‘Till moonlight shows no ripples on the waves.
Our lives will be so different from now on,
Each and every good time will be longer,
Full moon.”
The final three lines here, rewritten into something more poetical by the time album sessions came around, suggest a willingness to change, if only he would stay, or perhaps if only he would come back. Though the song seeks a romantic rekindling of first love, the despair underlying this very personal song is betrayed by an addenda to Sandy’s written draft: “Say you feel the [?same]/ Why do I feel I love you? … Maybe we will see another day/ I still want you back.”
The ebb and flow of Sandy’s relationship with her husband found a more even keel on another song written in those months, ‘Take Me Away’, a simple lyric of transcendence perfectly suited to that plaintive quality in Sandy’s voice. With none of the ambiguity of ‘Full Moon’, it suggested life without her man unthinkable, a sentiment also expressed in a long letter she wrote to Miranda on February 23, 1976, a couple of days after she had a wisdom tooth removed when, unable to run up her telephone bill nattering into the night, she took up her pen instead:
“Dear Miranda,
… I shall definitely be down on Wednesday night and if not then I was thinking perhaps after the extraction of stitches I might wend my way Barnes-ward. It would be so lovely to see you again. I really haven’t seen a soul for so long. It’s amazing when I think of it – quite the hermit in fact. Just me and my piano working on into the night … Congratulations on [finding] the Schaeffer pen and the fiver, and by the way I know just what it’s like to suddenly discover yourself totally indulging in reminiscences and waves of nostalgia as you uncover drawers and boxes full of the past. We have John Wood, you know, of the engineer’s breed, coming up to stay for a couple of days today. Trevor and he are proposing to discussing the ins and outs of my new album. For the first time, before a record has even been started I’m feeling so confident. I have as you know been writing a lot recently, and I keep reading through words and changing them all the time. It’s great for me to take the time to do that. It means that I’m not in such a panic when I do go into the studio and the end result will be more satisfactory to my ears, which I think is probably one of the most important things.
… Linda [Thompson] had a little boy on Friday. From what I can gather her labour was about 24 hours, which I suppose was fairly unpleasant, as she had it at home. Her mother rang me about it but unfortunately because Friday was the day I had my small op. I was well out of it. Trevor took the call and you know what men are like when it comes to relaying any kinds of details of that nature with any accuracy. You quite took me by surprise with your startling red pages but I must agree that a fountain pen is the basis of true enjoyment in handwriting. Whoever invented the biro ought to be etc. What happened with that Time Out escapade [a lonely hearts ad]? It sounds like it could be interesting. You know, although you have a tendency to self-mock, you can have some pretty bright ideas. Unless it’s never occured to you before, I would be in the same situation as you if I hadn’t bumped into Trev. I often think who would have me, or more likely, who would I have. It’s a situation to be fussy over, and there’s nothing wrong in thinking your standards are too high because I’d rather you stayed like that and eventually entered into a permanent relationship with which you are truly happy, but Miranda that doesn’t mean you can’t have a bit on the side. This is the age of women’s emancipation so to hell with stuffy antiquated reputations which stem from the ever responsible (sic) Victorian era! So there, chum! Capricorns are in for a good month and February sees the end of recent disasters, which I read in Vogue I think I told you. I for one welcome this as 1976 so far has been one major catastrophe for me, and if you feel the same perhaps we’re in for a good productive time ahead, and isn’t it just about due!!!! … Cheerio, Love from Miranda.” [Note: They both often signed each others’ names]
The chatterbox Sandy, captured here by pen and ink, illustrated a side of the mystery woman that her songs barely hinted at. The enthusiasm with which she writes about her new songs and her new album also show someone who felt there was a way back up the slippery slope down which she had recently slid. The good news that had reached Sandy shortly after leaving Fairport was that, though Island Records had now parted company with her old band, they wished her to resume the solo career their previous prevarications had prompted her to abandon. The opportunity to return to making music her way, and her way alone, now pushed her to write a batch of songs and record a further set of demos that laid the groundwork for what promised to be a major collection.
Trevor continued to crack the metaphorical whip, even though his own songwriting remained still-born. As Bruce Rowland observes, “Trevor could be pretty unkind at times, and used to castigate her for not having written anything. ‘That’s no good, that sounds like this one.’ … and [he] was still writing ‘Iron Lion’.” Sandy knew it was necessary, writing a brief note of thanks one morning to her absent taskmaster: “My dearest one, I hope you are well, I worked until five o’clock this morning just to make you realise I meant what I said about trying hard. I think it is the best song I have ever written, maybe because I feel as if I know all those feelings in the song.” The note precedes some stacatto images from the middle of the night, as inspiration proved fleeting and unwelcome thoughts about her husband’s whereabouts crowded in:
“It’s so late – it’s tomorrow
There’s nothing doing in my yard.
Early light – frosty covers
It’s that first day that’s so hard
The central heating pipes are banging
I keep thinking it’s the car
But if I keep up with my singing
I won’t be wondering where you are.
Oh don’t stop singing till you drop.
The only way you’re going to stop
is if a neighbour starts complaining.
And I won’t hear them any way
Write a book – sketch my home town
Don’t pick up the phone
It’s out of bounds
Shortage of sounds
strange to be alone.”
By the time John Wood arrived at Byfield to discuss Sandy’s musical direction and ideas for an album, at the end of February, she had half a dozen demos to play him, and was flowing with ideas. Her most recent song was another product of the night. It was also perhaps her most honest self-portrait-in-song, even if the first-person Sandy had transposed herself into the third person for the tune in question, originally entitled ‘Mystery Woman’, but issued as ‘Still Waters Run Deep’. The song later lost its introductory verse, in which she admits that “sorrow dwells beneath” her “witches hat,” before asserting independence from her public persona – whatever that might be:
“I’m mystery woman
so keep well away
I spell trouble to you
if you get in my way.
But how could you tell
it’s not like that
and sorrow dwells
beneath the witches hat.
How could you know me
You [who] never have spoken to me
Though you think you know me
Still river[s] still run deep.”
If the narrator lost her witches hat, she remained “all dressed in black.” The remainder of the autobiographical portrait was almost too revealing to sing straight:
She’s got a thorn in her side
A chip on her shoulder
Heartache to hide
A lot of people to scold her
But no-one comes near
It’s no place to be
They all live in fear
They might set her free.”
A new bridge also conspired to leave some surprising insights on view:
“The darkness grows
and the lady does not sleep
It’s so hard to lose
Now it’s
so hard to weep
While the river flows
Still waters still run deep.
The darkness was indeed growing, as was Sandy’s insomnia, prompting a rewrite of her little lyric about lost hope from the winter of 1975, so that it read: “Sleep/ Will I ever sleep?/ Oh, to sleep in peace once again, my love?” In an attempt to paint some colour into those “shadowed lanes,” Sandy wrote a song that looked forward to an evening when “we’ll be laughing/ just wait and see/ all the changes there’ll be”, ‘By The Time It Gets Dark’. Another attempt to inject some joy back into a relationship gone sour, the song was demoed on a 12-string at Byfield in the weeks leading upto sessions in April, along with ‘Take Away The Load’ and ‘I’m A Dreamer’. The former, donated to Dave Swarbrick, presumably prior to the album sessions (it was never cut in the studio), suggested that blame was a two-way street:
“You are the one I love,
You are the one I touch,
And it’s you who must not go
But it’s I who must try
Not to send you away.”
In fact, Swarb was privvy to most of the songs Sandy was now writing, desperate as she was for a kindly sir to share her worldly woes. Swarb remembers, “Sandy used to come round every day. Or I’d go over there. I knew her walk. I wouldn’t even look out the window, I’d just let the door open and let her in … [but] she didn’t look well.” A sounding-board for her new songs, Swarb was particularly struck by one that she hadn’t even demoed yet, obliquely named ‘One Way Donkey Ride’. Though the song seemed to have been written from the viewpoint of someone standing at the crossroads between a new and an old relationship, “swaying in both directions … how do I make my selection?,” it is hard not to see some religious import in the narrator’s cry, “God bless the poor ones on that one way donkey ride,” nor some messianic subtext in Sandy’s description of someone who “stand[s] in your splendour and jewels”:
“While we fumble in the darkness where once there was light,
Roaming the land of the ancients,
Oasis of love, sweet water of life,
God bless the poor ones whose patience never died…”
Sandy’s own capacity for suffering had assumed its own messianic tinge by now. Again, her notebooks caught her writing to herself in mock approbation:
“Sandy – why should you be unhappy?
Why be offended? Why get drunk?
Take away the brain, and substitute misery and sheer suffering torture
and you probably would accept it as your due.”
As someone for whom religious allusion had rarely informed her bag of imagery, even something as ambiguous as ‘One Way Donkey Ride’ suggested some kind of choice on offer. Not that the messianic portrait in this song was unduly flattering. In fact, Sandy had only recently exposed herself to the teachings of one such false messiah, L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology.
Linda Thompson: She became a Scientologist for a very short while, and then she left. And they hounded her, sending her literature. You weren’t supposed to break out of Scientology … She went to have some ‘auditing’, and the guy who was doing the ‘auditing’ was a really attractive guy. It’s like two tin cans and [string] – [the] ‘electric impulses’ tell if you’re lying, if things are bothering you. So she just reached over and grabbed his crotch, and he got this enormous erection, and she said, “Well, what are your feelings about that, then?” … Anyway she became a Scientologist partly due to this guy, and then got very sick of it … [But] I know what getting embroiled with cult religions is like, so I can’t throw stones.
The vacuum Sandy felt in her life had only been exacerbated by the decision of Richard and Linda Thompson to become part of a Sufi commune, adopting the dictums of this Islamic* creed until it invaded every aspect of their lives. It would be unwise to underestimate her sense of loss. As late as April 1975, she had delighted in sharing the stage at Queen Elizabeth Hall with the pair of them on an impromptu encore of ‘When Will I Be Loved’ (after Sandy had mockingly requested ‘Meet on the Ledge’ from the audience and Linda had retorted, “Only if you come up here and sing it.”). Sandy’s embracing of Scientology may have been her way of asserting a dormant spirituality, it may have been simply another plea for understanding, but she was finding it hard to face up to her friends having their own lives to lead, their own paths to find.
Linda Thompson: That was very difficult because we’d become Muslims, and Richard became more distant than ever. If you were a Muslim, you weren’t supposed to be throwing your arms around the opposite sex, and Richard really took that to the max. I suppose I did, too. I think that was quite hurtful for her. It’s like when you’re an alcoholic, and you stop drinking, you have to give up your friends. We had to give up Sandy – and people like that. However misguided it was, we were trying to better ourselves/find a spiritual side, and we couldn’t hang around people who were sinking brandy and snorting coke.
That Sandy had successfully inoculated herself from her own bout of spiritual doubt is indicated by a brief piece of prose written into the same notebook as ‘All Our Days’. This prose parable is subjected to a number of rewrites until it arrives at the following, with Sandy presumably playing the part of Reynard the Fox:
“A religion is too much like wire netting on either side of The Path, which it reveres, and to which it adheres. But the bright and wily fox will always search and find escape [ … Any wily fox can find a hole in the wire netting …] It must be there. For perfection is so rare. And then how different the aspect of the path becomes from the wide and boundless space without.”
So much for Scientology. Trevor’s reaction to the news of her swift conversion may have also persuaded her to recant – he apparently almost destroyed one of their ‘centres’ in an uncharacteristic fit of fury. The thought that Sandy’s ‘conversion’ was a cry from a lonely woman, hurting from the heart, seems to have eluded Trevor, who blithely continued a series of affairs, most notably with singer Jackie Byford, the ex-wife of guitarist Andy Roberts, prompting a whole series of entries in those last few notebooks, suggesting that the open relationship they had allowed their marriage to become was shredding their vows one by one. In one outburst, Sandy had simply written: “No Deal/I won’t write a song about the one I love/ even if he is a shitbag/I can’t r[h]yme when I’m upset.” The churlish tone hid a real, and almost constant, pain, which was only rarely allowed to spill over into song.
Preceding this note in the notebook is a lyric, ‘Makes Me Think Of You’, seemingly the song that Sandy described to Trevor in another note as “the best song I have ever written,” though it is hardly that. It seems rather to be an example of “keep[ing] up with my singing/ [so] I won’t be wondering where you are.” Demoed at some point between February and April, though with the key line “before you fell in love with her” rewritten as “before you went with her,” ‘Makes Me Think Of You’ is one of Sandy’s most personal examinations of her increasingly strained relations with her husband, the false optimism of ‘Full Moon’ and ‘Take Me Away’ having been replaced by an all too real regret:
“No use knocking at my door
I don’t think I live here anymore
[I live in the past you see]
I think of the need to be by you
I think of the last time you were here
Before you went with her.
All my letters lay unopened
Along with calling cards and tokens
I cannot read you see
I only need to be with you now
If I could only move somehow.
The albums strewn without their clothes
Gather dust amongst the grooves
The only one I play is Blue
It makes me think of you.”
The song would remain unreleased, indeed unrecorded save in demo form, perhaps because, as Sandy put it to Patrick Humphries a year later, “I adore Joni Mitchell but I do think she went around wearing her
heart on her sleeve [on albums like Blue]. I adore listening to those songs but I wouldn’t like it to be me whose painting it around for everyone to know. The last thing I’d want everyone to know is my business.” As it is, when her own pain obliterated all sense of self, Sandy would simply stop writing.
The notebooks suggest that Sandy had a lot to hide from unknowing eyes, as instances when Trevor “went with her” became increasingly common. Though the official line was that Trevor was in London producing, very little product resulted from the tracts of time he spent away. Sandy herself was preparing herself for the worst:
“It’s all very sad, and I won’t stand there in the wings
And wait for the tragedy I know the last act brings …
It’s goodbye now for the very first time
It’s hard to force a tear when you are numb.
It’s hard to squeeze our lifetime into a simple r[h]yme
Where is the laughter now, where is the sun? …”
Even now, though, Sandy couldn’t resist jotting another note to “my darling Trevor,” insisting that, “I never write to you. I wish I was like you, and was with you always. Sometimes I feel that I am so far away from you …” The precise, generous arcs of her earlier penmanship have now given way to jagged edges and fierce angular lines, the after-effects of one too many.
With her anchor coming away, Sandy felt the need for some tender, loving care of her own. The 1976 notebooks are as riddled with references to a.n.other as to “darling Trevor.” Whether Sandy’s own affair/s began as retaliatory gestures, or were a unilateral recognition of Trevor’s inability to plug this well of sorrow into which he had sunk so much of his energies, is impossible to say at this distance. Miranda Ward insists that, “Sandy twice turned up on my doorstep in an absolute state. One time she’d gone round to Philippa’s, Philippa wouldn’t let her in, she got in and found Trevor in bed with somebody.” Philippa herself paints a quite different portrait of the decaying relationship.
No More Sad Refrains: The Life and Times of Sandy Denny Page 25
