The Earl Haig Club
A long time before the world changed, in the days of social closeness, when we thought nothing of getting together, drinking, chatting, arguing and listening to music, there were people who wanted to change the world.
One whose music did so was Dave Cousins, who began by playing a small room above the White Bear pub in London with his folkie friends and any welcome fellow travellers. Like minds clustered, David Bowie famously stood in and the sessions engendered the first version of a band that was to permanently influence modern music- The Strawbs, or, as they were in those early days, The Strawberry Hill Boys.
Two generations on and less than a fortnight before shutdown 2020, Dave Cousins, and fellow Strawbs alumni, Dave Lambert and Chas Cronk, were pepping up and projecting their outstanding prog-folk back-catalogue for the privileged few on a 50th anniversary tour that took in the great Earl Haig Club in Whitchurch Cardiff (great venue- when this is all over, get there and support it). The troubadour trio effortlessly charmed, invigorated and distracted a vigilant group of medically vulnerable fans as they nodded, cheered and laughed while mentally wiping hands and surfaces and physically socially distancing from their cohorts.
Dave Cousins described the session as a “magical history tour”; musically it went from his early work with the first band, including “Turn Me Round” from the White Bear Days and “The Man Who Called Himself Jesus” from The Strawbs (and my hallowed fifth form days) to the prog giants “Hangman and the Papist” (bizarrely the first-ever item as an “album slot” on Top of the Pops- it was followed by Middle of the Road’s “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep”) “Bursting at the Seams”, “Autumn” (one from “Hero and Heroine” one of the top 50 Progressive Rock albums of all time according to Rolling Stone) and the glorious “Lay Down” which has probably been the tune that sticks with the band most.
Dave lightly delivered pre-number pep ups, injected with showbiz and personal anecdotes, and sang with soul and gusto all the songs in which he- and we- had so much investment. Alongside Dave’s acoustic and banjo playing, the relaxed and responsive Chas Cronk added a chiming twelve string and encouraged and cajoled a set of flowing bass lines into the main melody while stalwart Dave Lambert flipped personality, moving from self-effacing sideman to a fierce frontman, a grimacing and growling combatant as he pounded out his personal compositions.
Other great names have come and gone- Sandy Denny, Rick Wakeman, Wales’ Blue Weaver- but driven by Dave Cousins, Strawb music has never lost its identity or complete commitment and the band’s performances remain true to the enthusiasm, excitement and empathies of a radical and optimistic, if now distant age.
In these troubled times, it doesn’t hurt to indulge and positively self-isolate for a few minutes and reconnect with the fifth former that’s there, somewhere, in all of us. As Dave Cousins and the Strawbs put it 50 years ago:
DC
“In case you find your tortoise shell Is getting rather tight You can wrap yourself in your magic cloak And disappear from sight And I will stand guard over you As through the door you creep Leave your pack at the side of the road I'll show you where to sleep.”
Photographs Courtesy of Ian Burgess