Sitarswami Dept. - Fairytale 50th Anniversary

Artwork by Sitarswami

Has it really been fifty years? [MUSES SITARSWAMI, WHAT WROTE THIS SCREED - ED.] The 30 June 1973 issue of Melody Maker sits in front of me now. In its page one story, “Broken Wheel,” departing Stealers Wheel mainman Gerry Rafferty deflected the inevitable “What’s next?” with an old Scottish oath before acknowledging a long gestating project he and a few old chums had planned but subsequently abandoned. Asked if an album might one day see release he replied with a wink and a nod, “Write a few songs, things happen. Might call it Fairytale on Baker Street.” Baker Street, he explained, was the location of the flat where he was crashing temporarily.

Rumors surrounding Fairytale, and its personnel, pre-date the Melody Maker interview. Over the years any presumed conspirators, alive or dead, have declined comment or denied culpability – which makes Mr. Rafferty’s lone allusion noteworthy. Although, record buyers of a certain age may remember singing along with his first single’s chorus “Strange things for sale from our fairytale.”

If an album had been released, if the songs had been written or recorded, we’d surely have that 50^th anniversary Steven Wilson remixed & remastered 5.1 edition in our hands right now. And, as much as I enjoy blogs who create “Albums that should exist,” they do so with recordings that do already exist. Unfortunately, all we have of Fairytale are blank master tapes holding enough material to fill one blank cd (two, actually – see footnote below) and the promise of things which didn’t come to pass. But, five decades on, Fairytale’s sweetly unsung harmonies continue to swirl like half-forgotten melodies through the leaves of UK music journals. 

The Fairytale myth may have originated late one March night in 1970, in a pub somewhere near Stoke-on-Trent, British Isles. Two members of Liverpool Scene, Andy Roberts and Adrian Henri, crossed paths with Sandy Denny and a pair of Humblebums, Billy Connolly and Gerry Rafferty. The ‘ot & ‘eavy ‘Umbles were on a small tour opening for Fotheringay and Sandy, holding court and a near-empty pint glass, stood unsteadily to address the assemblage. Teetering off-balance, she bumped Connolly whose beer spilled onto Henri who knocked over the table upsetting everyone’s ale and porter. Dancing and sparring like an old couple in a well-rehearsed pantomime, the entertainer and the poet nimbly exchanged verbal blows. Once the bickering and the next round’s heady froth had settled, they adjourned to a far corner to debate the merits of an unpublished text tentatively titled “Rawlinson’s End.” Meanwhile, Sandy, Andy and Rafferty engaged in an addled assessment of the music scene. 

The trio lamented the failure of Blind Faith to keep it together. Their biggest mistake had been enlisting two of its members from a band which had already collapsed under its own weight. Crosby, Stills & Nash had 1) wisely avoided that issue, and 2) added gravitas by relying on their surnames and not a fanciful sobriquet. What had begun as a whimsical drinking game turned sober: prospective members of a pedigreed supergroup were proposed and summarily rejected: Dave Cousins, Donovan, Nicky Hopkins, Neil Innes, George Harrison, Georgie Fame, Alan Price, and dozens more. In the wee hours of morning, with daylight increasingly and inebriatingly approaching, it dawned on all that three-quarters of the answer lay right in front of them: Denny, Rafferty & Roberts & ??? 

After a moment’s quiet reflection in the bottom of her glass, Denny demurred, unable to desert her new boyfriend (and future husband, Trevor Lucas, curiously absent from this narrative) prior to finishing their album. In her stead she nominated an old bandmate, Ian Matthews McDonald. Andy assumed, incorrectly, that Sandy’s Ian was the similarly named ex-King Crimson multi-instrumentalist whom he had befriended the previous July (ed. note: Two weeks after their well-received Hyde Park appearance the Crimsos had opened for the Scene). Rafferty, deep in his cups, murmured “softly, softly” and fell asleep. Closing time found Andy and Sandy musing upon Rafferty’s cryptic mumbling. Stumbling out the door they ran into Conway, Donaldson & Donahue, Fotheringay’s rhythm section & and lead guitar. CD&D were in a celebratory mood and related tall tales of signed contracts providing studio support for folk-blues provocateur Mick Softley, who had a new three-album deal with CBS. The design behind Rafferty’s Delphic muttering crystallized: Softley, indeed.

Who knows where the time goes, and the night’s drunken ramblings, quickly forgotten by those involved, became the stuff of legend. Andy Roberts joined the Bonzo Dog Band in time to record Let’s Make Up & Be Friendly and from there it was a short jump to Grimms and solo albums. Ian Matthews (McDonald) formed Matthews’ Southern Comfort until carrying on with Andy in Plainsong. Gerry Rafferty hooked up with his ex-Fifth Column partner, Joe Egan, renaming themselves Stealers Wheel. As for the elder statesman, who later disappeared in mysterious circumstances while riding his bicycle, I defer to Record Collector who chronicled “Mick Softley … enigmatic hipster … beardedly optimistic … erratic and be-spectacled.” Sadly, while rehearsing their new group, ex-King Crimsonite Ian McDonald and his musical partner Mick Jones (former gov’nor of the great State of Micky & Tommy) were captured on tape inhaling a Gramm of hard rock. Their arrest and resulting trial, on television’s Christgau’s Court, was well publicized with the musicians sentenced to commercial success, exiled to a foreign land. I Ching and tarot card readings prophesied Sandy Denny’s transcendence of time and space following a one-night stand with Led Zeppelin.

By the summer of ‘73, unbeknownst to the principals, the machinery behind popular song had primed Matthews, Softley, Roberts & Rafferty for overexposure. But nothing happened, or did it? Facts prove elusive, if not completely fabricated, and memories are scattered like lost guitar picks. Supergroup theorists, with unlimited access to hidden clues, bake their bread and follow the crumbs.

One agitated listener, writing to Kerrang!, claims to have deciphered a backwards snippet of dialogue imbedded into the fadeout of Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath’s “Spiral Architect.” Reversed, the fragment reveals not a devil’s minion, but a blonde seven-year-old girl reciting: “When I used to read fairy tales (italics ours), I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one.” 

In The Wire’s “Invisible Jukebox” column, an avid 8-track collector has asserted that his recently acquired boot-sale Fleetwood Mac Mystery to Me quadrophonic tape sounds suspiciously like the fabled Fairytale. Members of an internet music group who have heard the up&downloaded file only confirm an abundance of highly compressed hiss. 

Then, shockingly, in its February 2023 issue, Mojo printed a blurry image of a long-haired foursome clad in beards and blue jeans smoking a joint offstage during Terry Reid’s 27 August 1970 Isle of Wight set. The photo’s caption, intended for an upcoming Michael Lindsay-Hogg exposé, read: “John, Paul, George & Ringo – is the fairytale over?” (Sharp-eyed readers quickly identified the four as Andy Roberts’ Everyone, third billed on that day’s schedule). Citing an editorial mix up, several Mojo staff members nevertheless faced dismissal when an enraged Mrs. Lennon threatened legal action. In response, the magazine hastily prepared a Mojo Presents Histrionic Yelping: Ono A Tribute to Yoko collector’s fanzine and flexi-single. Since the photo’s publication, Mojo’s letters-to-the-editor column has reported an uptick in septuagenarian festival goers’ eyewitness accounts of Mr. Reid refusing the proffered lead vocalist role in both The Beatles and on Fairytale. Possibly unrelated, the producers of the UK’s #1 rated television program, The Great British Half-Baked Lyricist Show have announced a new episode featuring Keith Reid vs. Peter Sinfield. 

But what of those promising early sides the boys cut leading up to that magical year, 1973? History owes a debt of gratitude to an unnamed crate-digger at the Shoreditch Underground record fair who, while surreptitiously fondling a VG++ import gatefold album jacket (with Obi strip attached), dislodged a small slip of silk paper. Discreetly covering the fallen scrap with his sandaled toe, he was able to recover it unnoticed when the dealer’s attention focused on two young women contemplating a US mono pressing of Songs of Leonard Cohen [artist's impression at left - Ed.]. The paper contained only a typed www. Address/link, and a scribbled handwritten note: “フェアリーテールの序章” Loosely translated as “Preface to Fairytale,” pop musicologists hypothesize the contents to be the individual members’ long unheard single and album tracks, misplaced for decades, compiled and presumably intended as a bonus material mp3 download link which would accompany the planned 47^th anniversary Japanese limited-edition vinyl pressing of Fairytale.  

Presented now for your benefit:

Preface to Fairytale

The Early Works of Matthews, Softley, Roberts & Rafferty (selected recordings, 1965 – 1972), featuring The Fifth Column, Mick Softley, The Scaffold, The Pyramid, Liverpool Scene, Fairport Convention, The Humblebums, Soft Cloud, Ian/Iain Matthews, Andy Roberts, Gerry Rafferty, Matthews Southern Comfort, Plainsong, and Stealers Wheel.

The first one hundred commenters will also receive Peripheral to Fairytale – bonus tracks by The Humblebums, Fotheringay, McDonald & Giles, and Mark-Almond.

(1) Fairytale – the 50^th Anniversary Edition: (link removed due to copyright violation)

-- disc 1 would include a newly remastered version of the original 1973 George Martin-produced record, plus outtakes, alternate takes, demos, and a lengthy unlistenable studio jam.

-- disc 2 should contain the 2023 Steven Wilson 5.1 remix; a previously unavailable pre-lp 45 b-side co-written by Nick Drake & Syd Barrett and produced by Joe Boyd; the abortive Todd Rundgren-produced reunion sessions; and other stuff no one will hear ‘cause no one owns a 5.1 player.

(2) – Third on the bill, on his first and only tour, was Nick Drake. One of Fotheringay’s roadies, in a vitriolic 2001 interview, recalled that after each show Mr. Drake would lock himself in his hotel room and re-enact the scene drawn on the Robert Johnson King of the Delta Blues Singers, vol. 2 album jacket. “We was all listenin’ to it all the time. Every night he’d be hunched over a mike stand playin’ some 12-bar shit. And (his producer Joe) Boyd’d be in the loo mannin’ the portable (tape recorder).” In his/their second memoir, Ride A White Bicycle, co-authored with fellow ex-patriot producer Tony Visconti, the erudite Mr. Boyd dismissed the bitter anecdote as “balderdash, pure poppycock.”

(3) – Available in one of four colors (lavender, mint, tangerine, or black & white ) the vinyl was only a part of the massive, unrealized (47^th Anniversary) 2020 Immersion boxset. 

(4) – Although a musical nonparticipant, Jon Mark was a conscripted stand-in for an unaccountably absent Mick during the Hipgnosis cover photo shoot.

(5) – On the Steve Hoffman Music Forum, a “one of a kind” multi-color splatter vinyl copy was briefly offered for sale in a classified ad placed by the estate of a European record pressing plant employee.