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
9 comments:
Dear phillip recived your book 17-12-2011 many thanks so mutch better than ch book hope you will continue writing about sandy denny all best
Book received today (19.12.11) after much patient checking of Amazon updates, and skimmed already.
First impressions: excellent.
One tiny, tiny point of correction, but one which has, I think, some relevance to Sandy's later career. Her scondary school was not a grammar school, but Coombe County Secondary (i.e. "modern"). She was an exact contemporary of my cousin there. In those barbaric times, the difference between "Grammar" and "Secondary Modern" was really quite important, especially while her brother David went on to be head boy of KCS Wimbledon.
But, as I said, a tiny point.
Very much looking forward to reading the book in full, and escaping from the clutches of CH.
Oh yes: did you register Kate Rusby's release of WKWTTG in 08 - the BBC used it as a background in "Jam and Jerusalem"!
Thanks for your comments, Steve. I stand corrected. I described it a "grammar" because that's how she refers to it herself in the World Service interview of 1972, but I can see from the school website that it never was a grammar. (I'm long in the tooth enough to remember the life-changing difference between grammar schools and secondary moderns!)
I think Krusby's is one of the better cover versions, but I always come back to the original(s).
Interested by your choice of musical contemporaries in your book. Naturally it is your prerogative as author and you couldn’t possibly include everyone or you would end up writing an encyclopaedia! However I have been speculating in a “compare and contrast” way about the careers of other contemporary ladies of folk rock, especially the ones that are the great survivors and who crossed paths with Sandy. e.g. Maddy Prior (b Apr 1947), June Tabor (b Dec 1947) and Sonja Kristina (b Apr 1949). I would quite like to include Emmylou Harris (b Apr 1947) but that would probably be cheating! 1947 was obviously a very good year.
@Mark: as for 1947; how about Annie Haslam (june 8th, 1947)?
@Philip: got the book about a week ago. Maybe I will comment on the contents later.
For the time being: what's the idea behind the figurative fill in the text "Sandy Denny" on the cover? My first thoughts were it's some sort of Paisley motif. Which some people will find appropriate in connection to Sandy Denny.
Personally, I think it's terrible. There's already too much kitsch around where Sandy is concerned, and this adds to it, I'm afraid.
Philip, excellent book, I enjoyed it immensely and finished it in one sitting. Nursing a fractured foot helped there.
It's important to learn new things from one's reading; I learned a few new things from your book. For one thing you mention there's a video of an FC gig at Birmingham Uni 1973, which is quite exciting as I was at that gig! There's a bizarre story of getting 14 people into a Morris Minor on the way to the gig, but that's neither here nor there at the moment. An excellent gig, indeed. Another thing new to me is the - frightening - idea that SD is becoming a "gay icon". What on earth is going on there?
I was mostly interested in your reflections on the songs themselves and particularly about who some of the songs are (most likely) about. I thought "The Music Weaver" was about RT, too. Whilst on the subject of RT, you say that "John the Gun" is the one song he's performed since Sandy's death. He recorded "I'm a Dreamer" with Linda for the aborted "Shoot Out the Lights" album, and performed it live in concert and on the BBC programme "A Little Night Music". He also recorded a version of "It Suits Me Well" with a reformed Full House lineup of FC on Swarb's "Smiddyburn" album. Sorry to be pedantic.
Anyhow, I also agree about Ian MacDonald's excellent essay on Drake/Blake. I must go back and read it again. Once again, thanks for a very useful book.
Great book, Philip. Great writing and a great subject, of course!
Really enjoying the book which I received just a few days ago.
I'm sure you will have had this question answered by now but, just in case, I was at the 1970 Fotheringay concert in Manchester and, without doubt, the support was The Humblebums and not Nick Drake. It was the first time I'd seen the late, equally great, Gerry Rafferty. Wish I'd kept the programme.
@Steve Clarke. The new biography clears up the confusion about her schooling. Mick Houghton says that "Coombe was a radical, bilateral school taking grammar and non-grammar streams. Sandy was in one of the grammar streams".
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