MADDY PRIOR

Every month we get inside the mind of one of the biggest names in music. This issue it’s Maddy Prior MBE. The British folk singer co-founded Steeleye Span in 1969 and rose to fame as the band’s talented lead vocalist. She’s now regarded as one of folk’s leading lights and has enjoyed a varied solo career, guesting with both Mike Oldfield and Ian Anderson, among others. Now in her seventh decade, the singer and songwriter continues to perform with The Carnival Band and was part of Steeleye Span’s 50th anniversary celebrations. Here, she revisits her early life and looks ahead to Steeleye’s future.

Words: Jo Kendall

“I tend to plough my own furrow. I’m focused on what I’m doing and not comparing it with what other people are doing,” says Maddy Prior as Prog rounds up an afternoon’s talk about her early life and Steeleye Span reaching 50-plus years. And maybe because of that outlook, Prior is probably one of the most recognisable voices in folk, and folk rock music – and her face is pretty recognisable too, after a string of hits in the early 70s with Steeleye Span led them to be staples of shows such as Top Of The Pops.

Steeleye Span’s 50th anniversary album, Est’d 1969.

From an early age Prior loved to sing, and was encouraged to do so and take part in competitions. In the late 50s the family relocated from Blackpool due to her father’s job – drama writer and novelist Allan Prior co-created hit TV show Z-Cars and later Howard’s Way – and Prior found herself in the Roman town of St Albans, which had a thriving music scene and was a folk epicentre.

Meeting like-minds such as Donovan and Mac MacLeod in the local folk clubs, in 1965 she teamed up with guitarist/vocalist Tim Hart both professionally and romantically and formed a duo that went on to release two albums on TeePee Records, Folk Songs Of Old England, volumes 1 and 2. By 1969 Prior and Hart wanted a change, and it came in the form of former Fairport Convention founder and bassist Ashley Hutchings. Together they created an electric folk band, Steeleye Span, whose popularity remains today, largely because of their enormous, resonant 1975 hit All Around My Hat. While in Steeleye Span, Prior would meet her future husband, bassist Rick Kemp, who replaced the departing Hutchings in 1972 (he was off to form The Albion Band).

Prior has released solo albums, joined June Tabor as the duo Silly Sisters, played with The Carnival Band and guested with Jethro Tull, Mike Oldfield and Status Quo. In 2001, she was awarded an MBE for services to folk music. And passing on the torch, Prior runs Stones Barn arts centre in Cumbria, where she holds weekend singing classes and residential workshops in folk music, often with her daughter, singer-songwriter Rose Kemp.

Today, in Ye Old Fighting Cocks pub in St Albans, Prior has been filming a feature about Steeleye Span, and pondering their 50-plus years. A May tour is planned for 2022, but in the meantime, a document to the band’s life to date exists in the release Est’d 1969, featuring the current line-up of Prior, Liam Genockey (drums), Julian Littman (guitar, mandolin, keyboards, vocals), Jessica May Smart (violin, vocals), Andrew ‘Spud’ Sinclair (guitar, vocals), Benji Kirkpatrick (bouzouki, guitar, mandolin, banjo, vocals) and Roger Carey (bass, vocals). “I’ve been very grateful to have been a working musician for years,” Prior reflects, now aged 74. “I had a week working in a Wimpy Bar while on holiday at the end of school for which I earned £10, and at the same time I’d done one gig with a band for £8. I thought, ‘I’ll do this for a living.’”