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Sandy Denny: Sympathy for the Solo Artist

Rolling Stone, 21 June 1973, by Steve Moore

BERKELEY, Calif. “Look at that. She's got a rotten mike, hasn't she; everytime she puts something into it she has to lean away. Oh God, what a spot to play.” The singer was a young willowy blonde trying for the attention of a dozen or so early-evening customers in the cocktail gloom of a University Avenue motel. On the whole the wall interested in their drinks and each other's commercial woes than in the Lightfoot and Hardin songs.

But the singer had one friend, the listener who empathized with her task of trying to communicate with people who have not entirely come to hear her: Sandy Denny. At the end of each song she applauded, a single pair of hands.

For nearly two months Sandy Denny had been an opening act in the United States. She is, almost without question, the best known and liked female singer in England, both for her work with Fairport Convention and now by herself. Yet she is almost unknown in the US. The difference in pressure makes her ears pop. She's decidedly unsure of herself on these foreign shores; it is as if the monitors don't work: She can no longer hear the rich accuracy of her own voice, nor the dense-textured music which accompanies it. She has been performing alone, using only piano and guitar, travelling with her brother David and a friend.

“It got really bad a few days ago. I was ready to pitch the whole thing. If I come again, I definitely will bring a group. Definitely. Anyway, I'm getting a bit bored with my own musicianship, if the truth be known. You know, like, I've been working solidly since last August. I've gotten better as a pianist just through having played. At first, I couldn't play and sing at the same time. It took me a long time to learn to do it. It was so alien. I was trained to play classical pieces, and I simply could not coordinate the parts at first.”

If she is sensitive and cautious about her performance, she's not when it comes to be Sandy Denny off stage. She is expansive and expressive, touching and gesturing, making faces and laughing. At the restaurant where most of the conversation took place, the clatter, generally couched in the accents of Mother Empire, was forceful enough to draw the attention of the other tables and longwinded enough that the party made its escape through the kitchens, saying goodnight to the owner who was toting up the night's take in his cramped office.

Denny began singing alone and then joined the Strawbs for short while. They were not suited to each other and she made away to Fairport, replacing Judy Dyble. She left that a group different musical directions to form Fotheringay with Trevor Lucas, the courtly Australian who has since been her producer and is now performing with Fairport.

The Fotheringay period is one of which she is reluctant to speak. The band was named after a song of hers which was on the first Fairport album she was part of. It is about the last day of Mary, Queen of Scots, who was imprisoned in a castle called Fotheringay. It is a high figure of tragic romanticism with which she readily identifies, and, not without irony, an apt device to mark the history of the group. For reasons best known to him, according to Sandy, Joe Boyd, whose Witchseason Productions handled Fairport among others, apparently took exception to the existence of Fotheringay.

“They hated us at the office,” Sandy said. “They kept saying, ‘Look, you're not Fairport, you are not to the Incredibles [String Band], you're nobody.’ This person kept after me for more than a year. He would say that he had had this fabulous offer from Warner Brothers, but if I would just break up the group, he wouldn't take the job and would produce me. The thing was that Fotheringay was a fabulous band. We had just started on the second album when it got so I couldn't take it anymore. I said, ‘If it's that important to you, I'll do it.‘ I went to the group and said, ‘That's it. It's all over.’ It was shattering. The next day he took the Warner Brothers job.” Motivation is not clear in the matter but Sandy thinks Boyd disliked Fotheringay “because he hadn't done it; it wasn't exactly his little thing. He couldn't take that, I guess. Too bad”

(Boyd, hired as musical director for Warner Bros' film company he just completed word on the Jimi Hendrix film replied: “There's a certain amount of truth in what she said. I did pressure her into that breakup, and then I left to cope with the results of that breakup. When Sandy and Fairport Convention split up, I told her I felt she should go solo. She wanted to be a member of the group. When she formed Fotheringay, there's no question that I was less than enthusiastic. [Boyd, whose company was managing and producing Fotheringay, agreed to let the group find other management.] After I had accepted the job at Warners, I was working for another three months in England, and during that time we scheduled to do the second Fotheringay album. It wasn't going at all well. We had long emotional meetings; I told Sandy she should break up the group and be a solo artist. I always felt Fotheringay was a back-up group for Sandy, but she was always insecure about standing up on her own. During one of the meetings I said if she would break up the group I would think about staying on in London to produce her. The next day I told her I couldn't; that I had to go to LA, and she shouldn't base her decision on me. The amount of time spent under that rash commitment of mine was about 12 hours.

(“She's probably bitter about the whole series of events, but I forewarned her.”)

The group had completed one track, “Late November”, which became the first track on her first solo album, The North Star Grassman and the Ravens. In it, one can note a convergence of a few themes and events. The backing is Fotheringay and marks the end of that particular configuration, although individual members appear on other tracks as well. The last verse of the song refers to a dream she had. She was riding with Fotheringay in the same van which killed Fairport drummer Martin Lamble some time previously. Suddenly it broke down and resisted repair. Instead of waiting there she began to walk out through the fields until she came to the ocean. She went down the beach to a point of land which stuck out into the water. Somehow she got around it and came to a deserted beach on which were a number of strange shapes; on examination they turned out to be dried cows' intestines. She looked up and saw that there was a herd of cows some way off and coming towards her were several tall brown man. “This is a sacred place,” one said to her. “I'm sorry,” she answered. “I didn't know. I'll go.” “No, that's all right, we just wanted you to know it was sacred.” Then she began to walk again and saw that the sea was mercurial, flat and shiny and the sands were phosphorus.

Then, several months after the dream, she was coming back from St. Andrews in Scotland when she stopped to walk her Airedale, Watson. They went out to a beach which she realised, walking along, was the same one as was in the dream. A jet pilot suddenly came out of nowhere and began swooping down to the water and climbing back up. She watched him idly for while until she realised that it was not the dream and he was in some danger, flying so low. About the time that that became clear, the pilot disappeared. Whatever its total significance, it seems to be a pivotal song, beginning a solo career and solo album and ending a traumatic group experience.

But there is group work ahead. She has been asked to rejoin Fairport, and because she would like to work with the group and because several of the Fotheringay people are now with Fairport, she will do it, although probably not until later this year. She is now recording a third solo album in Los Angeles.

Denny has done a bit of session work, the most noteworthy being her performance in Tommy. She got that smile on her face and said, “I've got a gold record, you know,” waiting for the listener to tumble. “I worked all these years and nothing. I sing one line in Tommy and this guy calls up and says, ‘Can you come down to the presentation and pick up your gold record?’ ” She also sang on Led Zeppelin's “Battle of Evermore” on the nameless album. She met Robert Plant at a magazine pop poll winners function. “We started out soft but I was hoarse by the end, trying to keep up with him.”

Look at her. Opening to show for Loggins and Messina here at the Berkeley Community Theatre, 3500 seats filled twice with customers more interested in getting to the L&M moment than in listening to Denny's dreamweave songs. The first show went all right, the audience quiet and attentive as she soared, with only her piano and guitar. But the second audience could hardly wait through her to boogie; when the PA began to hum, they began shouting, and she thought they were shouting at her. In frustration, she cut her set short. She had said she would never give into such situations. “Once I start, there is this incredible tenacity that says, ‘OK, I'm out here and that's the end of it.’ I'd stay even if they started throwing beer cans.” But this set, she played only one song on guitar and walked off, headed to L.A.

What a spot to play.