Led Zep

How a forgotten folk hero inspired Led Zeppelin

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“I approached it more like a jazz singer.”

By Kelly Scanlon | 

In the 1960s, the English folk scene was experiencing a transformation that saw many traditional Irish songs become repurposed, fragmented, and rearranged for then-modern audiences. The artists behind these reinventions didn’t care much for imitation, many of which followed a path of authenticity, making good use of the lack of copyright issues and creating sounds that harkened back to old, cherished tunes.

Anne Briggs spent a lot of her younger years sneaking out to pubs in Scotland and soaking up the monumental folk scene that began to brim at the time. Her journey is what led her to Bert Jansch in the 1950s, and together, they became immersed in their shared love of traditional folk sounds despite being less privy to its history or even the ways it sounded.

Briggs and Jansch began working on ‘Blackwater Side’ in the early 1960s after Briggs encountered a version of the song shared with her by folk collector Bert Lloyd. The version that fell into her hands was by Mary Doran, a young 21-year-old traveller of Waterford, Ireland. Of course, Briggs’ version likely differs as it showcases her sultry vocals and ability to seamlessly melt across various notes, often uttered in a quick, snappy pace, putting more of an emphasis on vocals than the accompanying arrangements.

At the time, this was certainly a trend, according to Briggs. “Everybody up to that point was accompanying traditional songs in a very three-chord way,” she explained, adding: “It was why I always sang unaccompanied, but seeing Bert’s freedom from chords, I suddenly realised—this chord stuff, you don’t need it.” It was precisely this attitude towards experimentalism and innovation that set Briggs’ version apart. Traditional folk needn’t remain restricted to convention; exploration can give it greater longevity and more meaningful resonance.

Jimmy Page claims to have come across Briggs’ ‘Blackwater Side’ in a London club, which inspired him to write Led Zeppelin’s two-minute instrumental song ‘Black Mountain Side’. “I wasn’t totally original on that [song],” Page explained to Guitar Player. He explained that while Briggs “was the first one that I heard do that riff,” Jansch was “absolutely brilliant”, and his version “crystallised all the acoustic playing.”

Briggs had a significant influence on the sound of Led Zeppelin, not just because of her intuition but also because she approached music creation with fierce independence. From a young age, she adopted a mindset that was, in her words, “pretty unconventional for the time”, which resulted in her “shedding everything as I went” to prove that women had a right to be as free as men. Musically, she threw out the rulebook and decided to mix and match, which wasn’t a commonplace approach at the time.

“I approached it more like a jazz singer in terms of my timing and decoration. It was very individual,” Briggs said, discussing her take on traditional ballads. In a way, Briggs gave to the folk scene what punk gave to rock ‘n’ roll, as she refused to be put into a box, stalling fame even though it was well within her reach. Led Zeppelin’s version of ‘Blackwater Side’ may sound like a significantly different spin, but the sprinklings of rebellion are still there as Briggs’ unwavering influence continues to live on.

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Source: How a forgotten folk hero inspired Led Zeppelin

Meet the folkers: the improbable story of British folk rock

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The HOBBLEDEHOY recently came upon this excellent overview of the history of British Folk Rock written by Hugh Fielder.

Folk’s music’s not all “hey nonny nonny” y’know. In the 70s, it sneaked its way into the heaviest of rock’s repertoire. We look at the groups that spearheaded the genre

Led Zeppelin’s folk-rock credentials may not be uppermost in any assessment of the heavy metal behemoths, but the haunting presence of Fairport Convention singer Sandy Denny on Battle Of Evermore from Led Zeppelin IV as she echoes Robert Plant’s vocals is perhaps the starkest example of folk rock’s impact on British rock music in the 70s.

Indeed, beneath the metal bombast, Zeppelin had flirted with folk from the start. Jimmy Page has acknowledged the influence of 60s folkie Bert Jansch and you only have to compare the instrumental Black Mountain Side from Led Zeppelin 1 with Jansch’s Black Water Side to hear precisely what he means. And Gallows Pole from Led Zeppelin III is a rock’n’roll version of a traditional folk song. Er, folk rock in fact.

And Led Zeppelin weren’t the only big name to dabble in folk rock. When Traffic regrouped in 1970 after Steve Winwood’s Blind Faith adventure, they cut a version of the traditional ballad John Barleycorn and called the resulting album John Barleycorn Must Die.

Folk was a fertile field for aspiring rock musicians of the late 60s to graze in because the whole scene had been revitalised at the start of that decade by a bunch of young turks – chief among them Martin Carthy, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn and Davey Graham – who brought their own distinctive guitar styles to traditional folk songs and added their own flavours.

This revival created a thriving folk club circuit around the country and something of a scene in London where clubs such as the Troubadour and Cousins became fashionable haunts. The reputation of the British folk scene even spread to America and lured up-and-coming American folkies such as Bob Dylan and Paul Simon over to check it out. Which is how Bob Dylan came to appropriate Martin Carthy’s arrangement of Lord Franklin for Bob Dylan’s Dream and Paul Simon nicked his arrangement of Scarborough Fair (for which Carthy only formally forgave him recently).

Simon also learnt Davey Graham’s innovative modal guitar tuning that conveyed more than a tinge of Eastern promise. It was that tinge that Bert Jansch picked up on for Black Water Side. Which Jimmy Page… you get the picture.

The first young folk singer to break cover and cross over to the pop charts was Donovan, who landed a series of spots on ITV’s ground-breaking Ready Steady Go programme early in 1965, despite the fact he wasn’t even signed to a record label.

Indeed he wasn’t even in the front line of folk singers and his demos were more pop than folk. This would explain why his first single, Catch The Wind (muddily ‘enhanced’ by the London Philharmonic string section) did better in the pop charts, reaching No. 4, than the folk clubs where the hip young things looked down their noses.

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