Legendary British folk rock band to Span generations at Johnny D’s

On July 19, 2015, in Latest News, by The Somerville Times

By Blake Maddux

Steeleye Span, with Julian Littman on guitar and vocals, will be rocking Johnny D’s on Friday, July 24.

Steeleye Span released its first album in 1970 and soon joined Pentangle and Fairport Convention as one of the prime purveyors of British folk rock.

Four and a half decades and innumerable line-up changes later, lead singer Maddy Prior continues to record and tour with the band, which released its most recent album, Wintersmith, in 2013.

One of the relative newcomers to the sextet is Julian Littman. Born in 1953 to an Irish mother and Indian father, Littman was adopted at birth. He began working on the British children’s program Rainbow in 1973. Since then, he has remained consistently busy in television, movies, theater, and music. Among those with whom he has worked are Pete Townshend, David Bowie, Richard and Linda Thompson, Gerry Rafferty, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Sheena Easton (for whom he co-wrote the 1984 hit “Strut”), Philip Bailey, and (gulp!) Right Said Fred.

Littman and his five bandmates will arrive at Johnny D’s on Friday, July 25. He spoke to The Somerville Times by phone from London about his long and varied career as an entertainer.

Somerville Times: When did you become a member of Steeleye Span?

Julian Littman: I joined in 2011. I was very much into the folk rock thing when it came out. One of the forms that grew during the late 60s was the amalgamation of Irish, Scottish, and English folk music. I suppose particularly Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span at the time put electric guitar with it, and drums. That meant that they crossed into the rock side of things, which meant that they played colleges and universities and people were getting down to it. It suddenly had relevance. It worked a treat because you’re telling these stories that are very, very robust which means that they can lend themselves to the rock treatment, and that leads on to the more progressive thing, which is kind of where we are at the moment.

ST: Who are some of the other more recent additions to the band?

JL: Maddy is still with us. She’s the main girl. And then we have Rick Kemp, who is her husband, who plays bass. However, when we come to Boston, we will be with Rick’s son, Alex, because Rick – he’s 73 now – said that he would do Europe and England, but asked if we would mind if he bowed out of [Canada and America]. And I had the brilliant idea of saying, “Well what about Alex?” He has added so much to what we will be doing. His actual profession is that he’s a rapper. He won’t be rapping in the show we’ll be doing, but that’s what he does. Very good, as well.

We have a new fiddle player, Jessie May Smart, who’s a mere 27 years old. With her and Alex, it brings the average age of the band down considerably! [laughs] It’s really given the band a kick. It’s great. The philosophy of this band, way before I joined, was always to retain the traditional but push the barriers with what we’re doing.

ST: How did you come to be considered as a possible replacement for former guitarist Ken Nichol?

JL: What happened was years ago, myself and Liam [Genockey] – who’s the drummer – were in Gerry Rafferty’s band in the days of Baker Street and all that, when Gerry was huge in America. We were in the band that toured that stuff in Europe and a bit in America. We’ve been pals ever since.

I happened to know [Steeleye Span’s] manager, John Dagnall, through other endeavors because I work a lot in theater. Liam said to him that I might be right to fill in the place.

My audition was on video. I had to put my MacBook on in my flat and play along to one of their tracks on my guitar. Eventually they said, well, let’s do one tour, and that was 2011, to see how we go. We did, and that was all good. Now I’m sort of writing stuff for the band and doing lead vocals on about three or four songs.

ST: Were you intimidated at the prospect of joining a band that was so well established?

JL: Absolutely intimidated. I was terrified! The two guitar players [Bob Johnson and Ken Nichol] before me are awesome, and they were big shoes to fill. I would say that I am not as much of a virtuoso as those two, but I brought other things to the party.

ST: You are an accomplished actor of stage and screen. Tell me about the filming of the 1996 movie Evita.

JL: I played Eva Peron’s brother, so I played the brother of Madonna. I worked for three months with Madonna quite a lot. I was onset with her most of the time and we got on great. We were good pals and it was really good fun. I thought the film was really good. I sang some lines on it and stuff like that. That was just an extraordinary experience. We were in Argentina with Madonna, or “M” as we had to call her, and Antonia Banderas. Argentina for three weeks, maybe more, then Budapest to shoot all the funeral scenes, and then in London to shoot the rest of it.

ST: What can the crowd expect at Johnny D’s on July 24?

JL: It’s going to be a mixture of old and new. There will be a few tracks from this thing we did with Terry Pratchett called Wintersmith, which goes slightly more into the progressive rock thing. And then we’ve got very old ballads of brutality, magic, and chivalry, which come from Steeleye Span’s canon of work from a long time ago. We’ve reworked a couple of things, because we’ve got Rick’s son, and he said, “Oh, I don’t want to sing that like me dad,” which is fine. And then there’s some really delicate stuff as well, where we just pare it right down. We go right from the gentle to the quite heavy metal. So you can expect an evening of really, really different dynamics. By the end, we’re rocking like there’s no tomorrow!