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One More Chance

[Sandy Denny]

Sandy Denny’s song One More Chance was the standout of Fairport Convention’s 1975 abum Rising for the Moon: featuring a good tune, strong words, an unexpected mode change for the middle-8, an excellent guitar solo by Jerry Donahue and a piano solo by Sandy. Dave Mattacks plays drums on this song. It was recorded at Olympic Studios in spring 1975. Given the fact that Rising for the Moon was not a marvellous album, I cannot help but wonder whether there was a hidden message in putting this song last on the album; maybe Fairport were asking for “one more chance.”

  1. The original recording of One More Chance was reissued in 1986 on Sandy’s Who Knows Where the Time Goes box set and in 1999 on Fairport’s double CD compilation Meet On the Ledge: The Classic Years 1967-1975.
  2. The original demo of this song was recorded at home in Byfield in December 1974 and can be found on the 1995 fan club cassette Together Again - The Attic Tracks Vol. 4, on the 1996 The Attic Tracks CD and on the Sandy Denny anthologies No More Sad Refrains (2000) and A Boxful of Treasures (2004). The last album’s edit has a few seconds of chat before the song starts and at about 2:35 into the song.
  3. An earlier live recording with Fairport Convention at Ebbets Field, Denver, Colorado from May 1974 was released in 2002 on Before the Moon.
  4. Another Fairport Convention live recording probably from 31 October 1975 at Brunel University, Uxbridge is on the 2005 CD Who Knows? The Woodworm Archives Vol. 1.
  5. A live recording of this song from Sandy’s last concert can be found on the 1989 fan club cassette The Attic Tracks Vol. 3 and on Sandy’s 1998 album Gold Dust - Live at the Royalty.

Cover Versions

  1. Karen Matheson on her album The Dreaming Sea (1996),
  2. Keiko Walker on her album Both Sides Now (2004),
  3. The Sandy Denny Project on their album SDP Vol Two (2024)

Joan Armatrading’s One More Chance of 1986 is not a Sandy Denny cover but a completely different song with just the same name.

Lyrics

Sandy Denny sings One More Chance

Calling all olive branches and laid-off doves
There is work to do before we say good-bye.
But who can see them turning to the face of love?
Though I hear them pleading with me, “Don’t let us die,”
As I sit, I can see their troubled souls wander by,
And I feel them leaning on my shoulder to cry,
“Oh, oh one more chance.”

The naked tree of winter seems to stand so proud,
Lording the poor mortal as he goes.
And the tears which well beneath his sombre shroud,
Will they fall with the shame of somebody who knows
He can never be like the thought of a rose
Whose beauty remains even though the bloom goes?
“Oh, oh one more chance.”

Oh is it too late to change the way we’re bound to go?
Is it too late? Then surely one of us must know.

(repeat last verse)

Sorry, I can't show the lyrics here as I don't have the copyright owners' permission to publish them. But please feel free and ask me to send you the song's lyrics.