Shelagh McDonald, 2012. Photo: Ian Anderson. From fRoots 353/354,
November/December 2012
My book
on Sandy Denny was recently reprinted – an encouraging sign that interest in
her work continues strong. The reprint was an opportunity to fix a few typos, but
otherwise the text remains the same. If there’s ever a second edition (admittedly, as Jeeves would say
to an excitable Wooster, ‘the contingency is a remote one’) I’ll have the
chance to correct and update then. Here, for the record, I should say that the Australian
interview footage I refer to on page 49 has now been eliminated from our
inquiries. ‘Sandy Davis’ turns out to be the interviewer, not the garbled name
of an interviewee, and although our Sandy is mentioned by the Fairport boys, it
is only to explain her absence. An update would also highlight the ‘Lady’
tour of last year and subsequent TV broadcast on BBC Four – Andrew Batt’s
greatest coup yet in bringing Sandy’s
work to the widest possible audience.
The single chapter in serious need of update is the short
one on Shelagh McDonald. As I write there, Shelagh had the world at her feet in
the early Seventies. A talented singer, songwriter and guitarist, a woman of striking
beauty with two acclaimed albums to her name, she was hailed by Melody Maker as a worthy ‘successor to
Sandy Denny’. Then she simply vanished. For over thirty years no one knew where
she was or even if she was still alive. A brief reappearance in 2005 brought
news of the reasons for her disappearance and a reassurance that she was happy
and well, but then we heard no more. Until 2012, that is. Early last year her
husband died, and out of the sad circumstances of his passing was born a desire
to pick up her music again, to reconnect with her old friends and dip her toe
in the waters of a much-changed music scene. The story is well told in Ian
Anderson’s lengthy feature in fRoots
magazine, available online,
so I won’t rehearse it here. Since then she has made several low-key
appearances in Scotland, and in January this year was lured down to London to make
her first appearance in the capital for over forty years in a support slot to
Anderson’s new duo, The False
Beards. It was a top-notch night. A clip on YouTube (’Let
No Man Steal Your Thyme’) shows how, despite evident nerves, her
musicianship and charm have not diminished with the years.
In the fRoots
interview, Shelagh talks a little about Sandy, whom she knew, pointing to a
conflict between Sandy’s gregarious nature and the isolation she needed for her
songwriting: ‘There was this wealth of songs in her, but she couldn’t organise
her time – I felt that a lot of her friends should have respected that and
given her more space.’
If everything comes to fruition, the future for Shelagh is
bright: more live gigs (including one with The
Razorbills), a reissue of her two albums from the Seventies (currently
out of print again), possibly even recording of the many new songs she has been
writing. There’s a Facebook
group devoted to her, which may be the best source of information
until she has a website up and running.* I only managed to snatch a few words
with her at the London event but hope to interview her at some point for a
magazine piece. As for what I wrote about her in the book, well, I slightly
regret making a direct comparison between Sandy and Shelagh. In my defence, I
can only say that, at the time of writing, I never expected to see Shelagh
perform, much less meet her. In the ‘remote contingency’ of a second edition, I
shall have to eat my words, or at least chew them more slowly.
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*Postscript, 25.3.13: there is now an excellent Shelagh McDonald website where fans can keep track of her activities and promoters can get in touch with her. And another delightful clip has appeared on YouTube, this time from A' the Airts, Sanquhar: ’Rigs O' Rye’.
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