No More Sad Refrains: The Life and Times of Sandy Denny

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No More Sad Refrains: The Life and Times of Sandy Denny Page 30

by Clinton Heylin


  If everyone had been keeping their feelings in check until that point, as Miranda remembers, “the piper did everybody in.” The piper’s refrain seemed to leave some very open wounds visible. Karl Dallas remembers that, “Richard [Thompson] was wonderful, he comforted everyone, but … some of the things he said were a bit hard to take. He kept on saying, ‘We only had her on loan.’” Among the things Richard felt compelled to say was in response to something voiced by a grieving Dave Cousins, but was an undercurrent in many a mourner’s thoughts, “What a terrible thing to happen. All this music that she should have written.” Richard turned to him and replied, “No, she wasn’t destined to write any more music, she was destined to die when she died.”

  Though Linda considers this an example of, “Richard being ludicrously insensitive … I know he didn’t mean it,” Thompson does not remember there being any “hostility in the exchange with Dave Cousins … I do feel that life had gotten to be too much for Sandy to bear. Accident or not, I don’t know how she would have continued beyond that point.” He expanded on this belief, to Pam Winters, “Somehow she just couldn’t handle the world anymore. I just thought that in a sense, that was it, creatively, and in terms of her life – that it wasn’t the wrong time, that that was the way it was going to happen and there was nothing you could do about it … There wasn’t some great body of music that was going to come in the next twenty years.”

  If Richard’s exchange with Dave Cousins was without rancour, there were a fair few recriminations passing from mouth to mouth on the day. The most serious was between Edna Denny and Trevor, who was understandably beside himself with remorse. Neil Denny later said, “My wife asked if we could look after the child, and Trevor was very drunk,” but refused to elucidate on what was said. A third party, though, later heard from Trevor that he turned on Sandy’s parents and told them that he wasn’t going to allow them to do to Georgia what they had managed to do to her mother. Though there had never been any love lost between Trevor and Neil, this verbal volley, on top of whatever Miranda may have said to Sandy’s parents about Trevor’s act of desertion whilst they were staying at her flat, seems to have definitively alienated Trevor’s one remaining ally in the Denny family, Sandy’s brother, David.

  Philippa Clare: The parents were convinced it was Trevor’s fault. Whatever Miranda said, she even managed to turn David Denny against Trevor, who was a great friend of Trev’s, to the point when he went to the house, and David slammed the door in his face. That really did him in. The parents wouldn’t see him. When we arrived at the funeral, they just turned their backs.

  Not that Miranda herself was spared the family barbs. As insensitivity reigned, Edna’s one consoling thought to Sandy’s dear friend was, “You’ll have other close friends, but I’ve lost my only daughter. You’ll get over this, but I’ll live with this pain for the rest of my life.” As it is, if such pain can be measured in hours and minutes, Miranda’s was to prove the greater. Edna would be dead herself within a couple of years, ostensibly from cancer but as much the result of a broken heart, having outlived both her children (David would die in a driving accident in Colorado barely a year after his beloved sister). The nervous breakdown Miranda suffered upon Sandy’s death was only the beginning of a twenty-year stint of grieving for her best friend that merged the past and present in a number of disarming ways. The death of her ex-lover Lowell George in June 1979, from a heroin-induced heart attack, in Arlington, Virginia, only compounded her grief. Only now has the healing begun.

  For Trevor, there was never any question of rebuilding his life in Byfield. Even when he fell in love with the daughter of Philippa’s upstairs neighbours, Elizabeth Hurtt, part of his own healing process in the weeks after the funeral, he continued to plan his return to Australia. However, before he could take his new love to the land of his forefathers, and hopefully begin to live a life at least partially removed from Sandy’s spectral shadow, Trevor needed to decide whether to memorialise his wife and love of his life in stone. It was only now, during discussions with Philippa, that he learnt of an incident from the days when Sandy used to frequent the Troubadour, when life itself was up for grabs and the living was free, if not always easy.

  Philippa Clare: I said to Trevor, “I remember going past the Troubadour [to] the Old Brompton cemetery, being there very late one night, Sandy and I were wandering through. She was pissed as a parrot, something had upset her, so we were going for a walk, and I always remember her looking at this old gravestone, going, “Well, William [Whoever], we don’t know who the fuck he was, but there he is, he’s got this stone in the ground. Isn’t that great?”

  The inscription Trevor chose for Sandy’s headstone was simple enough:

  The Lady

  Alexandra Elene MacLean Lucas

  (Sandy Denny)

  6.1.47 – 21.4.78

  If he was in the mood to forgive, though not forget, such largesse did not extend to Sandy’s parents. Through his solicitor, he informed them that he would not be dealing with them directly, only through his legal counsel. Edna would only see her granddaughter one more time before she died; and what news continued to reach Neil in the eighteen years that remained of his solitary existence usually came through Elizabeth Hurtt’s London-based parents.

  Trevor and Elizabeth settled in Australia, where Georgia grew up alongside a half-brother Clancy. Even this line, though, could not escape further tragedy and, in February 1989, barely a week after an Australian journalist had called to interview him about his late wife for a retrospective piece in an Australian music magazine, Trevor was found by his daughter Georgia, dead from a heart-attack, just forty-five years old. And still, the line endures, albeit on the other side of the world. Georgia herself, Sandy’s “beautiful, most precious child,” now has twin daughters of her own. Sadly, neither has taken the name of MacLean.

  It would take a further two decades before some merging of the public and private Sandy was achieved in print. Jim Irvin’s commendable, richly-detailed piece in Mojo in June 1998 took the top layer off the private Sandy, all the while celebrating her work. Reconciling the two, though, still bedevils those who knew her best. Just about everyone I interviewed for this book, when asked what they most remembered about Sandy, came up with similar replies.

  Richard Thompson: I tend to forget the traumas and tragedies, and I just hear her laughing the most infectiously funny, unique Sandy laugh. I think most people who knew her would share the same memory.

  Ashley Hutchings: The abiding memory I have of Sandy is onstage, getting tangled up in her leads, fumbling her song introduction, giggling and then breaking out into singing and suddenly it’s a totally different being there onstage.

  Dave Swarbrick: She had a laugh that would just come out of nowhere. And there was nothing much ladylike about it … And she was sharp as a razorblade. If she wanted to get you, she could.

  That such a laugh could emerge out of such deep-rooted insecurities remains one of those inponderables. As Linda Fitzgerald-Moore observed, “When you listen to her voice you think, God, what did she have to be insecure about?” That Sandy became progressively more unhappy as she dealt with even the lower rungs of fame she reserved for herself is something many have commented on. John Renbourn, for whom Sandy will always be that young girl on the folk scene, recalls how he has “heard it said that she was hard to deal with, that she was loud, and that she drank too much. That’s not how I remember her at all. I remember her as warm and generous, and with a lovely infectious personality.”

  Sandy’s husband came to believe that the problem may have been that “she was incredibly sensitive … especially in regard to being a woman in rock & roll – and not one of the really glamorous women at that. The industry in those days … was an almost entirely chauvinist enviroment … And men are fortunate in that they just don’t come under that sort of pressure, they don’t have to deal with that kind of bullshit. But she did, and it depressed her.”

  Her background and persona
l history suggests that Sandy’s depressive cycles stemmed from something far more entrenched. It is there in her work for all to hear, from the very off, an empathy with all the generations of ‘knitters in the sun’ who articulated their sorrows in song.

  Danny Thompson: She had that same quality as Richard. When she wrote a song, you thought it was an old folk classic. The person you’re going out with, larking about with, [then] goes off and writes one of these great songs. You can lie about your image, but you can’t lie about your music, [not] if you’re sincere about it. [JI]

  If, as Shane Danielson asserts, “[Sandy] at her best is at once mournful and inspiring – not quite surrendering to her latent pessimism, [rather] infused by it, drawing strength from it,” the songs ultimately only document attempts to fill a chasm. Even when she felt good about them, she remained chronically insecure about performing them. It is no coincidence that her stage-fright visibly worsened as she began to fill her shows with songs from her own soul. Dave Pegg believes that, “She just didn’t know how good she was, really. She never thought she sang well, and she never thought much of her songs. We all loved them. She’d go, ‘Oh, you all love Joni Mitchell. She’s much better than me.’ We’d go, ‘No, Sandy. You’re as good as her.’ But [there was] this dreadful insecurity – about everything.”

  As it is, however much Sandy’s quest for perfection may have been responsible for a musical legacy richer and more varied than any contemporary female songster, her recorded output remains curiously unsatisfactory on a number of levels. As Richard Thompson wrote, in a brief tribute to Sandy in the Flypaper fanzine, “I’m not sure just how much of the real Sandy went onto record. I don’t think she was always at her best in the studio, and I’m not sure that her various producers and arrangers really did the best job for her – and I would number myself among this culpable crew.” John Wood shares Richard’s view, that, “she so seldom fulfilled her potential. Every record I worked on with her has great moments, but a lot of dips and troughs … [Yet] she was unique because she was such a great writer as well as a great singer.”

  The posthumous releases, whose number reflect an enduring appeal, have included a lavish four-album set that, for the vinyl era, was a remarkable gesture on Joe Boyd’s (and Island’s behalf), and continues to reward repeated listenings (certain caveats excepted); a superb single-CD of Sandy’s (largely solo) BBC sessions that show the effortless command of phrasing and pitch in that mid-twenties voice; an import-only collection that combines demos and a glimpse at an alternate final album; and a rejigged version of her final performance on a concert stage, that illustrates how even her diminishing light could sometimes outshine all comers. Each has divulged some of Sandy’s still unfathomed depths. And the solo albums and her Fairport and Fotheringay albums await imminent remastering (with the propect of bonus tracks), that may yet achieve the critical resurgence Sandy’s work so richly deserves.

  Of those who knew her music best, it perhaps devolves to Richard Thompson, the other pillar around which the English folk-rock sound was built and bolstered, to remind us of the Sandy who wrote a concise canon of songs compelling enough to survive all the vagaries of fashion posterity tends to bestow on the medium:

  “She never showed off for the sake of it, it was all to the service of the song. I’ve not heard a singer since with that much of a gift … She could incline to the obscure in her writing – personal or literary references which are not easy to decipher, and are hard to pin down emotionally … and for that reason is sometimes not engaging for the listener. But … some of my all time faves are Sandy songs – some of the best songs written since the war.”

  Ultimately, it is still by her songs that ye shall know her, and by that voice infused by a inner strength, “whose beauty remains/even when the bloom goes.” Listen, listen.

  Acknowledgements

  This weighty tome began in less than satisfactory circumstances. I was originally asked to give my opinion on a typescript of a Sandy Denny biography commissioned by a friend of mine for his small publishing-house, Helter Skelter. The work in question, by one Pam Winters, had much of the raw material for a biography, but was clearly not the finished article he had hoped for. I suggested he approached Ms. Winters with a view to turning over her numerous transcripts and raw research material to someone who might yet rewrite the ms. into something that might reach a general reading audience. Ms. Winters, for her own reasons, chose to decline, leaving me with the option of taking up the reins. Ever since I wrote a little monograph on Sandy, back in 1988, I had wanted to do a biography and finally the time seemed right.

  I took soundings to see if the various weary souls who had offered their thoughts to Ms. Winters, in the belief that this would result in THE biography, would again expose themselves to a biographer’s whim. The response was overwhelmingly affirmative, something I believe to be a tribute to Sandy, and Sandy alone. Though I quickly disregarded Ms. Winters’ perspective as a possible template for my own, her endeavours left at my disposal an outline of possible willing cohorts and I was gradually able to work my way through all the same major players, with perhaps two notable exceptions, childhood chum Winnie Whittaker, who eluded me, and engineer John Wood, who spurned my advances. I’d like to think I also rustled up a few souls of my own, including Philippa Clare, who had refused to talk to Ms. Winters, a refreshingly forthright Pete Townshend and an aged Judith Pieppe.

  So, may I thank each and every one of those first-hand sources: Bambi Ballard, Val Berry, Joe Boyd, Steve Brickell, Philippa Clare, Jon Cole, Gerry Conway, Gill Cooke, Karl Dallas, Jerry Donahue, Linda Fitzgerald-Moore, Geena Glazer, Ashley Hutchings, Colin Irwin, Bert Jansch, Mike Kellie, Peter Kennedy, Richard Lewis, Jacqui McShee, Dave Pegg, John Perry, Linda Peters, Judith Pieppe, Maddy Prior, John Renbourn, Bruce Rowland, David Sandison, Al Stewart, Dave Swarbrick, Richard Thompson, Pete Townshend, Miranda Ward and Heather Wood. If Philippa Clare, Miranda Ward and David Sandison took an especially active interest in this project, entrusting precious sets of tapes and photos to this biographer, I’d like to say every single one of the souls named above responded with great patience to all my enquiries.

  On a handful of occasions – and I mean a handful – I felt the quotes Ms. Winters obtained were superior to mine and, with the preemptive publication of her ms. on the ol’ www: I had a license to use the quotes best expressed in her interviews (it’s called fair usage). The readers will find these marked [PW]. Jim Irvin of Mojo, whose 1998 piece on Sandy remains essential reading for any concerned party, kindly turned over to me a transcript of his interview with John Wood, along with similar transcripts for Danny Thompson and the late Neil Denny (his quotes are marked [JI]); whilst Colin Davies, of Hokey Pokey fanzine fame, who was a constant source of practical advice, suggested avenues, phone numbers, memorabilia and photos, unquestioningly turned over transcripts of his own series of interviews with Pat Donaldson, Sandy’s father Neil, college classmate David Laskey, and Linda Thompson (his quotes are marked [CD]). Finally, the ever generous Patrick Humphries refrained from berating me for hanging onto transcripts of interviews he did with Simon Nicol, Dave Pegg and Ashley Hutchings – for his 1980 Fairport history, Meet On The Ledge – for over a decade, and gave me carte blanche to quote from them as well as his Richard Thompson biography, published by Virgin in 1996 (such quotes are marked [PH].

  I’d also like to thank those who proved as generous with research resources as the above were with their personal (re) collections. Colin Harper and Neville Judd were ever willing to provide input and, in Colin’s case, to even allow me a pre-publication perusal of his own mighty bio of Bert Jansch, due from Bloomsbury. David Thomas also came up with a number of names and numbers, via Colin Davies, for which mucho gratias. Ed Haber confirmed details of a number of American performances. Donna Frantz dug out her own interview with Sandy from December 1974 for KLRB. Malcolm Taylor at Cecil Sharp House was his ever helpful self; and Jon Storey did all that he could to gather together all the visual
material. Thanks also to Mod Lang’s Paul Bradshaw for his visual input, ditto Linda Fitzgerald-Moore. Especial thanks also go out to Universal’s Bill Levenson in New York, and Jane Hitchin and her staff in London, for all their help accessing the studio records that enabled me to piece together a reasonably exact chronology of Sandy’s studio activities. My editor, Sean Body, displayed remarkable forbearance throughout. And finally, but most importantly, my undying thanks to Elizabeth Hurtt-Lucas, for making Sandy’s personal papers available to me, to Shane Youl for interceding with Liz on my behalf, and to Elizabeth’s parents, Pam and Harry, for allowing me the environment and opportunity to notate to my heart’s content. I hope that you all feel the end-product repays such acts of faith.

  Clinton Heylin

  The publishers would like to give special thanks to: Miranda Ward for the index, and for much more besides, Donna Frantz, Robert Greenfield, Kingsley Abbott and especially Colin Davies, for help far beyond the call of duty.

  PICTURE CREDITS

 

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