Anne Briggs, May 1965 Photo: Al Atkinson
Nick Bollinger revisits an influential folk classic from Anne Briggs.
The Time Has Come Photo: supplied
There are albums that keep coming round, like comets in orbit. This one has been making reappearances every decade or so, since it first flashed across the sky almost half a century ago.
Though never a hit as such, Anne Briggs’ The Time Has Come is regarded as a classic of its kind, and rightly so. When Briggs recorded it in 1971 she was in fact nearing the end of her professional career; one that ultimately produced more rumours than recordings.
It was in the early 60s when, as a free-spirited teenager, she first made her mark on a burgeoning London folk scene. It was her singing of traditional folk songs – often unaccompanied – that first made such an impression on people. But she was no slouch as a guitarist either. In fact, you could draw a line directly from her playing to that of Jimmy Page. It was her arrangement of the tune ‘Blackwaterside’ - which she had learned from the old folklorist Bert Lloyd – that Page picked up from the guitarist Bert Jansch and immortalised as ‘Black Mountain Side’ on the first Led Zeppelin album. And there are more examples of her opened-tuned expertise on The Time Has Come.
There are traces too of the traditional balladry that anyone who saw her in her folk club prime will tell you was spellbinding.
But though the songs on The Time Has Come clearly have their roots in Britain’s musical past, the bulk of them are Briggs’ own compositions. And it’s interesting to consider them in relation to the singer-songwriter scene that was blossoming at the time. Joni Mitchell’s Blue came out at almost exactly the same time and while there’s no doubt that Joni is the more sophisticated writer there are certainly moments that bear comparison.
As well as strong personal statements, there are songs on The Time Has Come that reflect the collective nature of the British folk scene. Several tunes have their origins in the 60s Irish band Sweeny’s Men, who Briggs performed with for a while.
But it’s one of Briggs’ own songs from which the album takes its title, and it might be her best-travelled tune, having been covered in its day by a number of popular artists including Alan Price and The Pentangle. Written when she was in her teens, her performance of the song here somehow conveys both an eternal innocence and a wisdom beyond the author’s years.
The Time Has Come hasn’t so much come as kept coming. It was first reissued in the 90s, and again in 2007. Its latest iteration has been spurred in part by the enthusiasm of the recent wave of acoustic guitar heroes. The American musician Ryley Walker has called it his favourite album of all time.
This new version of Anne Briggs’ The Time Has Come – while adding no extra tracks or bonus material – befits a classic, in its book-sized package with 20 pages of photos and biographical information.
As for Briggs herself, none of this interest has managed to coax her back into the limelight. A wanderer and a recluse by nature, the fact that the record was ever made at all is credited to the fact that, at the time, she was living in a caravan Suffolk – the closest thing to a conventional address she had had for a while – and relatively easy to track down. Now in her early 70s, she lives (according to the writer Richard Williams) somewhere in the west Scotland, “alongside nature and beside running water, which seem to provide all the music she needs.”
The Time Has Come is available on Earth
