Dave Mattacks
English rock and folk drummer
David James Mattacks (born 13 March 1948) is an English rock and folk drummer, best known for his work with British folk rock band Fairport Convention.
Fairport Convention
He replaced Martin Lamble, who had died on 12 May 1969 in a road accident on the M1 motorway, as the drummer for Fairport Convention. Mattacks left Fairport Convention in early 1972 to join The Albion Country Band. Meanwhile, he had also contributed to numerous studio recordings such as the Morris On project, Nick Drake's Bryter Layter, Steve Ashley's "Stroll On" sessions, Steeleye Span's debut album Hark! The Village Wait, John Martyn's Solid Air and Harvey Andrews' album Writer of Songs. He returned to Fairport Convention in order to help complete the 1973 album Rosie with a revamped line up of the band.
Mattacks also played on Nine (1974) but left halfway through the making of the follow-up Rising for the Moon, following an altercation with engineer Glyn Johns. Some of Mattacks' most notable participation in studio recordings in the late 1970s are the work on art rock studio albums by Brian Eno (Before and After Science) and 801's Listen Now, as well as several Ashley Hutchings-related folk rock projects (The Compleat Dancing Master, Son of Morris On etc.).
When Fairport Convention re-formed in 1985 after a six-year absence, Mattacks was recruited as drummer. He had already been playing with them again during annual reunions at the fledgling Cropredy Festival.
“Dave Mattacks” enters the record as english rock and folk drummer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dave, Mattacks and English can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2717544. VIAF identifies the subject as 29734359. The Library of Congress control number is n93054952. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948, 1969, 1972 and 1973.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dave Mattacks” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.