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Gonna See All My Friends: A People's History of Fairport Convention
Gonna See All My Friends is a fully authorised history of Fairport Convention in the words of over 300 fans. Illustrated in full colour throughout with photographs of the band and rare memorabilia, the book includes contributions from Fairport stalwarts Simon Nicol and Dave Pegg along with memories from some of the band’s many friends across the music world, including Ian Anderson and Doane Perry (Jethro Tull), Ralph McTell (‘Streets of London’), producer Joe Boyd, BBC broadcaster Michael Billington and folk luminaries annA rydeR, Edwina Hayes, Brendan Murphy, Kieran Goss, Fraser Nimmo, The Bar-Steward Sons of Val Doonican, along with Huw Williams and Steve Tilston. With an introduction by Fairport historian Nigel Schofield, this book is a fan’s-eye romp through 55 years of making music, mates and mischief, the latter aided from time to time by the odd pint of beer.
729 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 18, 2022
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July 30, 2025
"Like the Grateful Dead with real ale"
This was a thoughtful birthday present from a friend. I've been an on-and-off fan of Fairport (whose description I've taken from p328 and used as the title of this review) since we took our four-year-old daughter along to Cropredy in 1989, inspired by our niece who thought that we'd enjoy the festival "because they employ Boy Scouts as the security force". For twenty years, we lived over the hill from the Oxfordshire village where Woodworm Studios used to be, and there are a few people in this book who are familiar to me. It's a handsome collection of reminiscences from fans about how they first came to hear the band, stories about meetings with the members and memories of the way their love of Fairport has suffused their lives. Since the contributions were in response to a general invitation by the editor, opinions about the band are unrelentingly positive (presumably nobody bothered to write in to say that they didn't like them) and - perhaps surprisingly for a book of this kind - well-written.
The stories are entertaining - e.g. how Ric Sanders ended up jamming with Peter Tork in the foyer of an Australian hotel [p166], or how one of the fans was one of the first to make commercial video tapes of bands (inc Fairport), and received a thank you letter from a lady who enjoyed a Cropredy tape because she'd been unable to attend because of illness. She'd been delighted when, having encouraged her husband to go along on his own, she spotted him one of the crowd shots but was devastated to see he had his arm around her best friend (and subsequently divorced him) [p133]. There's the story on p344 of the woman who's a fan whilst here husband isn't, so he drives her to the gig and waits for her in the foyer, while on p244, an Australian fan describes how she'd been introduced to the band by her father and, a long time after his passing at the age of 44, was able to use their music (re-assembling his record collection bit by bit) to re-establish a link with his memory. There's also a great re-telling from Joe Boyd on p62 of how, having run out of songs when playing the Troubadour in 1970, the band invited Linda Ronstadt to come up from the audience and sing with them. "But I don't know any English folk songs," she demurred. "That's okay, we know all of yours," replied Simon Nicol and called 'Silver Threads And Golden Needles', which required her to sing the opening lines a cappella before, to her astonishment, the band came in at just the right moment, "absolutely the arrangement on her record, note for note". In Boyd's words, she hadn't realised "that these guys could play everything".
Tales of meeting with the members (mostly Dave Pegg) illustrate their - in the musical world, uncharacteristic - friendliness and approachability (which I can also attest to). This includes an encounter with Dave Mattacks behind the merch desk at a gig in Wolverhampton when, in response to stuttered thanks from a new fan to the "man I later discovered to be one of the world's best drummers with some of the all-time greats [...], looked [him] in the eye and said, 'Thank you for coming, glad you enjoyed it, really appreciate your support'" [p209].
As for us, we (including our daughter and her family) will be going to see Fairport again tomorrow. It all comes round again.
This was a thoughtful birthday present from a friend. I've been an on-and-off fan of Fairport (whose description I've taken from p328 and used as the title of this review) since we took our four-year-old daughter along to Cropredy in 1989, inspired by our niece who thought that we'd enjoy the festival "because they employ Boy Scouts as the security force". For twenty years, we lived over the hill from the Oxfordshire village where Woodworm Studios used to be, and there are a few people in this book who are familiar to me. It's a handsome collection of reminiscences from fans about how they first came to hear the band, stories about meetings with the members and memories of the way their love of Fairport has suffused their lives. Since the contributions were in response to a general invitation by the editor, opinions about the band are unrelentingly positive (presumably nobody bothered to write in to say that they didn't like them) and - perhaps surprisingly for a book of this kind - well-written.
The stories are entertaining - e.g. how Ric Sanders ended up jamming with Peter Tork in the foyer of an Australian hotel [p166], or how one of the fans was one of the first to make commercial video tapes of bands (inc Fairport), and received a thank you letter from a lady who enjoyed a Cropredy tape because she'd been unable to attend because of illness. She'd been delighted when, having encouraged her husband to go along on his own, she spotted him one of the crowd shots but was devastated to see he had his arm around her best friend (and subsequently divorced him) [p133]. There's the story on p344 of the woman who's a fan whilst here husband isn't, so he drives her to the gig and waits for her in the foyer, while on p244, an Australian fan describes how she'd been introduced to the band by her father and, a long time after his passing at the age of 44, was able to use their music (re-assembling his record collection bit by bit) to re-establish a link with his memory. There's also a great re-telling from Joe Boyd on p62 of how, having run out of songs when playing the Troubadour in 1970, the band invited Linda Ronstadt to come up from the audience and sing with them. "But I don't know any English folk songs," she demurred. "That's okay, we know all of yours," replied Simon Nicol and called 'Silver Threads And Golden Needles', which required her to sing the opening lines a cappella before, to her astonishment, the band came in at just the right moment, "absolutely the arrangement on her record, note for note". In Boyd's words, she hadn't realised "that these guys could play everything".
Tales of meeting with the members (mostly Dave Pegg) illustrate their - in the musical world, uncharacteristic - friendliness and approachability (which I can also attest to). This includes an encounter with Dave Mattacks behind the merch desk at a gig in Wolverhampton when, in response to stuttered thanks from a new fan to the "man I later discovered to be one of the world's best drummers with some of the all-time greats [...], looked [him] in the eye and said, 'Thank you for coming, glad you enjoyed it, really appreciate your support'" [p209].
As for us, we (including our daughter and her family) will be going to see Fairport again tomorrow. It all comes round again.
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