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Like An Old Fashioned Waltz

New Musical Express, 15 September 1973

WITH A new album two-thirds finished and an autumn tour in preparation, Sandy Denny has a day off from slaving over a hot 16-track and is receiving Press. It's High Noon, and here's a new, slimline Alexandra Elene MacLean pouring hot water over teabags in the kitchen of her Fulham flat.

Present is a huge boisterous Airedale called Watson. Absent: her man Trevor Lucas - also her record Producer - who's off in the West Country with Fairport.

It may be High Noon outside but heavy velvet drapes enclose the front room in gloom as we sit taking hits at mugs of tea. And I recall tales of her insisting on doing vocal overdubs (when she was in Fairport) alone in a pitch-black studio. “I just can't abide those -- lights staring at me”.

She's also pretty soured-off with the glare of publicity - which got unconfortably close when her Ecoute, Ecoute single, from her last LP, was selected as Tony Blackburn's Record Of The Week.

“I remember the feeling of panic - thinking ‘What on earth am I going to do if I get in the charts?’ I mean how could I go on Top Of The Pops? … oh I know there was Si Tu Dois Partir but that was just a joke. Anyway, the single got nowhere and the panic passed.

Sandy's infectious giggle is taking control, so thoughts are directed towards her upcoming album.

“Ah …” and her shapely forearms cross on her luxurious bosom in a self-hugging gesture of a girlish thrill - “It's pure romance - very Thirties - and the title is Like An Old Fashioned Waltz”.

Ye Gods, are we seeing the emergence of Sandy Denny as the Barbara Cartland of Softrock?

To discover more I am led next door to a nitty-gritty home sound workshop. Huge stereo speakers are slung from the ceilings on chains - obviously the handiwork of Trevor Lucas.

On to the tape deck goes a rough mix, and out floods Carnival - an exquite, sadsighing summer - into - autumn evening - dying Denny instant classic, with plenty of space left for instrumental joys to come.

Sandy's already created a dreamwash choral effect by multi-tracking herself and it all soars lusciously along over the solid, ex-Fotheringay funk squad.

Even as I lie back and enjoy it, I'm aware that it's gold from a familiar vein. So where's the Progress?

As if in answer to my unspoken thoughts Sandy spools on to the next track she wants to play me. It's the title track - Like An Old Fashioned Waltz, and that's just what it is. Roses are indeed red, and violets blue, especially when violins (arranged by Harry Robinson) - from behind garden walls.

And of course it's strong magic. IRA bomb scares, Watergate and inflation - we're in the middle of a depression, right? So we re-run the Hollywood Dream Factory on TV and feel better for a good cry.

In doing this Sandy has skated perilously close to the edge of the Fairy Ice-rink of Kitsch, but saved herself from a tacky death Vera Lynn-style by her sureness of touch and by the solid presence of a gospel piano that you could bite off in chunks.

If there's any justice, this track should break Sandy through - if only by it's sheer audacity. It's certainly a long way from all those romantically scruffy gipsies and tinkers …

While my head is still full of 5.000 yards of tulle, Sandy throws the switch for the showstopper. The long-stemmed roses turned into orchids and niterie-style jass piano from Ian Armitt sprinkles out a half-chorus of cocktail-lounge chords.

Diz Disley strums a swing 4/4 and … would you believe - the Fats Waller Thirties standard Until The Real Thing Comes Along? Our very own Girl Chum is singing a torch song to the manner born.

We repair once more to Sandy's front parlour. Photographer Joe Stevens has drawn a curtain back to let some light in for his pictures, and we see for the first time how the home-lovin' side of Miss Denny's nature comes through in every tasty detail the bead-fringed lamps, Morris - patterned sofa, glazed pottery plant-stand and shelves full of antique market knick-knax - not particularly tidy or flash; just a safe-looking place to keep head, body and spirit together in.

It's pretty easy to understand her reluctance to swap it for the anonymity of motels, motorway caffs, and bleak town-hall one-niters. But swap it she must to spread the good word and healing sounds.

The deal will certainly get better now that she is signed to MAM for agency. MAM are even now setting up a British tour for this autumn.

I ask how “relevant” she feels her song-lyrics can become - what with her sneaking of to the Starlite Lounge and all?

“I'm not clever enough to write directly engaged 'contemporary material.” she says cleverly. “You have to be so pertinent … and who could follow Dylan?”

In discussing Percy's Song - one of Sandy's best Dylan versions - I mention that the chorus seems to have been lifted from the final act of “Twelfth Night” - “Hey ho the wind and the rain”. And Sandy bounces up to the top bookshelf and lugs down a big volume of “Shakespeare's Complete Works”. Just to check.

See, she's thorough like that. Especially in her writing: “What I care most about in my songs is the craft side - getting the vowel sound just right. For instance - the way I sing the syllable ‘ing’ won't extend into a long note.”

Does this attention to detail help her communicate?

“I get letters saying that people find my work on disc ‘therapeutic’. One girl wrote to me from the States saying that listening to one of my albums had helped her to get over a bad period of acid tripping. Which is really quite something when you think about it. I mean - how ‘relevant’ can you get?”

The last few months of isolation have been crucial for Sandy - writing and preparing an album which has extended the limits of her ability. And she firmly believes that it's her best. She now has a new personal manager - her brother David, who has given up a career in Civil Engineering to protect his sister from crooks and heavies - and she's prepared if necessary to let stardom embrace her - on her terms.

No one is more aware than Sandy that most visible stars get burnt out by the time their light reaches the earth, but that the universe goes on for ever, and that work based on the most universal values has more chance of lasting.