Andrew Curry writes: Dave Cousins, who has died at the age of 85 after after a short illness, was the Strawbs. Co-founder, main writer, lead singer, only permanent member of the band as different versions ebbed and flowed, in a career that ran for about thirty years, allowing for a long break in the middle.
Cousins was brought up in west London and The Strawbs were originally the Strawberry Hill Boys, named for a part of Twickenham, before shortening it so the name would fit on a stage banner. Before they became the Strawbs, they had appeared (in 1963) on a BBC radio show with the Beatles and played at Eel Pie Island with the Rolling Stones. But their first LP, just called Strawbs, wasn’t released until 1969. There’s a story about why it turned out like that, but I’ll get to that.
(Dave Cousins with the Acoustic Strawbs, Manchester Free Trade Hall. (C) Roger Liptrot, Folkimages.com.)
Strawbs was definitely in the folk tradition; Dragonfly, which followed, was a bit more influenced by progressive music; From the Witchwood, their third record, a bit more so again.
Some of that was down to Rick Wakeman, who had played on Dragonfly as a session musician, and now joined the band for Witchwood and their first live record, Antiques and Curios.
The band at this time sounded a bit like Donovan might have sounded if he ever played with a band—or with Rick Wakeman come to that. (Have a listen to The Hangman and the Papist if you’re wondering what I mean by this.) Wakeman left soon enough for the full-blown prog-rock that was Yes, but he stayed friends, recording both a studio and a live album with Cousins in the 2000s and turning out for the 40 anniversary concerts in 2009.
Those early records were also blessed with fine producers. Gus Dudgeon—best known for his work with Elton John—produced Strawbs and Tony Visconti produced Dragonfly and From the Witchwood. When Wakeman left, Visconti advised Cousins to consult the I Ching about a replacement. Blue Weaver, the Amen Corner keyboard player, joined the band and the reading from the I Ching was incorporated into Benedictus, the opening track of Grave New World.
The band’s momentum continued to grow with 1973’s Bursting at the Seams, and the two songs that they’re best known for, Lay Down and Part of the Union, both made the Top 20 and saw them on Top of the Pops.
Part of the Union was controversial, released in 1973 against the backdrop of Britain’s febrile industrial relations between the two miners’ strikes against Heath’s Conservative government. I’ve never been completely convinced by the band’s story that it was a pro-union song, but some trades unions adopted it unapologetically as an anthem. And co-founder Tony Hooper has left after Grave New World,
And by this time, America was calling, and Strawbs became more of a rock band—and the music became drearier, at least to these ears—and ended up supporting Supertramp on a big American tour. Living the dream, perhaps, but by the end of the decade they were suffering from declining sales and Cousins moved into a successful second career in radio station management. Music mostly went on hold for the best part of 20 years.
Dave Cousins once said that the only band he would have liked to have been in apart from Strawbs was Sandy Denny’s Fotheringay, perhaps because of a sense of what might have been.
The Strawbs and Sandy Denny had recorded an album together, All Our Own Work, in Denmark in 1967, but she joined Fairport Convention almost as soon as they had completed it, and so it was shelved. It came out on a budget label in 1973, but the band and Sandy Denny sound like a good fit.
The break from the music business seemed to do Cousins good. The 2000s saw him re-energised as a musician. He toured with both the Acoustic Strawbs and an electric version of the band, and performed and recorded as a solo artist. Of the solo recordings, The Boy In The Blue Suit was notably personal, dealing in part with aspects of his childhood and his family history. The title of the record is a reference to his father, a submariner, who had died at sea before Cousins’s first birthday. His mother remarried when he was six, and his surname was from his stepfather.
The Acoustic Strawbs had happened by accident, although there was a clue in the earlier Old School Songs, with acoustic versions of some his songs recorded in 1979 with Brian Willoughby.
Cousins was due to play a gig with Willoughby in the late 90s, but had injured his wrist, so Dave Lambert stepped in to play guitar with Willoughby while Cousins sang. The format worked and led to a record, Baroque and Roll, and in many ways took them back to their folk origins.
Dave Cousins was blessed with a strong voice that was, I think, particularly suited to folk rock, and a knack for writing catchy songs. He was also a talented musician, playing as a session musician before the Strawbs took off. In some ways he reminds me of Lindisfarne’s Alan Hull, who was also able to shape the styles of folk-rock to a relatively personal vision of the world.
The Strawbs final gig was at Fairport’s Cropredy Festival in 2023. Given the band’s starting point, working with Sandy Denny, it must have seemed as if he’d come full circle.
—
https://cdnjs.buymeacoffee.com/1.0.0/button.prod.min.js
Feel free to ignore the donation figures suggested by Buy me a Coffee. If you'd like to support our work, just type in your own sum
~~
And do visit our Facebook group!
Leave a Reply