TalkAwhile - The Folk Corporation Forum

With the band celebrating 40 years of existence I'm a little surprised that I haven't read anywhere about a larger biography of the band being in preparation somewhere. Having just reread  "The Woodworm Years" I find an urgent need for a more in-depth biography of the band that also goes up to today. In another thread Fairport was named "the most boxed band" but while Sandy, Richard and Ashley have been the topic for rather substantial biographies , I only have the 1982 "Meet On The Ledge" (does the paperback edition from 1997 add anything to the original edition btw?), "The Woodworm Era" and David Hughes "The Fairport Tour" as biographies. I also have Kingsley Abbott's book, whose contents could be a good kick-off to a new biog.Does anyone know if a fat, rich, 300-page FC-biography is being written at this very moment so I can look forward to a such, together with sound and vision souvenirs from this Summer's Cropredy?

The 1997 version of Meet On The Ledge has a little bit of extra writing, but not much.  It remains a very basic and not-so-in-depth summary of the band's career up to that point.  Nice to have, but not that satisfying overall IMO.

Jules

Agreed, t'would be excellent...

Are there any authors on Taw who could be persuaded?

Has someone done a book with Peggy? Or was that just for the box?

Blimey! I'm talking music!

To be brutally frank, if no-one did this, even for their 40th year, it points to there not being a suffiently large market for it.

Sad, but true.

That´s what I feared! :(

I bet Maart would do it. There's at least 10,000 sales just at Cropredy, and he does seem to know everything about FC  ;)

If there was a profit in it, he'd surely have already done it.

To elucidate on my previous reply:

As demonstrated with his songbooks, Maart has a good commercial head on his shoulders and, as you say Keith, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of Fairport, if anyone was to do such a tome it could well be him. But given that "Festival Folk" took about a year to sell 1500 copies, I think your idea that 10,000 would sell in one fell swoop at Croppers is a tad fanciful and would represent a huge financial risk just in terms of investment in the printing.  Just look at how hard Peggy has had to push Box'o'Peggs, for another example of  a limited marketplace in this area.

It'd be interesting to know how many albums Fairport sell these days, even the deluxe 2CD version of L&L.

Obviously Fairport are a viable financial concern, but as has been said more than once by Simon et al (and I may be paraphrasing a bit here) "all it takes is one financially bad Cropredy to never have another one ever again", so there's obviously a balance to be made.

ill bet the latest version of l&l sold poorly as the extras have all been out there legally and otherwise for donkeys years
thers been 2 fc biogs so far one covwering the early years and that poor effort that covered some of the woodworm years, what would a new version tell us that we dont all know?

Why all the fiddle players wear baseball caps?

sad, innit

It's just to cover up the bald patches.

Ya think?

I think using "Festival Folk" as an example is a bit of a red herring... It's a book about the people who attend Festivals, not about the music, musicians or anything more interesting.  I only bought it as I knew a couple of people in the photos and it was for charity.  Otherwise, it isn't anything really of interest.

I think an updated Fairport book would be much more interesting, even if it is only taking Patrick H's book and continuing it.

Isn't part of the problem that a book about a bunch of 20 somethings, fired up by a wonderful idea, suffering tragedy, acclaim and breakups is a damn fine story.

A story about a bunch of 40 somethings having the occasional tiff whilst being on a hamsterwheel of touring and recording isn't.

Just a thought.

Jackdaw

Oh for sure, the first 10 years of the Fairport story is still going to be the most interesting material.  But it's the same with every major artist of that generation.  200 pages on the first 10 years and just another 100 on the next 30.

Jules

Speaking for myself, the first 10 years have been told to death. Far more fascinating to me would be an in depth tale of how they went from "has-beens" in 1979 to the viable, energetic organization they are now. Now THAT'S a story...

I don't know whether Chris Pegg would do a sort of biography/story of Cropredy. Like a kinda memoir. Unless this has already been done...

Isn't that what The Woodworm Years is?  Out of date now of course, mind...

The CD? I was thinking more a lit'rary project. Or is there a book I don't know about? (Very possible.)

The Book.

THE WOODWORM ERA - THE STORY OF TODAY'S FAIRPORT CONVENTION
by Fred Redwood and Martin Woodward August 1995
Published 1995 by: Jeneva Publishing, P.O. Box 5918, Thatcham, Berkshire RG18 9YY
Price £8.95
ISBN: 0 95 25860 0 2

"The Woodworm Era" is to my mind, a rather shallow account of the band and the festival up to 1995. Not intended to be nothing but a rather light and quick description of new members and the development of the festival, a biography to me is much more in depth.Something which  Humphries "Meet On The Ledge" is to a large extent. I was hoping for a more "warts-and-all" (=having also a critical outlook and not avoiding the less nicer side of the truth) type of biography, to summarize the bands 40 years.
But "The Woodworm Era" is a pleasant 100+ pages read, as pleasant in tone and attitude as the band.  :D

That won't appear, if at all, until the band cease to be.

Says who?

Use your brains.....

Who's going to spill any beans at the present time?
Anyone printing such a thing would be ostracised immediately by anyone associated.....

Plenty of biographies are written without the active involvement of those being written about.  I don't understand your point at all...

Read the quote.
Those in the know about 'warts-and-all' are friends of FC. Which of them is going to make them completely fall out with them? Name one...

Yep I think Chris has a good point here. Friends won't do it and music journalists aren't goin to touch it cos it isn't now enough.

Why does everything have to be written down anyway?

I'm waiting for Peggy or Simon's auto-biography. Having said that, Ric, Chris or Gerry's auto-biography could aslo be evry interesting, for different reasons.

Might sell a few dozen copies (Simon's slightly more)....not enough to invest the time, methinks.

But yes, I'd love them to write them too.

I might have misunderstood the phrase "warts and all" .I was thinking along the lines that á biography described like that, writes about and shows not only all the positive things, in an idolising and uncritical way, but also shows some of the drawbacks and maybe mistakes. I was more thinking of all our simple human failures, that might effect our doings. I'm not interested in anything unpleasant or revealing things that might hurt someone. But a sound, critical writing, I think, is more rewarding read than the totally uncritical one. Like we are here  :). I find the criticism here to be honest and constructive.

I hope that in spite of the language barrier, I've made my point understandable!

Depends how it is written. Sandy's biography tried to expose some warts and no-one appeared to come out of it at all well as a result. There is enough trashing of reputations in the newspapers (not that I read them but rely on placards or reading over people's shoulders in the train) of so-called celebs, without trying to write 'interesting' stuff about a unique band who are actually normal human beings and whom many on this board talk to at/after gigs, in The Field etc.

Warts and all is as bad as 'kiss and tell' c**p.  

Thanks! I will try to order a copy.

Martin Woodward was a sometime member of this board, and still resides on the RT email list.

10 years ago Walter Heger wrote a history of Fairport Convention, published on Star Cluster Verlag, 410 pages. But it is in German.
Does somebody want to translate it?

http://shop.starclustermusic.de/gbindex.html?d_228.htm

Nein.

 ;D

Jules

Wasn't Folkie going to take a look at this?

I know she's been busy with studying lately though.

Cheers

Nick

I might be interested in this, Johanna. I'd have to take a look at the book first to see whether it's worth doing. There's unlikely to be much profit to be made for anyone, but if half of its 400 pages is given over to discography (which someone else could update) it may not involve such a huge commitment of time on my part.

I think that an entirely new book on Fairport needs writing (using all previous books including Unscrapbooking as reference only.) There is such a wealth of material on this site that could add real meat into the Fairport story - It could become the Music world's equivalent of Fuller's scholarly work on Picasso (It is thought that he may not live to finish his series of books so if you are under 30 and want to write the Fairport epic for the rest of us please start now.)

I think there are plenty of opportunities for a Fairport book. It doesn't have to be a conventional 'this-happened-and-that-happened-and-then-they-all-went-down-the-pub'. I've often thought that a book that uses the Winter Tour as it's framework and jumping off point could explore the band's history in an interesting and entertaining way. Linear narratives are so passe....

 ;)

rob

Passe, yes, but making a book that is accessible to newbies and old fans alike is a difficult feat.

It'd probably have to be flashback-oriented. Hmm. Hmmm....

By placing the historical stuff in the context of the current tour, it ought to be possible to get and keep the attention of both groups, I'd have thought...

rob

And the opening line would be.......? :D

"Simon had never been nervous travelling in the van..."

Someone just IM'd me to say this was not a funny joke. But it wasn't meant as a joke. The seminal event of the early Fairport was the crash, and if the theme of the book was about the tour, it would serve as an introduction to that event.

If anyone remains offended, I've no worries about this being deleted.

A long time ago in a church hall far far away....

I'll get me coat

Once upon a time there were five struggling musicians ... but I took them away from all that. My name is Joe Boyd