Marianne, as part of the group Jade, released one of the seminal English Folk-Rock albums of the seventies 'Fly On Strangewings'. Described as 'Lush, orchestrated and filled with evocative electric and acoustic baroque folk-pop it was a record that sat snugly along with The Trees, Fairport and Sandy Denny in the heyday of the English Folk Rock sound'. In late November she releases her new album 'The Gathering'. We interviewed her in early November just before the albums release.
Marianne, I was really pleased when I heard you were doing a new album. However, I'd like to drag you right back, as I'm sure every interviewer does, to the 70s for now...
I'd sort of blocked them out for a while, and then had to re-open my head on it all! In a way it was scary, but very nice, to remember things I hadn't thought about for many years.
'Fly on Strangewings' is one of those albums that has achieved almost iconic status now, probably because you didn't follow it up with lots of other albums, like say Fairport did. So it has a little bit of magic about it, because there's the whole 'what if?' with it. What does it mean to you? Has it come to be a bit of albatross around your neck?
No, not at all. It's become very special to me, I think probably more so now than at the time. I was very young when it all happened, and it all happened very quickly for me, as a songwriter and a singer. It was very fast, the whole process of demoing and then being signed up for publishing and recording. Within a year, we were touring America and it sort of scooped me up like a whirlwind. It was the first proper recording I'd ever done, I was 21, and I don't think I realised really what was happening. Shortly after that, the punk era came in and the folk artists and writers were sort of shoved into the background because of the influx of new music and I didn't really think about the Jade album for many years. But slowly the younger generation has been listening to groups of that time and I realised that that era was now very much in vogue and that the Jade album was a part of that cult thing happening so it was a really really nice surprise to me.
Do you feel at that time, in the late 60s and early 70s, folk was absorbing blues and jazz influences, and there was a lot going on. Now there's another generation, bands like Tunng, that are taking folk and then bringing in electronica. Do you think that is a similar process?
Quite right, it's just absorbing what's going on around you, if you're writing or composing. In the late 60's early 70's we had people bringing in a little bit of blues and jazz and being experimental, and then we had the whole 80s era of keyboards and I think the new generation now has that as part of their psyche...
I think there's a certain sort of similarity between in the late 60s, early 70s there being a 'back to nature' feeling where people were becoming more concerned with the natural world, rather than the urban environment, and nowadays with current environmnental concerns. Do you feel that some of the allure of folk music is that it addresses our relationship to the natural world around us?
I always wrote in that way, when I say always, that was my main avenue if you like, I always wrote about nature, a lot about the sea. It was very important to me. If I look back at my catalogue of sounds, they are all of that ilk. I'm still writing in that way!
So when did you meet up with Michael Tyack of Circulus?
That was a great meeting. I met him because of Richard Allen, who reissued the Jade album. Richard said he wanted to introduce me to a big fan, and we went down to the Underworld at Camden and Circulus were playing that night. I'd never heard of them, never met them. We were introduced, and we got on really well and had a nice evening and a little while later I got a phone call saying they'd like me to sing on their first album. Michael came down to see me and I sang him some songs. He chose 'Swallow' and I went up to London shortly after that. I simply just stood there with my accoustic and we laid it out. Just like that. And then I went away and they layered on a few things, and that's how it began really. We've stayed in contact since then. When I had a really burning desire to get my songs together and bring out a new album, it was suggested to me by Richard Allen that I should think about working with Michael. I had already been quietly rehearsing with a few bands over the period of year, and then I met with Michael and we spent a day talking and over the course of about 8 months found really good common ground to go ahead with an album.
Well, that track, 'Swallow' sounds incredible on their first album. I didn't twig at the time that it was you singing on it, for once I didn't read the liner notes. Then eventually read it and thought 'oh hang on, there's a bit of history there'!
I didn't really think that much about it, just thought 'well that was fun' and then I got a call, I think it was from Richard again, later on, and 'Swallow' had gone into the NME and MOJO Readers Chart, as a single in Christmas 2004/January 2005 and I thought, 'oh, the people that are buying the records actually like something here' and that spurred me on to consider working with Michael for the album and I'm really pleased I did.
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