This year sees the 55th anniversary of Fairport Convention, prime architects of the UK’s folk-rock movement and a band that has left an indelible mark on British music. Here, founder member and guitarist Simon Nicol traces the band’s origins from the perspective of his own musical journey
Early Conventions
“There are many things in favour of the guitar. When you’re a young chap it’s portability, the fact you can have it around when you’re at the beginning of the learning curve. Somebody can show you exactly what they’re doing and you can try it yourself just by passing it over. That doesn’t work with a piano. When you’re a young lad growing up in the 60s, the guitar was kind of a token. You were part of some social experiment, but it seemed like a young person’s instrument in the way that the violin or so forth couldn’t possibly be. It was a cool thing to have.”
Connecting Up
“A number of my peer group had guitars and we would play Beatles songs and the hits from the Mersey bands, and it was all done by ear. I didn’t form a band or join a band until I got my way into Ashley Hutchings’ little black book. I knew Ashley because he’s about five years older than me and I came across him initially at the youth club in Muswell Hill, where he would occasionally turn up on a Friday night with a band. And he was clearly the leader as well as the bass player as he’d frequently be there with a different set of musicians playing a different kind of music the next week.”
Summertime Dues
“I’d saved up enough money from a summer job to buy myself an acoustic 12-string guitar because I just really liked the look of it. I thought it was a cool thing to have. I couldn’t play it in anything more than a basic rudimentary fashion. But I took it with me to the youth club, some nights, and so forth, and Ashley noticed it and he didn’t have anybody in his circle with a 12-string. So that was my USP. His little black book was legendary and I found myself in it, and before long I found myself alongside him playing jug band music.”
Humble Beginnings
“Richard Thompson was in the little black book, too. That’s how Fairport started, really. The three of us became a little sub core at the centre of a number of different musical adventures and we took the name Fairport Convention and became professionals. So it all happened by accident, really: tiny steps, little, little choices, you make little forks in the road. I was accompanying Richard, really, rather than trying to muscle my way to the front of the stage. I got a lot of pleasure from being part of this background, which provided a platform for the songs and for his virtuosity to shine.”
In The Clubs
“In the early days of Fairport we were interested in singer-songwriter and American rock music more than anything else. We’
