Fairport Convention – Unhalfbricking

I appreciate Liege and Lief is considered the most important album Fairport produced but Unhalfbricking is my favourite. This second album in the prolific but tragic year of 1969 showcases everything that we know and love about the band. Sandy Denny is at the peak of her awesome vocal powers. Richard Thompson plays as if he has a lifelong mastery of the guitar behind him despite his tender years. Martin Lamble displays for the final time what a sensitive yet powerful drummer he was. The icing on this considerable cake is Dave Swarbrick adding for the first time that ‘Fairport’ sound as he plays in an impromptu style with a band he has just met. The songs are some of Sandy and Richard’s finest compositions, Dylan covers, traditional British classics and more. It really does have everything.

It is difficult to imagine that there was a finer group of British musicians at this time. The whole album has moments of sheer perfection. In the case of Sandy’s immortal ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes’ the perfection holds throughout the track. It is reminiscent of the tension in that Torvill and Dean Bolero moment – can this magic be sustained flawlessly to the end without missing a beat. Yes, it can.

Released just a few weeks following the tragic road accident that took Martin Lamble’s life, along with Jeannie, Richard Thompson’s artistic friend, it marks a full stop in the band’s career before they regrouped with remarkable fortitude to produce Liege and Leif.

It starts with an early, but superb, Richard Thompson composition – ‘Genesis Hall.’

One of the great opening lines –

‘My father he rides with your sheriffs

And I know he would never mean harm’

The song refers to an overzealous police intervention towards some squatters at the said building Genesis Hall. Thompson’s father was a policeman at this time, although not involved in this operation, so the writer has a conflict to resolve. He does this in a balanced even-handed way. It is a mature piece of writing. Sandy sings with beautiful sympathetic feeling as Thompson plays a gorgeous melody with Martin Lamble filling in with some superb work on the drums. The word ethereal is often used to describe Sandy’s voice and this is a prime example.

Sandy plumbs the depths of sadness with her first composition on the album – ‘Autopsy.’ The examination of a failed relationship is the perfect example of how Sandy does sad melancholy better than anyone. The song is musically unusual, complex, and not adhering to the standard composition rules of the time. Not a well-known Sandy track but it deserves to be. It suits this album perfectly.

In between the two self-penned tracks is Fairport greatest hit – Si tu Dois Partir.’ Dylan’s song is translated into French, apparently by some volunteers at a Fairport gig. It is fun, it reached the upper end of the singles chart which gave them a memorable Top of the Pops appearance. Not that they took that too seriously as you would expect.

Dylan makes three appearances on this album with the best one being his unreleased ‘Percy’s Song.’ Telling the story in the tried and tested Dylan style of many verses with a repetitive hook line, this is a tragic tale that sadly would be played out for real just a few weeks after recording. The story of a road accident that claims lives but sees the drivers’ friends try to get mitigation must have been a painful one to leave on the album. Fortunately, they did, and we have one of the finest of Dylan cover versions. Sandy gets perfectly inside the feelings of the different characters she portrays. A sublime skill as she shows empathy, compassion, anger, fury even, in the range of her vocals. Ian Matthews joins her to add more colour to the harmony despite having already left the band. It was starting to get difficult to know who was or was not part of Fairport Convention. It would get even more problematic both in the short term and throughout the 70s as I discovered the first time I saw them.

My first ever live concert was Fairport Convention in early 1973 at the Albert Halls, Bolton. A group of us went over the moors from Darwen on the local Ribble bus. The excitement of this I find difficult to put into words. A first experience of live music that would live with me forever, forming a desire to see everyone I loved musically in a live setting. We went to the concert with not the greatest of expectation – we had not got a clue who was going to be in the band. Dave Mattacks had left. Richard Thompson was on his solo journey. Simon Nicol also gone. What we got was the most exciting and inspiring performance that had us reeling with joy and admiration. Wow – Dave Mattacks had come back, sat there on his drum kit. Swarb stalked the stage, cigarette in hand, and one in reserve on his violin. Dave Pegg statuesque and powerful in his squire of the manor riding boots. Gerry Donohue proving a fine substitute on guitar. But the one you could not take your eyes off, someone I had never heard of, was Trevor Lucas driving the band as frontman and tying them all together. Once again, this line up would not be long lasting, but I am certainly glad to have seen them for my first concert. I could not have asked for more – except Sandy Denny.

Going back to this event in 1973 you must appreciate what an exciting departure from normal life this was for us young people. We had no transport – who did back then. But we needed to get home so in the interval after the support act (Bernard Wrigley – The Bolton Bullfrog), we piled into the row of public telephone boxes in the entrance foyer to the hall to try and persuade someone to come over for us later. As we did the doors to the hall crashed open. In came Fairport, Swarb in the lead, cigarette between his lips and carrying his priceless violin. The others followed, bustling through the crowd. We could have fainted with excitement – but did they always leave it this late? I suspect they were just finishing a pint or two in the pub around the corner, knowing they could produce the magic at will. They did.

Unhalfbricking contains “The most favourite Folk track of all time” – ‘Who knows where the time goes?’ In the notes contained in the accompanying booklet in ‘History of…’ the quote is made that ‘you cannot see any world class group of musicians matching this performance.’

You cannot. It is perfect.

It is a deeply sad, unsettling track, showing Sandy’s vulnerability laid bare. It became even more melancholic with her death, almost as if at the age of nineteen when Sandy wrote this, she felt that life would be short, time was passing and would be fleeting. It is love and loss at its most potent. The vocal by Sandy is just gorgeous. The playing by the band sublime and sympathetic. It sounds almost as if they are entranced by this song and vocal as they follow Sandy through this spiritual journey. Nothing before or since in this genre comes close to this. Sandy’s brief body of work tries to reach this high spot, and she often comes close, but she peaks with this song and performance.

Or does she? If I had to under extreme torture reveal definitively my all-time favourite Sandy Denny vocal and Fairport track, then I believe I would confess to it being ‘A Sailors Life.’

Sandy Denny vocally dominates this early incarnation of Fairport for me, but you have to also step back at times and realise just what an amazing set of musicians these are. ‘A Sailors Life’ featuring Sandy is in the ‘Folk rock’ idiom that they shortly would bring to the world in all its glory with ‘Liege and Leif.’ You can apply that quote about untouchable performance to ‘A Sailors Life’ also. The interplay on this track of Dave Swarbrick on his extraordinary electric violin coupled with the self-taught guitar playing style of Richard Thompson reaches new heights. You sense they are chasing each other around the studio to soar and weave their solos into a breath-taking sound. Sandy’s vocal fights to rise above this performance. She ultimately triumphs, despite having a heavy cold on the day, to leave the stage clear for Swarbrick and Thompson to battle it out to a conclusion. Swarbrick was not meant to play on this track, being somewhat unsure of this mixing of styles. But he did, and the rest is history. One other detail stands out in the mix of ‘A Sailors Life’ and that is the drumming of Martin Lamble. Now I am a great Dave Mattacks fan, and his contribution to Fairport is enormous, but there is something special about the early drum playing of Martin Lamble. What an incredibly sad loss he was with his tragic early death shortly after recording this track. Producer Joe Boyd was told at the outset that the band could only give this song one shot. That is how it turned out and it is a one take masterpiece.

OK, I concede there are a couple of filler tracks on here but that takes nothing away from an album that contains a group of musicians at an inspired period of creativity. I have revisited this album many times to write this piece.

My view is just as it was all those years ago – it is my favourite Fairport record.

More ‘reviews’ from my Vinyl Collection are in my New Book: