Al Stewart
Review: “Les Cousins” – The Soundtrack Of Soho’s Legendary Folk & Blues Club
By Dave Thompson
Les Cousins: The Soundtrack Of Soho’s Legendary Folk & Blues Club
Cherry Red (3-CD set)
Talk about the British folk scene of the 1960s and, sooner rather than later, the name Les Cousins will come up — no, not another of the unheard legends that bestrode that era like an arran-sweatered colossus (although there were plenty of those around at the time), but the venue wherein said colossi strutted their stuff.
An unprepossessing Greek Street restaurant, where the young Al Stewart shepherded the evening’s acts on and off the stage; where Sandy Denny and Paul Simon were as likely to appear as a toothless Irishman singing “Danny Boy”; where both the folk boom of the mid-1960s, and the variants that followed in its footsteps were born.
Les Cousins Club Continental opened in October 1964, in a space that once had held the Skiffle Cellar. A failure in that form, it reopened, sans the last two words, in April 1965, with a solid diet of folk music, and remained in action for the next seven years. During which time, more or less every British (and many American) folk artist of note either played there, or at least stopped by.
This box set — amazingly, the first to truly focus upon Les Cousins alone, as opposed to the overall scene of the day — merely scratches the surface of the club’s renown. Three discs of (many of) the venue’s best known guests could probably be followed by 30 stuffed with lesser known talents, and 300 of complete unknowns. If only anyone had recorded their performances…
Unfortunately, if there are any unknown live-at-Les Cousins tapes circulating… well, they’re still unknown. The 71 tracks spread across three discs here are universally taken from studio albums, although so many of them are hard (if not impossible) to find these days that that is nothing to sniff at.
Neither is the roll call of talents. Bert Jansch, Sandy Denny, Al Stewart, the Young Tradition, the Incredible String Band, Donovan, Julie Felix, Wizz Jones, the Third Ear Band, Plainsong, Bridget St John… Anne Briggs, who is due for the super deluxe treatment later this year, shares space with the immortal Nadia Cattouse; Hamish Imlach with Mudge & Clutterbuck; Paul Simon with Shirley Collins. And while the song selection is not as adventurous as some browsers might demand, it is certainly representative of the artists involved.
Of course, for a true impression of what a night at Les Cousins might have sounded like, the BBC would need to uncork the long mothballed London Folk Club Cellar tapes, the corporation’s own approximation of a venue such as this in the mid-late 1960s. A taste of that is, in fact, on tap in a forthcoming Martin Carthy BBC sessions box set, and we can only hope that more is in the pipeline, while anyone who actually remembers the show is still around to appreciate it.
In the meantime, however, let Les Cousins be your guide to a unique period in British folk, and the unique venue that catered for its admirers.
An Interview with Al Stewart
Kristina, was a big Al Stewart fan. I remember listening to “Nostradamus” and “Roads to Moscow” as Mom would dance around the living room to those time-transcending, history-steeped folk songs. It was heady music for my young mind to assimilate yet beautifully packaged and realized by the Scottish bard.
Stewart began as a folk artist during the much-lauded British folk music revival of the 1960s and ’70s, his early songs stylistically resembling those of Bob Dylan, Donovan, and Leonard Cohen. With the release of Past, Present and Future in 1973, Stewart plotted an intriguing course writing history-based folk tunes that captured the imaginations of listeners and sparked a new genre of music in the process. In total, Stewart has released 19 studio albums between 1967 and 2008, with his two platinum albums, Year of the Cat (1976) and Time Passages (1978), being his most famous works. I spoke to the intriguing artist by phone in advance of his upcoming concert at Ojai’s Libbey Bowl on May 12, which will be a celebration of Year of the Cat.
What was it like in the mid-’60s in London’s SoHo, playing with Bert Jansch, Cat Stevens, Van Morrison, and other legendary folk artists? There was a movement in the early ’60s whereby … English folk club singers started singing traditional English songs … then around about ’63 or ’64, Bob Dylan appeared — as if out of nowhere — and a whole load of people … me included … bought acoustic guitars and started trying to rhyme things. Eventually, when I got to London about January of 1965, there was a small group of people — Bert Jansch, Davey Graham, John Renbourn, Roy Harper, Ralph McTell, and people like that — who were all playing at the same time in these little cellars and coffee bars. I think I made about three pounds — which is $6 — a night playing at Bunjies Coffee House. Van Morrison played there, Paul Simon played there — pretty much everyone played there.