Where and when were you born ? Did you grew up in a musical house ? What were you parents listening to ? Do you have older brothers or sisters that initiate you with their favorite artists or style of music ? I was born in an unremarkable place called Hartley Wintney, Hampshire, UK but when I was 3 months old my family moved just outside Stratford on Avon (Shakespeare town!) so I have always considered that my ‘home’.
My parents - especially my father - were avid classical music fans, and they liked dance band stuff and popular songs of the time. My elder sister was - and is - a singer, but amateur etc - of classical music too. My younger bother and sister (11 and 13 years younger respectively) weren’t around at the time, obviously!! How old were you when you decide to go from loving music for the pure listening pleasure, to being more active and taking up an instrument (the guitar i guess) to first recreate the songs you love and then create your own songs ? Did you take lessons from other kids or teachers ? At school I had piano lessons and/but the music teacher (who I had a 10-year-old crush on!!) played the guitar so I wanted a guitar like hers too. I kept on and on at my parents until, one Christmas when I was 11 there was a guitar under the Christmas tree. I will never forget that moment. It was the best present I was ever given - not that actual guitar itself, but the fact that it was a GUITAR!!! Guitars have been with me ever since. Did you do this on your own at school ? Or were you playing in bands (do you remember their names and if you ever recorded songs with them) ? I went through school playing my guitar, piano lessons, a bit of trumpet playing and singing in the choir, acting in school plays etc. I was the lead guitarist in a Shadows tribute band. We called ourselves ’The Four Squares’ and had fluorescent squares on our backs which glowed (obviously) in ultraviolet light! I wasn’t a very good lead guitarist! They chucked me out after a bit :-) The Beatles turned up but there were also folk artists like Peter Paul & Mary etc... Did you wanted then to become a professional recording artist, or maybe the urge of teaching was there even before going to College ? Did you tried to be a professional musician (alone or in bands) before going to University ? It never occurred to me to want to make a living as a singer-songwriter in those days. Sure we had dreams. My (soon-to-be) music more famous friend Nick Drake and I used to sit in his house playing stuff. Mostly chords in those days. David Costa said that he met you (in 1967 ?) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, is that also what you remember ? Do you remember playing him Suzanne by Leonard Cohen ? Yes I remember meeting David. He was so much more elegant and cool than me I seem to remember! And he played the guitar beautifully. And yes, arriving at university I was all Peter Paul and Mary and pop songs and stuff. And then I joined the UEA folk club and started to really hear folk music for the first time. More importantly in those years I found myself in small university folk club rooms sitting a few feet away from players like Bert Jansch and watching in wonder as they played. That changed my life for ever.
Suzanne? I have a memory of playing that to David in great excitement, but the memory - it was a long long time ago - is very vague. And into the mix, suddenly, were songs by Jackson C Frank (Nick was a huge fan), Dylan, and traditional folk as well - Martin Carthy etc The songs on "Idiosyncratics and Swallows Wings" sounds like someone who wrote a lot of songs before, there is a maturity (even in a young age), something more profound than just the fun of playing folk oriented songs. When did you start writing songs ? What do you remember about the first songs you create ? I wrote my first song (the first one I remember) when I was 14. I was in love with a girl so I wrote ’Together in love’. I think I can still remember it. Puberty!!!
Were you proud about them, and continue to play them or record them through the years ? Or maybe you just evolve while discovering new artists and being influence by them ? There are still some songs I wrote at UEA or just afterwards, that I play, but I have moved on a lot since then.
What were your main influence while writing "Idiosyncratics and Swallows Wings"? There was swirl of music around that time - the Incredible String Band (or maybe that came later…can’t remember). But those kinds of influence were just beginning to emerge and Idiosyncratics and Swallows wings was part of that. Did you wrote songs with David Costa ? I don’t think we wrote together really. For some reason he agreed to play with me - a huge privilege for me since he was so good. I think because we both loved that brand of folk music.
Was the playing and recording of "Idiosyncratics and Swallows Wings" with David Costa something planned from the beginning, or did you just decide to do this while you played folk clubs with him ? I am so sorry to say I can’t remember. Where else did we play together? Not at all sure. Why did you feel like those songs on "Idiosyncratics and Swallows Wings" needed backing singers, strings, a second guitar etc.. ? Was there a story that tied all those songs together ? There was a guy in the School of Fine Arts (music) who I think I might have worked on in something else. And I had friends and the word got round I had written some songs and somehow we hooked up. Two of the songs had lyrics by the Snoo Wilson (now sadly deceased) who has written a review called ‘A girl mad as pigs’. I did the music for that (we hired a Hammond organ I seem to remember). Were did you played the "Idiosyncratics and Swallows Wings" gig ? Did it happen really one time or more ? Why not record the live setting ? Why decide to go then in a studio and put them on vinyl ? Just as a souvenir or maybe you were hoping that it could go into a more professional direction ? We only performed the whole album live once - in the University ‘Village’. We had quite a decent audience. With the players and backing vocals (that was from the Snow Wilson show I talked about). The afternoon before that we ended up n English TV’s afternoon programme and did two, maybe three, songs live there. I am not aware of any permanent record of that. What do you remember of the recording of the album ? Was it fun ? Did the final product pleased you ? What David Costa thought then ? We record the LP late at night at the big studio on Anglia TV. It was not really satisfactory. The equipment was not great and the engineer - who did it for free I seem to remember - was not especially experienced as a sound engineer, but rather a TV programme engineer. I can’t remember any mixing conversations etc. But I guess there must have been. I remember being rather worried about the sibilance in the vocal tracks but there was never a chance to do anything about that. And on top of that I wasn’t really very experienced about that kind of thing.
I heard/read that it was a 99 copies pressing. Is that true ? Yes that’s absolutely right. I paid for those copies and then forced lots of in the university people to buy it. I think I sold all of them!!! Did you stay in contact with David Costa ? Did you follow him in his Trees period ? What did you think of those two albums ? I bought the first Trees album but then our ways parted. I moved in different circles and then I headed out to Mexico - and gradually left the world of folk music, although I have come back in the last 20 years or so, stronger and better than I was then!! Did you stayed faithful to your musical preference in listening and/or creating/playing ? Did you tried psychedelic music, hard rock etc... So here’s how it was. When I left UEA I was a bit rootless. Tried a few jobs. I lived in a bedsit in London (that’s where Nick came along with the test pressing of Five leaves Left - see the attached piece). Then I tried to study law at the Middle Temple in London to please my folks but my heart isn’t in it, and then when a friend gave me a funny pill (Acid) that kind of started me down another road. I REALLY started writing songs then and playing better. Learnt how to play in DADGAD and other tunings. I bused in underpasses, co-ran a weekly session at the Troubadour for a bit, lived in a squat, the whole thing. Music was everything.
Did I listen to Nick’s albums? You bet I did. Him and John Martyn and Bert Jansch/Pentangle and the amazing Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick albums. Fairport Convention, Steeleye etc etc My writing changed a bit. I took tapes round record companies looking for a deal. Never happened.
Then did you recorded other songs after this (and before "English Tea"), alone of woth band in a rock setting ? I recorded quite a lot on my own but I am not sure I could find those recordings. I was one of a tribe of young people trying to find a route into professional music. What happened then ? Did you start teaching ? When and Where ? And how did you ended in Mexico of all places ? A job opportunity ? Love ? I was beginning to get tired of being pretty poor! My dad had cut off any support - he hated everything about my life style!! A guitarist friend (called Alan; all I remember is that he had a nice Gibson guitar) said he’d done this course for £25 and that you could get a job anywhere in the world if you got through it. So I went to an organisation called International House in Shaftesbury Avenue and did a 4-week teaching course. To my surprise I started to really enjoy it, and it seemed I was OK at it too. While there I ran the International House Folk Club. We had some great evenings there. And yes, I met a beautiful girl (English father, Russian mother) who had been born and brought up in Mexico. We started living together and then I persuaded her to take me over to Mexico. Instant love. It still feels like my second home even though it was a long time ago. I loved Mexican music etc. I did some folk shows over there and two daughters were born. I ended up as director of a language teaching institute in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second city. I was there for 8 years in total. Where were you teaching there ? And how came in 1973 the idea of this educational album "English Tea" ? What was the name of the band you played with ? While I was in Mexico I wrote some songs to demonstrate the structures of English! That’s why the lyrics are a bit weird!! I wasn’t the first to do this - see also Ken Wilson and the Solid British Hat Band and their record ‘My Monday’.
I met a Mexico group called Tejocote and between us we worked out arrangements of the songs which we recorded at EMI studios in Mexico.
Was it a short recording too ? How many copies were pressed then ? Did you gave them to English students and friends and family ?
Did you played them to your students ?
They sold quite a few of those I think. The LP was published by Macmillan
Do you use music as a tool for teaching English ? If yes, how did you do that ?
Yes, in class. The first conference talk I did (in 1972!!) was about using songs and I had a guitar and did a song from English Tea.
When did you come back in England, or did you went elsewhere after Mexico ?
I came back from Mexico properly in 1983 and started working here in the UK, from Cambridge where I have lived ever since. I taught and trained teachers but have dedicated my life since then to writing books in that field and then travelling around the world giving talks at conferences etc. I have taught and trained teachers in the UK and New York (for the New School) on an MA programme, though for many years that was online teaching.
And when did you discover that your recordings attracted some fans all over the world, that you were/are a cult figure ?
I first realise that my 1967 LP was ‘desirable’ when some sent me a thing about how it had sold for quite a lot of money on eBay!! A track from the LP was included in the compilation CDs ’Strangers in the room’ - Grapefruit records
Do you still write songs today ? And do you play them live (when it was still possible) ? I left the guitar behind for a few years. When my kids started playing classical music (cello and double bass) I took up the viola from scratch. I’m not that good but I play in the Cambridge Philharmonic Orchestra and the Ely Sinfonia. I also met a violinist and lopper called Steve Bingham and we started doing poetry and music shows together. The first of them ’Touchable Dreams’ is a show we have done about 60 times in the UK and in Argentina, Uruguay, Poland, Mexico etc etc We included 2 songs in that show and my guitar playing was so ‘rusty’ that I started practising again. And I fell in love, again with singer-songwriting. You can find out more on my website www.otherloves.co.uk. I have made 5 CDs - the latest comes out next week (see the website). Steve and I have done more shows and I have also narrated with his Quartet and with various symphony orchestras. I play in folk clubs around the country. I have a solo ’Shakespeare and other folk’ show which I have done at conferences around the world. I have written (with another guy) an oratorio for kids, symphony orchestra, soloists etc which was premiered in Ely Cathedral.
You can see the kind of music I play now on the videos at the website.
When the pandemic and lockdown started I have organised twice weekly ‘Lockdown Folk’ sessions on Zoom. See have players (very good ones) and singers from all over the UK, the USA and Europe.
Do you have kids ? If yes what do they think about your two albums ? What your family thought then too ? And now ?
I have two daughters and 3 granddaughters. I think my kids are a little embarrassed by Idiosyncratics and Swallows Wings!! They are now used to their father's obsessive love and participation in music!!