I


T WAS A SPRING MORNING Saturday in Peckham, south east London, and there was that rare wonderful feeling of not having to do


anything at all for the rest of the day. ‘Lord And Master’ by Heron melted out of the speakers of the spillage-stained portable CD player in our kitchen.


“See the waters drifting by, on a winter’s day in the cold,” whispers Tony Pook, lead singer of this short-lived and obscure band from the early ’70s, who recorded their debut album in a field in Berkshire. The field had cows in it. “I am the lover of everything, and I walk with a friend of the trees.”


To an acoustic guitar, mandolin and accordion accompaniment Tony Pook creates a gentle vision of a rustic, peaceful Britain. ‘Lord And Master’ is redolent of hedgerows and muddy fields, of dappled sunlight on a forest floor. You can hear birdsong in the background, and at one point what sounds like a tractor. The words speak of being at one with the land, of melting into the eternity of nature. It makes you think about the mysteries of British life, and it makes you want to be in the countryside, preferably with a jug of


ale, sitting in the shade of an oak tree beside a flaxen-haired English rose, the laces of her bodice slightly loosened. The 19th century French historian Hippolyte Taine claimed that the first music of England is the patter of rain on oak tree.


“If William Blake could see angels in the trees then I don’t see why we shouldn’t hear the scrambling of


woodland creatures in our privet hedge.”


Listening to Heron, you know what he means.


Our house is a modern semi in one of London’s less bucolic neighbourhoods, and sits in the shade not of an oak tree but a


large brick wall with broken glass along the top. The transformative power of ‘Lord And Master’ is such that the ancient spirit of Albion soaked through the house that morning. Music twinned with imagination has a transcendent quality. If William Blake could see angels in the trees of Peckham Rye then I don’t see why we shouldn’t hear the scrambling of woodland creatures in our privet hedge, even if it was only the rustleof crisp packets being stuffed into it by the boys from the school across the road.


Britishness an idea, a feeling, a corner of the imagination – is something that everyone from Ralph Vaughan Williams to The Libertines have tried to capture, but nobody did it better than a trio of obscure folk-rock bands from the early ’70s. The afore-mentioned Heron; a Cornwall-based trio led by Incredible String Band co- founder Clive Palmer called COB, and a teenage duo from Nuneaton called Fresh Maggots captured the essence of this small island in a way that, like the place itself, is not overt.


All three bands started out with great hopes that, in true British style, were


Heron, in a field of their own. 24


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