Shirley Collins: ‘Is folk music a potent political tool? I would say: my arse’

How do you manage to look so fantastic at 87? I’m not 60 yet and look rough. Romead

I hardly think fantastic is the word for me nowadays, but I’ve spent a lot of time outside and eaten honey all my life.

Folk music used to be a potent political tool. Does it still have that power? JonathanKent

Potent political tool? I would say “My arse”, if you wouldn’t mind. For me, Pete Seeger bashing his bloody banjo and exhorting an audience to join the chorus of We Shall Overcome never seemed to advance any causes. It just made people feel they were taking part in something. Bob Dylan’s Masters of War is great, but I didn’t quite trust the people writing protest songs because those I knew weren’t, frankly, nice people.

In your biography, All in the Downs, you noted your disgust at Ewan MacColl, both for his unsolicited advances but also for his arbitrary snobbishness on the “authentic” way to sing folk music. Aside from that, do you have any sympathy for MacColl’s politics, folk music being, arguably, an essentially working-class genre? OttoLyotard

Of course it’s working-class music, because the people had to move away from the country to the mills to find work and were still impoverished. But Ewan was a bit of a bully, really. If you didn’t comply, you were kicked out of his group. He would turn a chair round, straddle it, put his hand behind his ear to “hear my own voice” and sing. It just made me laugh. He was a bloody good songwriter, but even as young woman I could see he was very pretentious.

On your important recording trip to the US southern states with Alan Lomax in 1959 you encountered rich traditions of spirituals, blues and folk music. Did this influence your own work? weltschmultz

Only in as much as I realised what absolute treasures we were finding and how important it was to get this music recorded while people were singing it naturally, before it was wiped out by commercial music. That trip was an extraordinary thing to happen to a young woman who hadn’t been out of the UK. I have the happiest memories – except the time I got bitten by a spider! One lady told us to visit the Baptist snake handlers and said: “They sometimes bite them.” I asked: “What? They bite and kill snakes?” And she said: “Lord no, honey, the snakes bite and kill them!”

Is folk music necessarily visionary music? sexed-up

I’d never put that word to it. Visionary sounds almost religious. I just find folk music so accessible. There are songs for every situation: joy, heartbreak, war, the weather, the lot! If people don’t like folk music, they haven’t heard the real thing. Some songs have lasted for centuries and still have things to say today.

Do you find that the singing voice ages at a similar rate to the body? sexed-up

I’m sure that’s true for untrained singers. Trained singers can keep a standard throughout life, but I can’t bear trained singers singing folk. They’re too careful and just lose it, like I would if I sang Nessun Dorma. I completely lost my voice at one point. I was working at the National Theatre [in the late 70s] with my then husband and he fell in love with first one, then another, actress, then he left me. One of them would stand right in front of me wearing his jumper while I was singing, which undermined my confidence so much that, eventually, nothing would come out of my mouth. I couldn’t sing for 38 years. Then one day it just came back, so seven years ago we made the Lodestar album. It’s amazing really that I got it back.

On the inside cover of your 1969 album Anthems in Eden there is a photo of you, Dolly [Collins, Shirley’s late sister/collaborator] and a strange “goat-man”. It has a pagan, Wicker Man feel to it. At the risk of losing the mystic allure, what is the story behind that? juhamakinen

It’s a horned ram made by Mike Clifton, a clever sculptor who also did the ceramic for the front cover, a picture of Dolly and her husband naked in the Garden of Eden, with a snake! We used the ram in a couple of concerts. It’s an insignia, like regiments have, but it was so benign. I’ve never connected it to The Wicker Man. I saw that film once and thought it was rather silly.

I consider the 1971 album No Roses to be the absolute masterpiece of English folk rock. What are your memories of making it? aliceinlimbo

Thank you. I love the album myself. Very happy memories. We were with the Albion Dance Band musicians in a little studio in Chelsea that used to be a dairy, but we’d invite people in who played odd instruments, which fitted because they were used sparingly. The Watersons came and sang. Richard Thompson played on it. I saw Richard perform a couple of years ago in Bexhill. It was fabulous to see him.

I have enjoyed reading about the music and musicians you don’t like – Odetta, Van Morrison (you apparently complained about his penchant for repetition over a Sunday roast once) and jazz. Which makes me wonder what music we might be surprised to learn you enjoy? lwarne01

I love the power and beauty of Italian Renaissance music. Cajun music, early English music – Tudor music! I can’t bear Schumann or Schubert, and once spent a whole afternoon with somebody who was convinced I ought to like them and played me two whole LPs worth of stupid songs. At the end of it I was so angry, but he didn’t like folk music either, so I don’t think I saw him again.

Which singer has been the most overlooked during your career? Croxleyhornet

Alasdair Roberts is just about my favourite singer. He’s got a great voice and he treats the ballad so straightforwardly. He’s got some success but deserves a lot more recognition. Some people put their music before success, which is so admirable.

Was the folk singer Anne Briggs the charismatic wild child of legend? tonystoke

I think she was. I didn’t get to know her well because we were never on the same bill, but she was a wonderful singer. It was the hippy era and the song that Richard Thompson wrote for her – Beeswing – summed her up perfectly.

Coil and [folk guitarist] Davey Graham seem to be pretty far removed musically. What did you have in common with them? sexed-up

On Lodestar, I worked with Ossian Brown and Stephen Thrower, who had been in Coil. We invited Ossian because I really wanted a hurdy-gurdy on the album; he brought some church pipes and we became such good friends. He comes to visit or we phone occasionally. The collaboration with Davey Graham was a long time before that, and he came to me with a certain reputation. I was nervous but his manners were mostly exquisite. The only problem was the drug taking, which he didn’t do in front of me. At certain times his behaviour could be a bit odd, aloof, but he was wonderful to sing with, so I have happy memories.

I recently discovered the music of Peter Bellamy through his vocals on your albums and was blown away by how he barrelled into old songs with gleeful punk abandon. What was it like recording with him? NitrousMcBread

Wonderful. He was full-blooded. It’s sort of over the top but not over the top, if you see what I mean.

Many years ago, we named our two sister kittens Shirley and Dolly after the two finest inspirational women on the English folk scene. Who would you name your pets after if you had to choose someone who inspired you musically? bootspinney

I had a cat called Copper after Bob Copper of the singing Copper Family in Sussex who have been around here for at least 400 years. When I was 15 or 16, I very naively wrote to the BBC saying I wanted to be a folk singer. Someone passed it to Bob and he just landed on the doorstep. Dolly and I sang him a long Scottish ballad in our best Scottish accents, because we thought that would impress him.

Do you ever get bored with the admiration and awe? RDMiller

No, because it’s so lovely when people come up and say they loved a concert or that it’s nice to hear me singing again. After one outdoor concert, four young people very shyly and sweetly came up and one of the boys had the thickest blond hair you ever saw. I had to ruffle it with my hands and he went: “Yeah, my mum did it last night.”

Dolly died in 1995, but if she was still with us, what would she be doing musically and what would the two of you be working on together? MrTubs

Dolly studied composition under Alan Bush at the Workers’ Music Association and her own composition was more important to her than the arrangements she wrote for the songs that I wanted to sing, although they suited the songs beautifully. The last thing she was working on before she died was a secular mass for working people [Missa Humana], with words by the poet Maureen Duffy, which finally had its first performance a couple of months ago in London. I think she would be composing classical music, but we’d still be friends, of course. And she’d be in her vegetable patch. She wouldn’t let me have asparagus, because you’re not meant to pick it in the first season. I still remember the disappointment of that. Fresh asparagus from her garden would have been lovely.