Liege & Lief

December 1969

Most Influential Folk Album of All Time

BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2006

The Masterpiece

Ashley: "After the crash, we got together for a meeting and decided we'd carry on, bring in Dave Swarbrick on fiddle and audition for a new drummer. We'd opened a whole new can of worms with A Sailor's Life and we decided there and then to go wholeheartedly in that folk rock direction. So that was quite an auspicious meeting. We rented this big old Queen Anne house in a viilage named Farley Chamberlayne, near Winchester and began work on Liege and Lief. Being in that house certainly helped form the music. We didn't dwell on the crash. There was a sense of adventure. It was uplifting. We were there for about 8 weeks. It was a very remarkable group. I'd say it's maturity was unmatched. Because we lived in that house all kinds of combinations were possible. And I wouldn't separate Sandy and Richard, everyone contributed to Liege and Lief sounding the way it did, Swarb, Mattacks...and Simon was such an important steadying influence. I remember it being a great shock to people when we appeared for that classic Royal Festival Hall concert where Nick Drake supported us and Dave played a solid electric fiddle for the first time and it blew people apart."

Recorded at Sound Techniques Studio,

October 16 - November 2, 1969
Engineer: John Wood,

Sound Techniques Ltd.
Producer: Joe Boyd,

Witchseason Productions Ltd.
with special thanks to the

English Folk Dance & Song Society at

Cecil Sharp House

Sandy Denny, vocals

Dave Mattacks, drums

Ashley Hutchings, bass guitar

Simon Nicol, guitars

Dave Swarbrick, violin and viola

Richard Thompson, guitars.