As the credits show, this was written by Richard Thompson, whose long career of making superb records has been celebrated here on many occasions. This was where it all began for him: he co-counded Fairport Convention in 1967, when he was just 18, and had already written this song before that. This was the penultimate track on their second album, What We Did On Our Holidays, which I bought and loved at the time and still play. The song was the first single taken from it, in December 1968, and made #52 in the UK Singles chart. The album came out the following month but didn’t make the chart – they had to wait until the July 1969 release of their third album, Unhalfbricking, for that. Lead vocals are by Iain Matthews, who is then joined by the wonderful voice of Sandy Denny.

 

I think this is a remarkably mature song for one so young, but in typical RT style he plays that down. It has been assumed to be about death and the afterlife, the regrets we might leave behind and the hope that we will see friends and loved ones again, and is a popular choice for funerals – I have asked for it to be played at mine, though hopefully that won’t be coming any time soon. In a 2011 interview with Mojo magazine Richard was quoted as saying “The hardest thing about being a 17-year-old songwriter is that you’re embarrassed – you’re never going to write a song saying, ‘These are my feelings, I love you.’ So I was trying to find some semi-veiled language that conveyed something to somebody somehow but which didn’t really say anything up front. It’s a slightly naïve song, a little obscure. I don’t even know what it means … I had to sing it at my own mother’s funeral. It was in her will. That’s about the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” 

 

Meet On The Ledge has become a kind of unofficial anthem for the band. I have seen them several times in concert, going right back to my uni days, and this has always been the song that closes the show: the band are often accompanied on stage for it by support acts, friends, roadies and anyone else they can squeeze in, and the audience sings along with them. It is a magical moment which I have enjoyed being a part of, and no one seems to mind that I can’t sing to save my life!

 

Since 1976 Fairport Convention have run their own festival every August, in the small village of Cropredy, near Oxford. It has grown over the years and regularly attracts 20,000 or more, many of whom have been going since it started and now come with children and grandchildren in tow. I’ve never been but by all accounts it is one of the friendliest family-oriented music and arts festivals that we have in this country: that’s the beauty of folk music, I think.

 

I said it had been every year, but they did miss one: 2020, of course, when the pandemic closed everything down. It is so typical of the band that they didn’t want people to think they had forgotten about them, so they got together – virtually – with many of the acts that would have played that year and have been there other times, to share a specially made video. Guess which song they chose? It could only be one, couldn’t it:

 

 

There is such an outpouring of emotion in those performances, and even though they were miles apart you can sense their togetherness of spirit. If anyone ever asks me why I love music that is one of the reasons I give – that community that it engenders. And speaking of communities, the annual reunion is taking place this weekend: Fairport’s Cropredy Festival lives on 😊🎶