HOW A GOON CAME TO PLAY UKULELE FOR STEELEYE SPAN
By Colin Irwin
© Melody Maker
26 October 1974
It was like the coming of a new Messiah. Everyone sat around nervously awaiting the arrival of HIM, the man who was gonna make this recording session a Very Special Occasion. The sort of stuff to make a rock legend. A real happening. No one in the band seemed to believe it. There they were, little ol' Steeleye Span who’d started out some five years ago as a bunch of folkies with nothing much but a few new ideas. But here they were recording their seventh album and HE was going to be on it.
They'd all got to the studio early in honour of his coming, and they sat around talking amongst themselves until conversation dried up and they just waited HE's late, fiddler Peter Knight observed, and doubts began to creep in about whether he’d make an appearance at all. Knight told a joke which wasn't very funny, but it whiled away a couple of minutes, and Maddy Prior spilled her drink.
Then they decided to play the tracks through again it was ‘New York Gals’ a famous shanty sometimes known as "Can't You Dance The Polka," given an entirely new bouncy treatment full of saucy touches and vintage Maddy back-up harmonies. There's a break in the vocals somewhere in the middle, and that's where HE‘s going to come in and transform the album. That's if HE turns up...
But the fears are unfounded. The word goes round quickly and a tremor of excitement is felt in the studio. It's HIM. And sure enough, in strides Steeleye's manager Jo Lustig, followed by the man himself - Peter Sellers. The introductions are formal and polite, Steeleye look in awe at Sellers. This is, really the man who had them all on their backs laughing, The Pink Panther, The Wrong Arm of the Law, The Man with a Girl in his Soup.
Yes, this tanned, fit-looking gent is really Sellers, fresh from another successful hearing at the divorce courts. Incredibly Sellers seemed diffident, even apprehensive He's not completely new to the recording studios, after all he's had a couple of big hits in the past with Sophia Loren, not to mention the Goons. But this is still a long way from his normal avenue of activity and sitting in with a rock band (even a traditional based rock hand) is an entirely different matter to cutting a novelty comedy record.
He's here because Bob Johnson of Steeleye saw Sellers playing ukulele in a film once and thought the solo in the middle of "New York Gals" would he an ideal part for him. It was just what they needed to give the track an extra bit of impetus - the reasons Sellers has been asked to play with Steeleye are, of course, purely artistic Who was the cad that suggested it mightn't be a bad publicity gimmick, either?
Sellers was happy to agree to do the session. He has a long and deep interest in music, at one time playing drums in a band. It didn't need much to persuade him to bring his ukulele along to this session, even if he hadn't previously been too well-versed with the intricacies of Steeleye Span's music.
There are a few self conscious jokes as Sellers unveils his Martin ukulele and then he settles down to listen to the track and hear what they want him to do. He listens impassively and at the end of it, mutters "Hmmm" The others wait for his verdict and finally he say. "Okay, let's see if I can do it," and picks up his ukulele. There's trouble with tuning the instrument in the right key, but through a systematic process of slowing and speeding the track to make the tuning fit, they finally get it right.
Sellers plays his part adequately enough and gets more ambitious as his confidence grows and he finds that over in the sound room they like what they hear. Eventually there's no holding him. Give him his head and he'll dominate the whole track. He's already given word to postpone an appointment with Vogue until another day and you get the impression he wouldn't mind the chance to have a go at some of the other tracks as well.
Earlier there had been some discussion amongst the members of the hand as to whether they could possibly ask him to do a bit of Goonery as well. They decided they couldn't, but it didn't matter for as he tired of playing the same ukulele piece over and over again, Sellers suddenly launched into "Play that matelot, Min"
By the end of the session the track was filled with strange sounds and quick fire cracks, almost obscuring Maddy's backing voice. Hilarity broke out in the studio, Peter Knight, who had been playing a leading role in the production operation, had to leave his seat he was laughing so much, and the others were falling about similarly.
Even Maddy didn't seem too concerned about the smothering of her voice. It makes you wonder what this lot are goona do next. They had David Bowie playing sax on one track on the last album and their stage act has become a showpiece for the unexpected, from the theatrical rock 'n' roll medley encore to the mummers play introduced on their last tour.
We've got no master plan
When sanity had returned. Steeleye's drummer Nigel Pegrum talked enthusiastically of the album, which is now almost complete and will probably be released in January. He's very conscious of not letting any secrets out of the bag, however, for he did an interview once and said all sorts of things that were meant to he kept as a surprise. So he thinks hard before he answers and doesn't even want to divulge the name of the new record. People still tend to think of Nigel as the new-boy, even though he's been with Steeleye for nearly two years and has become a vital member of the band.
It's hard now to understand how they got by for so long without a drummer. Nigel is himself aware that in some quarters he's still looked upon as a stranger, especially as he didn't come from a rock background, but after the group's last massive tour starting in Britian, moving immediately to the States and then Australia, he's as integrated in the group as everybody else.
"There are two or three songs that Bob has round like 'Long Lankin' and 'Little Sir Hugh' on this theme of rituals and killings, all very ghostly 'Little Sir Hugh' is the only one on it we’ve done before on stage, all the others are completely new. It's a far better recorded album because we're learning more and more about recording techniques"
"It's different from our other album, in that it's a much more integrated sound now. It's the first album we've worked out all the material together. At first I didn't know how to work with them and they didn't know how to work with me, but now we've really round each other."
He reckons it's far superior to "Now We Are Six" although he thinks that wasn't bad for what they could do at the time. They now regret including the two nursery tracks which received a unanimous storm of criticism; a joke that backfired. If Nigel isn't hiding anything from us there won't be any similar gimmicks on this record, except for the inclusion of Mr Sellers, although they wouldn't freely admit this was a gimmick.
"I just thought 'Now We Are Six' was bottom heavy. There could have been more interesting things on it but it was just the way it was mixed. It was too thuddy down the bottom which I think detracted from the music of the band."
"This new one has a much better feel. Maddy's singing better and better, Peter's come up with some great fiddle ideas, it's definitely the best album. . . well, maybe I shouldn't say that. The rock 'n' roll track on the last album was one for people who've seen us really. It's a great relief for us to come out and look vicious. It has a light hearted abandon about it which is a change from the rest which takes a lot of control.”
"We play a lot quieter than most electric bands, to balance the vocals and every thing. If you're feeling a bit down, you've got to go on stage and forget that. You can't go over the top because it takes so much control We get blamed at some gigs with people saying the can't hear Maddy but w spend a lot of money and time hiring the best PA’s in England and a lot of It's down to where you're sitting in the theatre. It you're in a good position you can hear everything. For people who cant hear, it's ever so sad, but there's nothing really you can do about it"
Steeleye are delighted with the way the mummers play was accepted in their act and a variation of it will be included on their next tour. It went down especially well in America and Australia apparently, where they delighted in seeing this "quaint English custom" performed on a rock stage.
"Playing at a place in New York, doing it to these really weirdo guys smoking dubious cigarettes and wearing dark glasses at twelve o'clock at night, it was really funny. It's so flippin' different for them. We did it because it's part of the English tradition and that's what the band is all about, we're proving it can be done in this day and age and be accepted perfectly well, instead of being confined to small clubs and a small section of the public."
"Theatrics are becoming more and more used. With people paying what they do for tickets, if you're going to pay £2 for a ticket we've got to give as much as we can. It's another form of presenting entertainment"
The appeal of Steeleye, which was originally confined to folk audiences and then extended to rock, has in the last year encompassed a whole new section of the public taking in the family audience. Their stage act has become an all-round show and their appeal broadened further with a hit single "Gaudete" last Christmas, and a series of television programmes showing Steeleye playing in stately homes. It's not an overall attempt to become the complete band for the whole family, but Pegrum agrees they're always looking for ways of increasing their audience.
"An unconscious attempt at reaching a wider public," is how Nigel describes it "We haven’t got an overall master plan, we just do things as they come along and sound like they could be fun. The sound on those three television programmes was pretty bad but it should be better if we do it again"
In terms of rock bands, Steeleye have had quite a long life Playing as they do 99 per cent traditional material the musical pressures on the group members must be even greater than most bands. There've been changes of course in fact Tim Hart and Maddy Prior are the only original members, but this line up has been stable for several years with Nigel merely an addition. So how long can they last?
"At the end of a tour you never wanna hear the music again, but a week later you're raring to get back. There's no disenchantment. There’s excitement every time we start to hear a new album coming together it's really exciting. It's all good. The idea of the tour, another English tour is exciting financially too, it means the bank balance is the right side of the overdraft, no disenchantment."
Will you be altering your style at all to broaden the all traditional policy?
"It would be sad to do that for Steeleye are the band that plays traditional music as opposed to Fotheringay Confusion and the other lot. There have been a couple of other bands that have come up doing some of their own stuff as well as traditional so it would be nice if Steeleye stayed the band that was doing all traditional stuff. There's such a wealth of material around. We change things a bit but that's to make the music more effective."
Nigel himself still finds there's some opposition from diehard folkies who affectionately remember Tim and Maddy when they played the folk clubs and they don’t hold with all this star-system stuff, when Martin Carthy joined Steeleye, that made electric folk all right but doubts arose in their minds when he left, and to add a drummer was for many people the severance of the final link with folk. Nigel, who had previously been with Halcyon said: "The biggest time I felt it was after we'd come back from America and I’d been in the band only a few weeks."
"I was living in a commune in Worcester completely down and out and I got the job with Steeleye, and a couple of weeks later we went to America on the Jethro Tull tour. It was a massive tour, flying everywhere, 20,000 people, hotels, really big time. I had been living with the band before and we couldn't pay more than 50 pence for a room."
"We came back from America and after years of living on nothing I was catapulted into this sort of existence and I certainly knew I was in a much better position than I was before. I wasn’t openly trying to be flash or anything like that, but we went to the Cambridge folk festival about two days after we got back from Los Angeles and we were in a terrible state. I laughed at people when they said jet lag but It really is bad news, you don't feel right for a week."
"Having played in massive arenas through Jethro Tull's 'PA' we came to play at Cambridge in a tent to whatever it was. 8,000 people I suppose, it was just too much to adjust to. I went on stage and started the whole act with the flute and one of the keys had come unscrewed and I went to play it and, nothing happened I just cracked. I threw it down and bent It and I was so aware then that these were real folk people and there were Steeleye Span."
"A lot of them before had probably really liked the band and now there was me, this nasty drummer, this horrible rock person, come into THEIR Steeleye Span I really felt bad, and we didn’t play very well. Other than that it's been all right. I’m sorry if some people don't like us any more. If they could listen to it as it is, this new album especially, it's so good. Whether it's Steeleye Span or Charlie Splinter and the Flying Turds it's a good album. I hope they can look at it like that and not say I wish Martin Carthy was with them still!”
A new single may be taken from the next album but they aren't looking for one. At one time they did start to tailor one of the tracks with a single in mind but it didn’t work so they've decided to let the singles market go its own sweet way with or without them. It came as quite a shock to them all to find "Gaudete" in the chart last Christmas, especially as it has been recorded a couple of years previously on the 'Below The Salt' album, before Pegrum joined. 'Thomas The Rhymer,' which had been produced by Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson was taken off "Now We Are Six" as the follow-up, but it flopped.
"It's not a singles band. We thought we'd do a three minute bang crash thing for a single, thinking of Mud and Sweet and Suzi Quatro, and it just doesn’t work. It came out an absolute abortion "We've got to be Steeleye Span and make really good albums. If a track comes out that chrysalis or somebody decides could he a single than okay, that's great, but when we try to make a single it's a disaster. We want to keep making good quality albums and be consistent The trouble with 'Thomas The Rhymer' was it was too complicated for a single. If you have a single at number one and the next one doesn't make it, people say you're going down."
On the eve of another British tour Nigel insists there's still plenty or scope for the band's development, though he's uncertain which direction it will be. As far as he's concerned there's no sign of Steeleye reaching the end of its span.
"We don't do things in a showbiz way just for effect. Within the music there's lots of little bits which use our skills for what they are, so we're fulfilling ourselves as musicians. Overall we've got to take the group to the people. You've to be a bit egotistical to go out and do it but we're not doing it just for success"
© Melody Maker