STEELEYE SPAN

(Incorporating a beginners’ guide to folk music)

By Pete ?

©Zigzag No.18
March 1971

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

  These days, when an artiste or group decides that their music has become more than just a hobby and it is time to sign with a Tin Pan Ally manager, turn professional and get ready to dent the charts, a publicist is hired to thrust their name in print. Now, these publicists have become so profuse and persuasive that the pop press is always full of articles they have been hyped or asked to do by such pushers, and it has become imperative to employ the services of these people unless you want your work to go unnoticed.

  Thus, when a group like Steeleye Span comes along, realising that by the very nature of their profession they are part of the big-show-biz-thing whether they like it or not, they take the advice of their manager and hire a publicist, who will verbally attack, threaten, terrorize, plead or bribe writers so that ultimately the nation, nourished by ever increasing printed praise, will resound to the screaming Melody Maker headline “SUPERSONIC STEELEYE…ELVIS DIGS MADDY”

Right, now there are about half a dozen groups that I would tremble to interview on the grounds that I hold them in such reverence and awe, and Steeleye Span is one of them. The various constituents of the group, one instinctively feels, are not in the least bit interested in having loads of incompetent bullshit and hype written about them – they just want to get on with their music in their own way.

  Tony Brainsby is a publicist. He’s a nice cat, he does his work with just the right amount of oiliness, just the right amount of aplomb, and just the right amount of bonhomie. Every mouth or so he comes on the phone to enquire whether we feel inclined to interview Fred Wilks & the Spoons, the Big Orange Chrome Mind Excursion, Willie & the Sack, and a whole string of other chart topping grist….and occasionally we allow our arms to be twisted and write about one of his bunch, but only if we dig the music. Anyway, good old Tony knew of our keen interest in the work of Steeleye Span and in view of my trepidation ,invented what I consider to be a preposterous (but clever too, mate) piece of scheming. The group, he assured me, were desperate to be featured in the pages of Zigzag (a likely bloody tale), and he wanted to fix a day of interviews with us and lesser periodicals (are there any?) participating, but based around whatever time and date Zigzag could make it. Well, I fixed a date and agreed to go along, knowing full well that he’d probably picked a day when the group was in the recording studio or something (“Oh shit man, have we got to break off from this masterpiece to go and answer a load of banal questions from that berk?” or words to that effect).

 Well, I got to the good Mr Brainsby’s residence as arranged, but, as expected, failed to notice any throngs of journalists milling around, deep in conversation with Steeleye Spanners. But presently Martin Carthy arrived by minicab, didn’t seem unduly choked off by being dragged over to Knightsbridge, and we chatted amiably about the group and folk music in general for about two hours. Right, having long-windedly exposed the world of the publicist (and my phobias as well), we’ll begin.