Features: Roll On Ruby
Fairport at 40, Nigel Schofield looks back

It's forty years since Fairport first convened at a now legendary gig, a Mass Conversion, in North London (writes Nigel Schofield).

However, it would be inaccurate to say that they've "been together now for forty years....and it don't seem a day too long" because of the original band, only Simon Nicol remains – the man after whose family home the band was named – and even he took time out.

In fact, there wasn't a truly consistent line-up of Fairport until years after the band officially broke up. But, as Simon has pointed out, Fairport Convention works more like a football team or a Northern Brass Band; the elements may change completely but the concept and the spirit remain. In this respect there is nothing else like them in popular music.

When Fairport Convention was first formed, it represented the culmination of a series of groups which Ashley Hutchings created, sometimes on a one-off basis, to suit particular circumstances. With a troupe of hand-picked musicians he felt he had created a line-up capable of performing a wide-range of music, genre-hopping with confidence and dexterity.

In its first two years, Fairport played everything from pop to heavy rock, blues to ballads, original material to songs by then-unknown singer songwriters, and, of course, electric folk. It's an ethos to which they have remained true, one of several Convention constants. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in their ability to transmute into the houseband par excellence when backing guests at Cropredy: over the years we've heard them play with total conviction traditional folk, glam rock, punk, rock'n'roll, opera, heavy metal, new wave, skiffle and much more.

From the outset, the comings, goings and returnings which became a Fairport hallmark had already begun. They swapped drummers after their very first gig; Judy Dyble was excused after the first LP; Iain Matthews left before the third album was completed; the list goes on.

The year 1969 was Fairport's annus mirabilis. Ashley Hutchings has likened it to winning the treble in football, a rare achievement which is unlikely to be repeated but which establishes importance and significance forever. Their line-up was enhanced by two respected figures from the folk scene and two of Britain's finest songwriters honed their talents within the band. They'd also invented a new genre – British folk rock. (2006 saw the 1969 album Liege And Leif recognised as "the most influential folk album of all time.")

On a more personal level, 1969 was also the year I first saw Fairport play live. The band was on one of its very first visits up North (although as Simon pointed out at the launch of the Fairport UnConventional box set, if I had turned up a week earlier I might also have seen them because they made the journey up the M1 a week too early thanks to confusion about the date of the gig).

I was an immediate convert and am proud to say I have remained a fan ever since.

Through the 1970s, Fairport survived changes in musical tastes –- glam rock, disco, punk, new wave and so on. There were ups and downs, including two albums made when the band itself had virtually ceased to exist. By the end of the decade, Fairport, by then a four-piece, decided to call it a day. The university and rock club circuits which had been their main source of work had gradually died away.

If Fairport had ended in 1980, they would have left a legacy to be proud of – classic albums, essential tracks gracing their weaker albums, and gigs which remained in the memory. It's those live performances which stand out: the Full House tour where the set began with the words "Side one, track one" and we enjoyed the delights of the combined talents of Swabrick and Thompson; the ambitious staging of Babbacombe Lee; the Rising For The Moon tour with Sandy and Trevor ("What do you want next, something new, a bit of rock'n'roll, a folksong or a Richard Thompson song?") and, though it is often overlooked, the Farewell tour with its setlist that cherry-picked from the best of the band's dozen or so years.

But, as the oft-repeated music mag headline used to blare, they were indeed 'Phoenix Fairport'. A small scale final gig developed into an annual reunion. It became a reunion for the band, all of whose surviving members have at some point rejoined for Cropredy: but more importantly it was a reunion for more and more fans. Curiously, with no tours, no broadcasts and no new albums apart from cassette-only souvenirs of the Cropredy concerts, Fairport increased its fanbase. The Cropredy reunions eventually spawned short winter tours, which grew in length and range. Demand required a new album even though there was no permanent Fairport at the time.

Suddenly it seemed worth creating a full-time band again. This featured for the first time on the all-instrumental album Expletive Delighted. The new five-piece Fairport set a remarkable record for consistency by remaining together for eleven years. Touring took them all over Britain and Europe, to the Far East, Australia and America. Audiences included long-term fans of the band, folkies (including those who had roundly condemned those pioneering explorations of folk-rock) and new recruits, many of whom were younger than the band itself.

Fairport even anticipated the fashion for 'unplugged' music by creating Fairport Acoustic Convention, perhaps the most obvious example of the band's flexibility.

In 1997, Chris Leslie joined the band: this year, he celebrates a decade as a full time Fairport member. Previously, Chris had worked with the band in various contexts since 1978. He was a fan and a folkie as much as a new recruit.

Chris's arrival changed the band in several ways: for the first time, Fairport featured twin fiddles on stage; once more they had a first-rate songwriter within the band; and Simon no longer had the burden of being the band's only vocalist. In fact, the contrast in their voices increased the range of what Fairport could do, especially in terms of reviving the back catalogue.

The current line-up has existed since March 1998, when Gerry Conway – who had always been on the fringes of Fairport activity since sitting in with them as a member of Eclection way back in 1968 – replaced Dave Mattacks. More recently, Dave Pegg's personal circumstances have led to changes including new management arrangements and a new record company.

So here we are, forty years on. Fairport has been part of our lives for most of our time on earth. Despite being ever-changing, they are a constant. Unlike many other long-running bands, they have never got too big for their boots, turned into their own tribute band, sold out to the chicken-in-a-basket circuit, gone with the flow, or descended into unfortunate self-parody.

Fairport Convention was born when the vinyl single was still the main music format, when the term 'rock music' had not been invented, when Radio One still seemed wonderful and the only radio came from the BBC. John Peel, a great supporter of Fairport from the outset, shortly before his death described Fairport as "one of the genuinely reliable things in a changing world."

Fairport is forty this year. Happy Anniversary! Now Be Thankful.

© Nigel Schofield

Nigel's in-depth history of Fairport's first 35 Years is available as part of the Fairport UnConventional boxset on Free Reed Records.