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It's three decades since the world lost Sandy Denny, a singer and writer of majestic songs that transcend their folk roots. In tribute we offer this excerpt from "Angel of Avalon," Jim Irvin's magnificent MOJO retrospective on the former Fairport Convention chanteuse.

Barney Hoskyns, RBP Editorial Editor

On a fair, crisp Sunday afternoon in February 1969, a young band are working on their third album are waiting for their singer to turn up. They're in Olympic 1, a popular eight-track studio housed in an old music hall in Barnes, southwest London. Last year, the Rolling Stones cut Beggars Banquet here and, just a few months ago, Led Zeppelin used it to record their debut album. Now Fairport Convention are ready to lay down an English folk song they've been experimenting with, "A Sailor's Life."

Ashley "Tyger" Hutchings, founder member of the group and keen to push them further towards folk, is tuning his bass. Guest fiddler Dave Swarbrick has been here with engineer John Wood since the previous afternoon, testing pick-ups on his violin so he can hear himself above the guitars of Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol. They set up in a semi-circle flanking boyish drummer Martin Lamble.

Out in the control room, next to Wood, sits producer Joe Boyd, an American mogul in London. He's the man behind Witchseason Productions, which manages and records Fairport Convention, the Incredible String Band, John Martyn, and Nick Drake. He's engrossed in the baseball pages of a New York Times. The atmosphere in Olympic 1 is relaxed but industrious. Then Sandy arrives.

Short, full-figured and rosy-cheeked, with a cloud of fine, fair hair tumbling over her shoulders, 22-year-old Sandy Denny resembles the archetypal English farm wench in her peasanty floral print smock-dress. Her speaking voice normally hearty, today (and not for the first time) she's seeking sympathy and monopolizing attention: she has woken up with a terrible cold and is afraid her voice won't hold out for more than one take, though this doesn't stop her lighting up another Embassy.

Denny clatters into the vocal booth Wood has readied facing the band. Through its glass panels, she can be observed sipping honey and lemon and peeling tissues from a box. She kicks off her shoes and stands at arm's length from the large rectangular, Neuman microphone and clamps on a set of headphones.

Somehow this young woman from Wimbledon, streaming cold and all, sails from her soundproofed box in the middle of Barnes and harvests history's echoes. Her voice is river-clear, evoking a siren's magnetic music and the lament of Polly on the shore; now delicate, now robust, it summons longing and departure. It's sultry and sad and deep as the sea. And when it glides away, Richard's guitar breaks over the song like a giant wave, Swarbrick's violin both a ghostly hornpipe and a lightning bolt. Swaying like a storm-tossed galleon, it's a dynamic tour de force: an unrepeatable take of 11 minutes and 11 seconds. When it's over, Boyd and Wood are grinning. Everyone knows they've been present at the birth of something definitive.

Sandy Denny's is the story of a suburban, middle-class English girl blessed with a magical voice. When she died suddenly in 1978, aged only 31, she'd become one of the finest singers and songwriters Britain has ever produced. It's a story with many levels and many of the people who lived through it recall it differently. Sandy's father proudly pictures the sweet, sunny-natured daughter who moved him to tears singing "Away In A Manger" at a primary school concert, and again years later singing "Wild Mountain Thyme" at the Royal Albert Hall. Her close friends, on the other hand, knew a raucous woman who swore like a docker, drank like a horse, filled a room with her chatter and caused scenes in Soho nightclubs. She was loved by most who met her, knew her, heard her; yet she often displayed so little confidence in her marvelous talents that those same friends could be worn down by her hunger for reassurance.

Rather than reveal herself, Sandy would often write heavily coded songs about her friends. They're almost all reflective, downbeat songs of great elegance. On stage, their creator was likely to finish one, light up a cheap cigarette, forget which song she was doing next, trip over her second-hand dress, send her drink flying, exclaim "Bugger me, I'm a clumsy cow," and roar with laughter.

**** 

ON THE AFTERNOON of Monday, April 18th, 1978, a young London-based musician named Jon Cole left his flat in Barnes, climbed into his Datsun Cherry and set off for Hammersmith where his band, the Movies, were rehearsing.

He turned the corner into the long road where his friend--a teacher named Miranda Ward--lived in a first-floor flat. The previous evening, Miranda had given him a spare key and asked if, while she was working, he would look in on the woman who was staying with her. The woman's husband had just run off, taking their baby daughter with him. Miranda thought it would be nice if someone kept an eye on her and checked to see if she needed anything. But Jon couldn't be bothered; he was already late for his rehearsal.

Then something changed his mind.

As his car drew level with the bus stop outside 93 Castlenau, he heard a woman's voice whisper a single word in his ear: "Help."

He wasn't a man prone to hearing voices, so he paid attention to the command in his head, pulled into the drive and opened the door to Miranda's flat. Miranda's friend was upstairs on the landing. She was dressed in bell-bottomed jeans and a pink mohair sweater. She was stretched out on her side, feet touching the bottom of the steep set of stairs which curved up to the next floor. She was motionless.

At around 3pm Miranda was telephoned at school and told that Sandy had been taken to Queen Mary's Hospital in Roehampton. She was in a coma; a brain hemorrhage had been diagnosed. She was put on a life support machine. The prognosis was not good.

On Wednesday 20th, Sandy was transferred to the Atkinson Morley hospital, specialists in brain injury, for an operation. It wasn't a success. Linda Thompson visited and was shocked to see Sandy wrapped in foil to prevent hypothermia.

In the early hours of Thursday morning in Los Angeles, California, Don Henley of the Eagles was returning from a recording session. Driving over the Hollywood Hills, he began tuning in his radio. Suddenly a clear, English voice that he knew came through the static. It was Sandy singing "Who Knows Where The Time Goes." Something about it spooked him and he pulled over to listen to it and marvel at the sound. The following night he heard that Sandy Denny had passed away just before 8.00 p.m. that evening.

The death certificate cited "mid-brain trauma." The verdict at the inquest was accidental death. There were no reports of significant levels of drugs or alcohol in her body. It was a tragically mundane end to a special life.

Sandy was buried in Putney Vale Cemetery. A lone piper played "Flowers Of The Forest" as she was lowered into the ground.

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