Folk-rock all-stars get together as The GPs and resurface decades later on a live album that’s tighter than it has any right to be. Ralph McTell’s storytelling, Richard Thompson’s searing solos, and a rhythm section of Dave Pegg and Dave Mattacks keeping it all on course. Dylan, Motown, rockabilly, and their own songbooks, played like they mean it. Call it a one-off, a relic, or just a rollicking fun set. Brian R Banks explains.
In 1981 there was…The GPs Live In Concert (Talking Elephant TECD505)
It’s rare when top-level musicians get together from their regular projects, play six gigs (and a brief reunion 16 years later at a festival) which survives as a recording 44 years later. Even the venue disappeared. If folk had a supergroup this would have been one of them, but the genre’s musicians hold a different candle to working together (co-operate not the negative collaborate). And they choose songs they like from their own back grounds (two each by Ralph McTell and Richard Thompson) as well as influences from rock ‘n’ roll/country/blues classics flecked with a sprinkle of Motown and Dylan along with The Band.
Ralph McTell (vocals, guitar, harmonica) of Streets Of London fame (written in 1969, the year after his debut LP), Richard Thompson (vocals, guitar), Dave Pegg (bass, mandolin) and Dave Mattacks (drums), i.e. more than half of the legendary Full House line up of Fairport Convention, got together as the GPs (Grazed Pontiffs, it was the time of the attempted assassination of the pope, though let’s be honest the name isn’t the best and became even worse for this internet age), a bit like the Dukes of Stratosphear from XTC or a couple of embryo not-yet-named bands at the same festival: Whippersnapper (Dave Swarbrick) and Brass Monkey (Martin Carthy). This CD is mostly from what was the Capitol Theatre in Horsham, Sussex, with five from Broughton Castle in the summer of ’81, the only famous Cropredy not held in that Oxfordshire village near Banbury, and one from Cropredy itself sixteen years later.
Croydon-born McTell had issued 10 albums before 1981, Richard Thompson had forged a leading solo career after Fairport Convention, Dave Pegg had gone onto Jethro Tull (which he was still in at this time) plus LPs by Nick Drake, John Martyn, Richard & Linda Thompson etc., and Dave Mattacks who was probably the leading drum sessioneer (Steeleye Span, Incredible Steel Band, Drake, Martyn, Brian Eno, the Beatles etc.) as well as being in McTell’s band that played venues such as the Royal Festival Hall two years earlier. Contractual ties, however, meant the new group couldn’t continue even though Fairport Convention were on sabbatical at the time.
The remastered recording has been painstakingly enhanced to fine quality, bettering its CD debut in 1992 (Saturday Rolling Around). From an atmospheric Zimmerman Blues (McTell) and Dylan’s Going Going Gone with classic Thompson guitar sound, a laptop country ballad ((Take A Message To Mary), more than one lengthy blistering solo (in the over six minutes of Marvin Gaye’s Don’t Do It) alongside much in between. Excellent, forensic liner notes include song histories for often variant titles and the GPs recording history (please change irritating “Peggy” next time to his real name!). This label has a fascinating knack of finding stuff that deserves a new listen simply because it’s memorable and shouldn’t be forgotten. Great fun.
Brian R. Banks
