White Bicycles

by Joe Boyd

  Scientology is not designed to engender timidity. Confidence flows from the belief that you are eliminating the weak points in your personality. The group refused to contemplate the notion of failure and U went ahead full- speed. The fact that it was a disaster artistically, critically and financially failed to dent their confidence, but it hastened my search for new challenges. The Incredible String Band carried on into the ’70s with ever declining audiences and less and less interesting records. Rose escaped back into a normal life, got married and had a daughter. For a while in the ’90s, she was the girlfriend of the chairman of Aberystwyth town council and took on the role of Lady Mayoress. Dressed in the sensible tweeds befitting her status, she sat with me in the audience at an ISB reunion concert in London in 1997. Licorice disappeared somewhere in California and is presumed dead. Mike and Robin went their separate ways; both eventually left Scientology. Robin tours the world reciting bardic tales and playing the Irish harp and the fiddle. A recent reunion – including Clive – has served primarily to rekindle old feuds.

  Chapter 28

  ON A RAINY FRIDAY afternoon in August 2002, I left London and headed for Fairport Convention’s annual Cropredy Festival in Oxfordshire, an event I honour with my admiration more than my presence. There are real ale stands, a Mojo-sponsored CD stall and a cartoonist’s dream of beards and anoraks. When I arrived, the hoods were up and the face furniture dripping wet, but over 15,000 stood in the soggy pasture to hear a reunion of Fairport’s earliest line-ups. Barring occasional feuds, current and former members participate on a rotating basis, while Richard Thompson, star that he is, gets invited every year.

  That evening they played songs that hadn’t been performed since the M1 crash. Curiosity and nostalgia propelled me through the downpour to hear Ian Matthews and Judy Dyble singing with Richard Thompson, Simon Nicol and Ashley Hutchings again on ‘Time Will Show The Wiser’ and ‘Jack O’ Diamonds’. With ex-Fotheringay drummer Gerry Conway taking Martin Lamble’s seat, the understanding between the three old friends from Muswell Hill was as instinctive as it had been thirty-five years before and the originality of their take on American ‘folk-rock’ as clear that night as it had been in the summer of 1967. Hearing them through a great PA system, with every detail sparkling in the chilly air, reminded me what a wonderful group they were and what a future was lost along with their friends in the crash. After an hour exploring the first three albums, Dave Swarbrick was assisted onstage with a tank of oxygen beside his wheelchair and they started in on the music created by the new line-up in a Hampshire farmhouse that mournful summer of 1969.

  As they pondered the future that spring, the record on all their turntables was Music From Big Pink by The Band. It had thrown down a gauntlet: You want to play American music? Well, try playing something as American as this! It was a revolutionary record: their schooling in the Southern roadhouses with Ronnie Hawkins followed by their work as Dylan’s backing group meant they were at once both source and emulators. Fairport couldn’t face going back to the pre-crash repertoire and they felt Big Pink meant that a return to their trademark style wasn’t an option. They decided to pick up where ‘A Sailor’s Life’ left off and create a repertoire as English as Big Pink was American – to turn a rebuke into an inspiration.

  First they added Swarbrick, then found drummer Dave Mattacks in a ballroom dance orchestra. Mattacks’s strict-tempo schooling was a perfect foundation for their reinvention of English traditional music. He has been endlessly – and depressingly – imitated, but no folk-rock drummer has ever trumped what he conjured up in his first months with the group. Ashley Hutchings spent weeks trawling through the Cecil Sharp House archives, consulting sages like A. L. Lloyd and assembling a set of ballads that would lend themselves to Fairport’s approach. In August, after two months of rehearsal, we were in the studio, and by November Liege and Lief was out and selling better than any Fairport record before.

  Making English folk music fashionable was an extraor- dinary accomplishment, pushing against the historic diktat that nothing could be less hip. But the team didn’t stay together long enough to enjoy the acclaim. Sandy loved what they were doing but wanted to be in a band that would perform her new songs as well. She had also fallen in love with a man known for his roving eye and was reluctant to leave him unchaperoned while Fairport was on tour. When she refused to board a plane to Copenhagen for a TV appearance, the implications were clear.

  Ashley, on the other hand, had the passion of the newly converted. Traditional songs may have been old news to Sandy, but he had a vision of transforming English folk music and bringing it to a wider audience. Even with Sandy gone, he knew Richard wouldn’t want to be tied to a strict repertoire of traditional material. He persuaded Martin Carthy and Maddy Prior to join him in forming Steeleye Span. Two wings of Fairport had broken off.

  The remaining members loved the road, couldn’t wait to tour the new material and were dying to get to America. Richard and Swarb could handle the singing; all they needed was a bass player. They indulged the folkie Swarbrick when he insisted on an audition for his Birmingham mate who played stand-up bass with the Ian Campbell Group. Throwing him in at the deep end, they took ‘Mattie Groves’ and ‘Tam Lin’, with those impossible bass lines of Ashley’s, at breakneck speed. Dave Pegg blinked and tore into what Swarb had warned him to learn by heart. I watched from the doorway as Fairport’s future took shape in front of me. Pegg played everything they threw at him with a hooligan edge that Ashley could never have matched. The legendary rhythm section that would grace albums by so many different artists had just been formed.

  In 1970, Fairport toured as widely and as often as we could find bookings. On the night of their American debut at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, Linda Ronstadt cheered them from the audience. When they ran out of encores, they invited her to join them. ‘I don’t know any English songs,’ she shouted. ‘That’s OK, we know all of yours,’ said Simon. Pushed onstage, she nervously sang the first a cappella notes of ‘Silver Threads And Golden Needles’, then heard Fairport enter on cue, re-creating her arrangement perfectly. When Richard took an expert James Burton-esque solo, she almost fainted in astonishment. The set lasted another forty minutes, covering songs she had forgotten she knew. On another occasion at the Troubadour, Led Zeppelin (old Birmingham buddies of Dave Pegg) turned up and Jimmy Page and Richard jammed on R&B numbers. John Wood and I were recording the show that night and the tape reveals Plant’s vocal being louder than any of the amplifiers, Page trying to keep pace with Richard on jigs and reels and Zep manager Peter Grant at a front table cursing and abusing the waitresses.

  From the moment Sandy left the group, she and I did nothing but argue. I could get a big advance from A&M for a solo LP, but she wanted to form a group with boyfriend Trevor Lucas. Successful women in show business often have trouble maintaining relationships. Or rather, men have problems dealing with a star performer. Many women solve the problem by ending up with their lead guitarist/ producer/manager/musical director or by casting their (usually unqualified) man in one of those roles. Fotheringay, as she wanted to call the group, after Mary Queen of Scots’ prison, would be a castle built on false foundations. The money keeping everyone on salary was Sandy’s, but she made me write the contract for the egalitarian benefit of all. Blackwell, A&M and I were clear about what we wanted: a record of Sandy’s songs, sung by Sandy with Sandy’s name in big letters on the cover. (She was voted ‘best female vocalist’ in the 1971 and ’72 Melody Maker polls.) But she was determined to make Trevor her equal. The record we made includes some of her best performances: ‘The Sea’, ‘The Pond & The Stream’, ‘Winter Winds’, ‘The Banks Of The Nile’; but the rest of the album is filler.

  Fotheringay hurtled through Sandy’s advance, buying a huge PA system (nickname: ‘Stonehenge’) and a Bentley to get around in. The musicians earned higher salaries than Fairport could afford to pay themselves. Sandy was bankrolling the group without having the power to lead or the money t
o keep going much longer since she refused American tours because of her fear of flying. Her relationship with Trevor was turning her into a nervous wreck. I turned over the managerial role to Roy Guest.

  Fairport’s first all-male album, Full House, with hilarious liner notes by Richard, was far better than I could have hoped. The only cloud on the horizon was a variation of the problems appearing all over the Witchseason realm. Inexperienced musicians recording for the first time need a producer’s guidance and are grateful for it. By the fourth or fifth album, the process has been demystified and many become less willing to be told what’s good and what isn’t. With only one track usually available on the old eight-track tapes, Richard had always let me decide whether to keep or retake a guitar solo; now when I wanted to keep one, he insisted on erasing it and vice versa. Discontent stalked the land. Many of them had been seemingly successful for a few years and didn’t have much to show for it. If I was such a great manager and producer, why weren’t they rich?

  In 1970, I finished sixteen LPs: I was working myself to a frazzle. In Charlotte Street, the financial wolves were circling; we owed money in every direction and the more success we achieved, the more we seemed to spend. Break-even was a horizon that kept receding. I started thinking about radical solutions.

  Chapter 29

  IN THE LATE SIXTIES, John Sebastian’s ex-wife Lorey settled in a Hertfordshire cottage with her remarkable record collection. One evening, I brought some tapes and acetates of things I was working on plus some records I thought she wouldn’t know and we reminisced and took turns playing DJ. When I played her an advance copy of Five Leaves Left she went crazy, telling me how wonderful it was and how big a success it was going to be.

  Listening to Nick Drake led to a search for ‘Sunny Girl’, an English-language single by a Swedish outfit called the Hep-Stars. Lorey had gone to Stockholm with the Spoonful a few years earlier and someone took them to hear this local group perform their new hit, an obvious copy of Sebastian’s ‘Daydream’. She thought it was a clever tribute and she adored the lead singer, who had broken his ankle skiing and performed on crutches. Lorey gave me her extra copy of the record; she was right – the lead voice did remind me at times of both John Sebastian and Nick Drake.

  In 1969, Witchseason’s booking agency landed a deal to arrange Frank Zappa’s European tour, and I joined the Mothers of Invention for their trip to Stockholm. I was thumbing through the racks in a local record store when my eye caught a familiar name: Lorey’s Hep-Star Benny Andersson in a duet album in Swedish with Björn Ulvaeus. The record was great, full of rich melodies and harmonies. When Liege and Lief started to sell in Scandinavia, I needed a local music publisher to collect the composers’ income and help promote my artists. In other territories I relied on colleagues’ recommendations about the best sub-publishers, but for Scandinavia I looked no further than the credits on the back of the Andersson/Ulvaeus LP.

  I met Stig Anderson in the Polar Music offices in Stockholm in October 1970. He was bemused at being offered the publishing rights to artists he had barely heard of but brightened when I told him I didn’t want an advance, just a swap. I would give him Fairport, Nick Drake, Sandy Denny and John Martyn for Scandinavia and he would give me the English-language territories on Benny and Björn’s songs. He suggested I join them all for a drink at a downtown hotel that evening. After a friendly chat, Benny and Björn invited me to stick around: their girlfriends were starring in a turn-of-the-century revue in the hotel lounge, complete with top hats, high-kicking routines and old Swedish music hall songs.

  After the show, the five of us (yes, the dancers were Agnetha and Frida) went back to Benny’s flat. We spent half the night talking, drinking and playing records, mostly by obscure American soul singers. I told them they should go back to writing in English. We joked about whether or not they could ever write a song as successful as ‘Daydream’.

  Back in London, there were two pieces of paper on my desk. One was a letter from Stig Anderson confirming our reciprocal arrangement: he had checked on Fairport’s and Sandy Denny’s sales figures and was reasonably pleased with what he found. The other was a message to call Mo Ostin at the Dorchester Hotel.

  Everyone in the music business knows Mo Ostin. Once Frank Sinatra’s accountant, the legendary boss of Warner/ Reprise Records presided over the greatest company in the most wildly successful years of the recording industry. His gentle demeanour, his willingness to delegate to the ‘good ears’ that worked for him and his loyalty are legendary. He is a short man, whose wide black-framed spectacles, bald patch and benign smile make him look a little like Sergeant Bilko. I had met him on an early visit to Los Angeles and we hit it off well. He hired me for the Geoff & Maria Muldaur project and picked up John & Beverley Martyn for North America. Whenever I was in Los Angeles, I would stop by his Burbank office to say hello.

  Things got more complex when he started asking me questions about Chris Blackwell and Island Records. Warner had no European outlet then and were considering buying their way into the market. I waxed lyrical about what a great company Island was. Mo sent accountants to go over their books and when Chris balked at the first proposal, Mo went out on a limb with the Warner Brothers board and made a huge offer matching what Chris said he wanted. Blackwell’s response was ‘Let me think about it’. Think about it? Mo was beside himself. Then an interview appeared in a British trade paper where Chris explained that Philips had first option on buying Island and anyway, he wasn’t in the mood to sell. Mo seethed with quiet fury. He had learned the business from Mickey Rudin, Sinatra’s fearsome attorney, and underneath the smiling exterior, Mo was not a man to take kindly to a slight.

  It later occurred to me there was more to my Dorchester visit than his flattering offer to run the film music department in California. He gave me a schedule of upcoming projects that included Clockwork Orange and Deliverance and I asked for a few days to think it over. On the same trip he offered Chris Wright and Terry Ellis at Chrysalis their own label deal in the USA, and eventually – when Warner set up in Europe – in the UK as well. In one short visit he had removed two of Island’s sources of new artists and successful releases.

  Blackwell was away looking after Steve Winwood on Traffic’s first American tour. I found him on a snowy November morning in a hotel room in Northampton, Massachusetts, far from the headquarters of his growing empire, adding up petty cash receipts. Chris had never forgotten Millie Small and was determined to take good care of his prodigy. If he sensed what lay behind Mo’s offer, he never let on. I had to do it, he said, it was the chance of a lifetime. Never mind that it left him with a stable of artists in turmoil, all poised at crucial points in their careers. Suffering studio burn-out and terrified by the mounting bills, I was in no state to judge the situation clearly. The Incredible String Band’s devotion to Scientology and refusal to listen to my advice, coupled with my arguments with Sandy, the growing recalcitrance of Fairport and Nick’s simple concept for his next album all combined to make me feel that everyone might be happier with me out of the way. And the only certain way to balance Witchseason’s books was to sell it to Island: at least that way I could make sure everyone got paid.

  I flew to Burbank to meet Ted Ashley and John Calley, the heads of the film company. I was dazzled by the studio and the rich possibilities that seemed to open up and I buzzed with ideas about using John Cale for film scores and getting Nick to write title songs. I had done records; it was time to move on to a bigger game on a larger playing field. The contract with Stig Anderson lay unsigned on my desk; Island Music would buy my publishing company and they had their own relationships in Scandinavia. What was a deal for a few songs by some Swedish songwriters that might never be written compared with the new world beckoning in California?

  Back in London, I started arriving at Sound Techniques at ten every morning and leaving after midnight. The Fairport schism had left me another group to produce while Mike Heron’s prodigious output of songs led to a solo albu
m, and the chance to record him with John Cale, Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, Steve Winwood and Dudu Pukwana. And there were now another two female artists: not only had I taken on Nico, but a singer I had pursued in 1966 suddenly re-appeared.

  Early in my Elektra year I attended a poetry reading at the old Institute of Contemporary Arts in Dover Street. Singers were scattered through the declamatory line-up and one intrigued me. Her voice was small and delicate but the quieter she sang the more attentively the audience listened. She disappeared before I could speak to her and when I finally tracked Vashti Bunyan down, she had just signed with Andrew Oldham’s Immediate label as ‘the new Marianne Faithfull’.

  Oldham’s recordings were overproduced flops, so Vashti had headed north in a horse-drawn caravan with a man she and her previous boyfriend picked up hitch-hiking one night. She started writing songs again and remembered my interest from four years earlier. I visited their winter-quarters somewhere near Lancaster and was smitten once again with her and her music. Her new ultra-rural life and impending motherhood made her an even trickier commercial proposition than Nick Drake, but I couldn’t imagine saying no. With new Chris McGregor configurations, John and Beverley Martyn and Dr Strangely Strange, Ireland’s quirky answer to the ISB, my 1970 productions came to 16 LPs. All needed to be mixed and mastered before my January departure for LA.

  One night in December working on the second Fotheringay LP, I lost my temper after the fortieth unsuccessful take of John The Gun. Sandy and I went out and got drunk. She asked if I would stay if she broke up the group and made a solo album. I said I would take time off to produce it and if there was anything that would have tempted me to turn Warner Brothers down, it was that. The next morning Sandy rang to say she had disbanded Fotheringay: when could we start work on her new record? I said I would have to discuss it with Warner Brothers once I got there.