Dave Swarbrick first
recorded with Fairport Convention on their third album, 'Unhalfbricking'.
His mesmerising contribution was the haunting, daunting violin on 'A
Sailor's Life' behind Sandy Denny's soaring ethereal vocals.
Swarbrick's association
continued until the late Seventies, when, on his doctor's advice, he stopped
playing electric folk in order to minimalise the damage to his hearing.
Deafness is a problem that has troubled Swarb since his very earliest days
as a musican.
I met up with him in
the dressing room of The Cabbage Patch prior to a duo-appearance with Simon
Nicol. Swarb related his tale with a mixture of happiness and sadness.
PT:
Tell us what your thoughts are of Fairport Convention's late vocalist Sandy
Denny as a singer.
DS: I don't think my
opinion of her as a singer has altered at all. If anything the passing of
the years and the lack of other female singers has really made her stand out
even more. She's even more missed now.
And as
a person?
As a person I loved her.
She was wonderful. But she could be exasperating. Everybody was... I was
exasperating. As I get older I wish she'd been around as long so that she
could have learned as much about life as I have. She'd certainly be a lot
happier now, I think. At the time, I thought she was maybe destined to get
more unhappy as the days went by. Now, looking back on it, I think if she
could have got over it she could have been great in middle-age and beyond.
Why do
you think that?
More understanding is
gained as you get older. And I certainly wished that I'd had more
understanding then. Those were wonderful times, you know, but they were hard
times - people were hard. That's the way everything was then with business.
It's a lot nicer now. A lot nicer to be older.
Life's
nicer for you now, then.
I don't go on the stage
now with the same attitude that I had then now I'm a lot older. I
understtand more about what I'm doing, and I'm a lot more lenient now with
the audience. You know what I mean.
You
seem pretty laid-back.
Well, I'm in my fifties
now and I've done one-night stands for over thirty years. You can see how
that would mellow one, can't you? It certainly has for me. These years that
I'm living now are the happiest I've ever lived in my life, without any
qualification whatsoever. I'm just having a ball, now. And it's good that
the feelings that I have now come without any of the angst of being young,
without any of the hang-ups associated with either making it or not making
it or wanting to make it or any of that.
Was it
that which was wrong back then, do you think?
I'm not saying that's
what was wrong with Sandy, but everybody was the same age. Everybody was
growing up, and it was hard. It's hard enough for a single artist, and when
you get six together it's really not easy. And it was harder for a woman
then than it is now. She had a hard time trying to be herself instead of
being what the media wanted her to be. I just think that if she could have
somehow lived through all that without any accidents befalling her she would
be having a ball now.
Simon
said that she was like an accident waiting to happen.
Yeah, she was. She
really was accident prone, they happened all the time.
You're
still cut up about Sandy's death.
I'm as cut up now almost
as the day it happened. I think of her and Trevor [Lucas, Sandy's late
husband] very regularly.
You
were actually the bigger name when you joined Fairport Convention and
recorded on 'Unhalfbricking'.
Well, I knew Joe (Boyd,
the producer) from the past. I suppose it was very different playing in a
rock band - it certainly wasn't the same as folk.
What
was it like working on what's seen as the seminal folk-rock album, 'Liege
and Leif'?
The whole thing was
remarkably relaxed, believe it or not. We all lived together in a house
prior to that. Very relaxed. I don't remember an awful lot about it now. It
was over twenty years ago!
How
about the other personalities in Fairport Convention besides Sandy Denny -
Richard Thompson for example.
I suppose like everybody
else, people's personalities were being forged. Richard was always very
self-effacing. I think most of that was him being shy as well. He's not so
shy now. I think everybody has improved with age - age has done everybody a
service.
'Full
House' is reckoned to be the band's best period by members of the band
itself.
You can't say it's the
best period. It's the memories and the fun we had. We were mad. Always mad.
We've had some wonderful times will all the different line-ups. You'd have
to ask my bank manager which was the best.
Can
you think of any examples of that craziness?
Yes, but none of them
printable.
What
about the lorry smashing into your bedroom, is that a true story?
That happened. That
actually happened. I'll tell you something weirder than that, though. The
day before that happened we'd had a pay out. It was the first real cheque of
any size that any of us had ever had. It was the first cheque of any size
that I'd had in all my life. Now, I've always been into antique shops. Still
am, but even more so then if that's possible. I used to buy antiques left,
right and centre, but with no money! And I had this cheque. So I went
straight out and amongst all the things I bought - of course, I spent all
the money - amongst all this stuff was a brass bed. When I got it back to
the place I was staying in, it wouldn't fit where my bed normally went,
which was right in front of the window. The only place it fitted was the
opposite corner. The following morning, this effing lorry came crashing
through. And the only part of the room that wasn't completely destroyed was
the corner where the brass bed was. If I'd have been in the old bed in front
of the window, if I'd kept the cheque and been a miser, I would have been
killed. How about that?
[after
a suitable period of digestion] You joined an acoustic band called
Whippersnapper after you left Fairport.
I'm not with them any
more - they're still going though.
The
reason for leaving though was partly because of your hearing problems - how
is your hearing now?
It's better. A lot
better. I suppose in the intervening years I've only played electrically
three or four times, and only once at volume. So my ears are a lot better.
I've still got problems, but they're a lot, lot better. I was told not to
play electric any more, that my hearing would deteriorate for as long as I
played electric. Going acoustic has stabilised them - they're painful
sometimes, but not too bad.
You
were involved in the Cropredy Festival which celebrated Fairport's 25th
anniversary.
Oh yeah. The most
enjoyable aspect of that Cropredy was the warm-up gigs. There was one at the
Mill in Banbury.
What
does Fairport mean to you, now and in the past?
Now it's a chapter of my
life. It's a big chapter and it overhangs a lot of what I do now. I very
rarely go to a place to play my music without meeting Fairport fans. And the
nature of the beast means they come up and let you know. I think that's
good. There was a time a few years back when it wasn't so good... when I saw
Fairport then they were fat-bellied drunkards. But they seem to have gone
now, and there's a new generation. A nicer type of person altogether.
Finally, let's have your thoughts on unusual time signatures in English
traditional music.
If you love English
music and traditional music, sooner or later you're going to come up against
unusual time signatures. So many of them have great time signatures. It's an
aspect of English traditional music, and it's one of its most charming ones.
That's what I love about it. We do one called 'Oh Dear Oh'. It's usually
done unaccompanied. Martin [Carthy] and myself put that into 7. That's a
great rhythm to play, very natural. Eastern European music is much plainer
music. If you're standing by listening to it when they clap you notice it.
They don't clap like fuckin' seals - they really synchronise. It makes it
much more pleasurable.
And
with that, Dave Swarbrick received his call to the stage for his duo spot
with Simon Nicol. Our thanks to them both for such fascinating interviews...
Interview by Mick Donovan. (c) Terrascope Online. Originally published in
Ptolemaic Terrascope issue 17, July 1994
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