Sandy, Aurora Still Rising Behind You: Profile in Music #6

Our part two charts brief solo career of Sandy Denny, one of finest songwriters and singers to come out of the UK. With guest spots by Richard Thompson, Led Zep, Emmylou Harris, and Nina Simone.

Last month, I promised with my latest “Profile in Music” on Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny in their Fairport days that I would return to survey their careers after leaving that seminal group. So today here’s Sandy, although it, sadly, stretches only from 1970 (after “Who Knows Where the Time Goes”) to 1978 (with her passing), while Richard is still going strong. First, below, the usual cartoons. Also note: No weekend posting coming thanks to the holiday, so bookmark today’s post and come back and watch most of the videos, you’ll have four days. Enjoy, then subscribe—it’s still free.

Sandy Denny, 1970-1978

It was long suggested that Sandy Denny left Fairport because there wasn’t room for much of her songwriting amid the band’s turn to rocking traditional tunes (which she had helped spark). But as Richard Thompson points out in his current memoir, Beeswing, the truth was that she had started drinking too much and didn’t really want to tour and be away from new boyfriend (and future husband), Trevor Lucas. So they bounced her. There is evidence that both sides later regretted this terribly. But she did quickly form the fine group Fotheringay (the name of one of her early songs) with Lucas and featuring fine American guitarist Jerry Donahue. Here songs “John the Gun” and one about Richard Thompson, “Nothing More,” are spectacular.

Sandy had trained as a pianist but starting out in the folk clubs she naturally turned to guitar. Thompson admits that in Fairport no one knew about her keyboard prowess but after she left she began writing most of her songs on, and for, piano. In fact, many of her most stunning performances would be recorded as solo, one-take demos, and not heard by fans until long after her death. So there are a bunch of them below. Here’s “The Pond and the Stream,” about her friendship with elusive Brit folk heroine Annie Briggs.

Fotheringay did not break through commercially. Sandy, however, would be named in a key UK poll as best female singer two years running (the male picks were Robert Plant and Rod Stewart). Pressure grew for her to record solo, as the “singer-songwriter” music trend peaked. Her uneven first album under her own name in 1971, The North Star Grassman and the Ravens—which included “John the Gun”—got some help from Richard Thompson. Here’s the haunting title track, again live.

But around the same time she also recorded “The Battle of Evermore” (below) for Led Zeppeliln IV—their first and only guest vocalist ever. One might have expected this would bring her true stardom and riches but neither occurred. But still….

Her maiden solo album had only reached #31 on UK charts. High hopes remained for the followup, however, titled simply Sandy Denny, and again with Richard guesting. Here are four terrific songs, starting with “It’ll Take a Long Time.”

The song below simply slays me, a demo for “The Music Weaver,” with Fairport master Dave Swarbrick adding some atmospheric violin….

And another stunning vocal performance on Richard Farina’s “The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood,” again with Swarb on violin….

Yet another demo, below, a fine tale of gypsies and misfits, “It Suits Me Well”—her own composition but seemingly traditional….

But even though well-received by critics and most fans, this album also did not make a major sales impact, and the singer-songwriter trend was now fading. Her drinking and drug use increased, despite marriage to Lucas, and her resistance to wide touring did not abate. The record company did not know quite what to do with her. Still, she kept on, and her next album, Like an Old-Fashioned Waltz, opened with one of her finest songs, “Solo.”

Emmylou Harris, with the McGarrigles, would later cover the album’s title track…

Producers (including her husband) increasingly felt the need to add strings and orchestration to her piano-based songs to find a wider audience. Usually it didn’t work or help, with her most profound singing still on home demos at the piano—so don’t miss “No End,” below.

By 1975, Sandy was ready for a change—and to take her insecurities to the comfort of a group—and so she rejoined Fairport (Richard Thompson was long gone), for one album, Rising With the Moon. One heavily promoted tour of America was botched by the record company. As you may have guessed by now, there is almost no video of Sandy after 1971, but someone found about 60 seconds of her singing “White Dress” quite wonderfully on TV after re-joining Fairport and then added audio for the rest of the song. Not her greatest song but worth the watch.

And there was yet another sensational, gorgeous, demo, “What is True.”

In 1976, still declining in health and spirit, and marriage rocky—even her voice in decline due to drink and drugs—Sandy produced her final album, Rendezvous, searching to find an audience as the rock-pop terrain now was dominated by everything from disco to punk. The songs were mainly not great and the record company demanded a single, so she tried covering Elton’s “Candle in the Wind,” a mini-disaster. In 1977 she got it together for a short tour, and a live recording of her final full concert appeared much later. This dynamic “One More Chance” from that concert shows what she was still capable of. Don’t miss her vocal as she closes in the final minute or so.

So let’s end with this demo of her fabulous song, “All Our Days,” that appeared on her final album in a heavily-orchestrated version (a choir-only version was also recorded) but so much better here—sort of her “Four Seasons.” She would die in 1978 not long after hitting her head in a fall down stairs (nothing new for her). Sandy was 31. She left behind a daughter, Georgia, now an artist. This video of “All Our Days” focuses on a pilgrimage to her grave in Putney.

Bonus: Nina Simone covers “Who Knows Where the Time Goes,” live, and then Richard Thompson does the same not long ago with Glen Hansard.

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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), the current The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s wild atomic bomb movie), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. His new film, Atomic Cover-up, just had its world premiere and is drawing extraordinary acclaim. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.