In the summer of ’69, while most of London was chasing the tail end of psychedelia, Fairport Convention was busy inventing a new musical vocabulary. This wasn’t just another studio effort; it was the exact moment the band stopped trying to be the British Jefferson Airplane and started digging into the dirt of their own English heritage. It’s a record defined by high-wire artistic risks and a sudden, sharp turn toward the ancient, all while the group was operating under a heavy cloud of personal transition.
A Title Born From A Van Ride Word Game
The peculiar title of the album originated from a word game called “Ghost” that the band played to pass the time while traveling between gigs. The goal was to add letters to a string without ever completing a real, existing word. Lead vocalist Sandy Denny eventually blurted out “Unhalfbricking,” a completely nonsensical creation that the band loved so much they decided to use it for the record’s name.
The First British Musicians To Raid Dylan’s Basement
Fairport Convention were among the very first artists in the world to hear Bob Dylan’s legendary and then-unreleased ‘Basement Tapes’. They were invited to Dylan’s London publishers to listen to white-label vinyl copies of the tracks, which bassist Ashley Hutchings described as having a strange cloak of weirdness. They immediately covered three songs for the album, including a Cajun-style version of “If You Gotta Go, Go Now” sung entirely in French.
A Masterpiece Recorded With A Telephone Microphone
During the sessions for “Cajun Woman,” the band featured guest fiddler Dave Swarbrick in what would become his first collaborative work with the group. Because Swarbrick’s fiddle did not have electric pick-ups and they needed more volume, the band had to get creative with studio engineering. They famously smashed open a telephone and used an elastic band to strap the internal microphone directly onto the instrument to capture its sound.
The Album Cover Featured A Suburban Stakeout
The iconic UK cover photo was taken at Sandy Denny’s family home in Wimbledon and features her parents, Neil and Edna Denny, standing prominently in the foreground. The band members themselves are actually visible in the shot, but they are tucked away in the distance behind a garden trellis fence. This domestic image was meant to ground the band’s mystical sound in the reality of ordinary English life, though the US label famously hated it and replaced it with a picture of circus elephants.
A Pivotal Work Marred By Motorway Tragedy
The release of ‘Unhalfbricking’ was overshadowed by a horrific road accident on May 11, 1969, just two months before the album hit shelves. While returning from a show in Birmingham, the band’s van rolled over, resulting in the tragic deaths of 18-year-old drummer Martin Lamble and Richard Thompson’s girlfriend, Jeannie Franklyn. This devastating event nearly caused the band to call it a day, but they ultimately decided to push forward into the folk-rock territory they had pioneered on the track “A Sailor’s Life.”