#sandy saturdays

Sandy’s Song

My daughter is getting married today. There are no metaphors or words to describe the wonderful enormity of such an event.

I don’t know what music she and her fantastic partner have in mind for the day, but I suspect Adrianne Lenker, or maybe Simon & Garfunkel or Joni Mitchell are involved. They have good taste.

But here's what I've been humming all day.

Sandy Song exists only as a demo. Sure, Dave Swarbrick issued a deeply regrettable version on his late 70s solo record which had the Fairport label slapped on it at the last moment.

But Sandy’s Song is only worth experiencing by Sandy herself, alone at the piano. Listen as she pleads with, and devotes herself to, us, herself, and the spiritual and natural worlds we live in.

My daughter grew up with this song. I’d sing it as I walked her to sleep in my arms. 23 years later, I recognize that, even then, she was busy caring for me as much as the other way around.

The Battle of Evermore

Imagine pasting nonsensical references to a bare-chested manchild and his corpulently centaurian intentions into George Eliot's Middlemarch or painting that same dude as a hairy stick figure onto Botticelli's Rites of Spring.

Imagine freestyle rapping about penguins' priorities during a Prairewolf show. Imagine me and my tremendous bald spot photo bombing my goddess-like wife.

In other words, imagine being Robert Plant.

Sure, Page and Plant wrote today's sweet song in question: an odd-ball, mandolin-driven prequel to REM's Losing My Religion which relies upon Tolkien-driven imagery that any Nerd Club worth its salt will quickly take issue with. Um, excuse me, Mr. Plant sir? There seems to be an error within your belted lyrics. You see, when the Ringwraiths approach the castle city of Minas Tirith they do so on winged reptiles, not horses. Understood? Now, Forth Eorlingas!

Sure, Plant, Page, Bonhom and Whoever recorded everything for the song except the vocals before our stand-in for George Eliot, Botticelli, Prairewolf and my sainted wife - that would be Sandy Denny, of course - joined them in the studio to see what could be done with their so far mediocre track.

But show up she did. Let's revel for a moment in what Sandy helped Led Zeppelin accomplish.

Isn't the song fantastic? Plant fumes nicely and fondles his chest hair with at least a modicum of taste. Page churns away at a few dozen strings, summoning up a nice, ringing tone.

But it's Denny who holds the whole thing up, Atlas-like, upon her powerfully petite shoulders. Dance in the dark night, she commands us all at the get-go. Yes, ma'am! I was playing this thing really loud the other day and my 16 year old begged me to turn it the hell off: now that's a mark of greatness!

But then there's the song's last minute. Denny, after elevating everything to an entirely new and ethereal plane at the 3:20 mark - sing to the morning LIGHT - and after teaching Plant how to drone like a primordial being, was then seemingly ordered off stage altogether, leaving Plant room to scream, grunt and belch at us until it all finally ends.

Denny, lilliputian when beside him, surely shrugged about it all. So he wanted to scream about bringing it back, over and over again, without me, she thought. Big deal. .

But he just keeps... on... going... Bring it back, bring it back, bring it back. Bring it! Bring it!

The Optimist

Even Sandy Denny’s most obscure songs contain the seeds of her genius.

Consider The Optimist, a meandering and not fully realized track from 1971's The North Star Grassman and the Ravens. It’s not one of Sandy's classic tracks - the arrangement, despite Richard Thompson's stringed responses and Ian Whiteman's sympathetic keys, is a bit busy and dull at once, and the melody, unlike with so many of her songs, isn't one I regularly wake up already humming.

But, holy smokes, there's mystery and shimmering depth here all the same.

Who is the song's rambling wanderer, who may or may not be pursued by an assassin (and who may or may not know that that is the case)? Is it a good or bad thing that he comes close, but ultimately fails, to meet up with a "trapper"? And what are the lingering wishes he tosses down into a well in the midst of it all?

I don't know any of the answers here, nor can I imagine dwelling in the world in which all of this goes down rather than mine and your current world of 68 or more insistent emails a day, plenty of impractical budget work and patience with the cat, and I suspect Denny didn't either. But, I sure enjoy all her majestic, vivid and aloof wonder and the utter obscurity of her storytelling.

Sure, Sandy wasn't the only timeless songwriting storyteller at work at this point. Cohen, Simon, Kristofferson, Newbury, Mitchell, Drake and Young were also writing in complex and alluring fashion about something other than the lover they had, didn't have, or longed for.

But, unlike Sandy, every one of those artists consistently placed themselves, directly or suggestively, into the heart of their fantastic storytelling:

After all, that's Leonard himself trying to get his head around Susanne amidst the garbage and the flowers; that's Paul and his balding pate pensively flirting with his female physician; those are Mickey's and Kris's stoic and blundering stand-ins who forever let everyone around them down. Are you with me? Joni gets her windows washed by some dude singing White Christmas, Nick mocks himself in Poor Boy, and Neil personally greets every one of his travelers from space. Their songs are cosmic, and amazing, but the men - and Joni! - forever made themselves the subject.

Denny's track, however, contains zero Denny. She's not The Optimist's wanderer, or assassin, or trapper, or its anticipated flowers. Here, and in so many of her songs, she's solely and purely the storyteller: she honors the "other" alone, and not herself.

Yes, she was setting the stage for all the dense and selfless poetry ahead on records like Mitchell's The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Young's Freedom and Simon's The Rhythm of the Saints. But she was also, humbly and simply, looking back.

Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if Denny's Optimist is actually a personal riff on another, more ancient, rambler, Spencer the Rover. Like Denny's assassin dodger, Spencer is the central, cosmic and aloof, character in a traditional ballad that soon found new and perfect life in the hands of Sandy's contemporary and labelmate, John Martyn.

I'll Keep It With Mine

There are plenty of versions of this tricky Dylan song. Nico, Judy Collins and Dylan himself stumbled over it for years before everyone shelved it altogether.

Everyone, that is, except Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention.

The story starts in June of 64 when Dylan recorded Another Side of Bob Dylan in one rambling and probably pretty drunken night. Dylan did not attempt the song during the session, even though it was freshly written. Would the resulting record be better with I'll Keep It With Mine in place of the whiny, sophomoric Ballad in Plain D? Yes, totally.

But it's a tough song! Here's Dylan that same month trying to figure it out for copyright purposes. Suffice it to say that he does not figure it out.

6 months later, in January 65 (don't believe the date on the video below; I clearly know Dylan's timeline better than he does) he gave it another go, this time during the Bringing It All Back Home sessions. Bob was a far better musician and studio presence by that point and he lays down what is perhaps the song's most elegant take.

Most of us born in the 70's or 80's grew up with this version. Beloved copies of Biograph served as our introduction to all things Bob and this version of I'll Keep It With Mine is one of the collection's signature moments.

But no one in the 60's ever heard this version: Dylan recorded just this one take and then immediately abandoned the whole thing, jumping back into the far more manly, silly and obscure songs that actually make up the record.

At that point Dylan clearly felt done with the whole thing. I'll Keep It was either too complicated, too earnest or too melodic; probably all those things.

And so he tossed the song to Judy Collins, telling her it was meant for her anyway, and she immediately put out a fussy and almost good version that never merited space on one of her albums.

It's too bad Collins got her hands on the track in 65; a year earlier she would have slayed the thing by playing it solo acoustic; don't be fooled, Collins could totally play guitar.

But in 65 she was entering her pop arrangements phase, during which no one let her pay an instrument. You can hear the dumb men in the room undercutting her greatness here: everything is rushed and hummable, lacking depth.

Dylan's producer, Bob Johnson, clearly wasn't impressed with Collins' version because he tried to talk Bob back into the song a year later while they were making Blonde on Blonde. Listen to Johnson here, cajoling Dylan into playing the damn thing while perhaps the greatest assembly of studio musicians in white man musical history work out their parts.

Johnson was so sold on the song that he put the musicians to work on an entirely new arrangement soon thereafter while Bob was momentarily missing in action (he was either writing Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands at that exact moment, taking uppers and/or downers, or recovering from just having done all of those things).

Wow, don't you wish Dylan had given in to Johnson and completed this version? The whole thing is so tight and crisp; I'd love to hear Dylan mangle it.

But, no dice: Bob had Sad Eyed Lady to record instead, and I guess that worked out pretty damn well.

Still, Johnson's promotion of the track must have stuck with Dylan because the next time he had a goddess to impress - that would be Nico - he offered I'll Keep It With Mine to her.

As we speak, my famous brother is sitting up a little straighter, a look of potential fury forming in his beedy eyes: if I insult his beloved Nico and her VU bandmates his wrath will know no bounds.

Well, tough luck broheim: I think Nico's version, which is from 67, sucks like a cranky old vacuum. The guitar sounds good, and Nico is great in her standard I'm-not-familiar-with-your-language-or-how-to-sing-in-it-but-I'm-fabulous-anyway manner. But John Cale clearly had nothing to do with the string overdubs and they make this whole thing sound like a soundtrack for Honey Bunches of Oats: they're the cheery and wholesome way to start your day.

Enter Fairport Convention. It's 1968 and they suddenly have one of the greatest singers of all time, Sandy Denny, standing alongside their more than capable male vocalist, Ian Matthews. It was time to up their game with a complex, big deal song that everyone knew but no one had ever done quite right. It was time for them to play I'll Keep It With Mine.

Is this the song's perfect take? No. Denny and Matthews had not yet learned how to support one another dynamically (though they'd soon figure it out in a big way) and Matthews' contributions feel competitive here rather than complimentary.

Okay, you ask, it may not be perfect, but is this the best version of I'll Keep It With Mine out there? Naw. I like Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home take just as much.

But, whatever: Fairport's late 68 version is still pretty damn great. On the other side of the Atlantic Neil Young was getting ready to reinvent lead guitar playing on Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. But you can hear Richard Thompson doing much of that same work here, albeit in a less flashy fashion: his lead guitar chases itself all over the mix as Simon Nicol ably fills the Danny Whitten chair.

And then there's Sandy's lead vocals. Denny had never played anything larger than a coffee shop at this point and had had just one real recording session with a band beforehand. But she sure doesn't sound like a newbie here. Rather, she sounds like Athena: assured, patient and powerful; Dylan, Collins and Nico are mere mortals beside her.

Update from an hour after posting:

My famous brother just humbled me yet again, offering up two more versions, neither of which I knew about until this moment; I'll let him introduce them himself:

I think I prefer the Richard & Linda Thompson live version over Fairport — uses a pretty similar arrangement, but Linda might have the edge vocally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q6Y-R-p7J4

And yeah, the Nico version isn't great, but the Velvet Underground version ... it kind of cooks! Beware of horrible bootleg quality sound here. Legend has it that Lou Reed hated this song but Nico insisted they play it a few times early on. So they basically do it like it's "I'm Waiting For The Man." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP5-vv9mmZM

No End's first demo

Let's slow down and embrace an entirely inappropriate theme song for this harrowing month we're all living through.

Instead of downing another shot of the bluster, violence and hate we've put into office and cued up on our phones, let's imbibe Sandy Denny's first pass at what would become the closing track for her third solo record, Like An Old Fashioned Waltz. In its earliest form No End is patient, modest and cosmically human. Just like Sandy herself.

She giggles; she searches; she rearranges on the fly. Nearly 50 years after her death she breaks our already strained hearts all over again.

I wrote a few weeks back about how little I understood Like An Old Fashioned Waltz as a teen. No End epitomizes my early ignorance. I couldn't find a chorus in the song; I grew instantly bored. And, unlike her early solo work, Denny's lyrics here came off as excerpts from a profoundly dull and grown up diary when what I wanted from Denny at that point was a feminine compliment to the stoner dream songs I centered myself around: I wanted to sleep with Pocahontas and have Visions of Johanna; I wanted direct access to The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory.

But that was a long time ago.

I don't want cold hands touching my face anymore. All we seem to be doing right now as a culture is running through the night as if nobody cares. We scream and we cry and ignore all the stares. And all our beloved male stoner dreams about the Astrodome and jewels and binoculars are increasingly giving way to real life nightmares about the racists, drug using pedophiles and professional wrestling executives who are about to assume leadership of our country. The snake can indeed see us. And the old friends we might not remember are fading away from you.

And so the only news I can stomach right now is Sandy Denny's banal reports from her local channel 50 years ago: Snow! New Boots! Turpentine!

And frankly I don't want to listen to male music at all right now. If I can't have female leadership in the white house at least I can have it on my turntable.

That said, there is one male voice out there that is still very much worth listening to: I got to see Richard Thompson last week. The front row was my ideal place to balance our national and local griefs with a profound appreciation of RT's gesture, tone and unblemished mastery.

Early in the show I alone whooped with unbridled joy in response to Thompson's in-between song patter while the rest of the Monday night crowd demurely fingered their drinks. I can lose my head at these kinds of events, and I'm really freakin' loud. Happily, Thompson seemed to appreciate my exuberance. At least there was someone out there, he noted in his dry way, who knew who he was talking about.

And who, you ask, was his subject in question? It was Sandy Denny, of course.

Pass of Arms

I'll bet there are already far more words written about T. Swift's new record than in all of the Mahabharata (that's the Hindu holy book that contains the Bhagavad Gita; it's around 13,000 pages long).

The opposite can be said for Pass of Arms, a 1971 half hour film that contains two stand alone Sandy Denny songs. The film does not have a Wikipedia page and is not available in any form anywhere as near as I can tell: it exists but you literally cannot watch it.

Having a Wikipedia page is a pretty low bar. Without knowing, I bet there are extensive ones dedicated to Chewbacca's family tree and Joe Biden's dog. I'm right on both counts of course: I just looked.

But google to your hearts content: the internet confirms that the short film existed, that it claimed to be "award winning", and that a guy who worked marginally on the 80's buddy flick Spies Like Us, in which I seem to remember that Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase save the world from nuclear destruction while failing to make us laugh, directed it; and that's it.

Happily, we can still hear the songs at least, something I've never done with any real focus until this moment. Let's start with Here in Silence.

Okay, I'm digging it so far. I picture a knight in his pensive non-warrior boy clothes looking longingly at his maiden, fall grass billowing between them in slow motion; but then that scene gives way to that same knight, now in full armor, gearing up for gnarly battle and then we realize this is actually a film about the Children's Crusade, or maybe it's all a chunky metaphor and it's actually about angsty and hirsute teens in jolly old 70's England: they're looking to stick to the man, or bloke I guess - this is England - and, well, maybe there's a reason no one other than me is angry they can't watch this film anymore because this song, which Denny clearly did not write, kinda sucks. Sandy sounds glorious, as always, but I'd rather hear her sing The Wheels On The Bus.

Have some faith though, people. We've got the marginally more famous Man of Iron track left to consider. I've definitely heard this one before, but I can remember nothing about it other than the fact that it's really long and moody with strings. Here goes!

Yeah, those are strings alright. Today the students at my tiny high school were all bent out of shape - it's Spring and everyone's either breaking up, thinking about it or striving to create similar drama in their life asap, so I led a full school game of musical chairs on the basketball court and declared in advance that I would win at all costs. I did not win but I shoved a bunch of giant teen boys aside in the effort and everyone laughed at their weird teacher and got into it.

We're a pretty cool school so one of our tenth graders, who's already a semi-professional cellist, played whatever came into his head for each round, which sure beat dancing around the chairs while T. sang 65 new songs about her loser boyfriends or whatever. My student's cello sounded, some of the time, a bit like the vibe that starts the track, only better. Then for the next round he'd play Mozart at triple speed.

But now there's a whole mess of fifes involved and this thing is starting to sound silly. Bring in Sandy Denny soon, please.

Oh thank the sensitive medieval Jesus who probably repeatedly appears to the lead character in this film swathed in psychedelic splendor: here's Sandy, and she's brought a whole pack of Cinderella's helpful birds with her to twitter about, somewhat helpfully.

But these lyrics are unbearable. When I was in seventh grade I committed the cardinal sin of writing an earnest original poem about "the roller coaster of life" and then turned it in to my earnest, no clue teacher who of course then read it to the whole class while on the verge of tears - someone had finally attempted something, anything, of marginal note in his earnest but lousy class - which turned my pimply face red, then white, then putrescent purple with shame as the other 13 year olds around me murmured then moved on to mirth and then on to all out rage: never would I be forgiven for writing sensitive poetry in earnest. Jeff Stimpfig, the school's stock character bully, declared me both gay (it was 1989; "gay" equaled uncool and homophobia equaled cool; what a dumb world...) and soon to be dead through his potent fists. Anyway, my seventh grade poem was surely terrible. But it contained far fewer cliches than this claptrap.

Was this end you chose Sir Knight?

Was this why you were born so bright?

The wolves will chew your bones tonight...

Sandy clearly needed a sizeable offered payday to have ever uttered these words; Trevor Lucas, or perhaps Stephen Stills, surely talked her into the whole gig. The guitar is nice though... I wonder if Sandy plays it. Sounds like her...

But good grief, now we've got a stomach churning drum thing going on. I'm starting to think this whole film may have been a Stephen Stills vanity project: it probably centers on Stills's broriffic relationship with Joe Freakin' Lala; they're on a quest to no longer suck and it's going nowhere fast as their stuck in a room of lemons, all of them worth sucking, and buxom ladies who admire them for no discernible reason whatsoever; and then, at the end of the film / this terrible song, aliens in sunglasses descend and take Steve and Joe to their leader for an extraterrestrial blues jam complete with wolves and low production value fake wind. Clearly, they didn't have Neil Young's budget for fake wind: he's got a huge budget when it comes to producing fake wind.

Fairport Convention's White Dress

Sandy Denny hated her return to Fairport Convention.

By 1974 the band had cycled through about 25 increasingly Tolkienish members in 7 years (seriously, I can think of 2 drummers, one of whom was about to be replaced, 2 bass players, 3 guitarists, a fiddler/mandolin savant and about 17 lead singers; and the only two women in that mix were the only ones without giant, hairy feet).

What's more, no one in the band understood Denny's songs, most especially her own husband; I mean just look at them; do they look like who you want backing up one of the best musicians in history?

The husband in question, Trevor Lucas, far left, was about 7 foot 6 (unlike his band mates, he obviously was not a hobbit; rather he's like a ranger that Aragorn would ditch at first chance) and knew a few guitar chords; he figured that qualified him to be Denny's producer.

What's more, Fairport in 74 wanted to rock while Sandy wanted to sway; the other band members knew Lucas couldn't produce pancakes for the breakfast table let alone a real band, so they turned away from their long term sympathetic engineer and producer, John Wood, and hired this guy instead:

That would be Glyn Johns, who had guided both the Beatles and the Stones to just about nowhere worthwhile, and who went on to dedicate his lousy career mostly to Eric Clapton (yuck; someone get Eric's slowhand offa my throat) and, you guessed it, Stephen Stills. Both men suck. Just look at Johns and Stills hanging out with two lesser losers:

David Crosby, second from left, is accusing Glyn, far right, of having a fake name (seriously: Glyn?) and of eating Crosby's pastrami sandwich to boot. Glyn, in turn, is pointing out that the sandwich is clearly already in Crosby's belly. Graham Nash, standing between them, is employing some of the Nonviolent Communication Techniques he has been trying to use, unsuccessfully, on his pet ferrets. And Stephen Stills? Standing at far left, he's clearly the true pastrami thief, plus he's stolen Graham's ferrets, and is opening his mouth to dissemble about it all while (covertly) passing gas.

To make matters worse for poor Sandy, when on stage Fairport Convention still rolled out the traditional rockified British folk songs that had made them all initially famous. "Forget the perfect songs you wrote on your first four records Sandy," they told her. "We need you to sing Child Ballad Number 69: The Undertaker's Loathsome Barrow, then stand aside while we lay out assorted French dances that will insure we never have a successful record; please, learn the lyrics lass."

Here's what Sandy had to say about it all afterwards:

"If I have to sing Matty Groves one more time I'll throw myself out the window."

Her quote would be funny if she'd had the life, and the band, she deserved, and had not fallen down a set of stairs to her death just a few years later.

But there is one moment in her second tenure with the band which documents the greatness of what could have been. Dave Swarbrick was capable of writing a song worthy of her voice and he did so just once in 74 with the simple and aching, White Dress.

Check it out.

This video is a bit of the Holy Grail for Denny freaks like me: only the first minute of footage has ever emerged. Where is the rest? Happily some guy who surely lives in his mother's basement and is wondering right now when she will tell him breakfast is ready took the time to paste on still photos over the rest of the live take so we can hear everything and see how it started.

That's drummer number three in the opening shot, and Swarbrick stands behind Denny with the mandolin, grinning away at his good luck to have her singing his song. Sandy sets aside all her angst in this performance; she fills every available space with her grace and heartache.

Did Neil Young know about Denny's performance of this song before he wrote its natural sequel, Wrecking Ball, wherein his ladyfriend dons something pretty and white before they go dancing tonight? If not, Emmylou Harris certainly knew all about Sandy and the song before she sang Shakey's version. Just listen to the similar aching sway.

I love Harris's performance here, but I get chills seeing and listening to Denny fronting the band in 74. I get a little weepy to. Denny died four years later, 46 years ago this Spring. She should be 76 years old today, singing to her grandchildren.

The Music Weaver

Let's have ourselves a Sandy Saturday. We deserve it.