This was the song that sent Dave Cousins and his band of former folkies The Strawbs into the pop charts for the first time early in 1973.
It was the height of Glam and all but one of the band embraced it with make-up and shiny multicoloured costumes when they appeared on TOTP. Even the toothless drummer.
The solitary exception is Cousins, who might have been happy to evolve from his folkie roots but clearly drew the line at changing his wardrobe.
Cousins had first formed the group in 1964 as a bluegrass trio called The Strawberry Hill Boys, named after their alma mater in south London, St Mary’s Teacher Training College in Strawberry Hill.
Shortening their name in order to fit it on a banner behind them onstage, they added a female folk singer called Sandy Denny with a voice as clear as a bell and recorded an album with her in Denmark.
Featuring the first recording of her signature song, Who Knows Where The Time Goes, it was shelved when she left soon after that – later to be canonised as a folk icon after an early death – to join Fairport Convention. It was finally released in the mid-’70s as All Our Own Work.
A self-titled folk-rock album followed in 1969, produced and arranged by Gus Dudgeon and Tony Visconti (with John Paul Jones on bass and Nicky Hopkins on piano) after they became the first British band signed to Herb Alpert’s new label A&M.
After a second album, Dragonfly, they changed both line-up and direction, adding Rick Wakeman on keyboards and a rhythm section of John Ford (bass) and Richard Hudson (drums).
Two more albums followed – Just A Collection Of Antiques And Curios and From The Witchwood – before Wakeman, already being acclaimed as a “future superstar”, left to join Yes.
The next album, Grave New World, featured new keyboard player Blue Weaver and began to incorporate the more rock-oriented songwriting of Hudson-Ford and began to reach an audience beyond the folk-rock fans of fellow travellers like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span.
The biggest change came with the next album Bursting At The Seams – their eighth – with the departure of founder member Tony Hooper (double bass player Ron Chesterman had left after their third), and the arrival of a rock guitarist, Dave Lambert.
It’s his guitar solo that lights up Lay Down, with waves of mellotron from Blue Weaver giving The Strawbs a distinctive new sound. I still have the single, with its curio of a B-side called Backside – credited “amusingly” to Ciggy Barlust And The Whales From Venus.
Reading his obits, I now learn that Cousins had a degree in Statistics and Pure Mathematics from Leicester University and spent ten years in a parallel career in radio as producer for Denmark’s public service radio station before becoming programme controller for Radio Tees and MD of Devon Air.
He was also involved in the business plans for radio franchise operations including XFM, Thames Radio and Portsmouth’s Radio Victory and had his own independent record and publishing company, Witchwood Media.
In what was evidently a good life well lived by a very good man, he was also a trustee of the Commonwealth Medical Trust, providing water tanks in Africa.
RIP Dave Cousins (1940-2025)