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Freeborn John Live album cover

Track Listing:

  1. Overture
  2. Pillory Scene / Commons of England
  3. The Whipping Song
  4. The Battle of Brentford
  5. Elizabeth's Great Gallop
  6. Return To London
  7. England's New Chains
  8. Speech No1
  9. Bonny Besses
  10. Burford Stomp
  11. Speech No2
  12. Exile
  13. Return From Exile
  14. Rumour And Rapture
  15. Seventeen Years of Sorrow
  16. Lilburne's Death Song

RevHammer.com

Freeborn John - Live

Rev Hammer

Back in 1996 Rev Hammer released his self penned folk-opera concept album of the life of John Lilburne, probably England's first radical who's lifelong opposition to arbitrary authority pitched him against Oliver Cromwell. A monumental work involving over 50 musicians that seemed destined to only exist in recorded form. It took the vision of the Beautiful Days festival organisers to commission Rev Hammer to perform the whole thing onstage at the festival in 2005.


Listen to 'Bonny Besses'

This was no mean feat, convening the artists and adapting the album to live performance were all done in double quick time, and the results were riveting. Performed on a summer evening on a green hill in England Freeborn John's life was celebrated, and his rightful place in British history acknowledged.

This recording of the event comes as a CD and DVD in a digipak with an excellent booklet detailing the historical setting as well as the lyrics and performers. The studio album was an extremely ambitious project, in subject matter and performance, that somehow managed to pull off the trick of being 'worthy' without disappearing up it's own arse. As a live performance it gains credibility from the commitment of the performers and the physicality of watching it in the open air.

The English Civil War was a highly complicated stage in English history, so often it's reduced to simplistic levels of democracy loving roundheads against aristocratic fops dressed as dandy's. The truth within this imagery contained religious prejudice, lust for power, and the perennial abuse of the populace as pawns in the games of the elite. John Lilburne had a hard life in hard times, he put the fight against tyranny above the cost of his own life and he inspired others to stand alongside him. That his legacy is celebrated by the creativity of Rev Hammer and performed in the open air before a festival crowd of 'ordinary' people seems in some ways as moving as a memorial service for those who have fallen in battle. For these reasons the DVD is a real gem, and a moving event to watch as the performers are clearly invested in the emotional gravity of the piece. Serious yet rarely sombre, the events portrayed of several hundred years ago are uplifting, and you are left with the desire to know more.

It's hard to pick highlights from the piece as it's all of a uniformly high quality, Justin Sullivan, Maddy Prior and Simon Friend stand out for the strength of the material they recount. It's the Bonny Besses in their sea green dresses that sum it all up for me, Mary Overton leading a protest song of beautiful conviction that reduces all the convoluted history to a comprehensible human desire for justice.

This piece deserves to be performed live more often, in the meantime buy this and tell your friends about it.

Iain Hazlewood