95 f
The Curse Of fRoots Put an artist on the front of this magazine and
they sometimes vanish without trace. Whatever did happen to The Equation? They don’t want to talk about it, but apparently the individual parts have done quite well, reckons Colin Irwin…
A
h, the ebullience of youth… Lady Coxson’s Equation inter- view from the last century is quite something. Not only is it quite prescient in the con-
text of the music scene at the time, it reveals some startling long-forgotten gems of triv. Like, did Sam Lakeman real- ly hero-worship Howard Jones, very pos- sibly the naffest pop star in an era that has dined out since on its reputation for hilarious naffness?
And, who remembers that Kate Rusby appeared on a Battlefield Band album? Or indeed played fiddle? Or that she and Kathryn Roberts were in a dance side together? And the Lakeman boys made their professional debut on… wait for it… Saturday Superstore?!
You have to laugh at some of the things that came out of their mouths too… “There isn’t a lot of difference between what E17 do in a photo studio and what we do.” And “fourteen- and fif- teen-year-olds passing Folk Roots in WHSmiths will say ‘What’s that?’” Indeed, they’re more likely to see a pig flying past the window than a copy of this magazine in WHSmiths. And there’s “It’s not designed to scare the shit out of Fred Blog- gs from East Anglia.” Well, we asked Fred Bloggs from East Anglia and he says he’s been traumatised ever since.
It’s true that the year of our lord nine- teen-ninety-five was a very different coun- try. I mean, they had people in the charts called Zig & Zag, Corona and Scatman John, Riverdance reigned supreme, the Britpop wars were detonating, Eric Can- tona was kung-fu kicking fans, Julie Goodyear left Corrie, Blackburn Rovers won the league title and Jolly Johnny Major was Prime Minister.
And, as Sarah’s interview implies and the band themselves – if not Fred Bloggs from Norfolk – were happy to address, youth was regarded as a bit of a novelty among British folkies. Indeed, great excite- ment surrounded the suggestion that any- one under the age of fifty-seven might have a passing interest in folk music, let alone that young things were up-and-at- ’em playing it.
So in a reckless leap of faith, the ever- bold denizens of Folk Roots decided to go gung-ho into this brave new world of “passionate ambition” offered by Sean Lakeman, his little brothers Sam (the acid jazz fan) and Seth, and their Yorkie chums Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts, and offered up the cover. Which, clearly, they grabbed with both hands. We can’t imag- ine why they acquired the nickname the folk brat pack…
So what happened then? Funny, you should ask that…
We asked too, but for reasons unex- plained, the band members seem to have made a pact not to talk about The Equa- tion (or even just Equation, as they came to be known) and declined our invitation to have a nice chat and a bit of a laugh about those days, maybe give the big, bad record industry a kicking and celebrate their considerable subsequent individual triumphs as they slowly emerged from the band to become key figures in the modern British folk scene.
A nice story, we thought, but they did-
n’t want to talk about it. Boo! Hey ho, we’ll tell it anyway…
What happened was a man called
Geoff Travis came to see them. A hugely respected music industry figure, Geoff’s career began with a small record shop – Rough Trade – in Ladbroke Grove, London in 1976. It gradually spawned other shops before evolving, a couple of years later, into an indie record label that quickly established an enviable reputation for championing influential alternative music, including Cabaret Voltaire, Scritti Politti, Robert Wyatt and The Smiths.
There were many winds in the road
along the way, one of which involved Travis and Rough Trade compadre Jean- nette Lee (one-time manager of Public Image Limited) setting up a new label, Blanco Y Negro – a subsidiary of the giant Warner Brothers empire – releasing records by the likes of Everything But The Girl, Jesus & Mary Chain, Dream Academy and Catatonia.
Rough Trade’s Jeannette Lee and Geoff Travis. “I thought we could make a good record…”
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