' I certainly didn't see it as a catylist to destroy our contemporary songwriting movement. Alternativly, although I favoured traditionally based folk clubs, I and plenty others were quite comfortable in clubs where traditional and contemporary songs lived side by side.'

Summer of '65 I saw a fine young American singer/songwriter called Marc Sullivan at a west country folk club. Despite him being very accomplished, I saw that some of the locals were rude and talked through his gig. I wondered what all this was about.

When I saw the MacColl interview in MM, I knew from whence it emanated. They were too dim to have worked it out themselves. By the time I started singing The Grey Cock folk club (in the 1970's on the ring road in Brum, having some sort of arts council grant, and having Mac Coll's collaborator in the Radio Ballads , Charles Parker in the background as an eminence gris) wouldn't let floorsingers in with guitars - they would ask you your influences, and when I said ralph McTell - they said well we've got to draw the line somewhere - you can listen, but you're not singing.

It was a pernicious, underhand thing, a hydra headed monster that had no respect d for any singer that didn't sound like Walter Gabriel and wore a fiherman's smock.

Of course there were some good broad minded traddies - but like I said in 1965, Dylan had half our fifth year interesyyted in the idea of c becoming folksinger. there was a joke in Readers Digest at the time:-

Fifteen year old to his mother - I'm not sure what I want to be either a nuclear physicist or a folksinger.

The kids nowadays who get into folkmusic look like they've smoked a pipe and worn a tweed jacket since they were six.