet counterpoint to the closing sinister neo-folk of “Crazy Man Michael”
with its disconcerting - and seemingly unresolved - dying fiddle fade. It
reminds me of the way Van Morrison abruptly ended his own folk-cycle “Astral
Weeks”. (this LP incidentally being something of a unique mix of soul and jazz
within Celtic and American folk traditions)
After
this the band splintered with Sandy Denny going on to record a clutch of epics
such as “Banks of the Nile”, “Next Time Around” and the quite spectacular
multi-tracked “Quiet Joys of Brotherhood” (a version of this Richard Farina
song had been attempted by Fairport for the “Liege and Lief” sessions and was
probably only rejected as it shares the same eerie ambiance as “Reynardine”).
Not many years later Sandy Denny fell down-stairs and died. She now shares a
Putney graveyard with Howard Carter, Jakob Epstein and Kerensky, a couple of
miles away from the house of her parents, immortalised on the “Unhalfbricking”
sleeve. Her brief career is largely unknown even to this day.
Like
traditional arrangements, mis-transcribed, re-interpreted and then forgotten so
we cultural historians wander over these overgrown paths again and again. We
pore over meaning from brief magical moments of music capturing the thoughts of
men and women before they’d even reached the age of 30. Music captured in old
brick studios long lost to developers’ profits. ”Liege & Lief” was recorded
off the Kings Road in a very different Chelsea to the one we find today. If you
keep walking down Old Church Street you’ll find the former site of Sound
Techniques set back from the road in an old 19C dairy. This was the creative
hub of Joe Boyd’s Witchseason productions, most of the acts I’ve mentioned
recorded their work here using the same pool of musicians. But like the old
stories say, be careful not to stray too far from the path. When you get to the
Thames your way may well be blocked by the private security guards protecting
Michael Caine’s view of Battersea.
