TalkAwhile - The Folk Corporation Forum

I was going to post this in the Fairport Album Vote thread after hendo's eloquent eulogy for the song but I figured it probably deserves its own thread.

I suspect that A Sailor's Life is a Marmite song, either loved or hated by Fairport fans depending on where they climbed on board the bus (boat?). My own journey with the song has seen me progress from one extreme to the other in my affections for it.

I found Fairport many years after their Heyday, enticed by the Richard Thompson connection, whose solo work I was aware of prior to the band's. Working backwards from my point of entry, when I came to the History album and subsequently Unhalfbricking, I found A Sailor's Life to be a painful and unlistenable squawl that for years I skipped during any play through of those albums.

I started to re-think things upon hearing the Swarbless recording on RT's Watching The Dark anthology, which was a real eye opener and gave me a way into the song. Perhaps it was the screeching fiddle I was having trouble with. I still love the Swarbless version but found that I was now able to listen to the original also, though it still did not rank amongst my Fairport favourites.

Two things changed that. The first was the majestic performance at the 1969 show at the Barbican a few years back. It was one of the most electrifying performances I have ever seen by anyone. It closed the first half of the show and brought the house down. The second was a voyage that I took up the coast of Norway and into the Arctic Circle on the postal "steamer" service that ploughs the route daily. It was winter and snow and ice covered every inch of the dramatic landscape, forming on the surface of the sea and even piling up to a depth of several inches on the ship's deck. A Sailor's Life on my Ipod formed the perfect soundtrack to this almost overwhelming but bleak spectacle and to the pace of the journey so my love for the song deepened with that experience.

For me then, the marmite qualities of the song were converted to those of a fine wine which requires time and experience from which to appreciate it. I would never direct any new listener to start with that song but it is surely some sort of pinnacle towards which they should work.

While I wouldn't go as far as to say I found it unlistenable, I have to say that story pretty much matches my experience exactly!

I'd always found it a bit dull to be honest, and would end up skipping onto the next track after a while.  Until the Barbican.  What an amazing performance!  It seems quite a long time ago now, but I can remember it as though it was yesterday.  I couldn't get up out of my seat for a good few minutes afterwards.  Now I'd describe it as 'essential Fairport'.  One of the first tracks I turn to if I come back to FC music after a bit of a break.

I also think, although it features two fantastic instrumentalists soloing, and one of the greatest vocalists, the real stars of the track are Simon, Ashley and Martin.  They have the difficult job of driving what is, at heart, a really simple piece of music across ten minutes.  And they do it splendidly.  I think it really hows off Martin's skill as a drummer.  The standard narrative of Fairport seems to cast him as 'the drummer who died' which I think really overlooks his ability as a musician.  I've always been a huge admirer of DM, but the more I listen to the early albums, the more I come to appreciate Martin's extreme talent.

I should add that possibly my biggest Fairport wish (which sadly I suspect will never be fulfilled) would be to hear a recording of one of the original live performances of this.  There's a bit in the Ashley biography where the writers talk about the band opening the set with it to a half full club that was packed by the end of the song.  I wish I could have seen the band back then, but sadly I was about 30 years too late!

I tend to prefer songs that are more structured and less built around jamming, but then I'm a huge fan of Neil Young & Crazy Horse, so that doesn't always apply.  A Sailor's Life is a milestone in the history of folk rock, but I confess that it wouldn't make my personal best-of Fairport.

Jules

I waiver between disliking it strongly and tolerating it. I don't think it does Sandy's voice justice, but I love the drumming on the original so I tend to leave it on when it comes up on random play. I don't like Chris Leslie's version though. Sorry Chris I love most of what you do but not this!

I'll be brief cos i've said it before but it was a genuine Damascean moment, 17, sat on my bedroom floor alone with Dansette clutching a borrowed copy of
Unhalfbricking. Sailor's Life just did it, as if Swarb and RT were just jamming.
It's one of those late at night, on my own, return to, songs and almost 50 years just dissipate.

Ahem...Grateful Dead...ahem!

An essential part of Unhalfbricking, and the Swarb-less version on Watching The Dark is just as good.
The rendition at The Barbican in 2009 (by Kellie While, Chris Leslie, Simon, Ashley, Richard and DM), was one of the many highlights of the evening.

 I will go with wine, and I too like the Unhalfbricking version and the Swarb less version. If I sometimes skip it while playing either album it is usually because I like to listen to lengthy jams from any artist, be it the Grateful Dead, Neil Young or Indian ragas with devoted attention, and not just as background sounds. When I do listen to it, there is much to dissect, so complex is it. Of course there is Sandy's vocal, Richard's guitar and Swarb's violin, but there is also Ashley's weaving bass lines, Martin's fabulous drumming ascending and descending deftly, and Simon's rhythm guitar part. In fact on the Watching The Dark version, I have listened to the song just for Simon's part which IMHO would make the entire song fall flat if not for his playing. Then there is that moment when Sandy's vocal drops out, before the jam begins, and then around 7 minutes in when the drama builds. Richard's guitar becomes a little louder, the bass steps up in the mix, the fiddling becomes slightly faster, and Martin Lamble trades keeping time with drum rolls and more insistent cymbal work. Must play it again today after typing all of this in fact as it has been awhile since I played it.

So definitely wine. Maybe a nice 1968 Merlot if I had a choice?  ;)

I think it's a stellar track but one I need to be in right mood for, or at least have time for. I think it deserves to be listened to, not just background music. It's obviously a precursor to the material on Leige and Lief, and shares the majority of the same personnel, but would/does it sit comfortably amongst L&L tracks, or is it to stylistically different? It's certainly has more of a 'jam' feel than the L&L tracks, and I think highlights the difference between Martin Lamble's drumming with his decorative rolls, and DM's more 'disciplined' approach. Not knocking either BTW, quite the opposite.

Its a great, great track, wonderful arrangement exquisite playing by all concerned and topped off with a marvellous vocal performance. This was one of the songs that cemented Fairports place in the hall of greats.
    Sandy was so good no other performance of the song has ever come close to doing it justice.

Definitely wine and the very finest vintage.  The one that started it all for me and led to almost 40 years of pleasure.

Have probably told it before but I was lying in the sun at the Charnock Richard festival in the summer of 1976 when between acts this amazing piece of music came over the PA. I thought it was stunning then and I do know, though I accept one has to be the right mood. A tour de force by all the band but for me it is Ashley's finest hour. Sadly I have never heard the band play it - hopefully 2017 Cropedy will put that right.

Never really liked it. Sorry, but that's just me

As an aside, I note that in the last verse of Grace and Favour on Myths and Heroes are the opening lines of A Sailor's Life

Yeah.  I prefer them when they're doing songs and all.   8)

Jules

Good spot!

Wine. Prog. Marvelous.  ;)

One of my finest moments in nearly three and a half decades of gig going was A Sailor's Life at the majestic Barbican gig in 2009.  Transcendental music.  It doesn't get much better in my book.

Well I really like it, the Unhalfbricking version that is.. I remember playing the album to a friend who was very much a rock music fan, a lot of years ago, and he was bowled over by 'SL'. Along with many people, i thought at the time it was a single take, no dubs, not that it makes any difference to me now.

Actually I think it's the vocal by Sandy that really makes the track for me, rather than the rest of the group banging and jangling away. If I wanted to be really critical I could say they were trying too hard, but that 's what you do when you're young, even when things are going your way. I recently re-read the Flashback feature on Trees, which reproduces a recording contract - -the ages of the musicians stuck me forcibly -   Celia aged 19, the others barely into their 20s.  

Greg, do you know about the Fairport Unconventional box?  If not (unless I'm misreading your wish), you're in for a treat.  It contains a nine-and-a-half-minute live performance from '69, exact date unknown but the booklet implies it's from somewhere between Feb & April.

Meanwhile, I love a Sailor's Life.  Now that it's been mentioned, perhaps it was my inner Deadhead that was immediately open to its slow-building journey.  (I always enjoyed the parts that weren't songs, as well  :), sometimes moreso depending on how well they were singing on a give night  ;))  The Coltrane quartet and the sublime experience of Ravi Shankar in performance provided other precedents for me for the gathering of musical momentum.  But the song also encapsulates that melancholy that the early Fairport, Sandy especially, could evoke so affectingly.  It evokes seas and oceans, as well.  

I'll echo that the Barbican performance was my favorite moment of that concert and a highlight of concert-going.  I mused that they might end the 2nd half with Sloth as its counterpart, but alas...sometimes one just needs to be grateful for the riches already received.

Good points, well made  :)

31st January 1969. Bradford University. They ended the show with this. For me, it remains 15 special minutes. The only way I would ever skip a record is to get to this masterpiece. This was months before the Unhalfbricking LP was released. Bloody magic...

Wine.  Definitely. The very finest vintage.

My first exposure to Fairport Convention: in 1988, I was a high school student, and the cool older kids I hung around with had a cassette of In Real Time that they'd play in the car whenever we drove anywhere.  I became a fan and later heard A Sailor's Life for the first time when I acquired the documentary video It All Comes 'Round Again (which includes footage from Cropredy 1987 of a multi-generational hybrid lineup performing A Sailor's Life).  Maartin Allcock on bass, Ric Sanders on violin, Richard Thompson on lead guitar, Simon Nicol on rhythm guitar, Dave Mattacks on drums, and guest June Tabor as the vocalist.  'Twas not until the turn of the millennium that I heard the original studio version on CD, and another decade or so passed before I heard the Swarbless studio version.  I was intrigued by the guitar/violin jamming in the outro upon my first viewing of the Tabor version, but at the time I was interested primarily in the then-current lineup.  Now that I'm a middle-aged bloke with a much more comprehensive Fairport Convention album collection, I've grown to love the studio versions of A Sailor's Life.  Sandy's vocal timbre always mesmerizes me, and there's magic in the prolonged outro with RT working his fretboard, Swarb (on the Unhalfbricking version) jamming away on fiddle, Ashley Hutchings & Martin Lamble pounding out their steady rhythms, etc.  It's a beautiful bit of ear candy.  

You make me feel old!

Remembering that this was my 6th Cropredy & I'm in the photo on the front....

Astonishing stuff!

Not being a GD fan - "the poor bastards can't sing" (Rolling Stone, 1970) - the closest comparison I had at the time was the Airplane's 'Hey Fredrick' - and SL is every bit as captivating. None of the soloing carries on so long it loses attention before there's another change in tempo/pulse/emphasis and another solo/duet starts. It never gets boring...which so many jams do.

Swarb and RT, of course, are attention headliners...but, as several Forum members have commented, the rhythm section needs much praise. Martin is master of the first half - his transition from punctuating cymbals in the first half of the song to wave-rolling toms on the second half and into the jam is just masterful. Never heard anything quite like it. (If Martin had lived, I reckon he could have overshadowed Ginger Baker!)

Ashley is very much master of the jam - his  grating and grinding ascending/descending bass riffs at times putting him into the Jack Casady/Jack Bruce league of bass players. Though Martin's switch from tom rolls to snare drum hard cracks momentarily steals the attention back. Even the way the bass ends the jam with single pulses on the root note is just so perfect.

Truth to tell, I thought and still think 'Nottamun Town' and SL were far more revolutionary than ' LEIGE & LIEF' or any of the 'electric folk' stuff that came after.

Yep  :)

Yep +1

But A Sailor's Life was, in many ways, the blueprint for what they did on Liege & Lief.  That album was a continuation.  Less jammy perhaps (and I, for one, am glad of that).  I see it all as part of the same experiment, not as an opportunity to mark Liege & Lief down.

Nottamun Town, for me, isn't quite so remarkable.  There were plenty of 60s groups doing the odd "trad arr" song, and this was just another one of those, to my ears anyway.

Jules

But, Jules, using Indian raga scales?!?

Oh, can't say I noticed.  But then there was a lot of that around at the time too!

Jules

Yes, there was indeed, Jules. But, as far as I know, not done to traditional music.

'She Moves Through The Fair' is another left-field arrangement.

For all its grandeur, the intensity of the playing and it being one of the most sensitive jams ever put on record, 'Sailor's Life' is actually relatively conventional compared to the 'HOLIDAYS' trad arrs. Its time signatures and scales are pretty straight-forward.

I understand the significance of 'L&L' but it's never grabbed me the way those first 3 albums did. 'L&L' was about electrifying folk music, making it rock while being relatively true to the traditional idioms. But the 'HOLIDAYS' trad arrs are something else all together.

If it is true that early Fairport were boozers rather than druggers, then they must absorbed the acid influence by osmosis from the other bands of the time. (Didn't they share some bills with Floyd?)

I couldn't agree more.  Whilst also agreeing with its rightful place in the pantheon, L&L is the least listened to of all the first 5 albums for me...by a long shot.

I think there are wonderful heights reached on the first 3 LPs, and arguably Liege & Lief doesn't match those heights with its individual tracks, but for me, as an album, it's much more consistent and much more cohesive.

Jules

Certainly than Unhalfbricking. I have never quite understood the reputation of that album. Yes, individually it has wonderful tracks but it is all over the place as an album.

Agreed.  But the best tracks are definitely amongst the things the band ever did.

Jules

Quite. Si Tu Dois Partir and Million Dollar Bash are quite gimmicky, and I never really liked Cajun Woman, it just doesn't sound Fairport to me. The rest of the tracks are at least as good as anything on WWDOOH. All IMHO of course!

I wonder what a post L&L album would have sounded like, had the line-up stayed together? I imagine a sprawling double album dominated by Sandy and Richards songwriting, with a few trad-arr's and Full House style instrumentals.

Again ditto. I think it's in large part due to the production/recording. It always sounds muddy  to me, where say Holidays sounds clear and 'right', as does Full House. (Audiophile alert: the Ryko FH is the one to get)  L&L is to the Fpt canon what Aqualung is to the Tull catalogue. IMO of course.  :)

I think that was largely down to the group themselves wanting the kind of 'boxy' sound that they loved on The Band's first two records.

Jules

I didn't know that. . .

Unquestionably!  ;D

Lol.
I still read Jules' sentence with another 'best' before 'things', which made it
'But the best tracks are definitely amongst the best things the band ever did,' which was amusing enough.
It was only the second time through I read it right.
Never a truer word was spoken.

F***!  I need an editor today.   ::)  :-[

Jules

Exceptional. Groundbreaking - and even now, listening to it, you get the feeling of hearing history being made.

Wine,

Deffo...

This marmite or wine thing - sorry, but I've been biting my tongue...

If it's marmite it means that some people will like it and some will hate it. If it's wine, I suppose it's the same. It depends whether you like marmite, and whether you like wine, and what kind of wine it is.  **see spoiler

To me, it's Yellow Tail Shiraz (my favourite wine).

I was listening to it on the way home from my extended Cropredy week last night - and it sounds as fresh as he first time I heard it

Stephen, wish we could have met at Cropredy last week. We seem to agree on most things, incl highlights of Cropredy.
Trust me, this is unusual!😀

...and Yellow Tail Shiraz and flat caps??

I was geared up to going and meeting people, but then had a horrendous hour or two trying to revive a phone, get online and do some internet banking, so I had cash to pay for the charger they hired me so I could get online.. and when it was all fixed I just sat and cracked open a can, and the world drifted by...

Next year - it's a date..  ;)

"Sailors Life is my all time favourite track ever . Closely followed by "Battle of Evermore" . After that theres hundreds of top tracks but those two will probably never be usurped IMHO .

MY preference is the Swarbless version from Watching The Dark but it is one of my favorites in any guise, yes I can even tune out Ms. Tabor on the infamous live version.