FAIRPORT CONVENTION – LIEGE AND LIEF LP – Nr MINT ISLAND REPRESS

Fairport Convention – Liege And Lief
(Island Records  ORL8080  Italy Press)
Matrix No’s: A1/B1

Sleeve in Nr MINT condition

Vinyl in Nr MINT condition

Fairport Convention are a British folk rock band, formed in 1967 by guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol, bassist Ashley Hutchings and drummer Shaun Frater (with Frater replaced by Martin Lamble after their first gig.) They started out heavily influenced by American folk rock, with a setlist dominated by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs and a sound that earned them the nickname “the British Jefferson Airplane”. Vocalists Judy Dyble and Iain Matthews joined them before the recording of their self-titled debut in 1968; afterwards, Dyble was replaced by Sandy Denny, with Matthews later leaving during the recording of their third album.

Denny began steering the group towards traditional British music for their next two albums, What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking (both 1969); the latter featured fiddler Dave “Swarb” Swarbrick, most notably on the song “A Sailor’s Life”, which laid the groundwork for British folk rock by being the first time a traditional British song was combined with a rock beat. Shortly before the album’s release, a crash on the M1 motorway killed Lamble and Jeannie Franklyn, Thompson’s then-girlfriend; this resulted in the group retiring most of their prior material and turning entirely towards British folk music for their seminal album Liege & Lief, released the same year. This style became the band’s focus ever since. For this album Swarbrick joined full time alongside drummer Dave Mattacks. Both Denny and Hutchings left before the year’s end; the latter replaced by Dave Pegg, who has remained the group’s sole consistent member to this day; Thompson would leave after the recording of 1970’s Full House.

The 1970s saw numerous lineup changes around the core of Swarbrick and Pegg – Nicol being absent for the middle of the decade – and declining fortunes as folk music fell out of mainstream favour. Denny, whose partner Trevor Lucas had been a guitarist in the group since 1972, returned for the pop-oriented Rising for the Moon album in 1975 in a final bid to crack America; this effort failed, and after three more albums minus Denny and Lucas, the group disbanded in 1979. They played a farewell concert in the village of Cropredy, Oxfordshire, where they had held small concerts since 1976, and this marked the beginning of the Cropredy Festival (since 2005 known as Fairport’s Cropredy Convention) which has become the largest folk festival in Britain, with annual attendances of 20,000.

The band was reformed by Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks in 1985, joined by Maartin Allcock (guitar, vocals) and Ric Sanders (fiddle, keyboards), and they have remained active since. Allcock was replaced by Chris Leslie in 1996, and Gerry Conwayreplaced Mattacks in 1998, with this lineup remaining unchanged since and marking the longest-lasting of the group’s history. Their 28th studio album, 50:50@50, released to mark their 50th anniversary, was released in 2017, and they continue to headline Cropredy each year.

Despite little mainstream success – their only top 40 single being “Si Tu Dois Partir”, a French-language cover of the Dylan song “If You Gotta Go, Go Now” from Unhalfbricking – Fairport Convention remain highly influential in British folk rock and British folk in general. Liege & Lief was named the “Most Influential Folk Album of All Time” at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2006, and Pegg’s playing style, which incorporates jigs and reels into his basslines, has been imitated by many in the folk rock and folk punk genres. Additionally, many former members went on to form or join other notable groups in the genre, including Fotheringay, Steeleye Span, and the Albion Band; along with solo careers, most notably Thompson and Denny.Sandy Denny’s career ended with her death in 1978, though she is now regarded as being amongst Britain’s finest female singer-songwriters; her song “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” – recorded by Fairport on Unhalfbricking – has become a signature song for herself and the band.

Liege & Lief is the fourth album by the English rock band Fairport Convention. It is the third and final album the group released in the UK in 1969, all of which prominently feature Sandy Denny as lead female vocalist. (Denny does not appear on the group’s debut album from 1968.) It is also the very first Fairport album on which all songs have either been adapted (freely) from traditional British and Celtic folk material (e.g., Matty Groves, Tam Lin), or else are original compositions (e.g., Come All Ye, Crazy Man Michael) written and performed in a similar style. By introducing songs of this genre into the group’s repertoire, Denny, who had previously sung and recorded traditional folk songs as a solo artist, was instrumental in this transformation. Although Denny quit the band even before the album’s release, Fairport Convention has continued to the present day to make music almost exclusively within the traditional British folk idiom, and are still one of the artists most strongly associated with it.

The album was moderately successful, peaking at number 17 on the British charts during a 15-week run. It is often credited, though the claim is sometimes disputed, as the first major “British folk rock” album. (This term is not to be confused with American-style folk rock, which had first achieved mainstream popularity on both sides of the Atlantic with The Byrds’ early work several years prior.) The popularity of Liege & Lief did a great deal to establish the new style commercially and artistically as a distinct genre. In an audience vote at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2006, the album was voted Most Influential Folk Album of All Time.

Track listing

Side one

1. “Come All Ye” (Sandy Denny, Ashley Hutchings) – 4:55
2. “Reynardine” (traditional, arranged by Fairport) – 4:33
3. “Matty Groves” (trad., arr. Fairport) – 8:08
4. “Farewell, Farewell”^[14] (Richard Thompson) – 2:38

Side two

5. “The Deserter” (trad., arr. Fairport) – 4:10
6. Medley (trad., arr. Dave Swarbrick) – 4:00
   1. “The Lark in the Morning”
   2. “Rakish Paddy”
   3. “Foxhunters’ Jig”
   4. “Toss the Feathers”
7. “Tam Lin” (trad., arr. Swarbrick) – 7:20
8. “Crazy Man Michael” (Thompson, Swarbrick) – 4:35

Personnel

• Sandy Denny – vocals
• Dave Swarbrick – fiddle, viola
• Richard Thompson – electric & acoustic guitars, backing vocals
• Simon Nicol – electric, 6-string & 12-string acoustic guitars, backing vocals
• Ashley Hutchings – bass guitar, backing vocals
• Dave Mattacks – drums, percussion