I took my potatoes down to be mashed
Fairport Convention - 'Million Dollar Bash' (Unhalfbricking - 1969)
In the late 1960s, Fairport Convention had established themselves as the preeminent pioneers and flag bearers of British folk rock. Their 1969 album Unhalfbricking, is an eclectic and transitional record, that is a stepping stone towards the more explicitly traditional English folk found on Liege & Lief which was their third album of the year (January’s What We Did on Our Holidays was followed by the next records in July and December).
Nestled among its French-titled Dylan covers and dreamy originals is the closing track ‘Million Dollar Bash’, a rollicking, thigh-slapping, celebratory number that stands apart from the rest of the album. It is a Bob Dylan song, but unlike ‘Percy’s Song’ or ‘Si Tu Dois Partir’1, its loose, almost absurdist quality felt more like an invitation to a party than a ballad of sorrow or mystery. Which is exactly in keeping with it’s home on The Basement Tapes.
At first glance, Million Dollar Bash is one of the strangest and most light-hearted songs Bob Dylan ever wrote. Originally recorded in 1967 with The Band during the sessions that became The Basement Tapes, the song embodies the spirit of those recordings; casual, surreal, and rooted in an almost childlike sense of fun and adventure. The lyrics depict a bizarre procession of characters heading to the titular ‘Million Dollar Bash’, but their actions seem more chaotic than celebratory. Some are losing their hats, others are trying to run away, and the narrator himself doesn’t seem entirely sure what’s going on and nor do we.
Dylan’s Basement Tapes recordings were a reaction to the intensity of his mid-‘60s period, retreating from the electric fury of Blonde on Blonde into a looser, rootsier style, playing with language in a way that was both nonsensical and profound in the aftermath of his infamous motorpsycho nitemare. His version of Million Dollar Bash is stripped-back and playful, a song that seems to revel in its own layers of piled on meaninglessness. Fairport Convention’s version, however, is something else entirely.
Recorded in early 1969 (Jan-Apr), Fairport’s take is fuller, warmer, and more polished than Dylan’s original, yet it retains the song’s essential irreverence. It’s a proper band performance, blending Richard Thompson’s distinctive lead guitar work with the rich harmonies of Sandy Denny, Ian Matthews, and the rest of the group. This version swings where Dylan’s shuffles, replacing the basement aesthetic with something closer to folk rock grandeur. There’s a particular joy in the way the band delivers the chorus, their collective voices leaning into the phrase ‘Million Dollar Bash’ with both conviction and humour, I’m not sure if it is just me but it sounds like more people are joining in with each return to the phrase.
Perhaps the most striking feature of Fairport’s version is how much it feels like an English reinterpretation of an American folk song. Given that ‘A Sailor’s Life’ is probably the point in their career where the segue from the band interpreting American Folk to mainlining British Folk takes place it’s noteworthy that they take Dylan’s ramshackle back-porch jam and turn it into something that has been raised on skiffle and other British folk traditions, finding their way into the song’s groove through a more structured and disciplined approach. There’s something about the way Thompson’s lead guitar weaves through the rhythm section that makes it feel at home on Unhalfbricking, even though it is fundamentally different in tone to tracks like ‘A Sailor’s Life’ or the band’s masterpiece, ‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes?’.
The decision to cover ‘Million Dollar Bash’ was in keeping with Fairport’s deep reverence for Dylan, who by this point had become something of an unofficial patron saint of British folk rock. But whereas many of their Dylan covers leaned into the balladry of his work, this was an outlier that was far less concerned with poetic grandeur and more with that folky a sense of communal joy. If Unhalfbricking as a whole was a bridge between Fairport’s early American folk influences and their subsequent embrace of British tradition, then ‘Million Dollar Bash’ was a signpost of where they had been in the style of where they were going.
For those who don’t know, it’s a French language cover of ‘If You Gotta Go, Go Now’.