The Dylan connection

Sandy Denny is talking to journalist Ray Coleman in 1971:

‘You know I feel ashamed to sing Dylan. I feel I’ve got no right to get inside his mind, because it’s such a personal thing he’s saying. But I’m such a Dylan maniac I can’t resist. He’s as near as I would get to worshipping anyone… even though I’m still worried about why he changed his name.’

This anxiety about using a stage name niggled her. If you have a ‘personal thing’ to say, should you conceal yourself behind a false name? Her own strategy at the time was to wrap up her ‘personal things’ in opaque lyrics and deliver them under her own name. Later in the same interview she returned to the point when talking about Reginald Dwight aka Elton John:

‘If someone tried to change my name, I’d obviously refuse, but ten years ago I might have done it’.

‘Ten years ago’ – 1961 – she would have been fourteen, just the age when teenagers are trying out their ‘identity’ and forming their musical tastes.

She spoke about Dylan again in the World Service interview of 1972. The recording I heard in a cramped booth at the National Sound Archive was a ‘dubbing’ of a BBC Sound Archive disc. Duration given for the broadcast on the disc was 11 mins 13 secs, longer than the version of the interview now available on Sandy Denny Live at the BBC. This is one of the ‘missing’ passages:

‘You see, I realise what an important medium it is, being able to record my songs on records and have people buy them and listen to the words. And one day I hope I shall be able to really produce something worthwhile which might radically change an individual’s point of view. I don’t know quite how it’ll happen. I think the one person who has definitely done it is Bob Dylan, and he has been a very, very powerful influence on the young people of today. I feel that, you know, even if I can’t do it, at least somebody’s done it, you know, and to the full extent.’

Patrick Humphries interviewed her in 1977:

‘PH: What about Dylan as an influence on your writing?
SD: I don’t know if he was an actual influence on me, although I guess he was, but I couldn’t compare myself with him… he’s just a genius for writing the right words and getting his point across. He’s another who’s very evasive, so perhaps I get that off him, and of course I’m besotted with Dylan anyway, so I’m sure he did influence me but I just couldn’t tell you how.’

Well, one way, I suppose, was by verbal influences. Her own lyrics, poised like his between archaic balladry and the modern vernaculars they each spoke, would sometimes echo what she grew up listening to:

– Dylan’s ‘Lay Down Your Weary Tune’ is called to mind in Denny’s ‘My weary tune has lost its pleasure’ (‘Dark the Night’).
– Dylan’s ‘We never thought we could ever get old’ (‘Bob Dylan’s Dream’, a song itself based on the traditional ballad ‘Lord Franklin’) suggests Denny’s ‘I never dreamt we would ever grow old’ (‘In Memory/The Tender Years’).
– Dylan’s title ‘Down in the Flood’ returns in ‘Someone is drowning down there in the flood’ (‘One Way Donkey Ride’).

There must be other examples. Of course, Dylan himself was an inveterate magpie, so I make no value judgements as between these two great artists. ‘Masters of War’ may well be an influence on ‘John the Gun’, but ‘Masters of War’ is in turn derived from ‘Nottamun Town’, an English ballad that crossed the pond.

As far as I know, Dylan has only referenced Denny on one occasion: in his Theme Time Radio Hour. A rambling, left-field kind of a project hosted by the man himself, the Radio Hour reflects Dylan’s eclectic musical tastes, ranging across, blues, rockabilly, soul music, bebop, rock’n’roll and pop. Each episode is centred on a ‘theme’. In Programme 35, ‘Girls’ Names’, he played ‘Pretty Polly’ (from Sandy and Johnny, 1967):

‘While we’re on the subject of the high and lonesome sounds of the Stanley Brothers, here’s a story about Pretty Polly, by a woman with a beautiful name, Alexandra Elene MacLean Denny, but her friends knew her better as Sandy. Here she is, Sandy Denny, doing a murder ballad, "Pretty Polly", telling the story of a young woman, lured into the forest, where she was killed and buried in a shallow grave...’

I read somewhere that Dylan recorded ‘Farewell, Farewell’ for his Self Portrait set, though it was dropped from the album as released. This would obviously imply a few listenings to Liege and Lief, where Denny reserves one of her most heart-breaking vocals for this track.

Dylan songs she covered:

- ‘Dear Landlord’ (with FC, not released at the time, now available as bonus track on Unhalfbricking reissue)
- ‘Down in the Flood’ (originally on Grassman album. Numerous live versions with FC, most notable is an unbuttoned double-tracked vocal recorded for a Peel Session in 1974 and now available on FC Live at the BBC)
- ‘If You Gotta Go, Go Now’ (with FC, rendered into French as ‘Si Tu Dois Partir’, on Unhalfbricking)
- ‘I’ll Keep It With Mine’ (with FC, on What We Did On Our Holidays)
- ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe’ (home recording, c1966, officially unreleased, available on bootleg Dark the Night)
- ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ (with FC, live on Boxful of Treasures)
- ‘Million Dollar Bash’ (with FC, on Unhalfbricking)
- ‘Percy’s Song’ (with FC, on Unhalfbricking)
- ‘Tomorrow is A Long Time’ (on Sandy and live on Gold Dust)
- ‘Too Much of Nothing’ (with Fotheringay, on Fotheringay album and German TV clip on YouTube)

I’m not sure about ‘Jack O’Diamonds’ (with FC, on FC Live at the BBC), an Ian Matthews lead vocal where she may be on backing vocals.

We know that producer Joe Boyd acquired a copy of the ‘Basement Tapes’ in 1968, which explains why Fairport had access to several Dylan songs years before the recordings were officially released.

There were undoubtedly other Dylan songs in her early repertoire of which no recordings survive. A couple of her friends recall her doing ‘Ballad of Hollis Brown’, itself set to the tune of ‘Pretty Polly’. The song-list I quoted in another post – which may or may not represent what she was singing when she started out – includes ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’, ‘Daddy, You’ve Been On My Mind’ and ‘Girl of the North Country’. A reader of this blog, ‘Mr Natural’ (greetings, Mr N! you obviously don’t share Sandy’s misgivings about pseudonyms), has very helpfully suggested that item 32 on that song-list could be ‘Dink’s Song’, providing another possible link to Dylan. This was a traditional song, collected by John A Lomax from a Black plantation worker, which Dylan first recorded on the ‘Minnesota Hotel tape’ in 1961. Bootlegs circulated until the track was officially released in 2005.

Did they ever meet, Bobby and Sandy? She had a week-long residency at The Bitter End club in New York City in Feb ’72 and Richard Thompson remembers Dylan being at one of those shows. A correspondent who saw her at the club also recalls that Dylan was in the audience. When I naively suggested that it was hard to discern from the way His Bobness spoke about her in his radio show whether he knew who she was or not, my correspondent set me straight:

‘In the late ’60s Fairport Convention (and later solo Sandy Denny) were the premier interpreters of Bob Dylan in England. They were equal with The Band, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and the Byrds. Sandy and Fairport made Bob a lot of money. Of course he knew who she was.’

Roll on the next instalment of Dylan’s Chronicles! – perhaps Mr Zimmerman can do for Denny’s reputation what he achieved posthumously for Karen Dalton by name-checking her in Vol 1.

[Postscript, November 2008. Denny’s close friend, Miranda Ward, is pretty certain the two never met: ‘not that she ever wanted to meet him! She was scared he would end up having feet of clay!’]