A
memory .. . .. . . ..
Fairport
Convention took the Dylan song "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" into the
charts, albeit in an unusual fashion: the group translated the song into French
(partially, retaining the English "...you gotta stay all night" as
the end of a line beginning in French for comic effect) as "Si Tu Dois
Partir". Recorded for the ‘Unhalfbricking’ album, the song coming from a
game of 'Ghosts' that Sandy Denny won with, the song was issued as a single in
1969. I was 16 and yet to hear ‘The Great White Wonder’ Dylan bootleg that I
would buy in Holland years later which featured him singing his own song but we
had heard another charted ‘pop’ version. This version of Bob Dylan's "If
you gotta go, go now" was the band's only charting single, reaching number
21 and staying in the British Chart for nine weeks. When it came out and
everyone I knew was playing it, I thought why are they getting excited about a
pidgin French Cajun version of a Manfred Mann song!? We gathered regularly
round a friends house round the corner from where my parent’s lived and
listened to records, drank coffee and smoked cigarettes encouraged by their
parents to be there rather than hanging out on the streets. Rumour has it that
Fairport played a gig in which they asked members of the audience to translate
Dylan’s song which made it’s pidgin Cajun French more explicable!
Si
Tu Dois Partir
C'est
pas que je te demande
Que
faire que tu ne jamais fais
C'est
seulement qu'il fait trop tard
Et
il fait trop noir pour trouver la porte
Mais
si tu dois partir, va t'en
Mais
si tu dois partir, va t'en
Si
non, tu dois rester la nuit
C'est
pas que je te demande
De
prendre part dans ce jeu
C'est
seulement je n'ai pas de montre
Comme
toujours faire le par contre
Mais
si tu dois partir, va t'en
Mais
si tu dois partir, va t'en
Si
non, tu dois rester la nuit
Tu
sais j'aurais des cauchemars
Et
aussi mauvaise conscience
Si
je t'empeche de faire
Ce
que vraiment tu espère
Mais
si tu dois partir, va t'en
Mais
si tu dois partir, va t'en
Si
non, tu dois rester la nuit
I
didn't 'get it' but friends bought 'Unhalfbricking" the album from whence
the track came on the strength of it which contained the heartbreaking Sandy
Denny track " Who Knows Where the Time Goes" which was more my speed
and it has haunted me ever since, I just didn't get the jokey French song when
they could have released that one! Why it even included breaking glass bottles
as percussion. The album also contained a further two Dylan titles though I
don’t recall being aware of this at the time. The Convention had been invited
to Bob Dylan's London music publishers to hear then unreleased tracks from The
Basement Tapes sessions. The band's bassist, Ashley Hutchings, said "We
loved it all. We would have covered all the songs if we could." In the
event, versions of "Percy's Song", "Million Dollar Bash"
and "Si Tu Dois Partir" were used on the album. Nor did we know the
heartbreak and sorrow behind this album’s release only later to discover that just months before ‘Unhalfbricking’ had come out,
Richard’s girlfriend, Jeannie Franklyn, and Fairport drummer Martin
Lamble, who was a mere 19 years old, were both killed in a car crash.(*) This
made the unfettered jollity of the Bob Dylan pastiche more confusing to me.
(* Simon Nichol's moving account of the terrible van crash on the M1)
(* Simon Nichol's moving account of the terrible van crash on the M1)
 |
| Unhalfbricking |
In
an attempt to educate myself as to what was going on, I bought the Island
budget-price sampler, ‘You Can All Join In’, which had a profound affect upon
me and I have stuck with many of the bands I heard therein, not dissimilar to
the other sampler of the era 'Rock Machine Turns You on" an American
version if you will of the same idea and I stuck with many of the bands on that
album too. 'You Can All Join In' included Jethro Tull, Spooky Tooth, Free, John
Martyn, Traffic with the titular track and of course Fairport Convention.Liking the Fairports' sampler track, ‘Meet on the Ledge’ the chart success and jolly sound of Si Tu Dois Partir confused me as to why everyone thought it such a blast. 'Meet on The Ledge' also haunted me forever and seemed a much more serious and relevant song.
What
ledge? Why would we meet there and didn't I want to jump off? Or were we all
just clinging on? Huddled together, holding on against the wind. Too many
friends indeed blown off this mountain side. True now as it was then……
"The
song's title comes from a large, low hanging tree limb on which Richard
Thompson used to play as a child, and which he and his friends had dubbed
"The Ledge". Richard Thompson acknowledged that some people interpret
"the ledge" as some sort of code for the afterlife and that it is
popular at funerals. In an interview with Mojo magazine March 2011 Richard
Thompson said: "The hardest thing about being a 17-year-old songwriter is
that you're embarrassed - you're never going to write a song saying, 'These are
my feelings, I love you.' So I was trying to find some semi-veiled language
that conveyed something to somebody somehow but which didn't really say
anything up front. It's a slightly naïve song, a little obscure. I don't even
know what it means." Thompson added: "I had to sing it at my own
mother's funeral. It was in her will. That's about the hardest thing I've ever
done".
MEET
ON THE LEDGE
We
used to say
That
come the day
We'd
all be making songs
Or
finding better words
These
ideas never lasted long
The
way is up
Along
the road
The
air is growing thin
Too
many friends who tried
Were
blown off this mountain with the wind
Meet
on the ledge
We're
gonna meet on the ledge
When
my time is up I'm gonna see all my friends
Meet
on the ledge
We're
gonna meet on the ledge
If
you really mean it, it all comes round again
Yet
now I see
I'm
all alone
But
that's the only way to be
You'll
have your chance again
Then
you can do the work for me
Meet
on the ledge
We're
gonna meet on the ledge
When
my time is up I'm gonna see all my friends
Meet
on the ledge
We're
gonna meet on the ledge
If
you really mean it, it all comes round again
Meet
on the ledge
We're
gonna meet on the ledge
When
my time is up I'm gonna see all my friends
Meet
on the ledge
We're
gonna meet on the ledge
If
you really mean it, it all comes round again
As a
consequence of my not ’getting’ the song ‘Si Tu Dois . . . ‘ I chose to sulk
and not go when the guys heard that Fairport were up the road at the Manor,
Richard Branson’s recording studio, and imagine my chagrin when they duly
returned later that day with tales of being asked in and playing in the garden
on a beautiful English sunny summer day and one of the boys returned with Sandy
having signed his plastercast where he broken his arm replete also with signed
copies of the single too to add insult to injury as it were! It didn’t seem
much later but in fact it was to be nearly ten years later that reports came
down that Sandy had died in an ‘accident at home by falling down the stairs’
but in reality she had left Fairport in 1969 to pursue solo efforts and formed
'Fotheringay' but also by the seventies had begun to use drugs and drink
heavily and had banged her head on concrete several days before then
subsequently prescribed 'distalgesic' by an ill informed doctor not
understanding the fatal consequence of this drug when combined with alcohol.
Sandy had by then stopped caring for herself or her child by that stage and
that angelic ethereal yet all too human & troubled voice was lost forever
to us.
WHO
KNOWS WHERE THE TIME GOES
Across
the evening sky, all the birds are leaving
But
how can they know it's time for them to go?
Before
the winter fire, I will still be dreaming
I
have no thought of time
For
who knows where the time goes?
Who
knows where the time goes?
Sad,
deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving
Ah,
but then you know it's time for them to go
But
I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving
I do
not count the time
For
who knows where the time goes?
Who
knows where the time goes?
And
I am not alone while my love is near me
I
know it will be so until it's time to go
So
come the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again
I do
not fear the time
For
who knows how my love grows?
And
who knows where the time goes?
