“We are not a Steeleye Span tribute band,” announced Maddy Prior as she launched into All Around My Hat, the 1975 hit that established her as one of the commercial folk-rock icons of that decade. Indeed. But Steeleye have survived by carefully balancing the past with the present, and by providing reminders of their history while edging into new territory, without scaring off the devoted audience that guaranteed another full house for this London return.
They have succeeded because they are classy musicians. They don’t have quite the backstory of those other 60s folk-rock survivors, Fairport Convention, but they can boast of early lineups that included Martin Carthy, and of collaborations with both David Bowie and Peter Sellers – as Maddy reminded the audience as she picked up the ukulele, played by Sellers in their 1975 treatment of New York Girls. And it held up well against the celebrated version by Bellowhead.
Steeleye’s speciality was always harmony vocals, as they proved with the glorious six-part a cappella workout at the start of the opening Cold Haily Windy Night, or on their emotional finale, Rick Kemp’s Somewhere Along the Road. To this they added an easy, stomping line in folk-rock, with echoes of Jethro Tull in several of the recent songs inspired by the late Terry Pratchett’s novel Wintersmith. There were passages when they sounded predictably smooth but unchallenged, and songs that refused to change tempo or mood, but they didn’t just rely on past success and were still willing to experiment. Summer Lady was light and adventurous, while the epic Cromwell’s Skull concluded with a remarkable violin workout from Steeleye’s newest member, Jessie May Smart. It was an impressive show from the latest lineup of the band that Maddy Prior co-founded back in 1969. They are good enough to take more chances.
- At Guildhall, Portsmouth, on 16 December. Box office: 0844 847 2362. Then at City Hall, Salisbury, on 17 December. Box office: 017-224 34434.
