The mid-eighties were not an easy time for folk rockers. Yes, Runrig sold lots of records. Yes, The Pogues and Big Country were doing good business. Yes, Richard and Linda Thompson and The Waterboys were selling out big tours. But things were not so easy for, perhaps, the greatest of the lot of ‘em - the mighty Nutmeg.
Since the (relative) failure of 1979’s Camelot Calling (relative to The Clash’s London Calling) the band had been mostly quiet. Clive Masters and Benji Wendle had barely spoken throughout the intervening years although 1984 and 1985 had seen them collaborate on two (extremely rare now) standalone singles, C H R I S T M A S and My Sonny Went to War.
It was with some surprise therefore then that the NME broke the news on Weds 5th March 1986 that Clive, Benji and his wife and fellow Nutmegger Mrs Benji Wendle had entered the studio to begin work on a new album. The same article broke the sad news that Mahatma Coat was no longer in the band because he was dead.
The new record, stated the article, would be another concept album, this time based on the legend of Robin Hood who, apparently Clive Masters had started claiming he was descended from. It was to be called Arrow’s Rest.
Then…. Nothing. No record appeared and all queries sent to either Beatroot Records or to the band themselves were ignored.
Eventually, around six months later a press release was released to the press by Beatroot Records which simply said “Good news: Arrow’s Rest finished and brilliant. Bad news: we’ve lost it. Not sure what happened. Sorry.”
And that was it until early 2012 when Clive Masters was having a clear out of his kitchen drawers as he’d bought some new fiddlethread cutlery and needed somewhere to put it whilst it wasn’t being used to eat with.
As he tells it in the (as yet unpublished) liner notes for the album, Clive opened his usual cutlery drawer and removed the cutlery tray from inside in order to clean it. There was something underneath. He gave it a wiggle and pulled it out. It was an old reel to reel tape covered in (probably?) gravy and all bashed up and stuff. Just visible beneath the sticky brown smear on the tape’s side were the words Arrow’s Rest.
For the next eight years, before he lost interest, Clive, along with audio wunderkind (and close friend and room mate) Bosun Hardflank from Sunnyside Studios laboured long and hard to restore the badly gravied master tape, until six of the nine ‘song-suites’ were restored to their former glory:
Chapter 1 The Sherwood Overture / No More Free
Chapter 2 The Wanted Man / The Merry Men
Chapter 3 Robin Hood the Do Gooder / And God Made Maid Marian
Chapter 4 - The Poor Need it More (John's Song) / Sheriff's Theme
Chapter 5 (Not) The Marian Kind
Chapter 6 Kidnapped!
UPDATE JULY 2021!
One of the few good things to come out of the Covid 19 pandemic is undoubtedly the fact that it’s given Clive and Bosun time to work on restoring the remaining three song suites. Stay tuned folk fans!
Raymond Duck, 12th July 2021
