Podcast appearances and mentions of Kate Bush

SML a invité Guigui Pop en studio et ils ont parlé de rythmiques, de mémé zézette et de Kate Bush, bon épi !Pour venir assister à un enregistrement cliquez super fort sur ce lienCalme toi :Laura Laarman : production et sonLéa Jourdan : communicationLucie Meslien : illustration animation Lou Poincheval : chargée de productionCaroline Bérault : illustrations Manon Carrour : vignette Joanna & Gaspar : générique Merci Acast pour le studio

Matthew Bannister onDame Jane Goodall, the primatologist and environmental campaigner who changed our understanding of animal behaviour. Chris Packham pays tribute.Tony Harrison, the Yorkshire born poet who took his writing to new audiences through theatre and TV. Michael Rosen assesses his work. Lord Menzies Campbell, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats.Danny Thompson, the upright bass player who blended folk and jazz and worked with musicians ranging from Kate Bush, Paul Weller to John Martyn and Donovan - who shares his memories. Interviewee: Chris Packham Interviewee: Professor Ben Garrod Interviewee: Michael Rosen Interviewee: Magnus Linklater Interviewee: Donovan Interviewee: Jacqui McShee Interviewee: Martin SimpsonProducer: Gareth Nelson-DaviesArchive used: Tony Harrison, Meriden, BBC World Service, 21/10/1992; The Mysteries, Cottesloe Theatre, The National Theatre, Channel 4 Television, Directed by Bill Bryden, Writer Tony Harrison,,1985; V by Tony Harrison reads short extract from the poem 'V'. BBC Radio 4, 21/01/2013; Menzies Campbell Elected Leader Of The Liberal Democrats, BBC News, 02/03/06; Menzies Campbell, Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, 17/10/2004; Menzies Campbell, Iraq War, BBC News, 24/02/2009; Danny Thompson plays bass, extract from, Pentangle - Blue Monk, Songs From The Two Brewers, ITV, Danny Thompson YouTube Channel, 08/05/1970;

From guitar virtuosos to vocal powerhouses, Matt and Sam's "Women Who Rock: Volume 2" showcases twelve artists who represent the extraordinary breadth and depth of women's contributions to rock music.St. Vincent (Annie Clark) kicks things off with "Los Ageless," her scathing take on Los Angeles culture wrapped in irresistible guitar work. Meanwhile, Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" demonstrates how great music transcends time, finding a whole new generation of listeners through Stranger Things – likely causing Bush herself to wake up one morning wondering why her 37-year-old song was suddenly topping global charts.The mix features several guitar virtuosos deserving wider recognition. Orianthi, who's performed alongside Michael Jackson and Alice Cooper, delivers both technical brilliance and emotional resonance on "According to You." Even more surprising is Kaki King's instrumental "Default Shell," showcasing finger techniques so complex they seem impossible to be produced by human hands – explaining why she's collaborated with Eddie Vedder and toured with Foo Fighters.Modern innovators get their due through Maggie Rogers' "Anywhere With You" , CHVRCHES' build-up masterpiece "Clearest Blue," and The Joy Formidable's "Worrying," which culminates in an extended instrumental finale that serves as perfect running music for those final miles.We close with HAIM's Eagles-influenced harmonies on "The Wire" and Bully's raw punk energy on "Either Way" – proving that women aren't just participating in rock's evolution, they're driving it forward in exciting new directions. This isn't just a collection of women who play rock music – it's a celebration of essential artists whose technical skill, songwriting prowess, and unique perspectives continue to reshape what rock can be.Follow us on Instagram @superawesomemix and join our growing community of music lovers who understand that great music transcends all boundaries.https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7cMQ2xZQcDAoG6yx4KLDzF?si=ec5e4f18da1e419c Los Ageless by St. VincentRunning Up That Hill by Kate BushC'mon C'mon by Sheryl CrowBurning by Yeah Yeah YeahsAccording To You by OrianthiAnywhere With You by Maggie RogersAll American Girl by Melissa EtheridgeClearest Blue by CHVRCHESDefault Shell by Kaki KingWhirring by The Joy FormidableThe Wire by HAIMEither Way by Bully Support the showVisit us at https://www.superawesomemix.com to learn more about our app, our merchandise, our cards, and more!

La Piña Colada Song suena en películas como un himno inocente, aunque en realidad cuenta la historia de un matrimonio infiel. Ese contraste explica el poder de las sincronizaciones musicales: transformar canciones en clichés emocionales o convertirlas en catapultas de éxito.En este episodio hablamos de cómo funcionan las syncs, desde los derechos de autor que se negocian hasta el trabajo de los music supervisors, que deciden qué temas encajan en cada escena. También repasamos los grandes atajos emocionales de Hollywood —de Fix You a Don't Stop Believin'— y los casos en los que una sincronización cambió la historia de una canción y de un artista: Kate Bush, Fleetwood Mac, Moby o Nick Drake...Un viaje entre cultura pop y negocio musical que demuestra cómo veinte segundos de música pueden redefinir una canción y reescribir la memoria colectiva.

News, rants, theories, stories and assorted old hokum which this week stumbles into … … Kate Bush, Thunderbirds, Tim Buckley, the Blind Boys of Alabama … the magical bass adventures of Danny Thompson (and the time he headlined over the Beatles) … how Claudia Cardinale wound up on the sleeve of Blonde On Blonde … would Roxy Music have made it if their albums had been released in brown paper bags? … how TikTok is destroying the “superfan” … do late night TV hosts need us more than we need them? … Boris Johnson chose the Clash? Charles Kennedy chose Toploader? Theresa May chose ‘In These Shoes' by Kirsty MacColl? MPs on Desert Island Discs … packaged goods: how CDs removed music's greatest marketing tool … the peculiar life of Johnny Carson … have you ever bought an album solely on the strength of its cover? … and Carmel, Andrew Ridgeley, Jay Leno's pay packet and birthday guest Jon Pickles on high-impact sleeve art.Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

News, rants, theories, stories and assorted old hokum which this week stumbles into … … Kate Bush, Thunderbirds, Tim Buckley, the Blind Boys of Alabama … the magical bass adventures of Danny Thompson (and the time he headlined over the Beatles) … how Claudia Cardinale wound up on the sleeve of Blonde On Blonde … would Roxy Music have made it if their albums had been released in brown paper bags? … how TikTok is destroying the “superfan” … do late night TV hosts need us more than we need them? … Boris Johnson chose the Clash? Charles Kennedy chose Toploader? Theresa May chose ‘In These Shoes' by Kirsty MacColl? MPs on Desert Island Discs … packaged goods: how CDs removed music's greatest marketing tool … the peculiar life of Johnny Carson … have you ever bought an album solely on the strength of its cover? … and Carmel, Andrew Ridgeley, Jay Leno's pay packet and birthday guest Jon Pickles on high-impact sleeve art.Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

News, rants, theories, stories and assorted old hokum which this week stumbles into … … Kate Bush, Thunderbirds, Tim Buckley, the Blind Boys of Alabama … the magical bass adventures of Danny Thompson (and the time he headlined over the Beatles) … how Claudia Cardinale wound up on the sleeve of Blonde On Blonde … would Roxy Music have made it if their albums had been released in brown paper bags? … how TikTok is destroying the “superfan” … do late night TV hosts need us more than we need them? … Boris Johnson chose the Clash? Charles Kennedy chose Toploader? Theresa May chose ‘In These Shoes' by Kirsty MacColl? MPs on Desert Island Discs … packaged goods: how CDs removed music's greatest marketing tool … the peculiar life of Johnny Carson … have you ever bought an album solely on the strength of its cover? … and Carmel, Andrew Ridgeley, Jay Leno's pay packet and birthday guest Jon Pickles on high-impact sleeve art.Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lo Strillone Rock (News) P.ta 121 Nuovo episodio de “Lo Strillone Rock” l'appuntamento settimanale (Podcast Rock) con le notizie dal mondo della musica Internazionale e Nazionale. Cosa ascolteremo: la stagione riparte con nuove iniziative e spazi culturali. Possiamo citare il viaggio con i migliori duetti blues della storia per passare poi agli eventi live che hanno cambiato la storia del mondo, non solo rock. Si parla italiano con il “Disco Italia” dove andremo a spulciare le nuove uscite rock italiane e per chiudere la puntata in grande stile, andremo alla ricerca dei brani rock d'amore più belli di tutti i tempi. Cuffie alle orecchie, Ark Speaker vi aspetta! LA PLAY LIST DI ROCK NEWS P.TA 121 Queen – Don't Stop Me Now Judas Priest & Ozzy Osbourne – War Pigs (Charity Version) Stevie Ray Vaughan & Jeff Beck – Goin' Down (Live) Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) [12″ Mix] Kasabian – Hippie Sunshine Pearl Jam – Yellow Ledbetter The Cranberries – Empty (Live MTV Unplugged) My Chemical Romance – I Don't Love You Quarzomadera – Urano Garbage – There's No Future In Optimism Santana – Maria Maria (feat. The Product G&B) Metallica – Nothing Else Matters LE NOTIZIE DA ASCOLTARE I Queen tornano in studio; Ozzy Osbourne: la prima pubblicazione postuma, con i Judas Priest; Kate Bush, in arrivo l'album “The best of other sides”; Kasabian, il nuovo singolo è “Hippie Sunshine”; I Cranberries e quell'indimenticabile Mtv Unplugged; I My Chemical Romance tornano in concerto in Italia; Garbage: “Mai più i tour, è antieconomico”; Carlos Santana: dopo i problemi di salute, il ritorno sul palco.  

Prisiminsime dar keletą skambiausių, o ir mažiau žinomų roko bei naujosios bangos dainų Jungtinės Karalystės, Vakarų Europos radijo eteryje 1985 metų vasaros pabaigoje, atitinkamai ir už Atlanto - Amerikos top šimtuke, dainų, kurios įvairiais takeliais pasiekdavo ir klausytojus Lietuvoje. Grojaraštyje: Laimis Vilkončius, Kate Bush, Phil Collins, Heart, The Dream Academy, Kool And The Gang, OMD, Oingo Boingo, Supertramp.Ved. Lukas Devita.

I'll bet you don't have 8 Grammy's. Very few people do. Our guest this week is one of the chosen few. Producer Kevin Killen has been one of the best in his field since first coming up under the tutelage of Steve Lillywhite on U2's War album. From there the list of collaborators includes David Byrne, Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, Howard Jones, Lindsey Buckingham, Kate Bush, Shawn Colvin, Tori Amos, Mr. Mister and many more. One year he won Grammys for working with David Bowie, Shakira and Yo-Yo Ma. Talk about diversity! We're so fortunate he gave us some of his time this week!  The Hustle Podcast | creating podcasts | Patreon

El podcast perennial de la (re)generación del trigger. Tertulia cultural y sociológica acerca de lo divino y de lo humano de la mano de Popy Blasco. Esta semana charlando animadamente acerca de Jimmy Kimmel y la censura, Noelia Núñez, fiestas del Vaticano, la jornada laboral, la nueva cara de Jorge Javier, El Cautivo, la vuelta de Madonna, la casa de David Lynch, La muerte os sienta tan bien, Dangerous Animals, Overcompensating, Kate Bush y maravillas mil. Emitiendo desde la potentísima señal de Subterfuge Radio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Send us a textGraham gives the new release from Suede a listen. Have Suede managed a resurrection part 2 with new album Antidepressants?New movie Eddington with Joaquin Phoenix and the trend for social surrealism in cinema.There's money for major art museums and a bit of a face-off between Tate and The National Gallery as they re-draw their agreement to keep the National Gallery exhibits confined to 1900 and before. Graham and Charles take a look at the big money flowing into The National Gallery and Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum.Graham looks ahead to Harrogate events with Charlie Higson, Pete McKee and Kate Bush.Charles reports on his recent visit to Prague enjoying the sheer breadth and depth of galleries and museums.Keep in touch with Two Big Egos in a Small Car:X@2big_egosFacebook@twobigegos

Plenty more where this came from on the Best of the Rest at www.patreon.com/miketully!

Dans ce 3ème volume de notre série sur Kate Bush, on va voir ce qu'a fait Kate Bush après l'énorme succès de Running Up That Hill, le temps qu'elle a prispour ces projets suivants, et on va enfin se pencher sur un aspect majeur de cette artiste très imagée : les clips.Bienvenue dans Lights Out.Merci d'avance pour votre écoute, et pensez à partager le podcast s'il vous a plu.Rejoignez nous sur Instagram, BlueSky, ou notre salon Discord pour discuter du podcast !Et si voulez soutenir Tartine ta Culture, retrouvez-nous sur Patreon !Les extraits :Trio Bulgarka - пеятKate Bush - Never Be MineThis Woman's WorkThe Sensual WorldHeads We're DancingThe Red ShoesRubberband GirlToutes les autres musiques sont faites maison.Sources :Under the Ivy, The Life and Music of Kate Bush - Graeme ThomsonKate Bush, le temps du rêve - Frédéric Delâge Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

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Ce 16 septembre, Marjorie Hache propose une soirée aussi puissante qu'éclectique dans RTL2 Pop-Rock Station. Elle entame l'émission avec The Clash avant de célébrer les 40 ans de l'album "Hounds of Love" de Kate Bush avec le titre "The Big Sky", véritable ode à l'enfance. Les Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica ou encore Trust renforcent l'énergie rock de la sélection. Du côté des découvertes, Coach Party séduit avec "Do Yourself A Favour", extrait attendu de leur prochain disque "Caramel". Francis Zégut recommande The Ovines avec "Mind of Mine", groupe britannique influencé par les Doors et Arctic Monkeys. L'album de la semaine, "Parasites and Butterflies" de Nova Twins, se dévoile ce soir avec "Piranha". La reprise du jour rend hommage à Bon Scott avec une version habitée de "Highway to Hell" signée The Bellrays. Et pour clore l'émission, Marjorie diffuse "Chrome Jets", rareté des Smashing Pumpkins sortie en vinyle ultra limité, à la fois brute et insaisissable. The Clash - London Calling Franz Ferdinand - Hooked (Ft. Master Peace) Kate Bush - The Big Sky Caesars - Jerk It Out Metallica - Wherever I May Roam Trust - Antisocial Liam Gallagher - For What It's Worth Nova Twins - Piranha Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze Red Hot Chili Peppers - Suck My Kiss Them - Gloria Coach Party - Do Yourself A Favour The Bellrays - Highway To Hell Arcade Fire - No Cars Go Eels - Souljacker, Pt 1 The Ovines - Mind Of Mine Blue Öyster Cult - Dont Fear The Reaper Kasabian - Club Foot Florence + The Machine - Everybody Scream Supergrass - Alright The Kinks - All Day And All Of The Night Courtney Barnett - Pedestrian At Best The Smashing Pumpkins- Chrome Jets Bloc Party - Banquet Bruce Springsteen - Hungry Heart The Klaxons - Gravity's Rainbow Blur - Song 2 Idles - Rabbit Run Sébastien Tellier - La RitournelleHébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Hoy en La Gran Travesía, 16 de septiembre, podréis escuchar a T-Rex, Kula Shaker, Elastica, The Levellers, Tom Jones, Kasabian, Talking Heads, David Bowie, A Perfect Circle, Kate Bush... También recordaros que ya podéis comprar La gran travesía del rock, un libro interactivo. Jimi y Janis, dos periodistas musicales, vienen de 2027, un mundo distópico y delirante donde el reguetón tiene (casi) todo el poder... pero ellos dos, deciden alistarse al GLP para viajar en el tiempo, salvar el rock, rescatar sus archivos ocultos y combatir la dictadura troyana del FPR. ✨ El libro ya está en diversas tiendas, Amazon, Fnac y también en La Montaña Mágica, por ejemplo https://www.amazon.es/GRAN-TRAVES%C3%8DA-DEL-ROCK-autoestopista/dp/8419924938 ▶️ Y ya sabéis, si os gusta el programa y os apetece, podéis apoyarnos y colaborar con nosotros por el simple precio de una cerveza al mes, desde el botón azul de iVoox, y así, además podéis acceder a todo el archivo histórico exclusivo. Muchas gracias también a todos los mecenas y patrocinadores por vuestro apoyo: Juanito, Octavio Oliva, Piri, Andreea Deea, Samuel Sánchez, Igor Gómez Tomás, Matías Ruiz Molina, Eduardo Villaverde Vidal, Víctor Fernández Martínez, Rami, Leo Giménez, Alberto Velasco, Poncho C, Francisco Quintana, Con, Tete García, Jose Angel Tremiño, Marco Landeta Vacas, Oscar García Muñoz, Raquel Parrondo, Nacho, Javito, Alberto, Moy, Dani Pérez, Santi Oliva, Vicente DC, Leticia, JBSabe, Melomanic, Arturo Soriano, Gemma Codina, Raquel Jiménez, Pedro, SGD, Raul Andres, Tomás Pérez, Pablo Pineda, Quim Goday, Enfermerator, Joaquín, Horns Up, Victor Bravo, Fonune, Francisco González, Marcos Paris, Daniel A, Redneckman, Elliott SF, Sementalex, Miguel Angel Torres, Suibne, Noyatan, Iván Menéndez, Niksisley y a los mecenas anónimos.

Join Scott Kummer, Josh Hohbein, Andrew Robot-Dinosaur, Matt Smith and Chris Slemp for a discussion of Kate Bush: the Hounds of Love and Iron Maiden: The Number Of The Beast. Fill out the Poll for this show.  Remember....its never too late: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSclFiWJ1ZDzOIhlWsE7SIS_BG5Qh1SAboTHM5GSVQ9E-3wpZw/viewform All the other shows and forms can also be filled out on our website: https://igtov.com/vote-here Or just view the chart: https://igtov.com/chart-of-essentiality Get on the mailing list my emailing: igtovpod@gmail.com JoIn the "I've Got That On Vinyl" Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/684186180585840 On Twitter: @IGTOVPodcast On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/igtovpodcast/ Or email us anytime at IGTOVpod@gmail.com Intro and Outtro music by Mishka Shubaly: http://www.mishkashubaly.com

Mit "Hounds Of Love" veröffentlichte Kate Bush im September 1985 ihr fünftes Studioalbum. Das Werk gilt als sehr komplex und verbindet existenzielle Fragen mit poetischen und fantasievollen Erzählwelten. Die Folge der Meilensteine über "Hounds Of Love" von Kate Bush war längst überfälltig. Das Album ist ein zeitloses Meisterwerk und machte die Ausnahmekünstlerin Kate Bush zu einer feministischen Ikone, die viele Musikerinnen und Musiker nach ihr inspirieren konnte. "Hounds Of Love" wurde für Langspielplatte konzipiert und behandelt komplexe und existentielle Themen. Es geht um die Liebe, den Tod, um Glaube, menschlichen Wille und um die Kraft der Natur. Um es uns Hörern zu erleichtern, hat sie das Album geschickt in eine A- und eine B-Seite aufgeteilt. Auf der A-Seite befinden sich alle Hits, wie "Running Up That Hill", "Hounds Of Love" oder "The Big Sky". Die B-Seite enthält hingegen eine kleine Mini-Oper mit dem Konzeptstück "The Ninth Wave". Viele ihrer Songtexte sind inspiriert von Filmen, die sie gesehen, oder Büchern, die sie gelesen hat. Kate Bush besitzt die besondere Gabe, diese Geschichten in ihren Songs weiterzuerzählen und sie musikalisch lebendig werden zu lassen. Mit nur 13 Jahren nahm Kate bereits ihre ersten Demos auf. Eins dieser Demos gelangte 1974 über einen Freund ihres Bruders zu Pink Floyd-Gitarrist David Gilmour, der gerade auf der Suche nach Nachwuchstalenten war. Er entdeckte Kate Bush, nahm Songs mit ihr auf und organisierte ihr einen Plattenvertrag. Da Bush jedoch noch sehr jung war, betrachtete das Label sie als langfristiges Projekt und unterstützte sie gezielt mit Gesangs- und Tanzunterricht. Der erste Song auf "Hounds Of Love" ist "Running Up That Hill". Er handelt von der Kraft der Liebe und den Schwierigkeiten, die entstehen, wenn Männer und Frauen einander nicht verstehen. Bush vollzieht dafür einen Perspektivwechsel – ihr "Deal With God" beschreibt die Idee, einmal die Rollen zu tauschen, um die Perspektive des anderen einzunehmen. Im Jahr 2022 erlebte "Running Up That Hill" ein überraschendes Comeback. Es kam in der vierten Staffel der Netflix-Serie "Stranger Things" vor, eroberte ein neues, junges Publikum und erreichte in mehreren Ländern erneut die Spitze der Charts. __________ Über diese Songs vom Album "Hounds Of Love" wird im Podcast gesprochen (16:17) – "Running Up That Hill"(29:10) – "Hands Of Love"(39:22) – "The Big Sky"(47:53) – "Cloudbusting"(53:20) – "The Ninth Wave"(01:01:26) – "Hello Earth" __________ Alle Shownotes und weiterführenden Links zur Folge: https://1.ard.de/kate-bush-hounds-of-love __________ Ihr wollt mehr Podcasts wie diesen? Abonniert "Meilensteine – Alben, die Geschichte machten"! Fragen, Kritik, Anregungen? Meldet euch gerne per WhatsApp-Sprachnachricht an die (06131) 92 93 94 95 oder schreibt uns an meilensteine@swr.de

durée : 01:00:14 - Indécisions - par : Nathalie Piolé -

Rétro 1985 - on démarre avec les Béruriers Noirs et on termine avec Artists United Against Aparthedi - un message ?tracklist : Berurier Noir – Salut à ToiSheila E & Prince – Love Bizarre (12inch)The Bangles – Manic MondayLloyd Cole & The Commotions – Lost WeekendThe Cure – Close To Me (12" Extended Mix)Depeche Mode – Blasphemous RumoursTenor Saw – Ring The Alarm 1Tonto Irie – Life StoryBrenda & The Big Dudes – Touch SomebodyBig Audio Dynamite – E=Mc2Schoolly D – P.S.K. (What Does It Mean)Propaganda – DuelRyuichi Sakamoto – A Wongga Dance SongClio – Faces (Original Extended Version)Kate Bush – Cloudbusting (Original 12 inch)Suzanne Vega – Marlene On The WallChris Isaak – Dancin'Artists United Against Apartheid – Sun CityHébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Dave Mustaine takes to his rocking chair and scrapbook. Spinal Tap Return Just 40 Years Late. Kate Bush also celebrates a 40th anniversary. And - you'll never believe it! - MORE!! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week We Became Birds as we discuss Bill "Hummingbird" Callahan's hit record (in Maryland) Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle. Often I wish I was a Godzilla, I'd make some changes around here, that's for sure. Other Horses up for Wranglin' include: Charli XCX is going Kate Bush freestyle, Radiohead is hitting the road-iohead, and a saucy sorbet bev is bopped. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An exclusive Downtempo with No Drums DJ Mix this week featuring tracks from Arushi Jain, Ganavya, Jhelisa, Alina Bzhezhinska & Tulshi. Jazz from Finn Rees on Mr Bongo. Orchestral vibes from Benji Bower & The Terra Collective Orchestra. Piano pieces from Joe Armon-Jones, Duval Timothy and Calibre (not D&B). Soul from Rosie Lowe. Bobby McFerrin as featured in the excellent film The Square. Dezron Douglas & Brandee Younger covering Kate Bush. New releases from Auntie Flo and DJ Counselling. Plus plenty more music treats.

Singers often make or break a song. The exceptional ones can lift a bland arrangement into the stratosphere and the mundane ones can sink a great arrangement like a torpedo. This week the "How We Heard It" guys take a look at women vocalists (men singers will come next week), from the clear-voiced vocalists with perfect enunciation to soul singers who use a ragged edge to add personality. Some are belters, some practically whisper, some float into the atmosphere, and some are Bjork. But the differences between artists are pronounced, even in the sub-categories. Find out why Karen Carpenter hits differently than Barbra Streisand, how Tina Turner persevered, what sets Debbie Harry apart, where Sheryl Crow lands and how Billie Eilish factors in. And the guys are not on the same page on many of these vocalists, from Janis Joplin to Joni Mitchell to Kate Bush to Whitney Houston to Mariah Carey. Some of these women only seem better the more you explore their work, while others don't hold up to a closer listen. Your hosts dovetail, dissent and then dovetail again as they explore women singers from today, yesterday and long ago.   

durée : 00:59:21 - Banzzaï du vendredi 05 septembre 2025 : Bien le bonjour - rediffusion - par : Nathalie Piolé -

Carmen Toth is a Toronto-based singer-songwriter known for her hook-driven power pop, heartfelt storytelling, and retro-influenced sound. Drawing inspiration from artists like Stevie Nicks, Kate Bush, Cyndi Lauper, and Sheryl Crow, her music blends vulnerability with classic pop-rock grit. Over the past two decades, Toth has evolved from solo acoustic sets and her early duo Social Potion into a fully realized indie artist, performing in both band and solo formats and building a loyal following through regular livestreaming. Her 2018 EP Safety Net, produced by Derek Downham, marked a shift toward a modern pop sensibility. In 2020, Toth began work on her most ambitious project to date - Fix the World, an 11-song album co-produced with Joel Wasson and John Critchley (13 Engines). Featuring performances from members of The Discarded, Lowest of the Low, and Ace of Wands, the album captures Carmen's growth as a guitarist and vocalist and cements her identity as a powerful voice in Canada's indie rock and pop landscape. D I S C O V E R Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/CarmenToth111/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carmentoth111/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@carmentoth111X: https://x.com/carmentoth111Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/carmentothWebsite: http://carmentoth.comBandcamp: https://carmentoth.bandcamp.com Checkout my YouTube Channel with long form interviews from the Subversives | the History of Lowest of the Low. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9d1VSeOHYuxFWKuRdmn9j8UTW6AHwS_fAlso my Weekly Tour Vlog is up an live on the YouTubeshttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9d1VSeOHYuwphwhc4zd0VgY66f1OUQZp Pledge monthly with Patreon https://www.patreon.com/apologueShop Apologue products at http://apologue.ca/shopCheck out new Four Square Here: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/foursquare/brighton-beach-ephttps://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/foursquare/seven-oh-sevenhttps://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/foursquare/industry-at-home--21st-anniversary-remix-remasteredhttps://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/foursquare/when-weeks-were-weekends

Broadcaster and author Steve Blacknell is on the show to talk about his memoir, “Tales From the Bedroom Wall.” Known to a generation of fans for the mid-1980s MTV staple London Calling, Blacknell chronicles a whirlwind life of fame, lost fortunes, and everything in between. From first love Kate Bush to crossing the Atlantic on the Concorde with Phil Collins, and interviews with music's biggest names, the memoir brims with rock'n'roll excess, Hollywood heartbreak, addiction, and redemption. Joining from London, Blacknell dives into the tales behind the pages--and shares his own personal "rock & roll nightmare," which involves Bruce Springsteen.

Inspiriert vom Foto einer Frau am Rande des Abgrunds schreibt Peter Gabriel eine Hymne an das Durchhalten – und macht daraus ein Duett mit Kate Bush. "Don't Give Up” ist eine Umarmung – und in jeder Version, die Roland gefunden hat, absolut berührend.

With Stranger Things 5 on the way this winter, it's time for Tara & Andrew to continue their marathon with their Stranger Things Season 4x4 Reaction, Recap & Breakdown! Netflix's Stranger Things, created by the Duffer Brothers, continues to be one of the most beloved sci-fi horror series of the decade, blending supernatural suspense with heartfelt coming-of-age drama. Set in the 1980s in Hawkins, Indiana, the series follows a group of kids, teens, and adults as they battle the sinister forces of the Upside Down. In Season 4, Episode 4, “Dear Billy,” Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink, Fear Street, The Whale) takes center stage as she struggles with haunting visions from Vecna. Her emotional letters to her loved ones and the unforgettable climactic sequence—set to Kate Bush's “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)”—have already become some of the most iconic moments in television history. Meanwhile, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown, Enola Holmes, Godzilla vs. Kong) confronts the painful memories of her past under the supervision of Dr. Owens (Paul Reiser, Aliens, Mad About You) and Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine, Full Metal Jacket, Weeds), while Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder, Heathers, Beetlejuice) and Murray (Brett Gelman, The Other Guys) track down Hopper's (David Harbour, Hellboy, Black Widow) imprisonment in Russia. This episode is packed with emotional stakes, supernatural terror, and one of the most famous needle-drops in recent TV history. Join Tara Erickson and Andrew Gordon as they break down all the thrills, scares, and tear-jerking moments in this landmark episode of Stranger Things! Follow Andrew Gordon on Socials:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MovieSource Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/agor711/?hl=en Twitter:  https://twitter.com/Agor711 Follow Tara Erickson: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TaraErickson Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/taraerickson/ Twitter:  https://twitter.com/thetaraerickson Intense Suspense by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Support The Channel By Getting Some REEL REJECTS Apparel! https://www.rejectnationshop.com/ Follow Us On Socials:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reelrejects/  Tik-Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@reelrejects?lang=en Twitter: https://x.com/reelrejects Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheReelRejects/ Music Used In Ad:  Hat the Jazz by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Happy Alley by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... POWERED BY @GFUEL Visit https://gfuel.ly/3wD5Ygo and use code REJECTNATION for 20% off select tubs!! Head Editor: https://www.instagram.com/praperhq/?hl=en Co-Editor: Greg Alba Co-Editor: John Humphrey Music In Video: Airport Lounge - Disco Ultralounge by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Ask Us A QUESTION On CAMEO: https://www.cameo.com/thereelrejects Follow TheReelRejects On FACEBOOK, TWITTER, & INSTAGRAM:  FB:  https://www.facebook.com/TheReelRejects/ INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/reelrejects/ TWITTER:  https://twitter.com/thereelrejects Follow GREG ON INSTAGRAM & TWITTER: INSTAGRAM:  https://www.instagram.com/thegregalba/ TWITTER:  https://twitter.com/thegregalba Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've covered the odd world of The Comic Strip Presents... on Pop Screen before, when Mark and Graham looked at their Kate Bush-starring TV epic Les Dogs. But they also made big-screen films, the first of which featured even more pop stars - Lemmy, Paul McCartney, Shane MacGowan, Bill Wyman, Sandie Shaw, Jools Holland and more - and made even less sense.This week, Mark and Graham reconvene to discuss Peter Richardson's Eat the Rich, it's baffling casting decisions, infectious tabloid satire and quite a lot besides. As well as the film, we also talk about Bob Vylan at Glastonbury, Richardson's unmade Comic Strip film on Boris Johnson, Fiona Richmond, the pleasures of old episodic TV, Alex Cox's beef with The Comic Strip team, and the clashing rhetorical styles of Britain's godforsaken current crop of party leaders. Listen before we're arrested!If you want to help fund our legal defences, you can donate to our Patreon where you'll get a bonus episode of this show every month - we've just covered Amazon's instantly-notorious War of the Worlds adaptation - plus weekly written articles on Doctor Who, The Twilight Zone, The X-Files and a whole exclusive podcast - Last Night... - that you can't get anywhere else. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook for more.

Welcome to a brand-new series here on the Cosmic Cousins Podcast: Astro Somatix, a practice that bridges astrology and embodiment, bringing the wisdom of the stars down into the body through mindful, accessible movement. Each Somatic Movement episode, I'll guide you through a famous person's birth chart or the current astrological weather, not just with words, but through movement, breath, energy work, and somatic imagery, so astrology becomes more than an idea you think about. It becomes something you feel in your bones, your breath, and your heart. In this episode, we honor the iconic and otherworldly Kate Bush. You'll journey through the entirety of her birth chart, exploring her planetary placements while being gently guided into movement. This is intended as a movement meditation, an invitation to bring this cosmic practice into your body through love, presence, and joyful motion. If you'd like your own personalizedAstro Somatix Birth Chart Recording — a 20–30 minute somatic movement video crafted specifically for your unique birth chart, you can order one through my website at cosmiccousins.com/astrosomatix If you'd like to watch the video of this, you can tune in on YouTube. Cosmic Cousins Links Cosmic Cousins Memberships Free 20-Minute Somatic Flow Intro & Outro Music by:  Felix III

Darrell from Bush Telegraph chats with Jay Myrdal, the photographer who took the 'Wuthering Heights' and 'The Kick Inside' cover photos. Jay talks about how he got into photography, and his move from Montana in America to the UK, where he has lived ever since. For the very first time we get to hear Jay talk about the iconic photo session with the young Kate Bush, as well as his work with other artists. This was Kate's very first photo session at the age of 19, and yet you get a glimpse into how important the visual concepts were to her even back then. Jay recounts the process of this session, including the arrival of Kate's father a few days before who came to build that iconic kite for Kate. Enjoy!

Roy Harper has released 32 albums, performed at five Glastonbury's, and been cited as a an inspiration by Led Zeppelin, Pete Townsend, Kate Bush and more. Recorded Music NZ's Paul Kennedy takes us inside Roy's world.

Propaganda - P Machinery Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill Sabrina Carpenter - Please Please Please Benson Boone - Cry Tate McRae - Sports Car Pet Shop Boys - Domino Dancing Harry Styles - As It Was Damiano David - Born With A Broken Heart a-ha - Take On Me The Zutons - Valerie Vampire Weekend - This Life Lil Nas X - Thats What I Want Chappell Roan - P!nk Pony Club Run DMC Feat. Aerosmith - Walk This Way Tina Turner - Typical Male Bee Gees - Jive Talkin' Hébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Susan Morrison joins us to discuss her definitive biography of SNL creator Lorne Michaels. Author Leah Kardos tells us why Kate Bush's album, “Hounds of Love,” is as fresh as ever 40 years after its release. Also, Maggie Su on her very funny and very moving debut novel, “Blob: A Love Story.”

The Music of 1985 (Part 2) Our wayback machine is broken, so we’re still stuck in the year 1985! But it’s okay, because there was some really great music in the second half of that year! We’ll be talking about iconic albums by Kate Bush, REM, John Cougar Mellencamp, KISS, Dio, Big Audio Dynamite, The Firm, The […] The post Modern Musicology #143 – The Music of 1985 (Part 2) appeared first on The ESO Network.

In this episode, James Cox sits down with artist Sophia Warren to discuss the healing power of music and her personal journey with mental health. Sophia shares her experiences growing up with Hashimoto's disease, the role music played in her life, and the evolution of her music from her EP "Bloodstone" to her latest project "Adesso." They also delve into the nuances of musical genres, the impact of living in different cities like Austin, Texas, and Asheville, North Carolina, and the creative process behind their songs. The conversation touches on the challenges of navigating the music industry and the importance of authenticity.Key Themes Discussed:Mental Health and Music: How music serves as a coping mechanism and a source of comfort during difficult times.Hashimoto's Disease: Sophia's experience with the autoimmune disorder from a young age, including the challenges of diagnosis and living with an invisible illness.Musical Evolution: The growth and development of Sophia's sound between her EP "Bloodstone" and her project "Adesso."City Influence: How growing up in Austin, Texas, and Asheville, North Carolina, shaped her musical style and storytelling.The Creative Process: Sophia's journey in finding her musical voice and working with producers.Artist Identity: Exploring themes of self-discovery, insecurity, and maturing as an artist.The Power of Connection: How music helps listeners feel less alone and understood."Static" by Sophia Warren: A song that was cathartic to write and perform, dealing with anxiety and intrusive thoughts.Dream Collaborations: Sophia's ideal collaborations with artists like Nat King Cole.Superpowers: Discussing what superpower music would have and its impact on the world.Fictional Dinner Party Guests: Steven Universe, Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, and Johnny Test.Mount Rushmore of Artists: Twelve Rods, The Cranberries, Kate Bush, and Radiohead.Musical Influences: The impact of movie posters and specific artists on her room decor and music taste.Unexplainable Feelings: The song "Illusion" by Henry Mancini as a piece of music that evokes feelings she can't articulate.Guest Information:Sophia Warren: Artist, songwriter, producer.Find Sophia Online:YouTube: Sophia Warren Music (link may be under construction)Instagram: @SophiaWarrenMusic (or similar)TikTok: @SophiaWarrenMusic (or similar)Website: Sophia Warren Music (if available)Sponsor Information:BetterHelp: Offering listeners 10% off their first month of therapy. Visit betterhelp.com/music speaks to get started.Connect with When Words Fail Music Speaks:Follow them on their journey as they discuss the healing power of music, interview artists and bands, break down genres and music news, review artist biographies, and much more.Podcast Tagline: "When words fail, music speaks."

Our wayback machine is broken, so we're still stuck in the year 1985! But it's okay, because there was some really great music in the second half of that year! We'll be talking about iconic albums by Kate Bush, REM, John Cougar Mellencamp, KISS, Dio, Big Audio Dynamite, The Firm, The Replacements, Iron Maiden, Simple Minds, Stevie Nicks, and many others!  As always, you can follow along with our discussion by checking out our accompanying Spotify Playlist. What's your favorite album released in the second half of 1985? Drop us a line at modernmusicology1@gmail.com or just leave a comment on our socials or whatever podcast platform you're listening to us.  Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ModernMusicology  Check us out on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/modernmusicologypodcast/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ModrnMusicology  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk-MlcGy5u3fK1j4bVty1Kw  Modern Musicology is part of the ESO Podcast Network. https://esonetwork.com/  Find more about us: Rob Levy: https://kdhx.org/shows/show/juxtaposition  Stephanie Seymour: www.therearebirds.com   R. Alan Siler: www.kozmiccreative.com   Anthony Williams: https://watchers4d.podbean.com/

What connects legendary singer Kate Bush and Tudor queen Anne Boleyn? In this fascinating and inspiring interview, I chat with novelist Natalia Richards, author of The Falcon's Rise and The Falcon's Flight—two beautifully written novels exploring Anne Boleyn's early life and rise to power. Natalia shares how she transitioned from the world of music (yes, Kate Bush really did ask her to be a backing singer at 18!) to historical fiction, and why Anne Boleyn has captivated her imagination for so many years. We discuss: - The real Anne Boleyn behind the myths and portrayals - Natalia's research process and writing rituals - Her emotional connection to key scenes and characters - The places that inspire her work - And more! Whether you're a fellow Anne Boleyn enthusiast, a writer, or just love hearing about the creative process, you'll love this rich, warm, and insightful conversation. Find Natalia Richards' books here: http://getbook.at/falconsrise http://getbook.at/falconsflight

On the July 30 edition of Music History Today podcast, Metallica enters sandman, Top of the Pops ends, and Sublime debuts. Plus, it's Kate Bush and Buddy Guy's birthdays!!For more music history, subscribe to my Spotify Channel or subscribe to the audio version of my music history podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts fromALL MUSIC HISTORY TODAY PODCAST NETWORK LINKS - https://allmylinks.com/musichistorytodayResources for mental health issues - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lineshttps://findahelpline.comResources for substance abuse issues - https://988lifeline.orghttps://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/helplines/national-helpline

This week, Steve picked a set of dog songs.  Here are the artists you can enjoy listening to: Ladytron, Lit, The Killers, AC/DC, Kate Bush, Garbage, Kaiser Chiefs, Pale Waves, Suki Waterhouse, Joe Jackson, Louise Aubrie, Lloyd Cole, The Living End, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, TheKinks. AI-free since 2016! On the Air on Bedford 105.1 FM Radio      *** 5pm Friday ***      *** 10am Sunday ***      *** 8pm Monday *** Stream live at http://209.95.50.189:8178/stream Stream on-demand most recent episodes at https://wbnh1051.podbean.com/category/suburban-underground/ And available on demand on your favorite podcast app! Facebook: SuburbanUndergroundRadio   ***    Instagram: SuburbanUnderground   ***    #newwave #altrock #alternativerock #punkrock #indierock

River-related news has dominated the pages of the Montague Reporter so far this summer. Mike and Sarah discuss the recent drawdown of the Turners Falls dam, the vintage graffiti it revealed, and a new tax deal negotiated between the town and First Light Power. Plus, an update on a battery storage facility approved to be built outside Judd Wire. But first, learn how you and your little ones can fit fecal education and a Kate Bush flash mob workshop into one fun-filled day next week!Subscribe to the Montague Reporter! https://montaguereporter.org/subscribe/

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com In advance of their new album SISTER—out Sept 12 via True Panther and Dirty Hit—EDM emo pop punk crunkcore electroclash dubstep screamo trance DJs, producers, and siblings Angel and Lulu AKA the @FrostChildren join NM to talk about making music in a memetically driven age. For more: https://frostchildren.xyz https://frostchildren.ffm.to/sister https://instagram.com/thefrostchildren Names cited: Above & Beyond, Adam Curtis, Addison Rae, Afrojack, All Time Low, Blood on the Dance Floor, Breathe Carolina, BryanStars, Brokencyde, Celine, Charli XCX, Fall Out Boy, Gerard Way, Gracie Abrams, Harmony Korine, I Set My Friends on Fire, Isabella Rossellini, Jane Remover, Jimmy Buffett, Kate Bush, Kim Petras, Lana Del Rey, Mac DeMarco, Marc Jacobs, margø, The Medic Droid, Mission of Burma, Miu Miu, Model/Actriz, Monstercat, Montez Press Radio, MTV Cribs, My Chemical Romance, Nirvana, Oklou, Olivia Rodrigo, Owsla, Panic! At the Disco, Paper Magazine, Peter Gabriel, Pitbull, Porter Robinson, Sabrina Carpenter, Skrillex, The Smashing Pumpkins, Spring Breakers, The Sound, Stüssy, The 1975, True Panther, Vans Warped Tour, Virtual Riot, Vivaldi

Steve Blacknell dated Kate Bush and flew on Concorde with Phil Collins from London to Philadelphia during Live Aid—just two highlights from a life lived at full volume. A former BBC presenter and MTV VJ, Steve introduced New Order on Riverside, hosted Breakfast Time and Radio1's In Concert, and interviewed everyone from Lemmy to David Cassidy (in a hotel jacuzzi). He got his start in hospital radio thanks to advice from John Peel, worked in PR for labels like Decca and Chrysalis, and did PR for Peter Stringfellow in the '80s. Now CEO of the Central London School of TV and Media Training and host of Soho's Waffle Club, Steve's memoir Tales From The Bedroom Wall, charts his journey through fame, addiction, reinvention—and everything in between . Steve Blacknell is our guest in episode 509 of My Time Capsule and chats to Michael Fenton Stevens about the five things he'd like to put in a time capsule; four he'd like to preserve and one he'd like to bury and never have to think about again .Steve Blacknell's memoir, Tales From The Bedroom Wall: The Life & Times of a Serial Thrill Seeker, is out now, copies are available to buy from https://www.steveblacknell.comFollow My Time Capsule on Instagram: @mytimecapsulepodcast & Twitter/X & Facebook: @MyTCpod .Follow Michael Fenton Stevens on Twitter/X: @fentonstevens & Instagram @mikefentonstevens .Produced and edited by John Fenton-Stevens for Cast Off Productions .Music by Pass The Peas Music .Artwork by matthewboxall.com .This podcast is proud to be associated with the charity Viva! Providing theatrical opportunities for hundreds of young people .To support this podcast, get all episodes ad-free and a bonus episode every Wednesday of "My Time Capsule The Debrief', please sign up here - https://mytimecapsule.supercast.com. All money goes straight into the making of the podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

✦ The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever is dancing into its 10th year in Atlanta on Saturday, July 26, in Candler Park. City Lights Collective member, Chantelle Rytter, has more on this odd Atlanta tradition that brings Kate Bush and Emily Brontë fans together in a public dance. ✦ Today marks the 5th anniversary of Congressman John Lewis' death. Lewis dedicated his life to advancing the cause of freedom and equality in America and was a towering figure in our country's struggle for civil rights. He inspired countless people, including the band members of the Cabbagetown band, Evan Stepp & The Piners. They recently released a single titled "Good Trouble," and Evan joined us recently to share the story behind the song. ✦ The West End's Portrait Coffee is hosting an event this weekend called "A Place to Play," and City Lights Collective co-host Jon Goode recently sat down with co-founder Marcus Hollinger to learn why play is not a game. ✦ Today, we trace the history of one of Atlanta's most nostalgic institutions: the Science & Technology Museum of Atlanta, or SciTrek. From its grassroots beginnings to becoming a downtown sensation, SciTrek brought science to life for a generation. City Lights Collective member, podcaster, and self-proclaimed history nerd Victoria Lemos recently traced SciTrek's journey through civic politics, fundraising highs and lows, and the love Atlantans still have for the museum today. If you grew up here (or wish you had), this nostalgic deep dive is for you. ✦ You know as well as we do that there is always a plethora of things to do in Atlanta, and we have earned the title of "The Cultural Capital of the South." Mike Jordan, senior editor at the AJC, and Sammie Purcell, associate editor at Rough Draft Atlanta, know this well too. They join us weekly to share a few of their picks for your weekend entertainment. ✦ ATL Comic Convention is this weekend, and a couple of the stars from the hit saga "Twilight" will be in town to participate. WABE arts reporter Summer Evans spoke with two of the vampires—actors Kellan Lutz and Jackson Rathbone, or for you fangs out there, that would be Jasper Hale and Emmett Cullen, ahead of their appearance at the Georgia World Congress Center. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Semana tranquilita en la que Justin Bieber ha lanzado un álbum sorpresa, nos preparamos para el MAYHEM Ball, ya nos hemos escuchado todo lo de Kate Bush, Nicki se mete en un jaleo (qué sorpresa) y por supuesto sale musiquita.

Scottish pop-rock legend David Paton is one of the most quietly influential musicians of the past fifty years. Born and raised in Edinburgh, David made his mark as the founder, lead singer, bassist, and chief songwriter for the 70s pop band Pilot — the group behind the timeless hits “Magic” and “January.” These catchy, melodic tracks flew up the UK Singles Charts in 1974 and 1975, cementing Pilot's place in the classic pop-rock hall of fame.Pilot began when David, fresh from playing in local Scottish bands and even a short stint with the Bay City Rollers, teamed up with the late Billy Lyall, a fellow ex-Bay City Roller and brilliant keyboardist. With guitarist Ian Bairnson and drummer Stuart Tosh, Pilot quickly gained attention for their crisp harmonies, soaring hooks, and the polish of producer Alan Parsons, who helped shape their signature studio sound.At their peak, Pilot was more than a one-hit wonder. Their debut album From the Album of the Same Name (1974) and the follow-up Second Flight (1975) gave pop fans not just “Magic” but the No.1 UK single “January,” a song that topped the charts for three weeks. The band's unique blend of soft rock, glam pop, and radio-friendly hooks made them stand out in a crowded 70s scene.Though lineup changes and industry missteps led to Pilot's split by 1977, their legacy has endured. David Paton, the creative force behind the hits, went on to carve out an impressive career as a vocalist, bassist, and songwriter for other iconic acts. He played a vital role in The Alan Parsons Project, lending his vocals and bass to albums like Tales of Mystery and Imagination and I Robot, and fronted the progressive rock band Camel, where his vocals on “Heroes” from The Single Factor still mesmerise fans today.David's talents didn't stop there. As a sought-after session musician, he played bass on Elton John's hit “Nikita” and toured with Elton, worked alongside Kate Bush, Rick Wakeman, Jimmy Page, and even folk legends like Phil Cunningham and Dick Gaughan. His solo work reflects his Scottish roots too — with hauntingly beautiful arrangements of traditional songs by Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott.Still writing, recording, and performing, David's latest album, Communication (2024), shows that his knack for melody and emotional connection is as strong as ever. His autobiography, Magic: The David Paton Story, gives fans an honest, often funny look behind the curtain — from Pilot's dizzying success to the reality of life as an unsung rock hero.If you love timeless pop hooks, Scottish rock history, and the real story behind a band that gave us one of the catchiest songs ever written, dive deeper into the world of David Paton and Pilot — and experience the Magic for yourself.I know you'll enjoy the story of David Paton and relish the contribution he's made with his music.

For those who haven't heard the announcement I posted, songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the second part of a two-episode look at the song “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” by Fairport Convention, and the intertwining careers of Joe Boyd, Sandy Denny, and Richard Thompson. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-one-minute bonus episode available, on Judy Collins’ version of this song. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by editing, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Erratum For about an hour this was uploaded with the wrong Elton John clip in place of “Saturday Sun”. This has now been fixed. Resources Because of the increasing problems with Mixcloud’s restrictions, I have decided to start sharing streaming playlists of the songs used in episodes instead of Mixcloud ones. This Tunemymusic link will let you listen to the playlist I created on your streaming platform of choice — however please note that not all the songs excerpted are currently available on streaming. The songs missing from the Tidal version are “Shanten Bells” by the Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” by A.L. Lloyd, two by Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, three by Elton John & Linda Peters, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow” by Sandy Denny and “You Never Know” by Charlie Drake, but the other fifty-nine are there. Other songs may be missing from other services. The main books I used on Fairport Convention as a whole were Patrick Humphries' Meet On The Ledge, Clinton Heylin's What We Did Instead of Holidays, and Kevan Furbank's Fairport Convention on Track. Rob Young's Electric Eden is the most important book on the British folk-rock movement. Information on Richard Thompson comes from Patrick Humphries' Richard Thompson: Strange Affair and Thompson's own autobiography Beeswing.  Information on Sandy Denny comes from Clinton Heylin's No More Sad Refrains and Mick Houghton's I've Always Kept a Unicorn. I also used Joe Boyd's autobiography White Bicycles and Chris Blackwell's The Islander.  And this three-CD set is the best introduction to Fairport's music currently in print. Transcript Before we begin, this episode contains reference to alcohol and cocaine abuse and medical neglect leading to death. It also starts with some discussion of the fatal car accident that ended last episode. There’s also some mention of child neglect and spousal violence. If that’s likely to upset you, you might want to skip this episode or read the transcript. One of the inspirations for this podcast when I started it back in 2018 was a project by Richard Thompson, which appears (like many things in Thompson’s life) to have started out of sheer bloody-mindedness. In 1999 Playboy magazine asked various people to list their “songs of the Millennium”, and most of them, understanding the brief, chose a handful of songs from the latter half of the twentieth century. But Thompson determined that he was going to list his favourite songs *of the millennium*. He didn’t quite manage that, but he did cover seven hundred and forty years, and when Playboy chose not to publish it, he decided to turn it into a touring show, in which he covered all his favourite songs from “Sumer Is Icumen In” from 1260: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Sumer is Icumen In”] Through numerous traditional folk songs, union songs like “Blackleg Miner”, pieces by early-modern composers, Victorian and Edwardian music hall songs, and songs by the Beatles, the Ink Spots, the Kinks, and the Who, all the way to “Oops! I Did It Again”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Oops! I Did it Again”] And to finish the show, and to show how all this music actually ties together, he would play what he described as a “medieval tune from Brittany”, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt”] We have said many times in this podcast that there is no first anything, but there’s a reason that Liege and Lief, Fairport Convention’s third album of 1969, and the album other than Unhalfbricking on which their reputation largely rests, was advertised with the slogan “The first (literally) British folk rock album ever”. Folk-rock, as the term had come to be known, and as it is still usually used today, had very little to do with traditional folk music. Rather, the records of bands like The Byrds or Simon and Garfunkel were essentially taking the sounds of British beat groups of the early sixties, particularly the Searchers, and applying those sounds to material by contemporary singer-songwriters. People like Paul Simon and Bob Dylan had come up through folk clubs, and their songs were called folk music because of that, but they weren’t what folk music had meant up to that point — songs that had been collected after being handed down through the folk process, changed by each individual singer, with no single identifiable author. They were authored songs by very idiosyncratic writers. But over their last few albums, Fairport Convention had done one or two tracks per album that weren’t like that, that were instead recordings of traditional folk songs, but arranged with rock instrumentation. They were not necessarily the first band to try traditional folk music with electric instruments — around the same time that Fairport started experimenting with the idea, so did an Irish band named Sweeney’s Men, who brought in a young electric guitarist named Henry McCullough briefly. But they do seem to have been the first to have fully embraced the idea. They had done so to an extent with “A Sailor’s Life” on Unhalfbricking, but now they were going to go much further: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Matty Groves” (from about 4:30)] There had been some doubt as to whether Fairport Convention would even continue to exist — by the time Unhalfbricking, their second album of the year, was released, they had been through the terrible car accident that had killed Martin Lamble, the band’s drummer, and Jeannie Franklyn, Richard Thompson’s girlfriend. Most of the rest of the band had been seriously injured, and they had made a conscious decision not to discuss the future of the band until they were all out of hospital. Ashley Hutchings was hospitalised the longest, and Simon Nicol, Richard Thompson, and Sandy Denny, the other three surviving members of the band, flew over to LA with their producer and manager, Joe Boyd, to recuperate there and get to know the American music scene. When they came back, the group all met up in the flat belonging to Denny’s boyfriend Trevor Lucas, and decided that they were going to continue the band. They made a few decisions then — they needed a new drummer, and as well as a drummer they wanted to get in Dave Swarbrick. Swarbrick had played violin on several tracks on Unhalfbricking as a session player, and they had all been thrilled to work with him. Swarbrick was one of the most experienced musicians on the British folk circuit. He had started out in the fifties playing guitar with Beryl Marriott’s Ceilidh Band before switching to fiddle, and in 1963, long before Fairport had formed, he had already appeared on TV with the Ian Campbell Folk Group, led by Ian Campbell, the father of Ali and Robin Campbell, later of UB40: [Excerpt: The Ian Campbell Folk Group, “Shanten Bells (medley on Hullaballoo!)”] He’d sung with Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd: [Excerpt: A.L. Lloyd, “Tom’s Gone to Hilo” ] And he’d formed his hugely successful duo with Martin Carthy, releasing records like “Byker Hill” which are often considered among the best British folk music of all time: [Excerpt: Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick, “Byker Hill”] By the time Fairport had invited him to play on Unhalfbricking, Swarbrick had already performed on twenty albums as a core band member, plus dozens more EPs, singles, and odd tracks on compilations. They had no reason to think they could actually get him to join their band. But they had three advantages. The first was that Swarbrick was sick of the traditional folk scene at the time, saying later “I didn’t like seven-eighths of the people involved in it, and it was extremely opportune to leave. I was suddenly presented with the possibilities of exploring the dramatic content of the songs to the full.” The second was that he was hugely excited to be playing with Richard Thompson, who was one of the most innovative guitarists of his generation, and Martin Carthy remembers him raving about Thompson after their initial sessions. (Carthy himself was and is no slouch on the guitar of course, and there was even talk of getting him to join the band at this point, though they decided against it — much to the relief of rhythm guitarist Simon Nicol, who is a perfectly fine player himself but didn’t want to be outclassed by *two* of the best guitarists in Britain at the same time). And the third was that Joe Boyd told him that Fairport were doing so well — they had a single just about to hit the charts with “Si Tu Dois Partir” — that he would only have to play a dozen gigs with Fairport in order to retire. As it turned out, Swarbrick would play with the group for a decade, and would never retire — I saw him on his last tour in 2015, only eight months before he died. The drummer the group picked was also a far more experienced musician than any of the rest, though in a very different genre. Dave Mattacks had no knowledge at all of the kind of music they played, having previously been a player in dance bands. When asked by Hutchings if he wanted to join the band, Mattacks’ response was “I don’t know anything about the music. I don’t understand it… I can’t tell one tune from another, they all sound the same… but if you want me to join the group, fine, because I really like it. I’m enjoying myself musically.” Mattacks brought a new level of professionalism to the band, thanks to his different background. Nicol said of him later “He was dilligent, clean, used to taking three white shirts to a gig… The application he could bring to his playing was amazing. With us, you only played well when you were feeling well.” This distinction applied to his playing as well. Nicol would later describe the difference between Mattacks’ drumming and Lamble’s by saying “Martin’s strength was as an imaginative drummer. DM came in with a strongly developed sense of rhythm, through keeping a big band of drunken saxophone players in order. A great time-keeper.” With this new line-up and a new sense of purpose, the group did as many of their contemporaries were doing and “got their heads together in the country”. Joe Boyd rented the group a mansion, Farley House, in Farley Chamberlayne, Hampshire, and they stayed there together for three months. At the start, the group seem to have thought that they were going to make another record like Unhalfbricking, with some originals, some songs by American songwriters, and a few traditional songs. Even after their stay in Farley Chamberlayne, in fact, they recorded a few of the American songs they’d rehearsed at the start of the process, Richard Farina’s “Quiet Joys of Brotherhood” and Bob Dylan and Roger McGuinn’s “Ballad of Easy Rider”: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Ballad of Easy Rider”] Indeed, the whole idea of “getting our heads together in the country” (as the cliche quickly became in the late sixties as half of the bands in Britain went through much the same kind of process as Fairport were doing — but usually for reasons more to do with drug burnout or trend following than recovering from serious life-changing trauma) seems to have been inspired by Bob Dylan and the Band getting together in Big Pink. But very quickly they decided to follow the lead of Ashley Hutchings, who had had something of a Damascene conversion to the cause of traditional English folk music. They were listening mostly to Music From Big Pink by the Band, and to the first album by Sweeney’s Men: [Excerpt: Sweeney’s Men, “The Handsome Cabin Boy”] And they decided that they were going to make something that was as English as those records were North American and Irish (though in the event there were also a few Scottish songs included on the record). Hutchings in particular was becoming something of a scholar of traditional music, regularly visiting Cecil Sharp House and having long conversations with A.L. Lloyd, discovering versions of different traditional songs he’d never encountered before. This was both amusing and bemusing Sandy Denny, who had joined a rock group in part to get away from traditional music; but she was comfortable singing the material, and knew a lot of it and could make a lot of suggestions herself. Swarbrick obviously knew the repertoire intimately, and Nicol was amenable, while Mattacks was utterly clueless about the folk tradition at this point but knew this was the music he wanted to make. Thompson knew very little about traditional music, and of all the band members except Denny he was the one who has shown the least interest in the genre in his subsequent career — but as we heard at the beginning, showing the least interest in the genre is a relative thing, and while Thompson was not hugely familiar with the genre, he *was* able to work with it, and was also more than capable of writing songs that fit in with the genre. Of the eleven songs on the album, which was titled Liege and Lief (which means, roughly, Lord and Loyalty), there were no cover versions of singer-songwriters. Eight were traditional songs, and three were originals, all written in the style of traditional songs. The album opened with “Come All Ye”, an introduction written by Denny and Hutchings (the only time the two would ever write together): [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Come All Ye”] The other two originals were songs where Thompson had written new lyrics to traditional melodies. On “Crazy Man Michael”, Swarbrick had said to Thompson that the tune to which he had set his new words was weaker than the lyrics, to which Thompson had replied that if Swarbrick felt that way he should feel free to write a new melody. He did, and it became the first of the small number of Thompson/Swarbrick collaborations: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Crazy Man Michael”] Thompson and Swarbrick would become a brief songwriting team, but as much as anything else it was down to proximity — the two respected each other as musicians, but never got on very well. In 1981 Swarbrick would say “Richard and I never got on in the early days of FC… we thought we did, but we never did. We composed some bloody good songs together, but it was purely on a basis of “you write that and I’ll write this, and we’ll put it together.” But we never sat down and had real good chats.” The third original on the album, and by far the most affecting, is another song where Thompson put lyrics to a traditional tune. In this case he thought he was putting the lyrics to the tune of “Willie O'Winsbury”, but he was basing it on a recording by Sweeney’s Men. The problem was that Sweeney’s Men had accidentally sung the lyrics of “Willie O'Winsbury'” to the tune of a totally different song, “Fause Foodrage”: [Excerpt: Sweeney’s Men, “Willie O’Winsbury”] Thompson took that melody, and set to it lyrics about loss and separation. Thompson has never been one to discuss the meanings of his lyrics in any great detail, and in the case of this one has said “I really don't know what it means. This song came out of a dream, and I pretty much wrote it as I dreamt it (it was the sixties), and didn't spend very long analyzing it. So interpret as you wish – or replace with your own lines.” But in the context of the traffic accident that had killed his tailor girlfriend and a bandmate, and injured most of his other bandmates, the lyrics about lonely travellers, the winding road, bruised and beaten sons, saying goodbye, and never cutting cloth, seem fairly self-explanatory: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Farewell, Farewell”] The rest of the album, though, was taken up by traditional tunes. There was a long medley of four different fiddle reels; a version of “Reynardine” (a song about a seductive man — or is he a fox? Or perhaps both — which had been recorded by Swarbrick and Carthy on their most recent album); a 19th century song about a deserter saved from the firing squad by Prince Albert; and a long take on “Tam Lin”, one of the most famous pieces in the Scottish folk music canon, a song that has been adapted in different ways by everyone from the experimental noise band Current 93 to the dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah to the comics writer Grant Morrison: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Tam Lin”] And “Matty Groves”, a song about a man killing his cheating wife and her lover, which actually has a surprisingly similar story to that of “1921” from another great concept album from that year, the Who’s Tommy. “Matty Groves” became an excuse for long solos and shows of instrumental virtuosity: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Matty Groves”] The album was recorded in September 1969, after their return from their break in the country and a triumphal performance at the Royal Festival Hall, headlining over fellow Witchseason artists John and Beverly Martyn and Nick Drake. It became a classic of the traditional folk genre — arguably *the* classic of the traditional folk genre. In 2007 BBC Radio 2’s Folk Music Awards gave it an award for most influential folk album of all time, and while such things are hard to measure, I doubt there’s anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of British folk and folk-rock music who would not at least consider that a reasonable claim. But once again, by the time the album came out in November, the band had changed lineups yet again. There was a fundamental split in the band – on one side were Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson, whose stance was, roughly, that Liege and Lief was a great experiment and a fun thing to do once, but really the band had two first-rate songwriters in themselves, and that they should be concentrating on their own new material, not doing these old songs, good as they were. They wanted to take the form of the traditional songs and use that form for new material — they wanted to make British folk-rock, but with the emphasis on the rock side of things. Hutchings, on the other hand, was equally sure that he wanted to make traditional music and go further down the rabbit hole of antiquity. With the zeal of the convert he had gone in a couple of years from being the leader of a band who were labelled “the British Jefferson Airplane” to becoming a serious scholar of traditional folk music. Denny was tired of touring, as well — she wanted to spend more time at home with Trevor Lucas, who was sleeping with other women when she was away and making her insecure. When the time came for the group to go on a tour of Denmark, Denny decided she couldn’t make it, and Hutchings was jubilant — he decided he was going to get A.L. Lloyd into the band in her place and become a *real* folk group. Then Denny reconsidered, and Hutchings was crushed. He realised that while he had always been the leader, he wasn’t going to be able to lead the band any further in the traditionalist direction, and quit the group — but not before he was delegated by the other band members to fire Denny. Until the publication of Richard Thompson’s autobiography in 2022, every book on the group or its members said that Denny quit the band again, which was presumably a polite fiction that the band agreed, but according to Thompson “Before we flew home, we decided to fire Sandy. I don't remember who asked her to leave – it was probably Ashley, who usually did the dirty work. She was reportedly shocked that we would take that step. She may have been fragile beneath the confident facade, but she still knew her worth.” Thompson goes on to explain that the reasons for kicking her out were that “I suppose we felt that in her mind she had already left” and that “We were probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, though there wasn't a name for it back then.” They had considered inviting Trevor Lucas to join the band to make Denny more comfortable, but came to the (probably correct) conclusion that while he was someone they got on well with personally, he would be another big ego in a band that already had several, and that being around Denny and Lucas’ volatile relationship would, in Thompson’s phrasing, “have not always given one a feeling of peace and stability.” Hutchings originally decided he was going to join Sweeney’s Men, but that group were falling apart, and their first rehearsal with Hutchings would also be their last as a group, with only Hutchings and guitarist and mandolin player Terry Woods left in the band. They added Woods’ wife Gay, and another couple, Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, and formed a group called Steeleye Span, a name given them by Martin Carthy. That group, like Fairport, went to “get their heads together in the country” for three months and recorded an album of electric versions of traditional songs, Hark the Village Wait, on which Mattacks and another drummer, Gerry Conway, guested as Steeleye Span didn’t at the time have their own drummer: [Excerpt: Steeleye Span, “Blackleg Miner”] Steeleye Span would go on to have a moderately successful chart career in the seventies, but by that time most of the original lineup, including Hutchings, had left — Hutchings stayed with them for a few albums, then went on to form the first of a series of bands, all called the Albion Band or variations on that name, which continue to this day. And this is something that needs to be pointed out at this point — it is impossible to follow every single individual in this narrative as they move between bands. There is enough material in the history of the British folk-rock scene that someone could do a 500 Songs-style podcast just on that, and every time someone left Fairport, or Steeleye Span, or the Albion Band, or Matthews’ Southern Comfort, or any of the other bands we have mentioned or will mention, they would go off and form another band which would then fission, and some of its members would often join one of those other bands. There was a point in the mid-1970s where the Albion Band had two original members of Fairport Convention while Fairport Convention had none. So just in order to keep the narrative anything like wieldy, I’m going to keep the narrative concentrated on the two figures from Fairport — Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson — whose work outside the group has had the most influence on the wider world of rock music more broadly, and only deal with the other members when, as they often did, their careers intersected with those two. That doesn’t mean the other members are not themselves hugely important musicians, just that their importance has been primarily to the folk side of the folk-rock genre, and so somewhat outside the scope of this podcast. While Hutchings decided to form a band that would allow him to go deeper and deeper into traditional folk music, Sandy Denny’s next venture was rather different. For a long time she had been writing far more songs than she had ever played for her bandmates, like “Nothing More”, a song that many have suggested is about Thompson: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “Nothing More”] When Joe Boyd heard that Denny was leaving Fairport Convention, he was at first elated. Fairport’s records were being distributed by A&M in the US at that point, but Island Records was in the process of opening up a new US subsidiary which would then release all future Fairport product — *but*, as far as A&M were concerned, Sandy Denny *was* Fairport Convention. They were only interested in her. Boyd, on the other hand, loved Denny’s work intensely, but from his point of view *Richard Thompson* was Fairport Convention. If he could get Denny signed directly to A&M as a solo artist before Island started its US operations, Witchseason could get a huge advance on her first solo record, while Fairport could continue making records for Island — he’d have two lucrative acts, on different labels. Boyd went over and spoke to A&M and got an agreement in principle that they would give Denny a forty-thousand-dollar advance on her first solo album — twice what they were paying for Fairport albums. The problem was that Denny didn’t want to be a solo act. She wanted to be the lead singer of a band. She gave many reasons for this — the one she gave to many journalists was that she had seen a Judy Collins show and been impressed, but noticed that Collins’ band were definitely a “backing group”, and as she put it “But that's all they were – a backing group. I suddenly thought, If you're playing together on a stage you might as well be TOGETHER.” Most other people in her life, though, say that the main reason for her wanting to be in a band was her desire to be with her boyfriend, Trevor Lucas. Partly this was due to a genuine desire to spend more time with someone with whom she was very much in love, partly it was a fear that he would cheat on her if she was away from him for long periods of time, and part of it seems to have been Lucas’ dislike of being *too* overshadowed by his talented girlfriend — he didn’t mind acknowledging that she was a major talent, but he wanted to be thought of as at least a minor one. So instead of going solo, Denny formed Fotheringay, named after the song she had written for Fairport. This new band consisted at first of Denny on vocals and occasional piano, Lucas on vocals and rhythm guitar, and Lucas’ old Eclection bandmate Gerry Conway on drums. For a lead guitarist, they asked Richard Thompson who the best guitarist in Britain was, and he told them Albert Lee. Lee in turn brought in bass player Pat Donaldson, but this lineup of the band barely survived a fortnight. Lee *was* arguably the best guitarist in Britain, certainly a reasonable candidate if you could ever have a singular best (as indeed was Thompson himself), but he was the best *country* guitarist in Britain, and his style simply didn’t fit with Fotheringay’s folk-influenced songs. He was replaced by American guitarist Jerry Donahue, who was not anything like as proficient as Lee, but who was still very good, and fit the band’s style much better. The new group rehearsed together for a few weeks, did a quick tour, and then went into the recording studio to record their debut, self-titled, album. Joe Boyd produced the album, but admitted himself that he only paid attention to those songs he considered worthwhile — the album contained one song by Lucas, “The Ballad of Ned Kelly”, and two cover versions of American singer-songwriter material with Lucas singing lead. But everyone knew that the songs that actually *mattered* were Sandy Denny’s, and Boyd was far more interested in them, particularly the songs “The Sea” and “The Pond and the Stream”: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “The Pond and the Stream”] Fotheringay almost immediately hit financial problems, though. While other Witchseason acts were used to touring on the cheap, all packed together in the back of a Transit van with inexpensive equipment, Trevor Lucas had ambitions of being a rock star and wanted to put together a touring production to match, with expensive transport and equipment, including a speaker system that got nicknamed “Stonehenge” — but at the same time, Denny was unhappy being on the road, and didn’t play many gigs. As well as the band itself, the Fotheringay album also featured backing vocals from a couple of other people, including Denny’s friend Linda Peters. Peters was another singer from the folk clubs, and a good one, though less well-known than Denny — at this point she had only released a couple of singles, and those singles seemed to have been as much as anything else released as a novelty. The first of those, a version of Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” had been released as by “Paul McNeill and Linda Peters”: [Excerpt: Paul McNeill and Linda Peters, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”] But their second single, a version of John D. Loudermilk’s “You’re Taking My Bag”, was released on the tiny Page One label, owned by Larry Page, and was released under the name “Paul and Linda”, clearly with the intent of confusing particularly gullible members of the record-buying public into thinking this was the McCartneys: [Excerpt: Paul and Linda, “You’re Taking My Bag”] Peters was though more financially successful than almost anyone else in this story, as she was making a great deal of money as a session singer. She actually did another session involving most of Fotheringay around this time. Witchseason had a number of excellent songwriters on its roster, and had had some success getting covers by people like Judy Collins, but Joe Boyd thought that they might possibly do better at getting cover versions if they were performed in less idiosyncratic arrangements. Donahue, Donaldson, and Conway went into the studio to record backing tracks, and vocals were added by Peters and another session singer, who according to some sources also provided piano. They cut songs by Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band: [Excerpt: Linda Peters, “You Get Brighter”] Ed Carter, formerly of The New Nadir but by this time firmly ensconced in the Beach Boys’ touring band where he would remain for the next quarter-century: [Excerpt: Linda Peters, “I Don’t Mind”] John and Beverly Martyn, and Nick Drake: [Excerpt: Elton John, “Saturday Sun”] There are different lineups of musicians credited for those sessions in different sources, but I tend to believe that it’s mostly Fotheringay for the simple reason that Donahue says it was him, Donaldson and Conway who talked Lucas and Denny into the mistake that destroyed Fotheringay because of these sessions. Fotheringay were in financial trouble already, spending far more money than they were bringing in, but their album made the top twenty and they were getting respect both from critics and from the public — in September, Sandy Denny was voted best British female singer by the readers of Melody Maker in their annual poll, which led to shocked headlines in the tabloids about how this “unknown” could have beaten such big names as Dusty Springfield and Cilla Black. Only a couple of weeks after that, they were due to headline at the Albert Hall. It should have been a triumph. But Donahue, Donaldson, and Conway had asked that singing pianist to be their support act. As Donahue said later “That was a terrible miscast. It was our fault. He asked if [he] could do it. Actually Pat, Gerry and I had to talk Sandy and Trevor into [it]… We'd done these demos and the way he was playing – he was a wonderful piano player – he was sensitive enough. We knew very little about his stage-show. We thought he'd be a really good opener for us.” Unfortunately, Elton John was rather *too* good. As Donahue continued “we had no idea what he had in mind, that he was going to do the most incredible rock & roll show ever. He pretty much blew us off the stage before we even got on the stage.” To make matters worse, Fotheringay’s set, which was mostly comprised of new material, was underrehearsed and sloppy, and from that point on no matter what they did people were counting the hours until the band split up. They struggled along for a while though, and started working on a second record, with Boyd again producing, though as Boyd later said “I probably shouldn't have been producing the record. My lack of respect for the group was clear, and couldn't have helped the atmosphere. We'd put out a record that had sold disappointingly, A&M was unhappy. Sandy's tracks on the first record are among the best things she ever did – the rest of it, who cares? And the artwork, Trevor's sister, was terrible. It would have been one thing if I'd been unhappy with it and it sold, and the group was working all the time, making money, but that wasn't the case … I knew what Sandy was capable of, and it was very upsetting to me.” The record would not be released for thirty-eight years: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “Wild Mountain Thyme”] Witchseason was going badly into debt. Given all the fissioning of bands that we’ve already been talking about, Boyd had been stretched thin — he produced sixteen albums in 1970, and almost all of them lost money for the company. And he was getting more and more disillusioned with the people he was producing. He loved Beverly Martyn’s work, but had little time for her abusive husband John, who was dominating her recording and life more and more and would soon become a solo artist while making her stay at home (and stealing her ideas without giving her songwriting credit). The Incredible String Band were great, but they had recently converted to Scientology, which Boyd found annoying, and while he was working with all sorts of exciting artists like Vashti Bunyan and Nico, he was finding himself less and less important to the artists he mentored. Fairport Convention were a good example of this. After Denny and Hutchings had left the group, they’d decided to carry on as an electric folk group, performing an equal mix of originals by the Swarbrick and Thompson songwriting team and arrangements of traditional songs. The group were now far enough away from the “British Jefferson Airplane” label that they decided they didn’t need a female vocalist — and more realistically, while they’d been able to replace Judy Dyble, nobody was going to replace Sandy Denny. Though it’s rather surprising when one considers Thompson’s subsequent career that nobody seems to have thought of bringing in Denny’s friend Linda Peters, who was dating Joe Boyd at the time (as Denny had been before she met Lucas) as Denny’s replacement. Instead, they decided that Swarbrick and Thompson were going to share the vocals between them. They did, though, need a bass player to replace Hutchings. Swarbrick wanted to bring in Dave Pegg, with whom he had played in the Ian Campbell Folk Group, but the other band members initially thought the idea was a bad one. At the time, while they respected Swarbrick as a musician, they didn’t think he fully understood rock and roll yet, and they thought the idea of getting in a folkie who had played double bass rather than an electric rock bassist ridiculous. But they auditioned him to mollify Swarbrick, and found that he was exactly what they needed. As Joe Boyd later said “All those bass lines were great, Ashley invented them all, but he never could play them that well. He thought of them, but he was technically not a terrific bass player. He was a very inventive, melodic, bass player, but not a very powerful one technically. But having had the part explained to him once, Pegg was playing it better than Ashley had ever played it… In some rock bands, I think, ultimately, the bands that sound great, you can generally trace it to the bass player… it was at that point they became a great band, when they had Pegg.” The new lineup of Fairport decided to move in together, and found a former pub called the Angel, into which all the band members moved, along with their partners and children (Thompson was the only one who was single at this point) and their roadies. The group lived together quite happily, and one gets the impression that this was the period when they were most comfortable with each other, even though by this point they were a disparate group with disparate tastes, in music as in everything else. Several people have said that the only music all the band members could agree they liked at this point was the first two albums by The Band. With the departure of Hutchings from the band, Swarbrick and Thompson, as the strongest personalities and soloists, became in effect the joint leaders of the group, and they became collaborators as songwriters, trying to write new songs that were inspired by traditional music. Thompson described the process as “let’s take one line of this reel and slow it down and move it up a minor third and see what that does to it; let’s take one line of this ballad and make a whole song out of it. Chopping up the tradition to find new things to do… like a collage.” Generally speaking, Swarbrick and Thompson would sit by the fire and Swarbrick would play a melody he’d been working on, the two would work on it for a while, and Thompson would then go away and write the lyrics. This is how the two came up with songs like the nine-minute “Sloth”, a highlight of the next album, Full House, and one that would remain in Fairport’s live set for much of their career: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sloth”] “Sloth” was titled that way because Thompson and Swarbrick were working on two tunes, a slow one and a fast one, and they jokingly named them “Sloth” and “Fasth”, but the latter got renamed to “Walk Awhile”, while “Sloth” kept its working title. But by this point, Boyd and Thompson were having a lot of conflict in the studio. Boyd was never the most technical of producers — he was one of those producers whose job is to gently guide the artists in the studio and create a space for the music to flourish, rather than the Joe Meek type with an intimate technical knowledge of the studio — and as the artists he was working with gained confidence in their own work they felt they had less and less need of him. During the making of the Full House album, Thompson and Boyd, according to Boyd, clashed on everything — every time Boyd thought Thompson had done a good solo, Thompson would say to erase it and let him have another go, while every time Boyd thought Thompson could do better, Thompson would say that was the take to keep. One of their biggest clashes was over Thompson’s song “Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman”, which was originally intended for release on the album, and is included in current reissues of it: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman”] Thompson had written that song inspired by what he thought was the unjust treatment of Alex Bramham, the driver in Fairport’s fatal car crash, by the courts — Bramham had been given a prison sentence of a few months for dangerous driving, while the group members thought he had not been at fault. Boyd thought it was one of the best things recorded for the album, but Thompson wasn’t happy with his vocal — there was one note at the top of the melody that he couldn’t quite hit — and insisted it be kept off the record, even though that meant it would be a shorter album than normal. He did this at such a late stage that early copies of the album actually had the title printed on the sleeve, but then blacked out. He now says in his autobiography “I could have persevered, double-tracked the voice, warmed up for longer – anything. It was a good track, and the record was lacking without it. When the album was re-released, the track was restored with a more confident vocal, and it has stayed there ever since.” During the sessions for Full House the group also recorded one non-album single, Thompson and Swarbrick’s “Now Be Thankful”: [Excerpt, Fairport Convention, “Now Be Thankful”] The B-side to that was a medley of two traditional tunes plus a Swarbrick original, but was given the deliberately ridiculous title “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament For The 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat From The Straits Of Loch Knombe, In The Year Of Our Lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The Announcement Of Her Marriage To The Laird Of Kinleakie”: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sir B. McKenzie’s Daughter’s Lament For The 77th Mounted Lancers Retreat From The Straits Of Loch Knombe, In The Year Of Our Lord 1727, On The Occasion Of The Announcement Of Her Marriage To The Laird Of Kinleakie”] The B. McKenzie in the title was a reference to the comic-strip character Barry McKenzie, a stereotype drunk Australian created for Private Eye magazine by the comedian Barry Humphries (later to become better known for his Dame Edna Everage character) but the title was chosen for one reason only — to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the song with the longest title. Which they did, though they were later displaced by the industrial band Test Dept, and their song “Long Live British Democracy Which Flourishes and Is Constantly Perfected Under the Immaculate Guidance of the Great, Honourable, Generous and Correct Margaret Hilda Thatcher. She Is the Blue Sky in the Hearts of All Nations. Our People Pay Homage and Bow in Deep Respect and Gratitude to Her. The Milk of Human Kindness”. Full House got excellent reviews in the music press, with Rolling Stone saying “The music shows that England has finally gotten her own equivalent to The Band… By calling Fairport an English equivalent of the Band, I meant that they have soaked up enough of the tradition of their countryfolk that it begins to show all over, while they maintain their roots in rock.” Off the back of this, the group went on their first US tour, culminating in a series of shows at the Troubadour in LA, on the same bill as Rick Nelson, which were recorded and later released as a live album: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Sloth (live)”] The Troubadour was one of the hippest venues at the time, and over their residency there the group got seen by many celebrities, some of whom joined them on stage. The first was Linda Ronstadt, who initially demurred, saying she didn’t know any of their songs. On being told they knew all of hers, she joined in with a rendition of “Silver Threads and Golden Needles”. Thompson was later asked to join Ronstadt’s backing band, who would go on to become the Eagles, but he said later of this offer “I would have hated it. I’d have hated being on the road with four or five miserable Americans — they always seem miserable. And if you see them now, they still look miserable on stage — like they don’t want to be there and they don’t like each other.” The group were also joined on stage at the Troubadour on one memorable night by some former bandmates of Pegg’s. Before joining the Ian Campbell Folk Group, Pegg had played around the Birmingham beat scene, and had been in bands with John Bonham and Robert Plant, who turned up to the Troubadour with their Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page (reports differ on whether the fourth member of Zeppelin, John Paul Jones, also came along). They all got up on stage together and jammed on songs like “Hey Joe”, “Louie Louie”, and various old Elvis tunes. The show was recorded, and the tapes are apparently still in the possession of Joe Boyd, who has said he refuses to release them in case he is murdered by the ghost of Peter Grant. According to Thompson, that night ended in a three-way drinking contest between Pegg, Bonham, and Janis Joplin, and it’s testament to how strong the drinking culture is around Fairport and the British folk scene in general that Pegg outdrank both of them. According to Thompson, Bonham was found naked by a swimming pool two days later, having missed two gigs. For all their hard rock image, Led Zeppelin were admirers of a lot of the British folk and folk-rock scene, and a few months later Sandy Denny would become the only outside vocalist ever to appear on a Led Zeppelin record when she duetted with Plant on “The Battle of Evermore” on the group’s fourth album: [Excerpt: Led Zeppelin, “The Battle of Evermore”] Denny would never actually get paid for her appearance on one of the best-selling albums of all time. That was, incidentally, not the only session that Denny was involved in around this time — she also sang on the soundtrack to a soft porn film titled Swedish Fly Girls, whose soundtrack was produced by Manfred Mann: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “What Will I Do With Tomorrow?”] Shortly after Fairport’s trip to America, Joe Boyd decided he was giving up on Witchseason. The company was now losing money, and he was finding himself having to produce work for more and more acts as the various bands fissioned. The only ones he really cared about were Richard Thompson, who he was finding it more and more difficult to work with, Nick Drake, who wanted to do his next album with just an acoustic guitar anyway, Sandy Denny, who he felt was wasting her talents in Fotheringay, and Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band, who was more distant since his conversion to Scientology. Boyd did make some attempts to keep the company going. On a trip to Sweden, he negotiated an agreement with the manager and publisher of a Swedish band whose songs he’d found intriguing, the Hep Stars. Boyd was going to publish their songs in the UK, and in return that publisher, Stig Anderson, would get the rights to Witchseason’s catalogue in Scandinavia — a straight swap, with no money changing hands. But before Boyd could get round to signing the paperwork, he got a better offer from Mo Ostin of Warners — Ostin wanted Boyd to come over to LA and head up Warners’ new film music department. Boyd sold Witchseason to Island Records and moved to LA with his fiancee Linda Peters, spending the next few years working on music for films like Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange, as well as making his own documentary about Jimi Hendrix, and thus missed out on getting the UK publishing rights for ABBA, and all the income that would have brought him, for no money. And it was that decision that led to the breakup of Fotheringay. Just before Christmas 1970, Fotheringay were having a difficult session, recording the track “John the Gun”: [Excerpt: Fotheringay, “John the Gun”] Boyd got frustrated and kicked everyone out of the session, and went for a meal and several drinks with Denny. He kept insisting that she should dump the band and just go solo, and then something happened that the two of them would always describe differently. She asked him if he would continue to produce her records if she went solo, and he said he would. According to Boyd’s recollection of the events, he meant that he would fly back from California at some point to produce her records. According to Denny, he told her that if she went solo he would stay in Britain and not take the job in LA. This miscommunication was only discovered after Denny told the rest of Fotheringay after the Christmas break that she was splitting the band. Jerry Donahue has described that as the worst moment of his life, and Denny felt very guilty about breaking up a band with some of her closest friends in — and then when Boyd went over to the US anyway she felt a profound betrayal. Two days before Fotheringay’s final concert, in January 1971, Sandy Denny signed a solo deal with Island records, but her first solo album would not end up produced by Joe Boyd. Instead, The North Star Grassman and the Ravens was co-produced by Denny, John Wood — the engineer who had worked with Boyd on pretty much everything he’d produced, and Richard Thompson, who had just quit Fairport Convention, though he continued living with them at the Angel, at least until a truck crashed into the building in February 1971, destroying its entire front wall and forcing them to relocate. The songs chosen for The North Star Grassman and the Ravens reflected the kind of choices Denny would make on her future albums, and her eclectic taste in music. There was, of course, the obligatory Dylan cover, and the traditional folk ballad “Blackwaterside”, but there was also a cover version of Brenda Lee’s “Let’s Jump the Broomstick”: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Let’s Jump the Broomstick”] Most of the album, though, was made up of originals about various people in Denny’s life, like “Next Time Around”, about her ex-boyfriend Jackson C Frank: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Next Time Around”] The album made the top forty in the UK — Denny’s only solo album to do so — and led to her once again winning the “best female singer” award in Melody Maker’s readers’ poll that year — the male singer award was won by Rod Stewart. Both Stewart and Denny appeared the next year on the London Symphony Orchestra’s all-star version of The Who’s Tommy, which had originally been intended as a vehicle for Stewart before Roger Daltrey got involved. Stewart’s role was reduced to a single song, “Pinball Wizard”, while Denny sang on “It’s a Boy”: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “It’s a Boy”] While Fotheringay had split up, all the band members play on The North Star Grassman and the Ravens. Guitarists Donahue and Lucas only play on a couple of the tracks, with Richard Thompson playing most of the guitar on the record. But Fotheringay’s rhythm section of Pat Donaldson and Gerry Conway play on almost every track. Another musician on the album, Ian Whiteman, would possibly have a profound effect on the future direction of Richard Thompson’s career and life. Whiteman was the former keyboard player for the mod band The Action, having joined them just before they became the blues-rock band Mighty Baby. But Mighty Baby had split up when all of the band except the lead singer had converted to Islam. Richard Thompson was on his own spiritual journey at this point, and became a Sufi – the same branch of Islam as Whiteman – soon after the session, though Thompson has said that his conversion was independent of Whiteman’s. The two did become very close and work together a lot in the mid-seventies though. Thompson had supposedly left Fairport because he was writing material that wasn’t suited to the band, but he spent more than a year after quitting the group working on sessions rather than doing anything with his own material, and these sessions tended to involve the same core group of musicians. One of the more unusual was a folk-rock supergroup called The Bunch, put together by Trevor Lucas. Richard Branson had recently bought a recording studio, and wanted a band to test it out before opening it up for commercial customers, so with this free studio time Lucas decided to record a set of fifties rock and roll covers. He gathered together Thompson, Denny, Whiteman, Ashley Hutchings, Dave Mattacks, Pat Donaldson, Gerry Conway, pianist Tony Cox, the horn section that would later form the core of the Average White Band, and Linda Peters, who had now split up with Joe Boyd and returned to the UK, and who had started dating Thompson. They recorded an album of covers of songs by Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Johnny Otis and others: [Excerpt: The Bunch, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] The early seventies was a hugely productive time for this group of musicians, as they all continued playing on each other’s projects. One notable album was No Roses by Shirley Collins, which featured Thompson, Mattacks, Whiteman, Simon Nicol, Lal and Mike Waterson, and Ashley Hutchings, who was at that point married to Collins, as well as some more unusual musicians like the free jazz saxophonist Lol Coxhill: [Excerpt: Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band, “Claudy Banks”] Collins was at the time the most respected female singer in British traditional music, and already had a substantial career including a series of important records made with her sister Dolly, work with guitarists like Davey Graham, and time spent in the 1950s collecting folk songs in the Southern US with her then partner Alan Lomax – according to Collins she did much of the actual work, but Lomax only mentioned her in a single sentence in his book on this work. Some of the same group of musicians went on to work on an album of traditional Morris dancing tunes, titled Morris On, credited to “Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield”, with Collins singing lead on two tracks: [Excerpt: Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield with Shirley Collins, “The Willow Tree”] Thompson thought that that album was the best of the various side projects he was involved in at the time, comparing it favourably to Rock On, which he thought was rather slight, saying later “Conceptually, Fairport, Ashley and myself and Sandy were developing a more fragile style of music that nobody else was particularly interested in, a British Folk Rock idea that had a logical development to it, although we all presented it our own way. Morris On was rather more true to what we were doing. Rock On was rather a retro step. I'm not sure it was lasting enough as a record but Sandy did sing really well on the Buddy Holly songs.” Hutchings used the musicians on No Roses and Morris On as the basis for his band the Albion Band, which continues to this day. Simon Nicol and Dave Mattacks both quit Fairport to join the Albion Band, though Mattacks soon returned. Nicol would not return to Fairport for several years, though, and for a long period in the mid-seventies Fairport Convention had no original members. Unfortunately, while Collins was involved in the Albion Band early on, she and Hutchings ended up divorcing, and the stress from the divorce led to Collins developing spasmodic dysphonia, a stress-related illness which makes it impossible for the sufferer to sing. She did eventually regain her vocal ability, but between 1978 and 2016 she was unable to perform at all, and lost decades of her career. Richard Thompson occasionally performed with the Albion Band early on, but he was getting stretched a little thin with all these sessions. Linda Peters said later of him “When I came back from America, he was working in Sandy’s band, and doing sessions by the score. Always with Pat Donaldson and Dave Mattacks. Richard would turn up with his guitar, one day he went along to do a session with one of those folkie lady singers — and there were Pat and DM. They all cracked. Richard smashed his amp and said “Right! No more sessions!” In 1972 he got round to releasing his first solo album, Henry the Human Fly, which featured guest appearances by Linda Peters and Sandy Denny among others: [Excerpt: Richard Thompson, “The Angels Took My Racehorse Away”] Unfortunately, while that album has later become regarded as one of the classics of its genre, at the time it was absolutely slated by the music press. The review in Melody Maker, for example, read in part “Some of Richard Thompson’s ideas sound great – which is really the saving grace of this album, because most of the music doesn’t. The tragedy is that Thompson’s “British rock music” is such an unconvincing concoction… Even the songs that do integrate rock and traditional styles of electric guitar rhythms and accordion and fiddle decoration – and also include explicit, meaningful lyrics are marred by bottle-up vocals, uninspiring guitar phrases and a general lack of conviction in performance.” Henry the Human Fly was released in the US by Warners, who had a reciprocal licensing deal with Island (and for whom Joe Boyd was working at the time, which may have had something to do with that) but according to Thompson it became the lowest-selling record that Warners ever put out (though I’ve also seen that claim made about Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle, another album that has later been rediscovered). Thompson was hugely depressed by this reaction, and blamed his own singing. Happily, though, by this point he and Linda had become a couple — they would marry in 1972 — and they started playing folk clubs as a duo, or sometimes in a trio with Simon Nicol. Thompson was also playing with Sandy Denny’s backing band at this point, and played on every track on her second solo album, Sandy. This album was meant to be her big commercial breakthrough, with a glamorous cover photo by David Bailey, and with a more American sound, including steel guitar by Sneaky Pete Kleinow of the Flying Burrito Brothers (whose overdubs were supervised in LA by Joe Boyd): [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Tomorrow is a Long Time”] The album was given a big marketing push by Island, and “Listen, Listen” was made single of the week on the Radio 1 Breakfast show: [Excerpt: Sandy Denny, “Listen, Listen”] But it did even worse than the previous album, sending her into something of a depression. Linda Thompson (as the former Linda Peters now was) said of this period “After the Sandy album, it got her down that her popularity didn't suddenly increase in leaps and bounds, and that was the start of her really fretting about the way her career was going. Things only escalated after that. People like me or Martin Carthy or Norma Waterson would think, ‘What are you on about? This is folk music.'” After Sandy’s release, Denny realised she could no longer afford to tour with a band, and so went back to performing just acoustically or on piano. The only new music to be released by either of these ex-members of Fairport Convention in 1973 was, oddly, on an album by the band they were no longer members of. After Thompson had left Fairport, the group had managed to release two whole albums with the same lineup — Swarbrick, Nicol, Pegg, and Mattacks. But then Nicol and Mattacks had both quit the band to join the Albion Band with their former bandmate Ashley Hutchings, leading to a situation where the Albion Band had two original members of Fairport plus their longtime drummer while Fairport Convention itself had no original members and was down to just Swarbrick and Pegg. Needing to fulfil their contracts, they then recruited three former members of Fotheringay — Lucas on vocals and rhythm guitar, Donahue on lead guitar, and Conway on drums. Conway was only a session player at the time, and Mattacks soon returned to the band, but Lucas and Donahue became full-time members. This new lineup of Fairport Convention released two albums in 1973, widely regarded as the group’s most inconsistent records, and on the title track of the first, “Rosie”, Richard Thompson guested on guitar, with Sandy Denny and Linda Thompson on backing vocals: [Excerpt: Fairport Convention, “Rosie”] Neither Sandy Denny nor Richard Thompson released a record themselves in 1973, but in neither case was this through the artists’ choice. The record industry was changing in the early 1970s, as we’ll see in later episodes, and was less inclined to throw good money after bad in the pursuit of art. Island Records prided itself on being a home for great artists, but it was still a business, and needed to make money. We’ll talk about the OPEC oil crisis and its effect on the music industry much more when the podcast gets to 1973, but in brief, the production of oil by the US peaked in 1970 and started to decrease, leading to them importing more and more oil from the Middle East. As a result of this, oil prices rose slowly between 1971 and 1973, then very quickly towards the end of 1973 as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict that year. As vinyl is made of oil, suddenly producing records became much more expensive, and in this period a lot of labels decided not to release already-completed albums, until what they hoped would be a brief period of shortages passed. Both Denny and Thompson recorded albums at this point that got put to one side by Island. In the case of Thompson, it was the first album by Richard and Linda as a duo, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”] Today, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time, and as one of the two masterpieces that bookended Richard and Linda’s career as a duo and their marriage. But when they recorded the album, full of Richard’s dark songs, it was the opposite of commercial. Even a song that’s more or less a boy-girl song, like “Has He Got a Friend for Me?” has lyrics like “He wouldn’t notice me passing by/I could be in the gutter, or dangling down from a tree” [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “Has He got a Friend For Me?”] While something like “The Calvary Cross” is oblique and haunted, and seems to cast a pall over the entire album: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “The Calvary Cross”] The album itself had been cheap to make — it had been recorded in only a week, with Thompson bringing in musicians he knew well and had worked with a lot previously to cut the tracks as-live in only a handful of takes — but Island didn’t think it was worth releasing. The record stayed on the shelf for nearly a year after recording, until Island got a new head of A&R, Richard Williams. Williams said of the album’s release “Muff Winwood had been doing A&R, but he was more interested in production… I had a conversation with Muff as soon as I got there, and he said there are a few hangovers, some outstanding problems. And one of them was Richard Thompson. He said there’s this album we gave him the money to make — which was I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight — and nobody’s very interested in it. Henry the Human Fly had been a bit of a commercial disappointment, and although Island was altruistic and independent and known for only recording good stuff, success was important… Either a record had to do well or somebody had to believe in it a lot. And it seemed as if neither of those things were true at that point of Richard.” Williams, though, was hugely impressed when he listened to the album. He compared Richard Thompson’s guitar playing to John Coltrane’s sax, and called Thompson “the folk poet of the rainy streets”, but also said “Linda brightened it, made it more commercial. and I thought that “Bright Lights” itself seemed a really commercial song.” The rest of the management at Island got caught up in Williams’ enthusiasm, and even decided to release the title track as a single: [Excerpt: Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight”] Neither single nor album charted — indeed it would not be until 1991 that Richard Thompson would make a record that made the top forty in the UK — but the album got enough critical respect that Richard and Linda released two albums the year after. The first of these, Hokey Pokey, is a much more upbeat record than their previous one — Richard Thompson has called it “quite a music-hall influenced record” and cited the influence of George Formby and Harry Lauder. For once, the claim of music hall influence is audible in the music. Usually when a British musician is claimed to have a music ha