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

by Clinton Heylin

  Dave Pegg: She’d never got the right dress on for the gig. Two minutes before you’re going on she’s going through this performance, “I can’t possibly wear that.” It’s like when you’re going out for dinner, except this is every night of the week and you’re going on the stage, and you can’t say, “No. It doesn’t suit you, that.” Then it’s all over. And she would throw big wobblers. She was as good as any of the guys, if not better. If she was going to be stroppy, she was gonna be stroppy.

  As Trevor started to distance himself from the great love of his life, he seems to have begun to see Sandy’s own liasons as a form of temporary relief. Sandy had clearly forgotten her previous pronouncement that, “no way could I get into entertaining myself in that way, it’s just not part of the way I feel,” or the wisdom of her conclusion – “it only messes you up anyway.” Some of the lyrics she would pen, after coming off the road, indicate how much she was now investing emotionally in her ‘other men’:

  “I drink of the moment you nervously kissed me and ran away.

  A night in New York, you stayed with me when I was lonely.

  So wildly I hear the heart beating whenever I see you there

  But the distance grows wider and now all ties are broken.

  Love is so strange, but it has to be love that I had for you.

  Stage frlight and thoughts of you stir up the butterflies, just those two.”

  Sandy’s use of drink was not confined to mere metaphor. Always a prodigious drinker, she had (re)joined a band for whom alcohol was the first, last and often only refuge from the tedium of the road, and the apathy of away-from-home audiences. The Traffic tour, the previous fall, had only fueled the problem. The Fairport contingent had been able to imbibe almost around the clock, at the expense of some hard-drinking headliners. Chris Wood and/ or Jim Gordon would invariably set up their own optics of brandy, whisky, vodka and gin in their hotel rooms, until finally, and somewhat belatedly, Island brought in an accountant to supervise their spiralling ‘touring expenses’. When Al Stewart also shared a couple of bills with the six-piece Fairport, he was stunned by their rapacious consumption.

  Al Stewart: I did play a couple of shows with Fairport Convention [in 1974], one of which was at My Father’s Place on Long Island. I was partial to Bacardi & Coke, and I’d gone out to get a bottle of Bacardi, and [somehow] I didn’t buy a bottle, I bought half a gallon. I bought it back, and somehow we drank all of it that night. Extraordinary quantities of Bacardi were disappearing. I was in a state of shock. I’d never seen anyone drink that much Bacardi in a single session.

  Danny Thompson, relating his own alcoholism to Sandy’s, observed that this “was the kind of environment Sandy was in, she wouldn’t see that as being notorious or nasty or weird or blokish. She’d join in, and fall about laughing … When I was coming out of alcohol I refused to go to AA meetings, I found them very depressing, because some of the best times I’ve had have been drunk.” Sandy showed a similar disinclination to detach herself from her hard-drinking friends, one of the heaviest consumers being her own husband.

  Trevor’s controlled substance abuse, though, stood in such marked contrast to Sandy’s that he may not have realised how deep were her problems until the addiction began strangling the life out of her art. As Dave Pegg notes, “Trevor was an incredible party animal – you wouldn’t believe what he’d put inside his system. He should not have been standing up, and you’d see him nine o’clock the next morning and he’d be cooking himself like steak and eggs.” Philippa Clare also recalls how, “Trevor was the only person you could get a gram of cocaine for and … [he] would still have some three months later … None of us knew, though [about Sandy’s condition]. We didn’t understand what an alcoholic was, we just knew that some of our friends drank a lot and were a pain in their ass when they were drunk, and other people didn’t.”

  The introduction of Goodtime Charlie’s drug of choice, cocaine, into the equation, a sign of the times, only made Sandy push her constitution even further unto the brink. Charlie’s capacity for clearing the head, allowing the user to party last and longest – bound up as it was with that rush of wellbeing – had always given it a certain cachet among the chronically insecure. Sandy soon learnt to embrace it as a cure-all for the cripple inside.

  The American tour that September brought each of these problems to a head. Even though the Fairporters were required to stagger, sometimes literally, through a 24-date tour on their return to the U.K., the fiasco that was their final U.S. stint represented a distillation of all the disasters to have befallen this line-up to date. Their biggest mistake was recruiting Jo Lustig as their manager, despite many a horror story in folk circles regarding previous mismanagements.

  As Jerry Donahue remembers it, “we did … a tour of the States where we had half of the promoters pulling out, apparently because Jo hadn’t secured signatures to all the gig contracts. We ended up over there on a tour with a load of unconfirmed dates. We just didn’t know what was going on, and we lost a lot of money over it. It wasn’t our fault, it wasn’t our department. We’d left everything up to Jo … it was a king-size mistake and we didn’t end our relationship with him on the best of terms.” David Denny, as the new road manager, was also left high and dry by Lustig, and Bruce Rowland remembers, “many a time I had to hold David against the wall and say, Look here.” David’s duties inevitably included becoming an underpaid apologist for his sister’s behaviour.

  Dave Swarbrick: [David] was always a couple of steps behind her. He was quick, but he wasn’t driving the same car she was. “Oh, Sandy!” you heard that a few times.

  Lustig proved equally inept when it came to arranging press interviews, even though, in Pegg’s words, “Island Records really had a go. They spent a lot of money, in America especially. There were billboards up on Sunset Boulevard for Rising for the Moon, and … we lounged around [in America] for the first week doing nothing, ‘cause Jo Lustig said, “Oh, you’ll be doing like press and interviews for the first week.” But there was nothing. There you are in Los Angeles for a week with nothing to do. By the time the first gig came around … we could have been on the road for three months.”

  As for the tour itself, Dave Swarbrick’s description remains the most vivid, “We travelled all over the coldest part of America, for months [sic]. I sat staring out the window of this car, looking at the aerial, which was encased in a solid block of ice. We did gig after soddin’ gig after soddin’ gig, got back to England, and I got four-pence. I wanted to chew out [Lustig’s] jugular vein.” By the time they got to New York for their final shows before Britain beckoned, Swarbrick was not alone in wanting to chew somebody out. Sandy, in classic Denny fashion, decided to pick the biggest target she could for her pent-up wrath.

  Dave Pegg: I’ve seen her do some incredible things … Once we were in New York and we’d been playing some dates with Renaissance. We did six dates with them in Ohio, and they were supporting us – not that the Fairport ever bothered if you go on first, you’re in the hotel bar earlier, that was our philosophy – then we got to New York and I get the Village Voice and I look for the ad … and it’s like RENAISSANCE! With the New York Symphony Orchestra, and then underneath it was like ‘with Fairport Convention’. David Denny was the tour manager. He said, “I forgot to tell you about this but they’re recording this Renaissance gig with the orchestra for a live album. We’re only doing forty-five minutes.” … We get there at 5.30 [for the soundcheck]. Of course, it’s mayhem. They can’t hear the bloody violins. Sandy’s like hanging around. But there’s a grand piano. Trevor’s got like eight Ovation guitars which have all got to be tuned up, to save him putting a capo on. We eventually get a soundcheck, for about fifteen–twenty minutes, then we’ve got to get off. Sandy insists on going back to the hotel [to shower]. You can’t get a cab. It’s ten blocks. Just time for a shower. Twenty-five to eight, Sandy comes down, her hair’s soaking wet, she’s not happy, not happy at all, and now we’ve got to leg it the te
n blocks to get to the gig. We go round the back, great big black security guy on the door. We go, “We’re the Fairport.” “I need your passes.” “We haven’t got any passes.” “You’re not coming in.” David Denny’s like, “I’ll go in and get the promoter.” Sandy’s like, “Fuck you.” She gets her handbag and she just hits the guy across the head with her handbag, just physically starts hitting him across the head, and we’re [going,] “Sandy, Sandy …” But she wasn’t having it.

  The English shows helped to revive spirits somewhat, simply because Fairport were playing as headliners, to people pleased to see them. Though the album was already heading for the cut-out bins, the band pushed themselves to remind paying punters of their pedigree. However, it was clear that Island’s injection of cash was one last roll of the dice, not an ongoing commitment. As Pegg recalls, “We just thought, ‘That’s it. Nobody’s gonna do this kinda promo job on us again. We’ve failed.’ We kind of got an inkling, before this all started, that this was possibly going to be the case.”

  Life after Island was a prospect the Fotheringay half of Fairport preferred not to contemplate. After the tour, Jerry Donahue flew back to the States, where he was domiciled. He had already announced that he wanted out, “I just finally felt that no matter what we tried to do, there was always something that would go wrong … [and] musically, I wasn’t enjoying things as much. I really missed Dave Mattacks.” As Sandy later told Karl Dallas, “When [Jerry] decided to leave, Trevor and I had a discussion about [the situation] – it seemed so endless, recruiting new members into the band and teaching them the old stuff.” Admitting in 1977 that rejoining, “was a mistake, but … my marriage is quite important to me, and I hardly ever saw Trevor,” Sandy also acknowledged that there had been “a lot of musical conflicts. Swarb is an entity of his own, and we’re both strong personalities … I’m not saying we didn’t get on, but we did have our moments.”

  Though they would remain the best of friends, and Swarb would be among the first to hear the new material she now set about writing, a band featuring both Sandy Denny and Dave Swarbrick in 1974–75 was never going to work. Swarbrick remained devoted to the folk world that Sandy had spent her years away trying to transcend. Attempting to take the 1970 Fairport where her and Richard’s songwriting seemed to lead would have been a task unto itself, but the weary warhorse that was Fairport ‘75 was just as two-headed, and twice as lumbering. The English ‘folk-rock moment’ had come and gone, its demise passing the Fairport family by even as they presided over its wake.

  AN INTERLUDE WITH WATSON

  – Sandy Denny, ca. 1976

  One Thursday afternoon Watson was taking a nap under the grand piano.

  He has been fond of sleeping underneath things ever since he was a puppy, and of course when he was a puppy he was quite small. In those days it was a job to find him sometimes. We’d look under the chairs, the sofa and the beds. His favourite place was most often our double bed, but as Watson grew bigger and bigger–as Airedale terriers inevitably do–we would often have to lift up the bed and rescue a flattened and confused Watson from beneath.

  Watson is not terribly clever, but eventually even he realised that the discomfiture incurred by being sandwiched between the furniture and the floor, for the sake of finding a bit of peace and quiet, was not worth the loss of dignity involved in the rescue operation. Watson valued his dignity very highly. So gradually he was resigned to abandon his by now famous disappearing act (not without a certain amount of reluctance) and settled for behind chairs, on top of current newspapers (preferably when they were being read) or diagonally stretching across our bed, thus making it impossible to get in ourselves without disgruntling Watson somewhat and presenting him with the perfect excuse for demonstrating bad vibes and disapproval at us both before finally getting down and stalking off to lie behind the curtains. Very melodramatic is our Watson, though I’m sure he believes he performs these scenes in a most convincing manner.

  Thus when I bought my Steinway Grand Piano, which I cover with a beautiful piano shawl, Watson was thrilled to pieces. I could tell this was so only because I’ve known Watson some seven years now and one gets to recognise his peccadilloes.

  Anyway, there he was on this Thursday, lying comfortably under the piano, gazing dreamily through the long fringe of the piano shawl. “Very comfortable I feel,” thought Watson and sef-indulgently stretched out his legs absolutely straight, right down to the very tips of his paws, then relaxed them back into their normal hinged position and completed this exercise with a groan of pleasure.

  “Mm-Hmm” said Watson and licked his lips before resuming his afternoon nap. He always kept one ear cocked in order never to miss the Parish Magazine being pushed through the letter box. Watson and the Parish Magazine (amongst other postal deliveries) were mortal enemies, and he was unsurpassed as “Annihilator of the Printed Peril” whose method of breaking and entering the house never varied. “Huh,” thought Watson, “always through the letter box! No imagination. It’s always a pushover.”

  “As a matter of fact,” he reflected complacently, “I might not even bother today – unless of course it’s the ‘Banbury Cake’. Yes, I like the ‘Banbury Cake’ – it’s most diverting. It tears up well and makes the most satisfactory ripping sounds, and besides it’s perfect for jumping and tossing loudly around the hall and front room afterwards.”

  13

  1976: DARK THE NIGHT

  Part of Sandy’s letter to Miranda.

  “I don’t want to write miserable songs. Do you know how I feel after I’ve written a miserable, sad song? Something that’s really hit me and hurt me? I feel terrible. I go and sit down, and I’m really upset by it. I always write on my own. It’s like a vicious circle, being on my own. I tend to think of sad things, and so I write songs that make me feel even sadder. I sit down and I write something, and it moves me to tears almost. I’m fed up with feeling like that.” [1977]

  Sandy Denny

  In much the same way as her fellow escapee from Fotheringport Con-fusion, Mr Thompson, Sandy had made songs of doom and gloom something of a trademark in the years since Liege and Lief. As she told a journalist back in January 1972, “I sit down to write, and I say, ‘OK, I’m going to write some jolly little songs, with none of that doomy quality about them’, and as soon as I get my fingers to the keyboard, or pen to paper, out they come in their thou-sands – doomy, metaphorical phrases, minor keys, weird chords.” Miranda Ward recalls how even some songs that “came out of joy, she’d actually hook onto sadness … she was [just] not the sort that was going to write ‘It’s A Beautiful Day Today’.” Yet, at times, she clearly wanted that side to come out, perhaps simply to show the world that such a person existed.

  Bambi Ballard: She told me once she was trying to write a song about just how she felt about her life, her house, Trevor, her dog, all of it, and she said, with that wonderful laugh she had, “Of course, it’d be terribly boring if I just talked about the house and the table and the kitchen and the dog. But that’s what I want to write about.” So she want[ed] to put the emotion that she had about these terribly mundane things [into song]. Sandy was always trying to express that comfort [at home] that one has, a sense of love.

  Of the handful of songs she was writing in her final months with Fairport, perhaps the most ambitious was one of those songs that chose to deal with “these terribly mundane things,” and tied them to the passing of the seasons. ‘All Our Days’ was clearly conceived as a centrepiece of work to come, much as ‘No End’ had channeled the material on Like An Old Fashioned Waltz towards itself. Written in an autumnal mood, ‘All Our Days’ conjured up a series of “memories for saving all our days,” devoting a verse each to winter, spring and autumn (summer having to share its verse with spring).

  ‘No More Sad Refrains’, as performed at the Albert Hall back in June 1975, seems to have also begun life as a declaration of intent. That sense of sadness it sought to expell, though, seemed to come from a pit of sorrow
somehow divorced from “any tragedies that were.” In the original draft, that pit occasionally opens up, as when Sandy celebrates the (female) morning and hopes that if she helps it “wash away the dust of yesterday,” that it “will take away the constant pain of …” (the source of this persistent agony is never given). In the finished song she seeks to “forget about you,” a surprising volley from the emotional battlefield that had become her marriage, and which now inspired bouts of self-examination, purging pangs of guilt and reconciliation, and fierce assertions of independence, often in the same song.

  Another song, written shortly after ‘No More Sad Refrains’, that sought to cast aside past miseries, focusing only on happy memories, from a present of uncertainty and infidelity, was ‘Full Moon’. Taking as its inspiration a night just “like the night when we first met,” the song is directed at the faithless second-person lover, insisting that “this is where I want to stay/ maybe it could always be this way.” The final verse as demoed – along with ‘No More Sad Refrains’, ‘All Our Days’, ‘Take Me Away’ and ‘Still Waters Run Deep’ – in the winter of 1976, at their home in Byfield, made it quite clear that Trevor was the subject of this plea:

  “Gentle music rock away the sadness in me,

  Rock away my lonely yesterdays,

  Like pennies on the ocean

  ‘Till no trace of them I see,