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An Interview With Sandy Denny

Hokey Pokey #11, April 1988

Sandy Denny's piece of 1972 seems fairly well mapped out already. This week, she starts rehearsing with her band (almost the same people as were on the road with her last time, but with one - as yet unannounced - change) before going to the States for four weeks at the end of January. After that, she comes back to record her next album, then there's a British concert tour, and then back to the States for a concert tour.

But before all that starts, she wants to get the new album written, so that this time around she and the band will know the songs and the best way to do them, and will have played them live a lot before they go into the studio. She feels the lack of that sort of preparation spoilt her last album, but then again: “I know this sounds awful, but I do work best under pressure, like an album coming up or having to get material together for going on the road. I usually do most of my work almost seconds before the act is supposed to take place, but I must try to regulate it a bit more.”

Confident

As she sits at the foot of a giant Christmas tree in her flat, talking cheerfully and candidly about both past and future, you get the impression of an unpredictable but strong willed woman, vulnerable in some ways, and aware of her failings, but not in an apologetic way. She's confident, too, and purposeful. In a period of calm before the activity begins again, Sandy Denny is gathering her energies.

“Everyone knows what their faults are.” she says, “but how often do you sit down and think 'I know I've got these faults and I'm really going to do something about them'? It's so difficult, isn't it? People say that if you know your faults you're halfway to getting better, but the other half is really difficult to get across. But then, when could you ever own up to yourself and say 'I am all right'? I just want to continue the way I'm going and get a bit better - I know I do get a bit better every time in some says; I know my voice has changed a lot, and my way of singing too.”

Forgot

And so, over the years, have her ideas and music - both writing and singing. “I used to think when I was a lot younger that just a beautiful voice was all you needed, but I realise now that that isn't particularly where it's at. It's just the instrument - like you can have a beautiful sounding Martin guitar, but will not know how to play it - and that's what I mean about a voice. At one point I was so hung up on producing a beautiful sound that I forgot what singing was really all about. The whole point of singing is to tell the story of the song - what's the point of singing words if they don't mean anything?

“It's taken me a long time, trying to do the right thing. On every album I've made, there are things I cringe at - they might be in tune, but it wasn't what I was trying to do.”

Her approach to songwriting is changing too, and she wants to write in a much more direct way: “Everything's so metaphorical now, especially my own songwriting - it's a bit evasive, to say the least. But it's very difficult for me because I'm an evasive person, I never really want people to know exactly what I'm thinking.

“I sit down to write, and I say 'OK, I'm going to write some jolly little songs with none of that doomy quality about them, and as soon as I get my fingers to the keyboard, or pen to paper, out they come in their thousands - doomy, metaphorical phrases, minor keys, weird chords - and I can't do a thing about it. Two of the songs I've just written are a bit less like that, thank Christ, and once I've given them to the band to kick around for a week or two I think they'll have a little more life in them.”

These days, Sandy's more or less on her own - gathering other musicians around her for tours and recording, but not any more belonging to a group. “I do think it's a good idea to do that.” she says, “but also in a lot of ways I'd like to keep the same musicians together. It takes a long time to get the ones you want, and when you have to get a band together for a tour or something you have to do it, regardless of who you can't get.”

The problems with having a regular group are often far removed from music. Take Fotheringay for instance: “Musically we'd developed so much because we knew each other so well, and it was all really beginning to fall into place, but we had so many hang-ups in the business, like management, very strange things going on, and eventually we just broke up. It was a political break up really. It's only now, after all this time, that I've realised how stupid it all was. That's quite an admission really - it was so numbing at the time that I didn't really think about it for ages afterwards.”

Apart from when she was with Fotheringay, one of her most constant musical companions has been Richard Thompson. Did she miss him a lot when she was with the group? “Yes. Nothing against Jerry Donahue, but I'm really spoilt for Richard's guitar playing. Jerry is a completely different player, and I admire him equally in his own right, but Richard plays all kinds of different things, and he's very lyrical. He always anticipates something, and is nearly always right. That's a very rare quality. I like playing with Richard because … well because I think he's the best guitar player in the country.”

Clubs

Had they ever considered writing together? “No, we don't speak to each other very much. I mean, we spend a lot of time in each other's company, but we don't talk all that much - I have talked to him a lot from time to time, but it's not a regular occurrence. When we put things together on stage we talk about them, obviously, but we never actually write songs together.”

Since the early days of Fairport, Sandy's been doing concert rather than club gigs, but on the first American visit this year she's playing clubs like the Bitter End, the Troubadour, and the Main Point. She's also thinking about doing some English clubs, Cousins for instance, just on her own. She said that doing concerts was probably more satisfying than clubs when they went well, but that if they went badly they were far worse because it was so much more difficult to reach people.

She admits to stage fright: “I'm always terribly nervous before I go on, but I usually feel a calm come over me about halfway through the first song.” Then it's OK.