The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine

thing is,’ said Dave Swarbrick in that informal, matey way he has of cutting right to the chase, ‘if you’re singing about a bloke having his head chopped off or a girl screwing her brother and having a baby and the brother cutting her guts open, stamping on the baby and killing his sister, that’s a fantastic story by anybody’s standards. Working with a storyline like that with acoustic instruments wouldn’t be half as potent as saying the same things electrically.’

      Applying rock arrangements to traditional ballads so outraged folk purists when Fairport first tried it. It was bass player Ashley Hutchings, the Fairport member with the least folk credentials, who pushed hardest for the unequivocal move into traditional song, courting Sandy Denny and Dave Swarbrick for the band and driving even them to distraction with his obsessive fascination with the potential of folk song. It still didn’t sway everyone. Despite the contributions of Sandy and Swarb the folk world still regarded them as chancers, while rock fans frowned in confusion at their move away from more commercial West Coast roots. Rolling Stone dismissed the album as ‘boring’.

      Even Richard Thompson later conceded that he felt it was artificial and contrived, yet Liege And Lief left an indelible mark on both the folk and rock worlds, providing a reference point for Steeleye Span, the Albion Band and many others to follow. The recording sessions were stormy, and rifts over the controversial new direction went so deep the group was in tatters even before the album was released. Hutchings and Denny both quit in the wake of quarrels in the studio. Denny had already had her fill singing ballads in folk clubs and was more interested in writing her own material. Hutchings was concerned his dream wouldn’t materialise with Fairport, especially with Thompson also keen to develop his own writing, and he resolved to form Steeleye Span with musicians more entrenched in the folk world. So Liege And Lief’s often thrilling amalgam of ancient and modern was both a beginning and an end.