Sandy Denny

Events in 2012

2012-01-10T14:02:00.014Z

The Lady: A Homage to Sandy Denny

A special UK tour in May 2012 commemorating Sandy's songwriting legacy.

In the years since her death, Sandy has emerged as one of the UK 's greatest singer-songwriters. Her classic song ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes’ has been recorded by a diverse range of artists including Cat Power, Nina Simone and Judy Collins. This special tour celebrates her legacy for a new generation and showcases for the first time her entire songbook taking in her work with Fairport Convention, Fotheringay, her solo career and the new songs completed by Thea Gilmore on her acclaimed album ‘Don’t Stop Singing’.

Thea will join a unique line up of artists including former colleagues and friends Dave Swarbrick, Maddy Prior, and Jerry Donahue, alongside Joan Wasser (aka Joan As Police Woman), PP Arnold, Green Gartside and young admirers including Lavinia Blackwall (Trembling Bells), Sam Carter, Blair Dunlop (The Albion Band) and Ben Nicholls. Together with members of Bellowhead, who form the core of a house ‘super group’, they create this unique, adventurous homage to the artist described by Richard Thompson as ‘the greatest British female artist of her generation’.

TOUR DATES AND BOOKING INFORMATION

May 19: LIVERPOOL Liverpool Philharmonic 0151 709 3789

May 20: NOTTINGHAM Royal Centre 0115 989 5555

May 21: BRIGHTON Festival 01273 709709

May 22: COVENTRY Warwick Arts Centre 024 7652 4524

May 23: LONDON Barbican Centre 020 7638 8891

May 24: BASINGSTOKE The Anvil 01256 844244

May 27: GATESHEAD The Sage Gateshead 0191 443 4661

May 28: MANCHESTER Bridgewater Hall 0161 907 9000

[Produced by Andrew Batt and MBM]

Book now published

2011-12-10T19:46:00.016Z

The cover of 'Unhalfbricking' (1969), with Edna and Neil Denny in foreground and Fairport Convention in background. (Photo: Eric Hayes).

The cover of 'Rising For The Moon' (1975). Sandy does a Tarot reading while the band look on. Painting by Marion Appleton. (See 'Sandy Denny: Reflections on Her Music', p103.)

I’m pleased to say that Sandy Denny: Reflections on Her Music was published as scheduled last week. Now in stock at Amazon UK for £7.17. Customers in the States should be able to order from the UK site using their Amazon US account.

Alternatively, you can order direct from the publisher. I'm told that customers who order via the Troubadour website will receive copies within 2 days if they order before 2pm. The publisher can fulfil orders inland and overseas.

Philip

New book!

2011-08-23T14:10:00.010+01:00

Early news of my forthcoming book about Sandy:

Philip Ward
Sandy Denny: Reflections on Her Music
Matador Press
Publication: 7 December 2011
RRP: £9.99

ISBN 978-1780880204

This will be available through all good bookshops, from Amazon UK or direct from the publisher. It’s a collection of my writings on Sandy which have appeared in magazines, album notes and online over the years, together with new material and a host of photos, some of them previously unpublished.

From the blurb:

‘…In this book Philip Ward, who has made a close study of the artist, presents a series of personal ‘reflections’ on her life and work. He fills in details overlooked by her biographers, surveys recent reissues of her recordings and offers the first in-depth analysis of her songwriting. He looks back to the public events marking the thirtieth anniversary of her death and assesses her alongside some of her contemporaries. In the author’s words, the book is ‘a series of experiments’ in how to write about the subject. It concludes with a detailed essay arguing the case that, long before Amy Winehouse or Kate Bush, Denny was the first British female singer-songwriter of international stature.

“Philip Ward's analyses of Sandy's songs are original, thorough and insightful. I learned a lot from reading them.” – Joe Boyd, record producer.’

If you see material disappear from this blog or from my website, that’s because it’s in the book.

Collaborations old and new

2011-07-15T11:40:00.012+01:00

Due for release from Witchwood Media on 19 September:

19 Rupert Street (Sandy Denny with Alex Campbell)

Dave Cousins writes:

“I first heard this recording as I was being driven by my friend Stuart Douglas, Alex Campbell’s cousin, round Lake Ontario on the way to Toronto. He put a cassette into the player, without saying a word, and I was amazed to hear Sandy Denny and Alex swapping songs and chatting away. Stuart had found the tape in Glasgow in Patsy Campbell’s house after she died but, as a cassette, it was unusable for release.

Then last year I went to a meeting in Copenhagen and afterwards a guy came up to me and said that a friend of his had a tape of Sandy Denny that he’d recorded years ago in Glasgow. I wrote and asked if I could have a copy and a few weeks later, much to my amazement, the original tape arrived through the post. It was recorded at 19 Rupert Street, Glasgow, Alex Campbell’s home, on 5 August 1967 on a quarter track domestic machine. I took it to Abbey Road to have it transferred to digital, and I was stunned to hear Sandy and Alex singing, laughing and joking as though I was in the room with them.

I edited and mastered it with legendary producer Chris Tsangarides. It’s what it is, a home recording, but what atmosphere! On record Sandy often comes across as sounding melancholy. There are secrets behind some of her songs that very few people know, that brought about certain sadness. But this recording shows Sandy as she was when I first met her – bright and funny, with a voice that could pin your ears back or melt your heart. I’m so pleased to be able to share this with you.”

Tracklisting:

1. The Leaves Of Life
2. Willie Moore
3. Balulalow
4. The Sans Day Carol
5. Trouble In Mind
6. Jimmie Brown The Newsboy
7. The Midnight Special
8. Milk And Honey
9. Who Knows Where The Time Goes?
10. Fairytale Lullaby
11. She Moves Through The Fair
12. (And so to bed) Chuffa Chuffa Chuff/Clementine/Jesus Loves Me

Also available on 180g vinyl from Music on Vinyl.

The information I have is that Sandy is on all the tracks. Solo on 1, 3 and 8-11. Track 2 is a duet with Patsy Campbell. According to his biographer, John Martyn’s ‘Fairytale Lullaby’ was a song Sandy had plans to record, presumably on the projected solo album she mentioned to interviewers in 1967. The album sounds promising, even if it doesn’t look promising: I fail to understand why Witchwood seem determined to package her work as if it’s appearing on a budget label circa 1971. Or is that the idea? A ‘period’ feel?

Also scheduled for release later this year (on Island) is Don't Stop Singing, a collaboration between Thea Gilmore and Sandy Denny from beyond the grave: Gilmore sets to music and performs unpublished Denny lyrics (I believe). Here’s the tracklisting:

1. Glistening Bay
2. Don’t Stop Me Singing
3. Frozen Time
4. Goodnight
5. London
6. Pain In My Heart
7. Sailor
8. Long Time Gone
9. Song No. 4
10. Georgia

Postscript, August 2011: ‘Legs O’Hagan’ has written to set me straight on the cover of 19 Rupert Street: “The cover uses a Cath Kidston retro style as a way of looking back to the time the recording was made while the typography for the album title recreates that of the street sign. Cooper Black was fashionable in 1967 and again now. Yes, some thought went into it…”

Fotheringay Essen 1970

2011-06-21T15:27:00.004+01:00

Garden of Delights/Thors Hammer THCD006 (CD), THLP002 (vinyl)

Release date: 20 June. This is the first release of a newly discovered recording of Fotheringay live at Grugahalle, Essen, Germany, on 23 October 1970. Currently only available from amazon.de, but I’m told it should be with Amazon UK in the coming weeks. Remastered by Jerry Donahue. Booklet essay by moi.

“That, at least, may be something to get excited about” (Clinton Heylin, 2011).

Heylin Is Not Great

2011-06-18T11:32:00.009+01:00

People sometimes ask why I haven’t expressed an opinion about Clinton Heylin’s biography on this blog. I suppose I was hiding behind Oscar Wilde’s dictum: “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” No doubt which of these categories is appropriate for Mr H’s work. We’d forgive him much if he were a kind of rock’n’roll version of Christopher Hitchens (author of God Is Not Great) – writes like an angel, while cleaving to the Devil’s party. But Heylin doesn’t write like an angel. And now that his book has been republished, I wonder if what one might call the ‘Aesthetic’ defence is adequate. In his determination to be “forthright” (his publisher’s word), Heylin compounds his crimes against literary style by plumbing new depths of personal invective.

What we have from Omnibus Press is a straight reprint of the book originally published by Helter Skelter in 2000, complete with misprints and uncorrected factual errors and the same lacklustre set of photographs. To this has been added an opinionated and highly partial discography in which Heylin rubbishes every release of Sandy’s music since 2000, with the exception of the Saga sessions CD (the only one he was involved with himself.) This is followed by a truly bizarre five-and-a-half page tirade headed ‘An Intemperate Disquisition on the Plundering of Sandy Denny’s Musical Legacy’. Here he questions the professional integrity and motives of everyone who has been involved with issuing her music in the last ten years. These people must answer for themselves, and no doubt will. They’ll require, I daresay, at least another five pages to rebut his assertions point by point, for he makes numerous factual claims, many of which – even on the basis of information in the public domain – I know to be untrue.

For example:

He contrasts the firm control exercised by the Nick Drake estate over posthumous releases with the perceived laxity of the Denny estate: “As a result there has been no indentured hand on the rudder determined to nix material unworthy of her memory” (p275). In fact, there has been a stream of issues – Time Of No Reply, Made To Love Magic, A Treasury, Fruit Tree – designed to sate the public’s appetite for additions to Drake’s tiny recorded output. The most recent of these, Family Tree (2007), which packages up his early home demos, is prefaced by an open letter from Gabrielle Drake to her brother:

“Up till now, every decision I have taken – I have been allowed to take – on your behalf about your music has been guided by what I believe might have met with your approval… But now I am endorsing the publication of an album that I am not at all sure you would have sanctioned.”

Gabrielle’s purpose, she goes on to explain, is to dish the bootleggers.

Ah yes, bootleggers. Mr H has written a whole book about them. One of his most serious charges is that the compiler of the 19-CD Sandy boxset sourced many of the unreleased recordings from “bootlegs” (p272). The press notice issued by Universal at the time made clear that the material used came from the Island archive or from reels which were property of the estate. Indeed, much of what he says about the recent boxset – the tracklisting, the contents, the accompanying book – suggests that he has not physically laid hands on it or listened to it, or even read the 4- and 5-star reviews in the press of what he calls “the most ill-conceived anthology of the CD era” (p278). He tells us that he expected to receive a complimentary copy (p279) even when I have it privately on good authority that no recording of his was used. Besides, no one seems to have got a complimentary set; I certainly didn’t, and work of mine was used in the box.

And so on, by way of an attack on Jerry Donahue based on misinformation about the Royalty Theatre recordings and the Fotheringay 2 sessions. The accusation that Andrew Batt, who toiled for months in the Island archives to compile the recent boxset, has an “unhealthy obsession” with his subject (p278) is curious coming as it does from someone who has published over a thousand pages chronicling, via notebooks and studio logs, the evolution of every song Bob Dylan has ever recorded and putting Dylan himself right on a number of matters. As the Independent reviewer commented of this magnum opus, “Dylan might have been there – but only Heylin knows what actually happened.”

Authorised biography

2011-05-30T18:22:00.011+01:00

News from sandydennyofficial.com:

Authorised Sandy Biography to be published by Faber & Faber in 2013/14

Finally, a, complete, considered and authorised biography of Sandy is underway. Late last year her estate approached long time music journalist and PR man Mick Houghton with the idea; publishers Faber & Faber commissioned the project and now it’s underway – due for publication late 2013/early 2014.

Mick is eminently suited to the task. Whilst he’s taken care of the PR for many of the big names in the UK’s music scene through the 80s, Sandy fans will be more impressed by his current roster of boyhood folk music heroes: Richard Thompson, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, and Shirley Collins. The past couple of years saw him researching and writing Becoming Elektra, his book about his all time favourite record label, Elektra Records and its founder Jac Holzman, that was published last October – while Mick was already busy organising the PR for the Sandy Boxset and also providing all the interviews for the hardback book that accompanied the 19CDs.

New Fotheringay DVD

2011-04-03T14:09:00.008+01:00

Fotheringay with Sandy Denny - The Lost Broadcasts (CD+DVD)
Release Date: [originally given as] 6 June 2011
Label: Gonzo

The session featured on this CD/DVD package was filmed for German TV in October 1970 and includes four songs. 'Too Much Of Nothing' was part of the original broadcast on the Beat-Club programme back in 1970 and 'Gypsy Davey' turned up on a compilation programme in the late 80's. 'Nothing More' and 'John The Gun' have been unseen until now.

Contents: 1. Too Much of Nothing 2. Gypsy Davey 3. Nothing More 4. John The Gun

Press release
Buy at Amazon UK

Postscript, July 2011: Amazon is now notifying customers that this item is unavailable and cancelling their orders. It looks doubtful that the DVD will ever appear: something to do with uncleared rights.

Publicity

2010-09-04T16:00:00.022+01:00

“Don’t listen to her! You’ll realise that the rest of us are wasting your time.” – Rachel Unthank on Sandy Denny, quoted in Universal Music press notice, 2010.

Release date for the new box set of Denny’s work may have been put back to the third week of November but a veritable publicity blitz has already begun. First off the blocks was Rob Young in the October issue of Uncut, with a detailed biographical piece spread over five pages. Rob is very much the man of the moment: Electric Eden (Faber and Faber, 2010), his vast, encyclopaedic history of the English folk movement, has rightly won plaudits from critics and readers alike. Also out now is the September/October issue of Shindig! featuring an interview by Andy Morten with box compiler Andrew Batt. The September/October issue of R2 (formerly Rock’n’Reel) has the distinction of being (if I’m not mistaken) Denny’s first magazine cover since she graced the inaugural issue of Zigzag in 1969. The October fRoots has a feature by Mike Wilson (on sale from 23 September). Kingsley Abbott's 5-page article in Record Collector (October) is to be recommended, as is Sid Smith's 4-page profile in Classic Rock Presents Prog (December issue).

Frank Zappa once dismissed rock journalism as "people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read." I think his old friend (and sometime squeeze, if you believe the stories) is coming off better than that at the hands of today’s music writers.

The Radcliffe and Maconey show on BBC Radio 2, Monday 8 November, 8pm, will devote a “Listen and Learn” feature to Denny. Listen again for seven days here (00.32 to 00.49).

Promo video for the box set on YouTube.

A radio news item from 6 Music gives a taster of the newly discovered ‘Lord Bateman’ vocal.

Final tracklisting for box set (pdf)
Compiler's comments on some of the new tracks (pdf)

[Now also blogging at Brush on Drum.]

Mystery song

2010-07-20T16:42:00.021+01:00

Research for the new box set has unearthed a previously unknown early home recording. The lyrics are hard to make out but the following gives an approximation. It may be an original, but if so, with its cod mythology and sword-and-sorcery medievalism, it’s not quite like anything else Sandy ever did. It’s also delivered over (what is for her) an unusually fast finger-picking accompaniment. Any help in identifying it would be appreciated. She had several cracks at it, with slight changes of wording, hence the alternatives transcribed below. I find the lyric vaguely reminiscent of early Marc Bolan, for example ‘Aznageel The Mage’ on Tyrannosaurus Rex, Prophets, Seers and Sages: The Angels of the Ages (1968).

I saw a dark star against the black sky
Of a night thirteen hundred years long
It cast shrouding shadows upon the desert
Of the dark moons that formed in her eyes

On the … of … the sun never smiled
And the noon of the day was in shadow
And the sky left its tears on the black barren earth
And the … was … in …

On a shrine of black flowers M... lay dead
As he had for thirteen centuries
At his feet five crows stood and watched to his keep
And the whisper of time sighed around the hills

P... has tried fair winged [weird] for it stead
Though the sky's in search of a [the] star
And the serpent entwined about the stag's head
Tried to reach out and poison her hair.

O no, P..., you will not go far
M... has only one hour
And if you do not reach him before it is over
Then the … falls into the ocean [sea].

P... took her form and she stabbed [pierced] the serpent's eye
And he fell through the clouds to the land. [sea]
As she rode on and on through the blazing sky
With horizons of light in her unsung [till she came to …]

It was then that the daylight became the dark night
[And] she recalled [remembered] what the … [sermon] had said:
When the night becomes black and no sound can be heard,
You have come to the land of …

And she found the dark star hanging low in the sky
And she gathered it up in her arms
And she rode to the shrine where M... lay dead [and she rode to the place that was so …]
And she placed the dark star on her …

And the star became bright and it shone on the land
And the shrouds of darkness were gone
And M... was standing beside [before] P...
And the light came to bear in her hair.

Mojo has a preview of another of the unreleased tracks, an acoustic demo version of 'I'm A Dreamer'.

The Guardian has a preview of some photos from the box set.

Bob Harris's radio documentary about Sandy, first broadcast in 2008, is to be repeated on Wednesday 4 August 2010, BBC Radio 2, 10pm.

[Be sure to check out my new music blog Brush on Drum.]

New box set

2010-05-21T15:56:00.010+01:00

Information has begun to emerge about the forthcoming definitive box set of Sandy’s work.

Sandy Denny (Limited Edition 19CD Box Set), due for release on 1 November 2010 from Universal Music. The record company says:

"This superb limited edition box set includes 19 CDs, 11 of which feature Sandy's complete studio recordings with Alex Campbell, Johnny Silvo, Fotheringay, Strawbs, Fairport Convention and solo with additional content – outtakes, demos and live recordings. There are 8 CDs of bonus material – unreleased songs, demos, unreleased BBC recordings, alternate takes, live recordings, acoustic versions, and rare radio interviews. This set includes the legendarily 'long lost' Lord Bateman.

Lavishly packed, this unique collection features all new artwork. It comes with a 72 page 11" square hardback book containing over 100 rare and mostly unseen photographs, Sandy's handwritten lyrics (many of which are unrecorded songs) and fascinating memorabilia. Each CD is housed in an individual gatefold digipack sleeve. The box also contains reproductions of a beautiful original Island press pack, an exceptionally rare A3 promo colour poster for Northstar Grassman And The Ravens, a set of Postcards, the receipt for the purchase of her first piano and one of Sandy's handwritten notebooks."

Andrew Batt adds:

“I have been working on this boxset and have compiled the tracklisting, which will be released soon.

I think the way to look at it is, if there wasn’t substantial high quality unreleased material then this boxset wouldn’t be happening. Aside from two new songs – Lord Bateman and Twelfth Of Never – there are amongst other things demos for the whole Sandy album and most of Northstar that are exceptional and which fans will love. If you like Sandy in a more stripped down setting then this boxset will delight you! It is amazing that so much unreleased stuff has surfaced over the years, but after going through literally every master reel, this is really it!

I would estimate that there is 15-20% unreleased material, and remastered versions of things like All Our Own Work, Swedish Fly Girls that have never been on CD. All the previous bonus stuff will be included as well, and will also make their digital download debut.

The whole project has been a real labour of love and aims to represent Sandy’s complete legacy.”

Universal’s recommended retail price is around £140. Amazon UK is currently listing at £149.99 but this may reduce depending on the volume of pre-orders. It’s a tidy sum, but worth every penny, I reckon.

The artwork is by the ever-reliable Phil Smee. The design has not yet been finalised, so may differ slightly from the illustration above.

This sounds like a great project which we should all get behind. There's an official site at http://www.sandydenny.org.uk/ where you can join a mailing list for updates on the box and special offers. Also, the Island50 store is offering 100 sets that come with a numbered and framed print of the artwork, signed by the artist. Each print will be personally addressed to the purchaser.

(PS The Dutch painting I asked about in my previous post has now been identified as Vermeer, 'The Glass of Wine'. Thanks to Wim.)

Byfield

2009-08-23T17:32:00.024+01:00

(Photo: Sandy Denny at home in Byfield, mid 1970s)

Byfield is the village in Northamptonshire, about half way between Banbury and Daventry as the crow flies and the A361 meanders, where Sandy Denny lived for the last four years of her life. I was lucky enough to pay a visit recently. Here are some photos from that day (courtesy of Andrew Batt, who took them).

The house. The willow tree at the extreme right is clearly visible in photos of Sandy sunbathing in the garden which were included in the Live at the BBC booklet:

The house, from the opposite end. In the foreground is the barn, which Sandy used as rehearsal space, since converted into living accommodation:

The Village Hall, where Sandy made her last public appearance in April 1978:

And the shaded pathway to Holy Cross Church:

The Rectory contained a stained glass of ‘Reynard the Fox’:

The illustration, showing Reynard in clerical dress preaching to a flock of geese, draws on the medieval Reynard allegories. The link to ‘Reynard the Fox’, the folksong that was in Denny’s repertoire, is, I admit, somewhat tenuous (though there be foxes in both). At the risk of stretching it to breaking point – and without daring to utter the pompous word ‘synchronicity’ – let me add a plug for a wonderful book I happened to be reading at the time of my visit, Peter Burt’s Fables:

‘What was school like 65 million years ago? Do bees have intimations of immortality? Do frogs respond well to psychoanalysis? Why was the nightingale in Keats’ garden regarded by his fellow creatures as a disgraceful reprobate? Meet Magnanimouse and his laboratory cagemate Alphonse, Doctor Spineswine the prickly philosopher, Twenty-First Century Fox, Formby the lion of two worlds and a whole supporting cast of friends from the animal kingdom (or somewhere not too far removed from it). In twelve tales with settings ranging from the late Cretaceous to the present day, they reveal the answers to these and other pressing questions of contemporary zoology.’

Burt’s ‘Twenty-First Century Fox’ is Reynard’s brother in adversity. Buoyed up by the Labour landslide of 1997 and the incoming administration’s promise to outlaw hunting with hounds, our vulpine hero leaves his rural foxhole and migrates to the city, in search of liberal attitudes and a foxier class of vixen. But it’s no go. Buffeted between ‘Natural Enemy No. 1’ (mankind) and ‘Natural Enemy No. 2’ (dogkind), disillusioned by a grinning Prime Minister who tears off that ‘fox-friendly mask’ to reveal ‘the same cunning old dog’ underneath, he is driven back whence he came, brush between his legs. Not even Sandy’s Reynard, with the ‘jubal hounds’ a-pressing upon his life, has a more wretched time of it.

[Note. The photos of Denny’s former home are published with kind permission of the present owners. Please respect their privacy by not republishing them elsewhere.]

Postscript, February 2012. Further images of the Byfield interior, including the kitchen with vintage jukebox, are published in: David Roberts, Rock Atlas: 650 Great Music Locations and the Fascinating Stories Behind Them (2011), pp154-6.

A short tale about a long tail

2009-03-22T15:57:00.008Z

‘This one has no end,’ the lady sang. Was she right?

A friend of mine has a personal website. With perverse delight he has concealed it on some Austrian server, far from the reach of web-crawlers and search engines, where like a fox having evaded the hunter it gloats over its own escape from notice. If you do somehow locate it, you are met with a ‘welcome’ page (though never was the word less apt) which is the epitome of self-deprecating English humour. It reads:

‘Congratulations, intrepid cybernaut! You have finally reached the end of the long tail.’

The ‘long tail’ is a tale I’d like to believe. The idea was promoted in a book by Chris Anderson, who challenged the conventional wisdom in retailing, namely that selling the most popular 20 per cent of products is the way to make a profit as they will account for 80 per cent of sales. No, says Anderson, not so in the new online market. His analysis of online music sales suggested that, thanks to the cheapness, simplicity and global accessibility of searching for products online, retailers could make money from more obscure products because they would always find an audience. Amazon is the textbook example of this new retail model. The theory took a bit of a knock last year, apparently, with the publication of a study by the MCPS-PRS Alliance, which found that, over a 12-month period, of the 1.23 million albums available online, only 173,000 were ever bought, meaning that 85 per cent did not sell a single copy all year. Conversely, for the online singles market, 80 per cent of all revenue came from around 52,000 tracks. In other words, the online market may not have rewritten the ‘80/20 rule’ as we supposed. For Anderson the long tail, like the rainbow, has no ‘end’.

While I leave the supporters of both sides arguing over statistics, I turn to another friend who asked me why this blog has fallen silent in 2009. The short answer is that I was waiting for some good news to report. After the successes of anniversary year, I believed we’d reached a plateau – now I’m not so sure. We’re still hoping to reprint the souvenir brochure that was put together for the December concert. My contribution to that was the reprint of a long article written at the start of last year. Back then I was gloomy about Denny’s prospects in the new millennium:

‘To find Sandy’s albums in your record store you must locate ‘Folk’ on the first floor or in the basement, nestling somewhere among World, Jazz, Blues, Easy Listening and all the other consumer choices. In the Seventies she would have been on the ground floor, near the point of sale.’

Later in 2008 I decided this conclusion was too pessimistic: I was thinking in terms of the old technologies that I grew up with. By the year’s end, buoyed up by the apparent media interest in this long-dead songstress, I wanted to accentuate the positive, imagine how a 20-year-old, without ever leaving his bedroom, could stumble on Sandy Denny via YouTube or last.fm. So I drafted this upbeat insertion to my text:

‘But wait, here’s the upside: there’s never been a better time to have a posthumous career. The music lover (especially the younger one) no longer ventures into a shop to look for a ‘record’. Digital downloads, file-sharing and social networking sites have transformed how we ‘consume’ music. If you go hunting ‘Sandy Denny’ now, once the scent of the chase is in your nostrils, you’re only a few mouse clicks away from finding her – biographical information, music-examples, photos, even video clips. And you’re only an email away from finding others who share your new-found interest. Society has indeed become more atomised since the Seventies, but the Internet has the potential to remake those broken connections in another way.’

Still this paragraph remains unmoored, bobbing freely adrift from its context, because I don’t know whether I believe it. Is she a beneficiary of the ‘long tail’? Or is there no ‘long tail’ and is she a victim of the inflexible ‘80/20’ law which says that if you’re not in the 20 per cent of artists who generate 80 per cent of sales, then you’re not big enough to have books written or television programmes made about you?

(Statistics taken from: Patrick Foster, 'Sting in the tail for online sellers as 10m music tracks spin unloved through cyberspace', The Times, 22 December 2008, p17)

Review of the year 2008

2008-12-30T15:16:00.012Z

(Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, 1 December 2008. Photo: Chris Bates)

About eighteen months ago I published a post here on the topic ‘Cults and anniversaries’. My question then was whether the upcoming thirtieth anniversary of Sandy Denny’s death might be the trigger for a serious reappraisal of her work and a breakthrough to wider acceptance. Looking back over the past year, I have my answer. The tectonic plates of musical taste are definitely shifting, and to her advantage. Think how much has happened in the last nine months:

- April: tribute concert at the Troubadour Club, London, and one-hour documentary on BBC Radio 2.
- May: she makes a ghostly appearance on Jools Holland’s influential TV show in the middle of an interview with Robert Plant.
- August: tribute slot during Cropredy Festival, including a rare occurrence of Julie Fowlis singing in English.
- September: release of Fotheringay 2 after thirty-eight years in the freezer.
- November: ten-minute feature on Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 4.
- December: tribute concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London.

Add to that Robert Plant’s revival of ‘The Battle of Evermore’ on tour with Alison Krauss (introduced from the stage with due obeisance to an absent friend) and several newspaper and magazine articles, and you can’t help feeling something is astir. For me, this translates into the paradox that, whilst I personally have had a pretty bad year, culminating in bereavement in October, this long-deceased lady has had a remarkably good year, almost certainly her ‘best’ year since she passed over. All that’s required now is to keep up the momentum. Some of you may have heard rumours of a forthcoming TV series on British women musicians. Kate Bush, Dusty Springfield, Marianne Faithfull, Amy Winehouse and (so we thought) Sandy Denny. My mole on the inside tells me that Sandy has now been dropped from the series, on the grounds that she’s "not famous enough" and viewers of BBC1 (where the series will air) have “never heard of her”. It’s a shame, whichever way you look at it, as filming had already begun on the Sandy programme and this would have been a unique opportunity to place her in rightful company whilst bringing her to the widest audience.

(l-r: Lisa Knapp, Jerry Donahue, Mary Epworth, Johnny Flynn, Sam Carter, PP Arnold, Kristina Donahue, Jim Moray. Photo: Chris Bates)

Anyway, it's gratifying that both the tribute concerts this year happened in venues associated with her. While the QEH isn’t so redolent with associations as the Troubadour in Earl’s Court, it still has its place in her story. She performed there a number of times, notably twice in 1971 – at the Fotheringay ‘farewell’ concert in January, and again in September at her London ‘solo’ relaunch, an event recalled by those who were there as fairly disastrous, under-rehearsed, but redeemed at the last minute by a glorious a cappella ‘Lowlands of Holland’. Perhaps the next commemoration of this kind (and here’s hoping there will be more) should take place outside the capital, or even outside the UK? The LA Troubadour, perhaps? – another venue she knew very well. Closer to home, I notice that the the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival in Belfast is holding a ‘Sandy Denny night’ on 21 January 2009. The featured artist is Linde Nijland. It must be an ‘open mic’ night as well, as the advertisement says: ‘If you would like to perform a Sandy Denny song at this event contact [the Festival director] Sean@cqaf.com.’

As I write, the January/February issue of Rock’n’Reel plops through the letterbox. It contains, I’m pleased to see, not just my own retrospective piece on Fotheringay but also a poignant end-of-year message from Sean McGhee recalling that moment, so sacred to all of us, of first encounter with Denny’s work:

‘We rarely know what lies ahead for us. Little did I suspect back then, as I listened to her wonderful voice, that one day I’d be writing an editorial such as this, Sandy having long since sung her final song. Yet we’re still listening…’

Here’s to a wonderful 2009 filled with the very best sounds! Onwards and upwards!

South Bank Centre tribute

2008-10-14T17:41:00.014+01:00

The Lady : A Tribute to Sandy Denny

Monday 1 December 2008, 7.30pm, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

In the 30 years since her death, Sandy Denny has emerged as one of the UK’s greatest singer-songwriters. A unique line up of artists including former colleagues and young admirers re-interpret her songs in this very special tribute showcasing her work with Fairport Convention, Fotheringay and her solo career.

A great line up is promised (to be announced over the next few weeks) but early birds can get tickets here.

The above is from the Sandy page on MySpace, announcing the final event of anniversary year. I'm only peripherally involved in this one, but I heartily recommend it and hope to see some blog readers there. More details will appear here as I have them. Joe Boyd was complaining that tributes to Denny should be happening in the largest venues, not in little clubs like the Troubadour with a capacity of 120. I'm quite sure all 950 seats at the QEH will be sold out on 1 December, so don't delay.

Update, 11.11.08. Now confirmed to appear: Marc Almond, PP Arnold, Martin Carthy, Baby Dee, Lisa Knapp, Jim Moray, Dave Swarbrick, Jerry Donahue, Johnny Flynn, Mary Epworth, Sam Carter, Kristina Donahue and members of Bellowhead.

As I understand it, the concert is all about looking beyond the ‘Fotheringport’ family (though, of course, they will have their rightful place on the night) to find the much wider fan base she deserves. For instance, the Independent recently quoted Jamie Reynolds of Klaxons (NME Best New Band 2007, etc.) saying that Sandy would be the vocalist in his ‘fantasy’ band. Hence the welcome presence of a number of newer, younger artists who will bring in their own audiences, present her work in novel ways and take her legacy into the next generation.

Update, 28.11.2008. Jude Rogers, in her column in today's Guardian, much of it about Sandy Denny, cites this gig as evidence that 'her dark star is rising everywhere'.

Fotheringay 2

2008-09-16T21:09:00.015+01:00

I don't usually go in for advertising on this site but I'll make an exception to draw attention to an important new release from Fledg'ling:

'Fans of Fotheringay rejoice - the nine classic performances on their debut album are soon to be joined by eleven more studio recordings. Jerry Donahue has been working for many, many months reviewing all the recordings to finally bring this remarkable project to conclusion.

After several years of careful research in dusty tape archives, the surviving members of Fotheringay have been able to complete their second album begun back in 1970. It is very, very rare that musicians get the chance to complete a project begun 38 years previously. Fotheringay 2 will be released on Fledg’ling Records on 29th September 2008.

Fotheringay remain one of the great might-have-beens of British music. They lasted less than a year, and released just one album, but their disappearance robbed the early-’70s scene of a group of musicians capable of taking folk-rock to new heights of subtlety and musicianship. Now, the nine songs on that debut album, assumed for almost four decades to be their sole testament, are joined by the eleven that would have constituted a follow-up. Sadly they broke up during the recording sessions for that second album. Incredibly all the tapes survived in various record company archives. Guest musicians include Rabbit Bundrick on keyboards and Sam Donahue (Jerry’s father) on saxophone.

Track list: John the Gun * Eppie Moray * Wild Mountain Thyme * Knights of the Road * Late November * Restless * Gypsy Davey * I Don’t Believe You * Silver Threads and Golden Needles * Bold Jack Donahue * Two Weeks Last Summer - Fledg’ling FLED 3066'

Fotheringay were: Sandy Denny, Pat Donaldson, Trevor Lucas, Gerry Conway and Jerry Donahue.

There's a sample track from the album, a wonderful vocal take on 'Wild Mountain Thyme', up at MySpace and a telephone interview with Jerry Donahue about the project at Folk Alley.

Colin Randall over at the Salut! Live website is running a competition for ‘your best or most vivid memory of Sandy, Fotheringay, Fairport with Sandy, Sandy solo, Sandy on record.’ He has three copies of Fotheringay 2 to give away for the best entries.

My review appears in the November/December issue of Rock'n'Reel. Five stars - it deserves no less.

The surviving members of the band gathered at a launch party in Huddersfield. (Below l-r) Jerry Donahue, Pat Donaldson, Gerry Conway. Photo by Martin Hair (used with permission).

In preparation for an article I was writing on the background to the new album, Gerry Conway kindly agreed to answer my questions by email. Here are some of his replies (reproduced with his permission):

PW: Fotheringay 2 - how did you feel listening to and working on this material 37/38 years on?

GC: Because of the friendships that were formed all those years ago it felt perfectly natural to carry on working on the tracks. Our rapport with each other was just as good if not better for the passing of time.

PW: How much of what we hear on the second album was recorded anew?

GC: I replaced the drums on ‘Two Weeks Last Summer’ and added some percussion. I didn’t feel that I could live with the original. I thought it would be nice to add the harmony vocals that appear on different lines. For reasons unknown there wasn’t a drum track on ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ so that was added. We tried some harmony vocals but I thought Pat sounded best duetting with Sandy. I love what he did. ‘Bold Jack Donahue’ was extended at the end so I added some tom toms to match the ones at the front of the track.

PW: What was your impression of Sandy the first time you met her? Was that in your Eclection days?

GC: Yes I was with Eclection then. I thought Sandy was very shy and very humble when we first met. She and I got on very well and I enjoyed her company very much.

PW: Did songs like ‘Nothing More’ and ‘The Sea’ already come as demos from Sandy with fixed ideas of how they should be done, or were the ideas ‘worked up’ in the studio?

GC: Sandy’s songs were usually complete when she played them to us for the first time. Arrangements and parts were arrived at in an organic way. That is to say, songs were played over and over until they sounded good. Sandy never told us what to play but you knew instinctively when she was happy with what you were doing. We mostly rehearsed at Sandy and Trevor’s place in Fulham.

PW: Who was the bandleader? From the first album you’d guess it was Sandy, as she dominates the vocals and songwriting. But the second album, with Trevor’s contribution prominent, sounds more like the equal-parts democracy that she wanted the band to be.

GC: There wasn’t a band leader as such but for my part I felt that Sandy was the teacher and I was the pupil. Trevor was very ambitious for the band and often came up with grand ideas that didn’t fly but we had a lot of fun trying.

PW: Was the Albert Hall gig with Elton John really as scary as has been suggested?

GC: Not scary just a bit daft. Pat and I had been doing sessions with him and thought he was a great singer and player. We didn’t know anything about him and certainly didn’t know that he had a full scale rock and roll show. Not the perfect opener for Fotheringay but one for the grandchildren.

PW: Nick Drake toured briefly with you. Any memories?

GC: I don’t remember the tour unfortunately, only being in the studio with him once at Sound Techniques but I don’t think the tapes survived.

PW: The only archive film of Fotheringay is from German TV Beat Club. The band looks very relaxed. Do you remember that session?

GC: We would have been doing European dates at the time and probably dropped in to record it very quickly between gigs. When I first saw it I was shocked to see how young we all looked. It’s very nice to have though.

PW: The farewell gig in 1971 must have been emotional? I’d love to have heard Sandy’s take on ‘Let It Be’: was that solo at the piano?

GC: To be honest I’m not sure but we probably would have played along with her having found ‘ourselves in times of trouble’.

Troubadour anniversary tribute

2008-02-26T15:42:00.020Z

Onstage at the Troubadour, 1962: Ethan Signer, Martin Carthy, Richard Fariña, Bob Dylan, Eric von Schmidt. Photo by Alison Chapman McLean.

Onstage at the Troubadour, 2007: Beth Rowley, photo courtesy of http://www.stevelawson.net/

Sandy Denny: an anniversary tribute

On the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of her death, in one of the clubs where she made her name, a celebration of the legendary singer-songwriter in words and music.

News of an event I am co-organising at The Troubadour Club, London, on Sunday 20th April 2008: http://www.troubadour.co.uk/programme_view.php?view%5Btype%5D=programme&view%5Bid%5D=1488

With Linda Thompson, Joe Boyd, Martin Carthy, Linde Nijland, Lisa Knapp, Kamila Thompson, Karl Dallas and Vikki Clayton.

'Please take it off!'

2008-01-29T12:00:00.000Z

An amusing feature of the dear old Melody Maker was ‘Blind Date’. Hip cats were given a pile of the week’s new releases (or 'sounds') to listen to and asked to pass judgement, without being told what they were listening to. Sandy Denny submitted to this upmarket Juke Box Jury in February 1970. Johnny Cash and June Carter proved too much for her.

(Click on the picture to enlarge)

Fotheringay remembered

2007-05-29T15:17:00.005+01:00

Veronica Jill Broun Conway, former wife of Fotheringay drummer Gerry Conway, has written a memoir of her eventful life. Her book Peregrine – A Pilgrimage to a Holy Place is ‘the story of a war baby born into an upper-class Scottish family who went to London in 1970 and met some extraordinary people’. Jill has kindly offered me draft extracts from her book, which I reproduce here with thanks.

In 1970, sick of Scotland, I upped and went down to London with a fiver in my pocket. I crashed with my cousin Lizzie Egerton-Tatton, who was living with Roy Guest. Roy did not mind me joining his impromptu harem; in addition to his girl friend Barbara and her best friend Lizzie, a girl friend of Joe Boyd’s lived there. Roy loved girlies! He managed the singer-songwriter Al Stewart and the folk-rock group Fotheringay headed by Sandy Denny, who was voted Britain’s top girl singer in 1970. When I first clapped eyes on the band they were living together in a rented house in Chichester. My cousin Lizzie went down to visit them there and had a one-night stand with the aloof and sinister-looking drummer Gerry Conway, who was just the type of man I was attracted to. It wasn’t long before he made a play for me and asked me to live with him. We shacked up together in a bedsit in Hampstead.

The band often congregated at Roy’s flat for London gigs and my first impression was that they operated in a haze of marijuana smoke. Gerry often took me to Sandy and Trevor’s flat where we had evenings playing Monopoly or cards; they were all avid Monty Python fans, while consuming quantities of booze and pot. I tried it once but the mixture of Southern Comfort and pot made me sick. They were all good-time guys living life to the full. Often we went to the Rainbow or the Marquee and other venues to watch their contempories in concert: to see Long John Baldry, Gary Glitter, Marc Bolan. Late at night we went down the Speakeasy, the hangout of the pop stars, to watch a live band play, dance; and after a night smoking pot they got the incredible munchies and so we ate wonderful Speakeasy food at three o’clock in the morning.

In addition to being a very gifted bunch of musicians at the peak of their performing powers, those were the days of their lives; they were joyful, reckless, larger than life characters enjoying London in the great decade of the Seventies. As a mere mortal without a musical bone in my body I was somewhat overwhelmed by them all. Sandy was always the centre of attention. The affinity between them all was typical of the times of sexual emancipation; Gerry told me that he, Pat and Trevor had all had Sandy at different times and so in a sense there was a carnal intimacy between them all. That was not so unusual in those times. Sandy was a domineering little person who had them all wrapped around her little finger! All the guys were tall, the smallest was Jerry Donahue, who was a straight-looking American - the others were all flower-power people. Trevor Lucas was incredibly tall with long red hair and a voice like a foghorn. Pat Donaldson, also very tall and loud, was a beautiful man with long dark hair cascading down his back when I met him. Pat was an ex-public school boy who spoke with a put-on Cockney accent. Trevor was the Daddy of the group; Sandy, rotund, tiny, feisty and clever, was the mother.

Fotheringay gave their farewell concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in January 1971. For some reason I remember their manager Roy Guest (‘Guestie’) turning up in a red velvet suit. The final performance did not seem to be an unhappy affair but I think the end was caused by disharmony with their record company, perhaps a better financial deal awaiting Sandy. I was struck by the innovative musicality of their music - the perfect ease at which they operated as a unit in performance. Most of them had previously played together on the music scene for years. Gerry Conway, Jerry Donahue and Sandy were only 24 when Fotheringay folded and although they had all served apprenticeships with named bands since their teens they were blissfully unaware of what they were giving up - musicians playing that well together is a rare and precious chemistry, a gift given to few. They discarded a magic that could never be repeated or manufactured. It was an ill-judged move and one which Sandy regretted in time to come. She suffered abominable stage nerves and somehow her intimacy on a personal and musical level with the guys insulated her from falling apart while she was part of a band. At that stage she was far too highly strung and insecure to turn to solo performances. The second time I heard her performing as a solo artist she was in a terrible state. I was backstage for the second set of her performance and as soon as the curtain came down she fell off her piano stool and onto the floor under the grand piano, where she sat in a huddle, head buried on knees for at least an hour after the performance.

We once dined with her in a Covent Garden restaurant (possibly Joe Allen’s) and after the meal while we were taking coffee and liqueurs she suddenly broke into song and the crowd of other diners gradually became silent and you could have heard a pin drop while she sang. Without a microphone or the accoutrements of voice-enhancing technology Sandy’s marvellous voice had incredible resonance; her singing sent shivers up the spine. She sang a lovely ballad in that amazing voice to an awed hush and when she finished a huge cheer of applause from all the diners made her flush with pleasure.

The year of Sandy Denny’s death is jam packed with memories, almost too many to be more than a scrapbook in my head. Pages of flashbacks in Technicolor of events to be digested in retrospect in 2007. Sandy came to see us several times with her square-faced Airedale dog Watson, who had a sandy and white coat that looked as if it was permanently waved. She doted on the animal. Sandy loved Gerry Conway and she liked me and approved of me in Gerry’s life. By 1978 she dressed in beautiful expensive hippy clothes. She was small and curvy and charismatic and funny with her fabulous husky bell-like voice, equally resonant in conversation as in singing. She was socially adept, full of fun and laughter, and in everyday life there was no hint of the highly-strung intensity and the crippling stage nerves. But towards the end there were emotional outbursts and signs that her marriage was running into serious trouble. She ran away to London from rows, leaving Trevor alone with the baby at the cottage. Once we visited them there at the idyllic cream-painted brick cottage with hollyhocks growing round the front door. The ceilings were far too low for the guys, particularly Trevor Lucas! Sandy had superb taste; the cottage was painted cream throughout, the bland colour enhancing her beautiful pine furniture, collection of aspidistras, long-fringed satin Biba lampshades and Tiffany lamps which lit up dark corners with pools of jewel-like colour.

Towards the end Sandy came to Achilles Road to stay with us with nothing but the clothes on her back, on the run from Trevor. She was an emotional wreck, face mottled, tears streaming down her neck, inconsolable! Sandy had fought a battle with cocaine but alcoholism was leading her by the nose. She was drinking to anaesthetize her pain. I wish I had been more of a woman to her, more understanding and helpful in her hour of need, but all I could do was listen, comfort her by being an ear, and offering her a mattress on the floor of my baby’s bedroom for the night. I took my baby into our bed and in the early morning when I got up I looked in on Sandy and have this snapshot memory of her lying there asleep, dressed in exquisite black jersey underwear, her abundantly curly, cascading fair hair framing her face, looking absolutely beautiful.

Text © Veronica Jill Broun Conway 2007. All rights reserved. Photograph of the band © Linda Fitzgerald-Moore 1970.

Postscript, January 2010: I was saddened to learn, via her son Jerome, that Jill Broun passed away on 10 January 2010.

Postscript, January 2011: I didn’t include Jill’s account of Sandy’s last days, which has appeared elsewhere, as it differed from the Revised Standard Version of events. On 22 January 2011 The Guardian published a letter quoting a medical prof’s opinion that Sandy’s symptoms, as Jill (left) described them, were consistent with a diagnosis of Wernicke's encephalopathy: “a disease caused by vitamin (thiamine) deficiency, and easily treated by supplements, it is common in alcoholics and can also cause mid-brain bleeds.”

'Arctic City'

2007-04-14T14:12:00.000+01:00

Marc Brierley was a folk-singer active on the club scene in the 1960s who got to know Sandy Denny when she was starting out. On an EP he made for the Transatlantic label in 1966 he recorded his impressions of her in his song ‘Arctic City’:

She was a girl who left her home
To find the good times of the city.
She took her singing voice with her
To break the mysteries of London's night.
She took to her heart a thousand men
Who used her love and left her to the bright lights
And the arctic city's savage loneliness.

Marc left the music business in the ’seventies and is now a photographer. The reappearance of ‘Arctic City’ on a CD box set (Anthems in Eden) forty years later prompted him to recall those far-distant days:

In the shadows of memory it is the winter of ’65. In light no more than a single candle to warm our hands and bake our brew, I see three faces. One of them is Sandy. Teenage, friendly, rounded features, illuminated further by the sharp inhalation and the brighter glow. She was a girl who left her home; she took her singing voice with her. I catch the spark and let it fly. Mixing fiction with fact, I see a story unfold which could be her, it could be you. Am I the only shadow left to tell the tale?