Notes

---

Steeleye Span: Sails of Silver
Sails of Silver
Steeleye Span

Chrysalis CHR 1304 (LP, UK, 1980)
Ariola/Chrysalis 203.003-320 (LP, Germany, 1980?)
Takoma TAK 7097 (LP, US, 1981)
Park Records PRK CD40 (CD, UK, January 1998)

Produced by Gus Dudgeon
Engineered by Jerry Boys
Recorded at Sawmill Studios, Golant, Cornwall
Mixed at Marquee Studios, London
Mastered by Gordon Vicary at Utopia, London
Thanks to Janet, Mary, Julie and Peter
Tea and Tuck by Hazel Tether.
Road Crew: Andy Banks, John Wilford, Patrick Whitley.


Musicians
Original LP CD bonus tracks
Maddy Prior, vocals;
Tim Hart, vocals, guitar;
Bob Johnson, vocals, guitar;
Rick Kemp, vocals, bass;
Peter Knight, vocals, keyboards, violin;
Nigel Pegrum, drums, percussion, woodwind Maddy Prior, vocals;
Gay Woods, vocals;
Bob Johnson, vocals, guitar;
Peter Knight, vocals, violin;
Tim Harries, bass, vocals, keyboards;
Liam Genockey, drums


Tracks
The original LP has ten tracks:

Side 1 Side 2
Sails of Silver (3:27)
My Love (2:53)
Barnet Fair (4:34)
Senior Service (3:31)
Gone to America (4:21)
Where Are They Now (4:11)
Let Her Go Down (3:36)
Longbone (3:58)
Marigold / Harvest Home (3:05)
Tell Me Why (3:56)


The Park Records CD has three bonus tracks, track 11 recorded live in March 1997, tracks 12 and 13 recorded live in December 1996 when Steeleye was supporting Status Quo on a British tour:

Thomas the Rhymer (6:50)
My Johnny (1:39)
The Lark in the Morning (4:03)
Tracks 1-10 (P) 1980 Chrysalis Records Ltd
Tracks 11-13 (P) 1997 Park Records
All songs written by Steeleye Span
Published by Peer Music (UK) Ltd.

Sleeve Notes
There was a certain inevitability about the 1980 reformation of Steeleye Span - after all they'd parted on a critical high two years earlier, yet failed to crack any significant barriers individually. The sum of parts, it appeared, was less than the whole. They admit as much.

Maddy Prior: “There has to be a combination of certain personalities for Steeleye to function and when we got back together everything just fell into place.”

Of course, the Span which came back wasn't the Span that went, rather the most commercially successful and long lived version. This bunch hadn't spoken to one another to any great extent since a third of them waltzed off to promote The King of Elfland's Daughter project. So there were problems. What lay behind this Lazarus-like behaviour was the fact that Warwick - a TV advert label responsible for such wonders as `Bernard Manning sings' and `Twenty Golden Organ Greats' - wanted to license a Steeleye compilation from Chrysalis. The spin off from a venture like that would be considerable and Chrysalis wanted something new in the racks to go alongside. Thus the band were approached firstly through Maddy Prior and husband Rick Kemp. Gradually matters coalesced - before you knew it, whispers were flying around the folk and rock press about recording.

Rick: “The band would have liked Mike Batt (producer of All Around My Hat) to have done Sails of Silver but he was in Japan or somewhere, so we agreed on Elton John and Joan Armatrading producer Gus Dudgeon. He came to our first rehearsal and told us that, in his estimation, we had one and a half songs. On reflection, we agreed with him, so off we went to write some more.”

The idea behind Sails of Silver was that, whilst obviously a Steeleye album, it was to be a new beginning.

Maddy: “No, we weren't fed up with doing folk songs, but we'd all been writing and wanted to adapt our styles to make Steeleye music something fresh. What we came up with reflected traditional themes, yet sounded contemporary.”

Rick: “I remember sitting up all night finishing Where Are They Now and recording it straight away the next morning.”

The sessions for the album took place in the intimate and remote setting of Sawmills Studio, Cornwall - a spot you can only reach at high tide, in a boat, when the river waters rise.

Span reworked such folk concerns as betrayal, transportation, village revels, sinkings on the high seas, the rakish life of sailors and as Bob Johnson so deftly puts it, “Before, when we were young and carefree, we did songs about elves, witches and goblins. Now we're older, more mature, we're writing about giants.”

Touring the album at Christmas, most of the new songs stood well amongst a set of audience favourites and hits. Span openly talked about moving rockwards, extending away from their roots. Peter Knight played keyboard far more than fiddle. Less of a tour, more of a triumphal procession of return.

All this means, it's a pity there was no swift follow up to Sails of Silver, furthering the experiment. Instead, though they toured, Steeleye added no new recording for six long years. By then the momentum had faded, personnel changed and they had no reassess direction.

Yet this is a fine album and a remarkably bold statement of intent. Sails of Silver endures.

Simon Jones, Folk Roots

The first of Steeleye Span's many comebacks, Sails of Silver restores the classic lineup from their mid-'70s pinnacle. After not appearing on Storm Force 10 and Live at Last, guitarist Bob Johnson and multi-instrumentalist Peter Knight unseat their onetime replacements, Martin Carthy and John Kirkpatrick. The result is a surprisingly well-crafted yet largely overlooked album. In 1980, re-formed '60s and '70s bands of marginal renown did not receive the headlines — the new rebellious and controversial acts did. At the urging of producer Gus Dudgeon, Steeleye Span wrote all of the songs on this album, the first release that didn't include several if not solely traditional numbers. After a decade of reconstructing English and Irish folk songs, something must have taken hold of this band; several selections — including "Sails of Silver," "Barnet Fair," "Let Her Go Down," and "Longbone" — definitely possess a traditional feel, both in melody and lyric. Expectedly, this album wouldn't compete directly with the fashionable and tiresome music trends of 1980, but it was also a grossly underrated album that, in retrospect, proves to be a key release in the history of this storied band — particularly when considering all of the transformations they subsequently underwent. [The 1997 Park Records reissue contains live takes of "Thomas the Rhymer," "My Johnny," and "The Lark in the Morning," culled from concert dates circa 1996 and 1997.]