Fairport Convention – Suzanne (Peel Session)

The Track They Couldn’t Release Because The Label Wanted Dylan

Recorded on August 26, 1968, at BBC Studio 1 in London for John Peel’s Top Gear radio program, Fairport Convention’s “Suzanne” never made their debut album despite being one of their strongest early performances. Producer Bernie Andrews captured the Leonard Cohen cover with Ian Matthews singing the first verse, Sandy Denny the second, and both trading lines in the third. The duet arrangement felt forced because Polydor wanted them covering Bob Dylan, not Cohen, and certainly not splitting lead vocals on a melancholy folk song when they could be Britain’s answer to Jefferson Airplane. The track sat in the BBC archives until 1987 when it surfaced on Heyday, a collection of their radio sessions. A solo studio version with Matthews appeared on the 2003 reissue of their self-titled debut, recorded during the transition between Judy Dyble leaving and Denny joining.

The band never released it as a single, and it barely registered beyond devoted followers of Peel’s late-night broadcasts. Judy Collins had already scored with Cohen’s song in 1966, and Noel Harrison took his version to number 56 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967. Fairport’s recording arrived at exactly the wrong moment: too late to claim discovery of Cohen’s material, too early for the British folk-rock movement they would help create. Manager Joe Boyd had secured them a Polydor contract in early 1968, suggesting they add another male vocalist to round out the sound. Matthews joined, and the self-titled album recorded at Sound Techniques Studios dropped in June 1968 to disappointing sales. The label pushed them toward American folk-rock covers that radio programmers understood, not deep album cuts from Canadian poets.

Fairport Convention formed in 1967 when Richard Thompson, Simon Nicol, Ashley Hutchings, and Shaun Frater started rehearsing above Nicol’s father’s medical practice in a house called Fairport in Muswell Hill. After their first gig at St Michael’s Church Hall in Golders Green, audience member Martin Lamble convinced them he could drum better than Frater and joined on the spot. They added Judy Dyble on vocals, creating a distinctive sound that earned them residencies at UFO Club and Middle Earth. Boyd caught one of their sets and brought them into his Witchseason Productions fold alongside Nick Drake and John Martyn. The Cohen cover showcased their range but also their identity crisis: were they California folk-rock transplants or something uniquely British?

Recording the BBC session featured Matthews and Denny trading verses over Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol’s electric guitars, Hutchings on bass, and Lamble on drums. The arrangement builds slowly from intimate verses to more intense instrumental passages, with Thompson’s classical guitar training evident throughout. Engineer John Wood captured the performance at Sound Techniques, the same Chelsea studio where Boyd would record their breakthrough albums. The forced duet structure came from the band’s uncertainty about who should front which songs, a problem they’d solve when Denny gradually took control of the material that mattered. Her arrival in mid-1968 pushed them toward British traditional music, the direction that would define them.

“Suzanne” represented Fairport’s American-influenced phase, documented on their debut album alongside covers of Joni Mitchell’s “I Don’t Know Where I Stand” and “Chelsea Morning”, plus Dylan interpretations. The self-titled LP featured original compositions from Thompson and Hutchings that showed promise but hadn’t yet found their voice. By their second album What We Did On Our Holidays in January 1969, they’d begun integrating British folk with rock instrumentation. The tragic M1 motorway crash on May 12, 1969, killing Lamble and Thompson’s girlfriend Jeannie Franklyn, forced them to retire most early material and dive completely into traditional British music for Liege & Lief later that year.

Cohen’s song became a folk standard covered by Nina Simone, Joan Baez, Peter Gabriel, and James Taylor among countless others. Fairport’s version remains a footnote, interesting mainly for capturing the moment before Sandy Denny steered them toward their true calling. The BBC recording sat forgotten for nearly two decades while the band created the blueprint for British folk-rock, influencing Steeleye Span, Pentangle, and generations of musicians. By the time Heyday resurrected the track in 1987, Fairport had long since become legends for other reasons, and Lamble and Denny had both died far too young.

What makes this “Suzanne” worth hearing is how it captures a great band still searching for identity. Matthews and Denny harmonize beautifully, Thompson’s guitar work shows the brilliance that would flourish on later albums, and Lamble’s drumming hints at the jazzy fluidity that made him special. But the arrangement tries too hard to differentiate from Cohen’s original, and the vocal trade-offs disrupt the song’s hypnotic flow. Sometimes the most interesting recordings are the ones artists wisely leave behind, the experiments that don’t quite work but show where they’re headed. Fairport needed to stop being the British Jefferson Airplane and become themselves. They’d get there soon enough, though the cost would be devastating. This Cohen cover remains a beautiful relic of the band they almost were instead of the legends they became.