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SLEEVE NOTES
It is one of the ironies of life that the
significance of events only becomes apparent with the passing of time.
In 1963
at the age of five as the Beatles burst onto the scene I had no idea
that the
greatest pop music ever would be created over the next few years. Nor
that it
would never be this good again! It was my good fortune to have a
brother Jon,
not that much older than me, but somehow with the good taste to spend
his
pocket money on Beatles EPs and then to play them to me.
So it was
that the pop music of the 1960s was to
provide the soundtrack to our early years but it was folk music that
was to
provide the real inspiration to my own songwriting. By the late 60s I
was spending
my own pocket money on such singles as Those Were The Days by Mary
Hopkin, The
Night They Drove Old Dixie Down by Joan Baez and Ruby Don't Take Your
Love To
Town by Kenny Rogers. All story songs with something to say.
My mother was a big fan of Joan Baez and Julie
Felix and sang some of their songs accompanying herself on a Spanish
guitar. I
remember lying on my parent’s bed strumming the open strings of this
guitar,
loving the sound and longing for the day when my hands would be strong
enough
to play the chords. When I was eleven my brother Jon and I both took up
playing
Mum’s guitar and had a rota for its use until we were able to get our
own
instruments as birthday presents.
I loved my
mother’s Joan Baez records and was
especially attracted to the poetic imagery in her covers of Bob Dylan
songs
although I was too young to make much sense of it. Don’t Think Twice
was
one of the first that I learnt to play. My first public appearance was
with my
mother at a party in Cambridge when she sang Julie Felix’s version of
Woody
Guthrie’s Plane Crash At Los Gatos. Jon and I played along on
our
guitars.
In 1971 I
was gven a Christmas present of Simon
& Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits. The quality of the songwriting and the
performance was
a revelation to me. Paul Simon became my favourite singer/songwriter
and
remains so to this day. The Boxer is from this album and Duncan
is from Paul Simon’s 1971 solo album.
1973 was
the year of a life changing experience.
Jon decided that we should go to the Cambridge Folk Festival and we
paid £2.25
each for our full weekend tickets. Steeleye Span were headliners and I
later
became a big fan but at that time it was the singer/songwriters and guitarists who
grabbed
my attention. I loved the idea of one person alone on stage with just
an
acoustic guitar and their own stories and songs to hold the attention
of an
audience. The American Steve Goodman is still the finest solo act that
I have
ever seen and City Of New Orleans is his best known song. I
will never
forget the sound of 8,000 people singing the chorus.
On the
Saturday Jim Croce made a surprise
appearance the very week that he was number one in the USA with Bad Bad
Leroy
Brown. Sadly it was to be his only UK gig as he was killed in a plane
crash
just seven weeks later. I started playing his songs then and still do. Time
In A Bottle and Operator are two of his most successful
songs and
great favourites of mine.
The third
act that made a major impact on me was
the British singer/songwriter Havey Andrews who at that time was in a duo
with
guitarist Graham Cooper. The following year Jon decided that we should
we
should make our debut as performers at a folk club. Along with his
friend Dave
Prentis on bass we called ourselves The Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me
Band
after the Harvey Andrews song. Our one and only appearance was at The
Anchor
pub in Cambridge at a folk night run by local group Spriguns of Tolgus.
We
played Harvey’s song plus John Prine’s Dear Abby. Jon was lead singer
and lead
guitarist while I concentrated very hard on playing all the right
chords!
Over the
next couple of years the Cambridge Folk
Festival introduced me to three of the biggest influences on my
songwriter and
guitar playing. I have learnt more from Bert Jansch than anyone else
apart from
Paul Simon. Poor Mouth is one of his own songs but he was also
an
inspirational arranger of traditional folk songs.
Jansch’s
fellow Pentangle guitarist John
Renbourn is someone I made a serious study of. I learnt his arrangement
of Willy
O’Winsbury in the mid-1970s and still enjoy it today. Many years
later I
discovered that the song had actually been created by another of my
musical
heroes Andy Irvine who put the traditional lyrics to the traditional
tune so
successfully that everyone assumed the song had always existed in this
form!
Ralph
McTell of course found fame with Streets
of London but there is so much more to him than this. He is one of the
finest
British singer/songwriters and an excellent guitarist. I remember his
performance
of Naomi on the main stage at Cambridge very well.
By the
late 1970s I was listening to a lot of
Celtic music from groups such as Clannad and The Chieftains, I had
added Gordon
Giltrap to my list of guitarists to study and was enjoying American
singer/songwriters such as Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Jackson
Browne whose
song For A Dancer closes this album.
Of course,
there are many other songwriters and
musicians I owe a lot to but these have been the most significant. I
have had
the pleasure of meeting some of them over the years. I opened for Bert
Jansch
at the Cambridge Folk Club, and for John Renbourn and Jacqui McShee in
Bedford.
I booked Harvey Andrews for my own gig, Acoustic Routes, and awarded
myself the
honour of being the support act. I bumped into Ralph McTell at Cromer’s
Folk On
The Pier festival once and had just enough time to tell him that he had
been a
major influence on me as both a songwriter and guitarist.
Bert
Jansch, John Renbourn, Steve Goodman and
Jim Croce are all gone now but I hope their music will live on for many
years.
In creating these recordings I have tried to remain faithfull to the
spirit of
the original versions while adding something of my own to each one. I
hope you
enjoy it.
Bernard
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