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tom, it’s uninteresting, like today. In the mid-’60s, everything was interesting. There was a story that The Who appeared on the doorstep of the Bluebell in Hull after their gig, saying “When are the Watersons on?” Maybe that’s beginning to happen again.
You’ve now spent about twenty-five years, with a few breaks, working as a soloist, travelling around performing much the same area of music, to great acclaim. Where do you go from here? Do you ever wonder how long you can keep doing this before, say, the travelling final- ly becomes too much of a strain?
Oh yes, frequently. But it’s what I do. I occasionally try and do something differ- ent, but I find I’m not terribly good at it. If I’m not on the road for any length of time, my wheels don’t function. I once took two months off and I nearly went crazy! The first month was wonderful, but the second was a bore. I do what I do on the road, my wheels are oiled, I start doing new materi- al and working on it. I get fussier about songs as I get older; my rejection rate has been alarming – going to the trouble of learning songs, working them out, think- ing them through to the point of perform- ing them, then putting them aside after three or four tries. But my love for it has certainly not diminished over the years. In fact it has grown.
I’m sure it’s said to you, “Oh, these old tra- ditional songs are irrelevant to modern times.” Do you ever worry that it’s getting increasingly difficult to make people realise that an old song is still relevant?
The only thing that upsets me is singing to an audience of people who I think are basically intelligent, and seeing them shut their minds off to it, just because folk song is very uncool to a part of society, right and left, but the left is what interests me. I think folk song is very important politically because what’s hap- pening now is very similar to what was happening in Germany in the ’30s. It’s very important that the left keeps its hands on folk music, on people’s culture – that this body of music, this culture, shouldn’t get co-opted by the right. It was a catastrophe for Germany, they’re only just getting the nerve up to sing the songs again. I cannot imagine how awful it would be if the right took over and, God help us, there are signs. Signs in letting things slide – that was the great sin of the German people in the ’30s, they let it slide, they thought “Oh, it’ll just go away, let things be, keep your nose clean.” There’s a lot of “keep your nose clean” around at the moment.
I’m constantly reminded of Bruce Cock- burn’s classic line, “The trouble with nor- mal is it always gets worse.” What is acceptable this year was unacceptable last, which means that this year’s unac- ceptable is OK next.
That’s right! And my view is that folk songs are teaching songs, learning songs, they don’t approach things direct, they come in through the side door. And my view is that to reject them would be to drive them into the hands of the right.
Your singing style has changed quite a lot over the records you’ve made. Is there any
period when, looking back, you dislike what you were doing?
Yes. The period when I actually believed that what I was doing was impor- tant. I started really overdoing it and what was style became mannerism. It took a long time to heave my way out of that, and I’m not even sure that I’ve succeeded entirely now. But it all started around the time of Shearwater – I quite enjoy that, but there are the beginnings of disaster on it. It goes into Sweet Wivelsfield, and there are a couple of things on there that, when I hear them, I really wish I was dead. And it leaks onto Battle Of The Field – there are moments on that when I wish I could hide somewhere. At the time, I definitely thought this was Art. Very pompous and self-indulgent. I got a rude shock in the studio when making Sweet Wivelsfield. I’d sung what I thought was an astounding take of John Barleycorn, and went up into the box to listen to it. They played it back and I thought they were taking the piss out of me. I thought they’d slowed it down, or played it backwards or some- thing, just for a joke. Then I realised that it was me, and nobody else thought any- thing much was wrong – they were used to hearing me. I just went downstairs into the corner, incredibly confused, and had to do an enormous gear-shift to do another take of it. Thank Christ that none of us are as newsworthy as the Troggs, or they might have kept that take. It was really traumat- ic, how appalling it was.
It’s not just folk music where it hap- pens, though. I happened to hear a really awful woman singer on one of those TV variety shows and recognised the same symptoms. Part of it comes from using bad P.A. systems, and the easiest way to get volume and intensity is to sing through your nose, so you can hear it all in your head. And when I was in Steeleye, we had a bloody good sound man. Then doing gigs on my own, I was trying to reproduce this same breadth of sound in my head, and becoming more and more swallowed up by this nonsense – after which I went into the Albion Country Band and decided I could shout the band down. Then I went to make this record and heard this colos- sally loud sound that was just appalling, garbled garbage. But it’s especially in singers who start to believe that there ‘s something special about what they’re doing. It’s dead easy to do, and bloody hard to get out of once you’ve done it.
Do you foresee ever involving yourself with a loud electric band again, with bass and drums and so forth?
Well, Brass Monkey’s pretty loud. We’ve got a bass section in the brass, and Martin Brinsford is a pretty forceful percussionist. There’s loads of rhythm and impetus there. It’s a very special kind of drumming that interests me. Martin plays that side drum in a very particular way that’s fabulous. And John Kirkpatrick has some very specific ideas about percussion in bands, which Martin can do. I think the idea of having a “rhythm section” is what has made bands boring. The sort of rhythm they do can be better done by a machine and is frequently done so on records these days, but I don’t find that perfect time interesting.
I don’t know if I’ll ever play electric guitar again. I think it’s a fabulous instru- ment, like I think the fiddle’s a fabulous instrument, or the trumpet, but the instrument that spoke to me 25 years ago was an acoustic guitar. The first Telecast- er I had with Steeleye, I put medium gauge strings on and just played like a loud acoustic guitar.
I think folk/rock was one of the worst things to happen, in the sense that it’s an invented term and people think you’ve got to graft things together. It’s much more interesting when you get a person like [Jumpleads/ Tiger Moth guitarist] Jon Moore, who turns a few ideas upside down without actually changing any- thing. Rock’n’roll is no more important than folk music. There’s a lot to be done away from shackling yet another band with a rhythm section, and the fashion- able rhythm section at the moment is rock’n’roll – it used to be jazz. There’s a lot more to be done rhythmically by free- ing yourself of those shackles and getting on with the business of playing. I think people like Elvis Costello are very inter- esting, but they’re no more interesting than, say, Nic Jones. And Nic wouldn’t be made any more interesting by getting a rock’n’roll drummer. Substitute your own names. One of the blind alleys is seeing ourselves in the light of rock’n’roll. We shouldn’t try and isolate ourselves, but it’s a question of confidence.
A lot of interesting things have hap- pened, with Steeleye and Jumpleads and all the rest – with people coming in and impos- ing a few ideas on it and shaking it up, say- ing “Is it still any good?” Well, yes it is.
You’ve played for a few dances with Brass Monkey. Do you enjoy that?
Oh yes! Playing for dancing is so exhil- arating. On the last tour, we did two dances – one was at Butlins Folk Festival at Bognor and it was sensational, it was so exciting! Usually, I only get to that level of commitment when I’m singing on my own – and I was way beyond it. A fantastic experience.
I must admit that given the choice between playing for people sat in rows, or playing for dancing, I know what I’d rather do any day!
Me too. I couldn’t agree more.
As a final question, looking back over the last twenty years, do you still see a folk process working?
If the people who were listening to this music that they were just discovering twenty years ago – if they could have heard a record made in 1985, they would- n’t have believed it. How on earth do you get that from this? The fact is that in twenty years, this thing has changed. It has adapted and is adapting to an urban environment. It’s turning into a modern city music, a strand of popular music, late 20th Century. Records are a part of the process, they’ve become part of the gen- eral pool of information. It’s hopefully becoming a part of that continuous pro- cess of music, of handing music on, not through acceptable media and big busi- ness. We are the people.
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