| Sandy Denny |
"Listen
Listen" CD
|
| Background information |
| Birth name |
Alexandra Elene MacLean Denny |
| Born |
 6 January 1947 Wimbledon,
London, England |
| Died |
21 April 1978 (aged 31) |
| Genre(s) |
Folk, Electric
folk |
| Instrument(s) |
keyboards, guitar |
| Years active |
1967–1978 |
| Label(s) |
Island Records |
Associated
acts |
Fairport
Convention, The Strawbs, Fotheringay |
| Website |
sandydenny.co.uk |
Sandy Denny (6 January 1947 – 21 April 1978), born Alexandra Elene MacLean Denny,
was an English
singer
and songwriter.
She is best known for her involvement with the British folk rock
movement, including two spells as a member of Fairport
Convention, as well as her duet with Robert
Plant on Led Zeppelin's 4th album in
1971 - the song "The Battle of Evermore".
|
Contents
- 1 Childhood
- 2 Adolescence
- 3 Professional
career
- 4 Death
- 5 Tributes,
references
- 6 Discography
- 7 Books
- 8 External
links
|
Childhood
Denny, born at Nelson Hospital, Kingston Road, Merton
Park, studied classical piano as a child. Her Scottish grandmother was
a singer of traditional songs and at an early age, Denny showed an
interest in singing, despite the disapproval of her extremely strict
parents. After leaving school, she started training as a nurse at the Royal Brompton Hospital.
Adolescence
In 1965, she enrolled at the Kingston College of Art in
London, where she became involved in the folk club on campus. It was
there that she met fellow students John
Renbourn and Eric Clapton. She travelled
in to Earls
Court to play at the Troubadour club, where a member of The
Strawbs heard her. In 1967, she was invited to join the band, and
recorded one album with them in Denmark; the album includes an early
version of her best-known (and widely covered) song, "Who Knows Where the
Time Goes." Judy Collins recorded the song, helping
to bring Sandy Denny to attention. Denny also recorded her first solo
album in this period, featuring traditional songs and covers of folk
contemporaries including a boyfriend of this period, Jackson
C. Frank.
Professional career
In 1968, Denny became the lead vocalist for Fairport
Convention (replacing Judy Dyble), recording three albums with
them. Denny is credited with introducing Fairport Convention to the
traditional British folk repertoire, and is thus a key figure
in the development of British folk rock.
Denny left Fairport Convention in 1969,
just before the release of Liege & Lief
, to form her own band, Fotheringay, including her boyfriend, Australian
born Trevor
Lucas. She dissolved the group after one album to record solo albums,
with several members of Fairport Convention as guests. The
North Star Grassmen and the Ravens and Sandy
remain her most popular solo albums. In 1973, she married Lucas, and
returned to Fairport Convention for a world tour and another album, Rising
for the Moon, featuring several of her own
compositions.
During her solo period, Denny appeared in a brief cameo on Lou Reizner's version of The Who's
rock opera, Tommy,
and duetted memorably with Robert Plant on "The Battle of Evermore" from
Led Zeppelin's 1971 album 
(Led
Zeppelin IV). She was voted "Female singer of the year" by Melody
Maker in 1970 and 1971. Together with contemporaries including Richard
Thompson and Ashley Hutchings, she
participated in a one-off project called The Bunch,
recording a collection of rock standards.
She gained a devoted cult following, but remained deprecating
of her talent and unsure of her true direction. Some of her best-loved
recordings are interpretations of British traditional song. Denny
herself was unsure as to whether she wanted to continue in that vein
(in the manner of Steeleye Span and Maddy
Prior) or that of a singer-songwriter like Joni
Mitchell. She also had yearnings for success in the mass market, for
which her shy, unpredictable nature and insecurity about her looks were
ill-suited. Her solo albums feature efforts in all three directions,
gaining her a reputation for charming eclecticism rather than the star
power she and Lucas craved.
Her charisma and extraordinary alto voice were never in doubt.
Unfortunately, the stress of the Fairport Convention world tour in 1973
helped to make it apparent that Denny's heavy drinking and smoking were
damaging her voice, inclining her to put elaborate string arrangements
on her last two solo albums (Like an Old-Fashioned
Waltz and Rendezvous).
These heavily produced albums were not as well received by the critics.
Denny began to question her career goals in earnest and decided to turn
her attention to raising a family. At the same time, her substance
abuse became critical and her behavior, always erratic, became
sufficiently trying to alienate most of her fellow musicians, including
Trevor Lucas and her other colleagues in Fairport Convention.
Death
Sandy Denny died of a cerebral
haemorrhage on 21
April 1978
at the Atkinson Morley Hospital,
after falling down a flight of stairs. The exact circumstances of her
death are somewhat murky. Most likely, she fell at her parents' home
and the fatal haemorrhage occurred several weeks later. The confusion
occurred due to friends' efforts to protect the privacy of Denny's
family regarding the messy details of her life, specifically Denny's
long-term abuse of alcohol and her marital troubles (she was living
apart from Lucas and their daughter at the time of her death). Denny
was only 31.
The full story was finally told in Clinton Heylin's biography, No More Sad
Refrains. After her death, Trevor Lucas returned to Australia
with their daughter, Georgia. He died in 1989 of heart failure.
Sandy Denny's renown grew after her death and her songs have
been covered by many other artists. She is considered a founder of the
British folk rock movement and perhaps its most important female singer
and personality.
Tributes, references
Denny was namechecked in the printed lyric of the Spice
Girls song "The Lady is a Vamp" by accident. When the CD
booklet was printed, a line referring to Sandy and Danny (characters
from the film Grease) was misprinted as "Sandy Denny, summer love".
The Ocean Colour Scene's
song "She's Been Writing" (from the North Atlantic Drift
album) is about Sandy Denny.
Kate
Bush's song, "Blow Away (For Bill)" on her album Never
for Ever, mentions Sandy Denny. In this song Kate Bush ponders the
existence of an afterlife and recalls departed friends and musicians, Buddy
Holly and Marc Bolan are among the others
mentioned.
Denny is mentioned in a sketch in the Smith
& Jones show "One Night Stand" (released on VHS by Talkback
Productions Ltd., 1994).
Philip Lynott of Thin Lizzy
recorded a tribute for Sandy titled "A Tribute to Sandy Denny". The
instrumental version was played at his funeral in 1986.
A cover of "Who Knows Where the
Time Goes", sung by Nina Simone, is used in the film The Dancer Upstairs and a
Judy
Collins version of this song can be heard in the film A
Walk on the Moon.
Tim
Rogers mentions Sandy Denny in a song about turning twenty-eight on his
1999 album "What Rhymes with Cars and Girls." The lyric is "you dreamt
she sang like Sandy Denny and smoked like a malle tree."
The song "Did She Jump or Was She Pushed" from Richard and
Linda Thompson's album "Shoot Out the Lights" has been associated with
Sandy Denny's death, although Thompson has denied any such connection.
In the 2007 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, her song "Who Knows Where
the Time Goes" was voted Favourite Folk Track of All Time.
Her Song "Solo" was covered by Ex Marillion frontman "Fish" on
his album "Songs from the Mirror"
Discography
- The Original Sandy Denny (1967)
- Sandy Denny and the Strawbs (1968)
- All Our Own Work (1968)
- Fairport Convention: Heyday (1968-1969)
- Fairport Convention: What We Did on Our
Holidays (January 1969)
- Fairport Convention: Unhalfbricking
(July 1969)
- Fairport Convention: Liege
& Lief (December 1969)
- Fotheringay: Fotheringay
(June 1970)
- Sandy Denny (1970)
- The North Star Grassman and The Ravens
(September 1971)
- The Bunch: Rock On
(1972)
- Sandy
(September 1972)
- Like an Old Fashioned Waltz (June 1974)
- Fairport Live Convention (1974)
- Fairport Convention: Rising for the Moon
(1975)
- Rendezvous (May 1977)
- The BBC Sessions 1971-1973 (1997)
- Gold Dust--Live at the Royalty (May 1998)
- A Boxful of Treasures, a boxed set of
rare recordings released in 2004
She also appears on:
- "The Battle of Evermore" on Led Zeppelin's ,
where she sings a duet with Robert Plant;
- The stage version of the Who's Tommy performed with the
London Symphony Orchestra; Sandy plays the nurse and sings "It's A Boy"
- several live Fairport Convention albums;
- several Fairport Convention compilations (notably, The
History of Fairport Convention contains several recordings
which were released as solo works or with bands other than Fairport
Convention);
- several compilations and re-releases of her original albums.
- The song "Remember", on the Groove
Armada album Lovebox (2003), is
composed of Denny's vocals, sampled from her song "Autopsy"
(from Fairport Convention's Unhalfbricking album),
backed by The London Community
Gospel Choir.
Books
- (2005) Colin Harper, Trevor Hodgett, Irish Folk,
Trad & Blues: A Secret History. Cherry Red. ISBN 1-901447-40-5.
- (2002) Clinton Heylin, No More Sad
Refrains : The Life and Times of Sandy Denny. Helter
Skelter Publishing. ISBN
1-900924-35-8.
External links
