HELLO GOODBYE
Maddy Prior and Steeleye Span
They began at the dawn of British folk rock, but had to split to get some rest from the road.
Trad seeds: early Steeleye (from left) Maddy Prior, Peter Knight, Ashley Hutchings, Tim Hart and Martin Carthy; (inset) the Gay and Terry Woods line-up’s Hark! The Village Wait.
Getty (3)
HELLO LATE 1969
Tim Hart [voice, stringed instruments] and I had a small flat in Archway, in a house with about four flats in it. I was very into the olde worlde thing, everything was polished wood. I think three of the flats were actually rented by folk people, it was a sort of a community.
The first day of the group would be the dinner we had there with Ashley Hutchings [bass] and [folk rock married couple] Gay and Terry Woods, when they said, “Do you want to join the band?” At the time, there was a lot of talk about folk going electric, but basically nobody could afford it, and we didn’t know how to do it anyway. But Ashley had been in Fairport Convention and had access to record companies and things, so he was in a position to do it.