Cruel Sister was an album entirely of folk material. We have been accused of running out of ideas over that. It is a criticism that’s hard to follow. We all individually, then and since, have pursued a great variety of musical directions. In reality there was a surfeit of ideas right from the start. Making a coherent whole was what was behind limiting the selection to British traditional material. It certainly wasn’t intended as a statement – a stance against progressive trends or anything like that. The group had by then attracted the attention of a fairly wide audience and tendering an album of underappreciated music was no bad thing. Mind you, from the folk purists point of view it could well have been progressive anarchy with sitars and fuzz boxes and the total rearrangement of a ballad from the Bert and John days that took up an entire side.
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A Maid That’s Deep in Love When I Was in My Prime Lord Franklin Cruel Sister Jack Orion |