A House In The Country
“On my 22nd birthday – November 2, 1969 – I went to Mothers club in Birmingham with my ex-wife Christine to see Fairport Convention,” says the group’s current bassist Dave Pegg. “I had never seen them before but I knew [violinist] Dave Swarbrick from his work with Martin Carthy and I had played with him in the Ian Campbell Group.
“It was a new approach to traditional music,” he recalls. “It was such a great band: the interplay between [guitarist] Richard Thompson and Swarbrick instrumentally, and of course Sandy Denny’s singing and the great rhythm section of [drummer] Dave Mattacks, [rhythm guitarist] Simon Nicol and [bassist] Ashley Hutchings. I was blown away and said to Christine, ‘I would love to join that band.’ And bizarrely I got a call next day from Dave Swarbrick saying, ‘Ashley is leaving the band, would you come for an audition?’”
“It’s a very important record. I think when Peggy joined it changed so many things. Fairport before and after Peggy are two different animals.”
Simon Nicol
Pegg, who had played in rock bands in, but its release coincided with Sandy Denny also quitting the band.
