Although Fairport Convention are looked on as being a folk band, the reality is that the musical backgrounds of most of the guys in the band was rock.
For me it was things like Bert Weedon and Hank Marvin. A lot of the bands I’d played with as a teenager would have been Brum-beat groups in the 60s. And then I got quite into the stuff that was coming over from America, the blues and R&B stuff.
So a lot of the early bands that I was in were very much blues-based, inspired by the sounds coming across fromAmerica. And people like the Spencer Davis Group and Cream were becoming big at the time. I was in bands with people like Steve Gibbons and John Bonham, but eventually ended up in the Ian Campbell folk group with Dave Swarbrick. He left to join Fairport Convention, and thanks to him I was asked to join after Sandy Denny and Ashley Hutchings had left after LiegeAnd Lief [1969].
The great thing about being in Fairport was that we were fusing traditional music with electronic music but, as I said, all with a rock music background. The other great thing about Fairport was that, apart from Si Du Tois Partir [a French cover of Bob Dylan’s If You Gotta Go, Go Now], we never had a hit or a massive album, which has meant we’ve pretty much been left to our own devices without outside influences sticking their oar in.
For a while, certainly around 1979, no one was interested in this music, but today, with people like Seth Lakeman attracting headlines, I think folk rock is very healthy. And of course we’ve just carried on with our own record label and Cropredy festival, and with Chris Leslie we have one of the finest writers we’ve ever worked with. We’ve had a good run at things.
Below, Dave Pegg picks his six favourite folk-rock albums.
Dave Pegg was speaking to Jerry Ewing.
