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‘Dylan said: teach me that!' Martin Carthy on six decades of Scarborough Fair – and his new solo album

The Guardian

21-05-2025

Entertainment
The Guardian

‘Dylan said: teach me that!' Martin Carthy on six decades of Scarborough Fair – and his new solo album

Martin Carthy has returned to Scarborough Fair. It's been 60 years since he first recorded the song on his self-titled debut album, and famously taught it (or tried to teach it) to both Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, when they came to watch the young guitar hero playing in the London folk clubs. Dylan transformed the song into Girl from the North Country, while Simon turned it into Scarborough Fair/Canticle, a hit single for Simon & Garfunkel and the opening track on their 1966 album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Carthy's new version is on Transform Me Then into a Fish, his first solo album in 21 years, released on his 84th birthday today. It now has sitar backing from Sheema Mukherjee, giving it a mysterious, spooky edge. 'That's the kind of a song it is. Try not to be scared of it,' said Carthy, whose sleeve notes when he first recorded the song provided a reminder that parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme were herbs traditionally associated with death. 'It finds a home among the weird, oddball songs. I was interested in what Sheema could do with it, and she responded as a wonderful musician will respond …' He is sitting at his kitchen table in the house in which he has lived for the past 37 years, in Robin Hood's Bay on the Yorkshire coast, just half an hour's drive north of Scarborough. It looks like an over-cluttered museum, with every space on the floor, walls or shelves packed with musical instruments, cassettes, pictures, posters and a street sign from Hull, where his wife, the late Norma Waterson, grew up. He now shares the home with their daughter, the folksinger and fiddle-player Eliza Carthy, her two children, and a cat. He says he has always loved the lyrics of folk songs as much as the melodies, and as he discusses the new album, he delights in telling stories, often illustrated with bursts of song, about the bands and musicians he has played with. Eliza brings in tea, chipping in about lyrics and song titles. The new album started out as a 60th anniversary tribute to his 1965 solo debut, but didn't quite work out that way. A handful of songs have been dropped, and three new ones added. But eight originals remain, including Scarborough Fair. He remembers exactly where he first heard it – at the Troubadour folk club in Earl's Court, in 1960, where it was sung by Jacqueline McDonald (of the Spinners fame) who told her audience that she had learned it from a new song book, The Singing Island, by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. Carthy rushed out to buy it and thought: 'That's a nice tune – and of course it was, because Ewan wrote [this version of] it! He would always improve a tune.' Carthy composed his own arrangement for the song, and was singing it while playing with the Thamesiders at the King & Queen pub, near Goodge Street, when he 'found myself looking into Dylan's face – I had heard about him from Sing Out magazine'. Dylan was there with his legendary manager Albert Grossman, 'a folk fan who loved fishing and whaling songs and could sing the pants off anyone, though he never sang in public'. Dylan said he loved Scarborough Fair, and begged Carthy to 'teach me that, teach me that'. A few days later he came to watch Carthy playing solo at the Troubadour, and began visiting the house where he was living on Haverstock Hill, near Belsize Park tube. The first visit has become a folk legend. It was during the bitterly cold winter of 1962-3, and one of Carthy's friends had found an old piano abandoned outside Chalk Farm tube and pushed it up the hill to the house. Carthy started chopping it up with a sword he had been given as a Christmas present, so he could feed it into a wood-burning stove – to Dylan's fury. 'I got the sword and Bob came and stood in front of me and said 'you can't do that, man, it's a musical instrument!' 'It's a piece of junk', I said, and swung a couple of times. Bob was looking up at me and said 'could I try?' – and he battered it … it's all true!' Dylan failed to master Scarborough Fair. 'He wanted to do it with a flat pick though he's a perfectly good finger-style player,' says Carthy. 'He got the giggles all the time and it made him laugh.' So when Dylan later transformed the song into Girl from the North Country, did he mind? 'We just swapped songs all the time,' says Carthy. 'That's what people did.' Carthy was less pleased when Paul Simon did not credit him for his arrangement on Simon and Garfunkel's version, Scarborough Fair/Canticle. But all is now forgiven, with Carthy saying: 'It was grossly unfair [of me] because it wasn't a pinch in any way … it was written as a tribute because he is clever enough to do that.'' They made up by singing the song together on stage at Hammersmith Apollo in October 2000: 'He was doing a tour. He said, 'Really – you want to do that?' It was important, so I could lay it to rest and never have to sing that song again!' He eventually changed his mind about returning to the song, he said, because 'I was gifted a lovely version!' In 2014 he was invited to sing on a TV drama, Remember Me, set in Scarborough and starring Michael Palin. When he went to the recording, he was presented with a very different version of Scarborough Fair, 'collected by Cecil Sharpe, from Goathland – a village near here on the moors'. That's the one he recorded for the new album and now sings live 'but I haven't got it quite right yet …' Sign up to Sleeve Notes Get music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras. Every genre, every era, every week after newsletter promotion Other songs of course have stories attached, too. He tells how he sang High Germany back in 1963 and thought he had remembered the words correctly until he checked the English Folk Music Journal and found that for some verses 'the words were nothing like mine – I was highly impressed I had invented this stuff'. He still sings his version. As for his own original version of the Ewan MacColl song Springhill Mine Disaster, The Ballad of Springhill, he says that MacColl, a folk purist, 'hated what I did, because I was playing guitar – a foreign body!' On the new version, Carthy is backed only by Eliza's fiddle and demonstrates his new singing voice. 'I lost a lot in the lower registers and found something else – and I like it.' Eliza's fiddle also provides the new setting for Ye Mariners All, 'one of those lovely nonsense songs.' The suitably surreal album cover for Transform Me Then into a Fish shows Martin at the breakfast table in the middle of the ocean, holding his fork like a crazed Neptune. Carthy has always been adventurous. After recording that landmark album in 1965 he worked with fiddler Dave Swarbrick. When Swarbrick joined Fairport Convention in 1969 – an invitation also extended to Carthy, 'twice!' – Carthy joined Steeleye Span instead, playing electric guitar, very loudly, saying 'do you want me to turn it down to 'lounge' – it's supposed to be loud!' After marrying Norma in 1972 he joined the glorious vocal group the Watersons. 'I thought eventually someone would teach me to sing, and Norma did,' he says. He went on to be involved in many different projects, including solo work, playing in duos with Swarbrick and with John Kirkpatrick and Eliza, and in groups including Waterson: Carthy (in which he was joined by Norma and Eliza), the brass-backed Brass Monkey, and the gloriously experimental the Imagined Village, which reworked traditional songs for a multicultural Britain, and featured a large cast that included Simon Emmerson, Billy Bragg, Benjamin Zephaniah and Mukherjee. 'I loved it,' says Carthy. 'That huge band was so exciting. Sheema seized everything we tossed at her and she encouraged me to take risks.' With the Imagined Village, he recorded a powerful new treatment of the traditional My Son John in 2010, with sitar backing and updated to the Afghan war era with Carthy's new lyrics: 'Up come John and he's got no legs, he's got carbon fibre blades instead.' He startled his followers even more by re-working Slade's Cum on Feel the Noize: 'Because I'm a big fan of Noddy [Holder]. What a singer!' He's just home from a US tour with Eliza, with shows to celebrate the new album involving both Eliza and Sheema starting on 12 June – while next year promises the return of a new version of the Imagined Village. Carthy may be 84, but he's not slowing down. Transform Me Then into a Fish is out today on Hem Hem Records

Brendan Gleeson to make his return to the Irish stage

RTÉ News

01-05-2025

Entertainment
RTÉ News

Brendan Gleeson to make his return to the Irish stage

Brendan Gleeson is to make his return to the Irish stage for the first time in a decade in a new production of Conor McPherson's acclaimed play The Weir at the 3Olympia Theatre in Dublin this August. The Dublin actor will also make his West End debut when the play transfers to the Harold Pinter Theatre in London from 12 September to 6 December 2025. The Weir is at 3Olympia Theatre from 8 August to 6 September, with tickets, priced from €25 on sale Saturday 3 May at 12pm. This will be the first time McPherson, who has also written works such as The Brightening Air, Girl from the North Country and the movie I Went Down, will direct the play. The synopsis of The Weir reads, "On a stormy night, four local men gather in an isolated pub in rural Ireland. Their usual banter and everyday lives are disrupted by the arrival of a woman called Valerie. "The stories they weave to impress her are gripping, haunting and deeply unsettling. Little do they know that she has a profoundly personal story of her own, the sharing of which will leave them all shaken." Brendan Gleeson began his acting career in the late seventies with the Passion Project in Dublin's Project Arts Centre and has gone on to star in numerous movies, including The Banshees of Inisherin, In Bruges, Gangs of New York, the Harry Potter movies, Paddington 2, Braveheart, and The General. His TV credits include Mr. Mercedes, A Higher Loyalty, and Into the Storm. Speaking about appearing in The Weir, the actor said, "Conor McPherson's The Weir is one of the rarest plays around. The last time I appeared on stage was ten years ago, at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin, where I started my career. "I can't wait to be back there, and then to play in the West End for the first time, at the beautiful Pinter Theatre - and to work with Conor on his profoundly moving, inspiring and ultimately hopeful play." McPherson said, "I can hardly believe it's thirty years since I wrote The Weir - and about thirty years since I first met the wonderful Brendan Gleeson. "It's an absolute honour to bring this play to life again with one of the great titans of Irish acting. I'm hugely looking forward to directing my play for the very first time and sharing this production with audiences in Dublin and in London very soon." Co-producer Kate Horton added, "Along with a multitude of theatregoers, I was spellbound by Conor McPherson's play The Weir when it first premiered at the Royal Court. "I've since been granted three wishes; to have Conor agree to direct his own masterpiece for the first time, for the magnificent Brendan Gleeson to agree to lead the cast, and for the brilliant Anne Clarke to join me as co-producer. "Together, they are titans of Irish and International theatre. The Weir is a beautiful play about human connection, the endurance of hope and the essential power of storytelling. It will be a joy to share this production with audiences." The Weir had a critically acclaimed revival at The Abbey Theatre in 2022, with an ensemble cast featuring Downton Abbey star Brendan Coyle, who featured in the original London production of the show twenty-five years ago.

Brendan Gleeson will make his West End debut in Conor McPherson's chilling classic ‘The Weir'

Time Out

01-05-2025

Entertainment
Time Out

Brendan Gleeson will make his West End debut in Conor McPherson's chilling classic ‘The Weir'

One of the greatest character film actors of his generation, you'll know Brendan Gleeson for a million screen things, from Braveheart to the Harry Potter films, and most especially his two classic works with Martin McDonagh and Colin Farrell, In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin. He started off as a stage actor in Dublin in the '80s and has periodically returned to the Irish theatre ever since, albeit sparingly. And indeed, he'll do so this summer as he stars in a revival of Conor McPherson's all-time classic chiller The Weir about a group of lost souls telling ghost stories in an isolated Irish pub. This new production will debut at Dublin's 3Olympia Theatre in August, and then move on the Harold Pinter Theatre in September for what will, astonishingly, be his West End debut. It will be part of a remarkable year for McPherson: probably Ireland's most important living playwright, not a lot had been heard from him in recent years. But in 2025 he's back with an acclaimed new play at the Old Vic (The Brightening Air), a revival for his hit Dylan musical Girl from the North Country (also at the Old Vic), he's written the text for the much anticipated stage version of The Hunger Games, and not only is The Weir back but he's directing it this time (as he did with The Brightening Air and Girl from the North Country). It's quite the year to be having and it has to be said there's a little something for everyone here, but if you want a stone cold spooky-but-lyrical classic with a towering famous actor at the start of it then The Weir could be the place for you to start.

The Brightening Air: Rosie Sheehy confirms her star status in this terrific Chekhovian drama

Telegraph

25-04-2025

Entertainment
Telegraph

The Brightening Air: Rosie Sheehy confirms her star status in this terrific Chekhovian drama

The last time Conor McPherson staged an original, straight play was with The Night Alive in 2013. So The Brightening Air, his long-awaited new play that sees him returning as playwright and director to the Old Vic – where his multi-award winning Bob Dylan musical Girl from the North Country premiered in 2017 – feels like a major theatrical event. Stephen (Brian Gleeson) and Billie (Rosie Sheehy) are brother and sister living in a decaying farmhouse in County Sligo at the beginning of the 1980s. As another character puts it, they seem content to live and die with the house in which they were born. That is, until their self-made rut is disrupted by assorted family members. Chris O'Dowd is their brother Dermot, accompanied by Freya (Aisling Kearns), his age-inappropriate mistress who prompts his estranged wife Lydia (Hannah Morrish) to ask 'have you finished school, Freya?' For her part, Lydia will go to extraordinary and baffling lengths to win back feckless Dermot including tasking Stephen, who's been carrying a torch for her since they were teenagers, to fetch her a jar of water from a well known for its magical properties so that she can bewitch Dermot. Ex-priest and uncle, Pierre (Seán McGinley), who may or may not be blind but is certainly there for duplicitous reasons, accompanied by his helper Elizabeth (Derbhle Crotty) joins the fray. Into this melee of subtle and not-so-subtle digs, judgments and resentments also enters Brendan (Eimhin Fitzgerald Doherty), a neighbour who has the hots for Billie. O'Dowd may be the star turn here but the standout performance in this eight-strong ensemble piece is Sheehy. The other actors are uniformly superb in a play that is by turns, convulsively funny, bleak and puzzling but it's Sheehy that my eyes kept seeking out among the bodies on stage – she channels Billie (bolshy and, to a modern audience, neurodivergent) so convincingly and with perfect comic timing. A major part of the success of this play is driven by its atmosphere, a kind of non-human character essential to highlighting its central enquiry of what home means, what it contains and how it morphs. It is richly steeped in Irish folkloric tradition and philosophical enquiry emphasised by designer Rae Smith's diaphanous screens that partition the set at various intervals. These depict the dilapidated farmhouse, as well as dream-like landscapes and shadowy figures moving like memories and unrealised dreams at the back of the Old Vic's cavernous stage. The play wears its Chekhovian allusions on its sleeve – the religiosity, rural setting, unrealised dreams, threats from outside and women who fawn over unworthy men are major themes within the story. In the programme notes, McPherson also states that he borrowed the four act structure from Uncle Vanya which he adapted in 2020. This isn't a standard family drama ticking off plot points, elaborating on character motivations or playing for laughs – even though it is very funny. In fact, some plot twists and revelations are never seeded earlier in the play, or even resolved at its denouement; some viewers may find the lack of answers disorienting. But if you can receive the play on its own merits, and tap into its stated query of 'how much living is really forgetting?', as Stephen disappears into the blackness of the recesses of the stage, then its haunting imagery will stay with you for a long time.

Chris O'Dowd and Seán McGinley star as Conor McPherson's first new play in over a decade casts a magic spell in London

Irish Independent