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Folk Rock

Los Angeles, twelve strings, 1964

The Byrds

The Byrds formed in Los Angeles in 1964 around Jim (later Roger) McGuinn, Gene Clark and David Crosby, with Michael Clarke and Chris Hillman joining, and signed to Columbia that November. They put British Invasion beat under folk songs, with McGuinn's jangling 12-string Rickenbacker out front, and pioneered folk rock that way. Their first Columbia single went to number one in the US and UK. Albums like Younger Than Yesterday helped start psychedelic and raga rock, and Sweetheart of the Rodeo, made with Gram Parsons in 1968, became a blueprint for 1970s country rock. The original five got back together for one album in 1973 and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. Clark died that year, Clarke in 1993 and Crosby in 2023.

From "Big Music" to Irish fiddle

The Waterboys

Mike Scott founded the Waterboys in London in 1983, and the early records chase what he called "the Big Music": widescreen rock loaded with horns and piano, built, in his words, to search for "God's signature in the world." By the mid-1980s the sound had turned toward Ireland entirely. Fiddler Steve Wickham joined, Scott moved to Dublin and then Galway, and Fisherman's Blues (1988) traded the synthesizers for traditional Irish instrumentation.

Named after a house in Muswell Hill

Fairport Convention

Fairport Convention took their name from Fairport, a house in Muswell Hill, North London, where Ashley Hutchings and Simon Nicol rehearsed above Nicol's father's medical practice. With Richard Thompson on guitar, they played their first gig in May 1967. On 12 May 1969 their van crashed on the M1 on the way home from a gig in Birmingham, killing drummer Martin Lamble, nineteen, and Thompson's girlfriend Jeannie Franklyn. The survivors regrouped with fiddler Dave Swarbrick in a rented house in Farley Chamberlayne, Hampshire, and turned to traditional English song. What came out was Liege & Lief, which the 2006 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards named the most influential folk album of all time. A farewell concert in the Oxfordshire village of Cropredy in August 1979 turned into an annual festival, and the band carried on anyway.

Manchester-born, Harvest Records

Roy Harper

Roy Harper was born in Rusholme, Manchester, on 12 June 1941. His mother died three weeks later, and from age six he grew up in St Annes-on-Sea. He joined the RAF at 15, faked madness to get himself discharged, and from around 1961 busked his way through North Africa and Europe. His debut, Sophisticated Beggar, was recorded in 1966. After that he settled at Harvest for an eight-album run that took in Flat Baroque and Berserk, Stormcock (Jimmy Page on guitar) and HQ, recorded at Abbey Road alongside Pink Floyd, for whom he sang lead on a 1975 track. Man and Myth came out in 2013, the same year he got the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in Ireland.

Knokke, Belgium, 1973

Alan Stivell

Alan Stivell's father spent decades bringing back the Breton harp, a tradition that had nearly disappeared, and by fourteen Stivell had built one of the first electric versions and was playing it. Reflets, his 1970 album, made his career and took Breton music well beyond Brittany.

The Collection