Origins Bassist
Ashley Hutchings met guitarist
Simon Nicol in North London in 1966 when they both played in the Ethnic Shuffle Orchestra. They rehearsed on the floor above Nicol's father's medical practice in a house called "Fairport" in Muswell Hill – on the same street where Ray and Dave Davies of
the Kinks grew up. The house lent its name to the group they formed together as Fairport Convention in 1967 with
Richard Thompson on guitar and Shaun Frater on drums. After their initial performance at St Michael's Church Hall in
Golders Green on 27 May 1967, they had their first of many line-up changes as one member of the audience, drummer
Martin Lamble, convinced the band that he could do a better job than Frater and replaced him. They soon added a female singer,
Judy Dyble, which gave them a distinctive sound among the many London bands of the period.
1967–1969: The first three albums Fairport Convention were soon playing regularly at underground venues such as
UFO and The Electric Garden, which later became the
Middle Earth club. After only a few months, they caught the attention of manager
Joe Boyd who secured them a contract with
Polydor Records. Boyd suggested they augment the line-up with another male vocalist. Singer
Iain Matthews (then known as Ian MacDonald) joined the band, and their first album,
Fairport Convention, was recorded in late 1967 and released in June 1968. At this early stage Fairport looked to
North American folk and
folk rock acts such as
Joni Mitchell,
Bob Dylan, and
The Byrds for material and inspiration. The name "Fairport Convention" and the use of two lead vocalists led many new listeners to believe that they were an American act, earning them the nickname 'the British
Jefferson Airplane' during this period. Fairport Convention played at the
first Isle of Wight Festival, in August 1968, when Jefferson Airplane headlined. After disappointing album sales they signed a new contract with
Island Records. Before their next recording Judy Dyble left – she described it as being "unceremoniously dumped" – and was replaced by the band with
Sandy Denny, a folk singer who had previously recorded as a soloist and with
Strawbs. Denny's arrival encouraged the band to consider integrating British
folk music into what had previously been an American-influenced sound, and her distinctive voice (described by Clive James as "open space, low-volume, high-intensity") characterised the two albums which Fairport Convention would release in 1969,
What We Did on Our Holidays and
Unhalfbricking. These recordings marked the growth of much greater musicality and song-writing ability among the band. The first of these featured the Thompson-penned "
Meet on the Ledge", which became their second single and eventually the band's unofficial anthem. During the recording of
Unhalfbricking, Matthews left after having sung on only one song, eventually to form
Matthews Southern Comfort. He was not replaced; the other male members covered his vocal parts. The album featured a guest appearance by
Birmingham folk fiddler
Dave Swarbrick on a recording of "
A Sailor's Life", a traditional song brought to the band by Denny from her folk club days. The recording of this track marked an important turning point for the band, sparking an interest in traditional music in Ashley Hutchings that led him to detailed research in the
English Folk Dance and Song Society Library at
Cecil Sharp House; this theme would become the basis for their next, much more ambitious, recording project. These two albums began to gain the band wider recognition. Radio DJ
John Peel championed their music, playing their albums on his influential
BBC shows. Peel also recorded a number of sessions which were later released as the album
Heyday (1987). They enjoyed some mainstream success when they entered the singles charts with "
Si Tu Dois Partir", a French-language version of Bob Dylan's "
If You Gotta Go, Go Now". The record just missed the top twenty, but secured the band a slot on
Top of the Pops, Britain's most popular television pop music programme at the time. In 1969 four members of the band, one uncredited and three under pseudonyms, featured as backing musicians on the album
Love Chronicles by Scottish folk artist
Al Stewart.
Developing British folk rock On 12 May 1969, on the way home from a gig at
Birmingham venue
Mothers, Fairport's van crashed on the
M1 motorway.
Martin Lamble, aged only nineteen, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson's girlfriend, were killed. The rest of the band suffered injuries of varying severity. They nearly decided to disband. However, they reconvened with
Dave Mattacks taking over drumming duties and Dave Swarbrick, having made contribution to
Unhalfbricking, now joined as a full member. Boyd set the band up in a rented house in Farley Chamberlayne near
Winchester in Hampshire, where they recuperated and worked on this integration, which would result in a new sound and style manifest on their fourth album
Liege & Lief. Usually considered the highpoint of the band's long career,
Liege & Lief was a huge leap forward in concept and musicality. The album consisted of six traditional tracks and three original compositions in a similar style. The traditional tracks included two sustained epics: "
Tam Lin", which was over seven minutes in length, and "
Matty Groves", at over eight. There was a medley of four traditional tunes, arranged, and, like many of the tracks, enlivened, by Swarbrick's energetic fiddle playing. The first side was bracketed by original compositions "Come all ye" and "Farewell, Farewell", which, in addition to information on the inside of the gatefold cover on Hutchings' research, explaining English folk traditions, helped give the record the feel of a
concept album. "Farewell, Farewell" and the final track "Crazy Man Michael", also saw the full emergence of the distinctive song writing talent of Thompson that was to characterize his contributions to the band and later solo career. The distinctive sound of the album came from the use of electric instruments and Mattacks' disciplined drumming with Swarbrick's fiddle accompaniment in a surprising and powerful combination of rock with the traditional. The entire band had reached new levels of musicality, with the fluid guitar playing of Thompson and the "ethereal" vocal of Denny particularly characteristic of the sound of the album. As the reviewer from
AllMusic put it, the album was characterised by the "fusing [of] time-worn folk with electric instruments while honoring both". A few British bands had earlier experimented with playing traditional English songs on electric instruments, (including
Strawbs and
Pentangle), but Fairport Convention was the first English band to do this in a concerted and focused way. Fairport Convention's achievement was not to invent folk rock, but to create a distinctly English branch of the genre, which would develop alongside, and interact with, American inspired music, but which can also be seen as a distinctively national reaction in opposition to it.
Liege & Lief was launched with a sell-out concert in London's
Royal Festival Hall late in 1969. It reached number 17 in the UK album chart, where it spent fifteen weeks.
1970s: A time of change . Left to right: Dave Pegg, Dave Mattacks, Richard Thompson, Dave Swarbrick, Simon Nicol.|left Disagreements arose about the direction of the band in the wake of this success. Ashley Hutchings wanted to explore more traditional material and left to form two groups that would rival Fairport for significance in English folk rock:
Steeleye Span and
the Albion Band. Sandy Denny also left to found her own group
Fotheringay. Dave Pegg took over on bass guitar and has been the group's one constant ever since, in an unbroken membership of over four decades. The band made no serious attempt to replace Denny, and, although she would briefly return, the sound of the band would now be characterised by male vocals. Despite these changes the band produced another album,
Full House (1970), which was remarkably successful as a project. Like its predecessor, it combined traditional songs, including a powerful rendition of "
Sir Patrick Spens", with original compositions. The latter benefited from the writing partnership of Thompson and Swarbrick, most obviously on "Walk Awhile", which would become a concert favourite. Despite the loss of Denny the band still possessed four vocalists, including the emerging voices of Nicol and Swarbrick, whose tones would dominate the sound of this period. It was favourably reviewed in Britain and America, drawing comparisons with
the Band from
Rolling Stone magazine who declared that "Fairport Convention is better than ever". The album reached number 13 in the UK Chart and stayed in the chart for eleven weeks. In the recurring pattern, soon after the album's release Thompson left the band to pursue other projects and eventually his solo career. This left Simon Nicol as the only original member, and Dave Swarbrick emerged as the leading force in the band. In 1970 the members and their families had moved into The Angel, a former pub in
Hertfordshire, and this inspired the next album
Angel Delight (1971) the band's first to chart in the US, peaking at number 200 on the
Billboard 200 and their only top ten album in the UK. The next project was an ambitious folk-rock opera developed by Swarbrick, based on the life of
John "Babbacombe" Lee, "the man they couldn't hang" and released with the title
Babbacombe Lee (1971). The concept format, originally without clear tracks, excited considerable press interest, and it received good air play in the United States where it reached number 195. A version was produced by the BBC for TV in 1975 with narration by
Melvyn Bragg. These two albums were also notable as the first time that Fairport had recorded consecutively with the same line-up, but inevitably stability did not last; Simon Nicol left early in late 1971 to join Ashley Hutchings'
Albion Country Band, and he was soon followed by Mattacks. Only Pegg and Swarbrick remained, and the following few years have been dubbed 'Fairport confusion' as a bewildering sequence of band members came and went, but by 1973 Mattacks had returned and two former members of Sandy Denny's
Fotheringay had joined the band, Denny's Australian husband
Trevor Lucas on vocals and guitar, and American
Jerry Donahue on lead guitar. From these line-ups the band produced two studio albums:
Rosie, notable for the Swarbrick-penned title track (1973) and
Nine (1974), the ninth studio album by the band. The last of these contained writing contributions by Lucas to five of the nine tracks, which together with Donahue's country influences and outstanding guitar pyrotechnics gave the album a very distinctive feel. Denny rejoined the band in 1974, and there were considerable expectations, both artistic and commercial, placed on this line-up. Denny was featured on the album
Rising for the Moon (1975), which became the band's highest US chart album when it reached number 143 on the
Billboard 200 and the first album to reach the top hundred in the UK since
Angel Delight, reaching No. 52. Rowland, Pegg, and Swarbrick fulfilled their remaining contractual obligations to Island Records by turning what had originally been a Swarbrick solo effort into the album ''
Gottle O'Geer'' (1976) under the name 'Fairport' (as opposed to Fairport Convention) in the UK, and as 'Fairport featuring Dave Swarbrick' in the US, and with various session players and production by Simon Nicol, who subsequently rejoined the band. They then signed with Vertigo, but record sales continued to decline; after producing the first two of four albums for which they were contracted,
The Bonny Bunch of Roses (1977) and
Tipplers Tales (1978), Vertigo bought them out of their contract. It is claimed by members of the band that this was the only recording money they had seen up to that point.
1979–1985: The Cropredy era By 1979 the mainstream market for folk rock had largely disappeared, the band had no record deal, and Dave Swarbrick had been diagnosed with
tinnitus, which made loud electric gigs increasingly difficult. Fairport decided to disband. They played a farewell tour and a final outdoor concert on 4 August in
Cropredy, the Oxfordshire village where Dave and Christine Pegg lived. The finality of this occasion was mitigated by the announcement that the band would meet for a reunion. In August 1979, the band played at
Knebworth Festival in England. The headline act at both their appearances at the festival, over two consecutive Saturdays on 4 and 11 August, were
Led Zeppelin. No record company wanted to release the live recordings of the tour and concert, so the Peggs founded
Woodworm Records, which would be the major outlet for the band in the future. Members continued to take part in occasional gigs, particularly in festivals in continental Europe, and after a year they staged a reunion concert in Cropredy which became the annual
Cropredy Festival. Over the next few years, it grew rapidly and emerged as the major mechanism for sustaining the band. In August 1981, the band held their annual reunion concert at
Broughton Castle, rather than the usual Cropredy location. The concert was recorded, and released on the 1982 album
Moat on the Ledge. The Peggs continued to record and release the Cropredy concerts as 'official bootlegs'. These were supplemented by New Year's gigs in minor locations including the
Half Moon at
Putney and the
Gloucester Leisure Centre. In 1983 the magazine
Fairport Fanatics (later
Dirty Linen), was created: a testament to the continued existence of a dedicated fan base. The
Angel Delight lineup of Simon Nicol, Dave Swarbrick, Dave Pegg, and Dave Mattacks played a number of gigs in the UK in the early 80s, then toured extensively in the UK and the US in 1984 and 1985. Band alumni like Richard Thompson and Bruce Rowland would occasionally join in. The remaining members pursued their own lives and careers outside of the band. Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks had recorded and toured with
Richard and Linda Thompson at times in the 1970s, and did so again during this period, culminating in their appearance on the
Shoot Out the Lights album and tour in 1982. Bruce Rowlands gave up the music business and moved to Denmark and as a result Dave Mattacks returned as drummer for Fairport's occasional gigs. Dave Pegg was the first of several Fairporters to join
Jethro Tull which gave him well-paying steady employment. Simon Nicol had teamed up with Dave Swarbrick in a highly regarded acoustic duo, but this partnership was made difficult by Swarbrick's sudden decision to move to Scotland, where, from 1984, he began to focus on his new project
Whippersnapper. In 1985, Pegg, Nicol and Mattacks found that they all had some free time and an available studio belonging to Pegg. They decided that they needed some new material to add to the catalogue that had been suspended in 1978. As Swarbrick was unavailable, the selection of traditional tunes was more difficult than for past albums and there was a need for a replacement fiddle player and some vocals. Pegg and Nicol took over arranging duties on an instrumental medley and the band turned to sometime Albion Band members: jazz and folk violinist
Ric Sanders and singer-songwriter
Cathy Lesurf. They also had the help of ex-member Richard Thompson. Thompson and Lesurf contributed songs and took part in the recordings. Also important to the album was
Ralph McTell who contributed one song and co-wrote one track each with Nicol and Mattacks; the latter of these, "The Hiring Fair", would become a stage fixture of Fairport. The resulting album ''
Gladys' Leap'' (1985) was generally well received in the music and national press, but caused some tension with Swarbrick who refused to play any of the new material at the 1985 Cropredy Festival. Nevertheless, the decision to reform the band, without Swarbrick, was taken by the other three remaining members. Ric Sanders was invited to join, along with guitarist, composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist
Maartin Allcock. Nicol, with his developing baritone voice, took over the main share of the vocal duties. This line-up was to last eleven years, the longest period of membership stability in the band's history so far.
1986–1997: Stability The new band began a hectic schedule of performing in Britain and the world and prepared material for a new album. The result was the all-instrumental
Expletive Delighted! (1986). This showcased the virtuosity of Sanders and Allcock, but perhaps inevitably was not popular with all fans. This was followed by the recording ''
In Real Time: Live '87'' which managed to capture the energy and power of the new Fairport on stage, despite the fact that it was recorded in the studio with audience reactions dubbed on. In this period the band were playing to larger and larger audiences, both on tour and at Cropredy, and it was very productive in terms of recording. Fairport had the considerable composing and arranging skills of Allcock and, to fill the gap created by a lack of a songwriter in the band, they turned to some of the most talented available in the contemporary folk scene. The results were
Red & Gold (1989)
The Five Seasons (1990) and
Jewel in the Crown (1995), the last of which was judged "their bestselling and undoubtedly finest album in years." At this point, with Mattacks busy with other projects, the band shifted to an acoustic format for touring and released the
unplugged Old New Borrowed Blue as "Fairport Acoustic Convention" in 1996. For a while the four-piece acoustic line-up ran in parallel with the electric format. When Allcock left the band, he was replaced by
Chris Leslie on vocals,
mandolin and fiddle, who formerly worked with Swarbrick in Whippersnapper, and had a one-off stint with the band replacing Ric Sanders for 1992 Cropredy Festival. This meant that for the first time since reforming, the band had a recognized songwriter who contributed significantly to the band's output on the next album
Who Knows Where the Time Goes? (1997), particularly the rousing "John Gaudie". By the time of the 30th anniversary Festival at Cropredy in 1997, the new Fairport had been in existence for over a decade and contributed a significant chapter to the history of the band.
1998–present and
Ric Sanders of Fairport Convention on stage at
Fairport's Cropredy Convention 2005 Dave Mattacks moved to the US in 1998, and
Gerry Conway took over on drums and percussion. Fairport produced two more studio albums for Woodworm Records:
The Wood and the Wire (2000) and
XXXV (2002). Then, for
Over the Next Hill (2004) they established a new label:
Matty Grooves Records. In this period the band toured extensively in the UK, Europe, Australasia, Europe, the US and Canada, and staged a major fund raiser for Dave Swarbrick at the
Birmingham Symphony Hall. In 1998, members of the band began their association with the Breton musician
Alan Simon. Working in collaboration with numerous others, members of Fairport (predominantly Nicol and Leslie) have performed in and participated in the recordings of all Simon's rock operas, including the
Excalibur trilogy (1998, 2007, 2010) and
Anne de Bretagne (2008). 2007 was their fortieth anniversary year and they celebrated by releasing a new album,
Sense of Occasion. They performed the whole of the
Liege & Lief album live at Cropredy, since 2004 renamed Fairport's Cropredy Convention, featuring the 1969 line-up of
Dave Swarbrick,
Ashley Hutchings,
Dave Mattacks,
Simon Nicol and
Richard Thompson, with singer-songwriter
Chris While taking the place of
Sandy Denny. Footage of the festival, although not the
Liege and Lief performance, was released as part of a celebratory DVD. in August 2009|left The band's first official YouTube video appeared in April 2008. Edited from footage shot for the DVD, the nine-minute mini-documentary includes interviews with
Lulu,
Jools Holland,
Seth Lakeman,
Mike Harding, Geoff Hughes and
Frank Skinner. and Fairport Convention, 2012 In 2011 the band released a new studio album
Festival Bell, the first new album in four years. This was followed in 2012 by
Babbacombe Lee Live Again recorded live during the 2011 tour revisiting the
Babbacombe Lee album first issued in 1971. In 2012, the band also released
By Popular Request, a reworking in the studio of a number of the most popular songs in the band's repertoire (as determined by a mysterious consultation and voting process conducted by the band with its fans). the band continues to write and record music, regularly producing new studio albums, the most recent releases being 2015's
Myths and Heroes, 2017's
50:50@50 and 2020's
Shuffle and Go. The
COVID-19 pandemic impacted significantly on their ability to tour, and their 2022 tour was initially cut short after several of the touring team developed Covid. In 2022, Gerry Conway made the decision to leave the band after 24 years, and it was announced that the band would continue as a four piece. Conway did not make public that he left because he was suffering from
motor Neuron disease from which he was to die in April 2024. On the bands Winter 2023 UK Tour, they were joined by a returning Mattacks on drums and percussion who also returned for the 2024 winter tour. ==Public recognition==