Jim Irvin - Angel Of Avalon: Sandy Denny (2a. parte)

AUTOR: Jim Irvin
TÍTULO: Angel Of Avalon: Sandy Denny
EDICIÓN: 1998
PÁGINAS: 

Artículo publicado en Mojo, 1998:
Angel Of Avalon: Sandy Denny 
Jim Irvin, Mojo, 1998 

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Fotheringay's demise in New Year 1971 arose around a misunderstanding between Sandy and Joe. With Witchseason in financial difficulties and its artists changing and moving on, Boyd accepted an offer to sell the company and take up a new post in the US. "Most of the groups seemed philosophical about it," he says. "Sandy and Nick Drake were the most upset. Sandy was freaked out. Complicating matters, I was involved with Linda, so Sandy was like, 'How could you go and leave Linda behind?' - that whole subtext." 
One evening, in a Chelsea pub after a fruitless session recording 'John The Gun' for the putative second Fotheringay album, Sandy said "Maybe you're right, Joe. Maybe I should do a solo album. Would you produce it.?" Boyd replied that had she asked two months before, maybe he wouldn't have gone to America. Sandy, who sometimes fell foul of her endearing gullibility, promptly broke up the group as a way to make him stay. Donaldson and Conway immediately got work with Cat Stevens, and by the time Boyd realised what had happened it was too late for Fotheringay to regroup. 
This curious episode clouded Joe and Sandy's relationship for the rest of her life. Sandy often expressed a wish that Fotheringay had continued. "We got back to being friends later but I never worked with her again," says Boyd regretfully. "I went to America and Richard produced her solo record. It was good, but not as transcendentally wonderful a collaboration as I imagined. I was never really close to her after that night."
"It was typical Sandy really," says Richard of the sessions for her first solo record. "She just wanted to go in the studio and feel comfortable. There wasn't any producer; we just started doing stuff." Sandy's writing tended towards slow or mid-paced songs which she liked to contrast with covers. While these expressed a side of her that her own material ignored, her voice seems uneasy on something like 'Let's Jump The Broomstick'; and a ragged rendition of Dylan's 'Down In The Flood' with Richard singing the lead comes across like an out-take from Unhalfbricking. 
"It was all a bit of a muddle," Thompson admits. Fittingly, the album's working title was Slapstick Tragedies, but it became The North Star Grassmen And The Ravens; its cover depicting Sandy in an apothecary's workshop, it wasn't exactly a package which beckoned to a wider audience. Despite several gems - 'Late November', 'John The Gun' and the superbly chilling 'Next Time Around' (thought to be written for Jackson C. Frank), its overall haphazard feel dissipated some of the momentum she'd received from the poll wins and Led Zeppelin IV. 
"In the studio she could be lackadaisical," remarks Richard. "She'd do anything she could to avoid recording. Talk mostly. She'd give really half-hearted performances and then come along to the mix and say, 'That's a terrible vocal', and John [Wood] or someone would say, 'Well fix it', and because it was the last chance, she'd do a good one. Always postponing the real performance until the absolute eleventh hour."
"She had a lot of problems with self-confidence," adds Wood. "More than once she'd be doing an overdub, couldn't get it right and would completely go to pieces and run out of the room."
The search for confidence may have been what moved Sandy briefly to join The Church Of Scientology. She secretly paid the London chapter hundreds of pounds and undertook their "personality tests". Several sessions in, she became dismayed by The Truth Machine, a kind of lie-detector triggered by the pulse rate, realised she'd made a mistake and went home to confess what she'd been up to. Faced with six-foot-three of enraged, red-headed Australian waving bank statements, the Church capitulated and returned all the cash to Trevor. "He may not be able to read or write very well, but he's very good with numbers," Sandy proudly told one friend.
*
HARBOURING AMBITIONS towards production, Trevor saw the likes of Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Carly Simon selling millions and reasoned that Sandy could too. David Denny, who'd been living with the couple in Chipstead Street, gave up his job in civil engineering and became Sandy's manager, striking a deal with Island that enabled Trevor to produce her next album. 
Right from the opening track, 'It'll Take A Long Time', the result - accessibly titled Sandy - was clearly more focused than its predecessor. Though still broadly in a folk mode, Trevor had modernised the sound and the playing was steadier. 'Listen Listen' and 'The Lady' were among Sandy's strongest works, her acapella setting of Richard Farina's poem 'The Quiet Joys Of Brotherhood' was spellbinding, her voice at its most effulgent and other-worldly.

For many fans Sandy was her best work ever. With a glamorous sleeve portrait by David Bailey ("God, that was worth a three day flap," laughs one friend), it had all the potential of a hit. But, despite favourable reviews, reasonable promotion and Tony Blackburn improbably making Listen Listen his single of the week on Radio 1, Sandy struggled to sell. 
She began to despair to friends of ever finding her niche. Yet her work was attracting some influential fans. Dylan had enjoyed the Fairport versions of his songs. Frank Zappa was an unlikely champion (Frank and Sandy apparently had a fling during one of his London visits), Mama Cass loved her, Lowell George wanted to work with her. The Eagles, particularly Don Henley, were great enthusiasts. Lou Reisner and Pete Townshend cast her as the nurse in their lavish reworking of Tommy (her only gold record).
While she was finishing Sandy, Fairport Convention was falling apart. Dave Swarbrick and Dave Pegg asked Trevor to join them. He took along Jerry Donahue and Fairport embarked on a world tour.
Forced to go it alone while her husband went off with her old band, Sandy wrote the best songs of her career and unveiled them in America in the spring of 1973. She took an entourage of two: her brother David in his role as manager, and her chum Miranda Ward (formerly the first female presenter on Radio 1), invited along as assistant, moral support and social lubricant. In New York she opened for Genesis at the enormous Philharmonic Hall. In Boston and Denver she supported Randy Newman. Rumours of her rejoining Fairport began to filter back to the UK when they appeared together at LA's Troubadour club. Sandy admitted later that she felt "a sudden sense of relief" when they started playing behind her.
Work on her finest album also began in LA, at A&M studios. Like An Old Fashioned Waltz manages to conjure not only images of nostalgia but its sensations too. Listening to it is like looking out of a window onto the past. In the stirring opener, 'Solo', Sandy bemoans the lot of the lone performer - using it as a metaphor for the isolation of every human - but also mocking the singer's self-delusion: "I've always lived in a mansion on the other side of the moon. I've always kept a unicorn and I never sing out of tune. . .I can't communicate with you and I guess I never will. We've all gone solo." 'Dark The Night', 'Carnival' and 'At The End Of The Day' summon the dull ache of solitude, the extruded pang of departure, and a yearning to be reunited with a lover at home. Friends gently tells a lapsed friend to get lost. The title song simply lays out nostalgia's clichés: flowers, long-ago summers and ghostly music. 
The finest moment, however, is 'No End', the final song, in which a man pays a mid-winter visit to an old friend, a painter who has given up his vocation. The snowy setting, the way the story gradually unfurls and the conversational lyrics make it as rich and resonant as a good one act play. Sandy sings throughout with breathtaking poise. Like Sinatra's, her phrasing is inimitable.
The album was cautiously received. It was her first without any folk content yet it was barely a rock album. Though the tastefully judged production by Trevor and John Wood was applauded, the two jaunty covers - The Ink Spots' 'Whispering Grass' and Fats Waller's 'Until The Real Thing Comes Along' - threatened the mood set down in her own songs and bemused some critics; others felt that Harry Robinson's lush orchestrations were a coating of Mantovarnish. 
Nevertheless, Sandy was justly proud of it, and in anticipation of its October release, played the shows of her life, most notably an appearance at the Howff, a tiny venue in Primrose Hill, on September 4th, 1973. The performance was ecstatically received, and not just by the music press. The Daily Telegraph, a publication not known for hyperbole, declared: "It was one of those happenings that critics dream of but rarely experience, when a good but hitherto erratic singer suddenly takes off, carrying her audience with her on the kind of trip that singing is really all about. It was, in fact, Sandy Denny's moment of truth. . .In some of her songs tonight, particularly 'Solo' and 'No End, talent became genius and there were glimpses of depths which few other singers have revealed to us." 
Just a few days beforehand, Sandy and Trevor impulsuvely set their wedding for Thursday September 20th, 1973. Sandy had bought the wedding dress in a flea market and Miranda Ward dyed it green. Trevor went to find a ring, only to be foiled by Wednesday half-day closing, so Miranda lent him one she'd been given by Ginger Baker. Meanwhile, Sandy called her old beau Danny Thompson and asked him to improvise as best man.
"I got Trevor's suit ready and cleared the flat up," he recalls. "Sandy was notorious for lighting 200 fags a day and leaving them burning standing up like candles. There were all these cork tips on the mantelpiece. The fact that Trevor never sorted that out really got to me: I was thinking, If you were my wife. . .Sandy you're gonna burn yourself down one of these days! Nobody was going to be any good for her in my eyes. I was a bit like her dad, I suppose. Anyway, I went with them to the registry office in Fulham and was genuinely chuffed that she'd found a stable relationship. And then she said, 'Well, you're coming on the honeymoon aren't you?'" 
The "honeymoon" turned out to be a Fairport TV appearance in Plymouth and a night in a Holiday Inn. Danny joined the party and spent most of the return trip in a drinking contest with Dave Pegg. "The purser on the train came up afterwards and told us our party had drunk 500 miniatures of gin. That was the kind of environment Sandy was in; she wouldn't see that as being nasty or blokeish. She'd join in and fall about laughing."
But drink was beginning to exert its grip on her personality. David Sandison remembers seeing Sandy backstage at the Howff. "The show was mind-boggling, fantastic, but she was drinking really heavily afterwards. And she wasn't an amiable drunk; she got belligerent and argumentative."
*
JANUARY 26TH, 1974: the first rock act to play Sydney Opera House was Fairport Convention, and Sandy was back in the fold. As long as Trevor stayed with them and Sandy wanted to be with him, it seemed inevitable. But the ambitious world tour, which included their first Japanese visit, was financially ruinous. The band returned to the UK despondent and practically bankrupt, and dismissed their manager. David Denny took over temporarily and a live album was rushed out to help the cash flow. In the meantime, Sandy and Trevor moved to the heart of the country.
The Northamptonshire village of Cropredy had no idea what had hit it when Dave Swarbrick and his Chinese wife Gloria moved in. The takings at The Red Lion went up for a start. Swarb's friends and colleagues flocked to visit and liked it so much they all made plans to live in the area. Mr and Mrs Trevor Lucas bought a house in a neighbouring village called Byfield, and Dave and Christine Pegg moved into Cropredy shortly afterwards. It would never be quite the same again.
Trevor and Sandy soon became the talk of Byfield. He'd swan through the village in his orange and lime green Beetle; she'd weave to and from Cropredy's pubs in her automatic Rover, usually with Watson the Airedale in the back. The locals learnt to give her a wide berth. She could often be found trying to extricate the car from a ditch. 
With most of the band and its associates based nearby, Fairport Convention could party hard together both on tour and off, gin and dope the lubricants of choice. There was apparently even a period when Fairport Convention discovered amyl nitrate. Merrie England indeed.
"I had two small children at the time and thought I was insane and everybody else was normal," recalls Christine Pegg of this almost desperate conviviality. "It was only later I realised that I was the sane one and they were all off their heads. Swarb and Sandy had a lot of flare-ups - they were very similar in many ways. Trevor loved them both and was caught in the middle. And Trevor and Sandy were very fiery together too. Trevor acted as a buffer zone between Sandy and the outside world. She had an incredible imagination and lived in a slightly different world to the rest of us."
Their relationship became increasingly "open'. While not publicly acknowledging tolerance of extramarital affairs, Trevor and Sandy each turned a blind but disapproving eye towards dalliances, which they both indulged in. Even on tour, one of them might pick up a companion for a few days. Trevor once flew back from Europe with another woman while Sandy returned on the ferry with the rest of the band. "They both had a self-destruct button and seemed to do things just for the hell of it, knowing perfectly well it wasn't going to work out," says Chris Pegg. There were also one or two screaming matches backstage before gigs, after which Trevor and Sandy would go on wearing fixed smiles. They remained devoted, but damage was being done - insidious, corrosive damage that would eventually prove disastrous.
Working with such a couple put a strain on the band. Apart from the politics, there was the problem of assimilating Sandy's new, post-folk style into their traditional sound. "There were two different bands," remarks Dave Mattacks: "one with Sandy, and Swarb's instrumental band doing the uptempo dance stuff. It didn't really gel live."
In the midst of this turmoil, Fairport started work on an album. It felt like make or break. The harder they'd been working, the slimmer the returns; they needed a record that would lift them out of the mire. At Chris Blackwell's suggestion they hired Glyn Johns, acclaimed producer of the Stones, Who and Eagles, well-known for his discipline in the studio. Rising For The Moon was cut in two sessions sandwiching another American tour. When they returned, Dave Mattacks left the band, dismayed at their eternal financial struggle. "These were the early days of the realisation that this music was never going to be big, that it would always remain a minority thing," he says. (Roadie Paul Warren filled the drum breach for a European tour then former Grease Band drummer Bruce Rowland arrived as a permanent replacement.) Dave Pegg: "I thought, We've got no finished songs, no drummer and nobody's talking to each other! We're finished! Within a week it was done. Glyn Johns was a genius. It was a miracle album."
The closing song was a Denny masterpiece; 'One More Chance', a moving rallying call to peace, woven into some of the most stirring instrumental work Fairport had ever recorded and sung in a tone that was new to Sandy, mature and powerful but perceptibly fragile. There were husky overtones that hadn't been audible before, notes that sounded hard-won, bringing urgency to the lyric's last lines which she sings with an aching strength: "Is it too late to change the way we're bound to go? Is it too late? There's surely one of us must know."
*
SANDY NEVER changed the way she was bound to go. Though her work kept improving, her career refused to lift off. She felt pressurised whatever she did: forming a band or going solo. Her marriage felt lopsided: she told friends that she needed him more than he needed her, then sometimes she wondered if he was just using her to further his own career. She could never relax. Feeling settled was one of her prime goals but, at the same time, her mind was too sharp to keep still. 

When Rising For The Moon was not the hit that Fairport needed, Island finally dropped them. Jerry Donahue decided to leave the band and Trevor and Sandy followed. In the winter of '75/'76 she wrote the material for another solo album, Rendezvous, which was recorded the following Spring. In interviews a year later when it was finally released, Sandy insisted that the enforced break had been very useful. "It's taken me since last summer to get back some sanity, something I didn't even realise I'd lost."
"It was a difficult record to make," confirms John Wood. "She'd started having these very black moods. She wouldn't turn up, or she'd turn up very late. Trevor would be trying to cajole her into doing things that she wasn't so keen on. She was not in control of herself. It took a long time for material to come together and her mood swings became much greater. Halfway through the album, she turned up [at my house] at two o'clock in the morning, virtually battering the door down, drunk and in a complete state of nervous exhaustion, feeling totally unloved and unwanted."
"Nowadays people would see the signs, see the mood swings and cart her off to rehab," says Linda Thompson. "But in those days you didn't do that. She couldn't talk to anyone about it. She had to tough it out on her own."
Instead, she became pregnant. 
When Rendezvous finally emerged in the summer of 1977, it was the usual mixed bag, stunning tracks like 'I Wish I Was A Fool For You' (a Richard Thompson song), 'One Way Donkey Ride' and 'I'm A Dreamer' (a superb, one-take performance), offset by cheesy covers like 'Candle In The Wind'. However, 'No More Sad Refrains' declared that Sandy intended to move away from her stock-in-trade. "I always write on my own," she told one reporter. "Do you know how I feel when I've written a sad song? Something that's really hit me and hurt me? I feel terrible. It really upsets me. Why do I have to put myself through it? Why can't I try and relax a little bit more? I'm not really interested any more in being heavy with people. There's no point, I've just realised, because what can I do? If I can't do anything about the way things are, then surely I can try to make people feel a bit better about it." 
Rendezvous sounded rather fusty in the summer of the Sex Pistols and Chic. It was a worrying time for established musicians as many traditional channels began closing up. Sandy and Trevor discussed relocating to America. But their baby arrived two months early. 
Georgia Rose Lucas weighed barely two pounds. Thankfully, the John Radcliffe Hospital in nearby Oxford was a renowned centre for premature baby care. Georgia remained there for some weeks. But Sandy wasn't about to slow down. The album was out and there were shows booked. As usual, Trevor appeared the more adept domestically. His tiny daughter fitted snugly in one of his huge hands. 
Sandy's manic energy didn't wane. Her contract with Island finally expired two months after Georgia's birth, and was not renewed. In November 1977 she played a short string of dates. The final show, at The Sound Circus in the Royalty Theatre, London, was recorded. The voice is huskier than before, but the performance is excellent. It would prove to be her last gig. Some of the other shows had been poorly attended; Rendezvous and a single of 'Candle In The Wind' both sold dismally. Career doldrums, Trevor's infidelities and Sandy's unchecked drinking put a strain on the marriage, and the couple's fights began to escalate; which, in turn, made Sandy more prone to drinking her troubles away. It was a cruel spiral. 
"Sandy had total emotional recall of situations that had hurt her," says Miranda Ward. "She wouldn't just retrieve spoken or visual things but her own emotional response at the time. She'd become very shaken whenever she remembered certain events."
"The villagers were worried about what was going on," says Chris Pegg. "They expected her to be a mother but she didn't alter the things she'd always done. While Trevor was away, she would leave the baby outside the pub. People would call us and say, 'There's an orange Beetle with a screaming child inside.' We'd go and try and get Georgia and Watson wouldn't let us in. It sounds terrible, but she wasn't neglecting Georgia any more than she neglected herself. She just wasn't the most responsible person."
Incidents like these and a series of prangs in her car - at least once while drunk and with Georgia on board - made up Trevor's mind. He began to prepare a move. He tidied his affairs, sold the Beetle and bought a one-way ticket to Australia. He intended to return to his parents, whom he could trust to look after Georgia (who was still only nine months old) while he prepared a new life for himself. He told nobody of his plan or destination except Fairport's drummer Bruce Rowland, whom he swore to secrecy.
On the morning of Thursday, April 13th, 1978 he put Georgia in her carry-cot and told Sandy he was going to visit his sister in London. At 5pm that evening, Sandy called Miranda to see if he'd shown up in Barnes, as they'd often visit when they were in town. Miranda said no, but asked if there was any message if he did appear. "I've got his supper in the oven," said Sandy breezily. "I'll see him when I see him." At around 9pm, Miranda's phone rang again. It was Trevor in a call box. He told her he was leaving Sandy, taking Georgia with him, but didn't say where he was going. 
Miranda decided to drive Byfield. Sandy rang again before midnight. She'd noticed that some of Trevor's clothes were missing. Miranda broke the news to her and said she'd come and fetch her. Sandy took it surprisingly well. "She was very stoical and strong;" remembers Miranda, "She wasn't going to get hysterical, though she was convinced I knew where Trevor was. I was the one who was getting hysterical. After she'd gone to bed I was frantically ringing people asking where he'd gone. They were all denying that they knew anything."
The following morning Sandy began to complain of headaches. She thought she may have sustained a hairline fracture in a fall at her home the previous week. ("She was always falling down stairs," says Chris Pegg. "If there were three stairs in a row she'd fall down them.") She hadn't seen a doctor so Miranda made an appointment for Monday afternoon with her GP. They also decided Sandy should talk to him about her problems with drink. Over the weekend, the two friends had several long conversations reminiscing and talking about the future, who Sandy might work with, and so on. Miranda attempted to track Trevor down. Sandy was adament that she wouldn't beg him to return. On Sunday she had a long phone conversation with her brother. She went to bed in the early hours in an optimistic mood.
At 6am she awoke with a terrible headache.She went to Miranda's room and asked her for a painkiller. 
*
WHEN MIRANDA left for work on Monday morning, Sandy was asleep so she left her a long note with the school's phone numbers, contacts for friends if she needed to talk to anyone and household details ("Toaster doesn't stop on it's own!") and assuring Sandy she'd be back in time for the doctor's appointment. At 1.30pm Steven Walker, a friend who was taking care of Sandy's dogs in Byfield, called the house and spoke to her. He said later that she sounded less upbeat than ususal but otherwise seemed fine. 
At around 3pm Miranda was telephoned at school and told that Sandy had been found unconscious by Jon Cole and taken to Queen Mary's Hospital in Roehampton. She was in a coma.
A brain haemorrhage was diagnosed. Sandy was put onto a life support machine. The prognosis was not good. Miranda broke the news to Neil and Edna in Cornwall before the police contacted them and they came to stay with her. David flew back from America. Sandy's friends began to visit. Miranda finally got a number for Trevor's parents and called him, but it took a call from a consultant at the hospital to persuade him to fly back immediately. He left Georgia with his parents. It's a mystery why Trevor wanted his whereabouts concealed. He told the inquest that the trip was just a visit to show Georgia to his parents. 
On Wednesday, 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; most likely the untreated injury from her previous fall had suddenly flared. Naturally, over the years, there have been murmurings of other circumstances. Miranda Ward has pieced together a complex scenario of Sandy's last conscious hours, but in the end it amounts to much the same thing: the coroner's verdict seems the most plausible explanation. 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.
*
TREVOR WAS ostracised when he returned to Byfield to clear the house. The Dennys could not forgive him for abandoning Sandy. "There was a whole army of people who wouldn't answer the phone to him," says Chris Pegg. The Fairports were torn: they'd loved both Sandy and Trevor and understood that it wasn't a black and white story. "We all felt incredibly guilty," Chris admits. "Deep down we knew it had all been going wrong, we knew Trevor was thinking of going, but [with those two] we'd got into the habit of keeping our heads down while the storm passed and then it would be OK - and this time it wasn't. Everybody in our circle felt that we should have been there, but it was just another storm as far as we knew. "
The fall-out was strange. Fairport fell apart. Dave Swarbrick was particularly affected by Sandy's death and exiled himself to Scotland for a while. Miranda suffered a nervous breakdown and moved to the West Country where she still lives and teaches. Trevor married Elizabeth Hurtt, a former tenant of Philippa Clare's (Hurtt had had an affair with Swarbrick while he was living with Phillipa and Sandy had been appalled), and moved back to Australia to bring up Georgia (and their own son Clancy, who was born some years later). He died of heart failure in 1989. David Denny died in a road accident in Denver, Colorado in 1980. Having lost both her children, Edna Denny died broken-hearted a few months later. A year ago, Georgia gave birth to unidentical twin girls, Ariel and Jahmira.
*
UNHALFBRICKING is graced with an unforgettable cover. Unsullied by album title or band name, the photograph, by Eric Hayes, is of an elderly, middle-class couple - Neil and Edna Denny - posing in front of their home in Arthur Road, Wimbledon in the Autumn of 1968. Through the high fence behind them you can just make out Fairport Convention, lounging playfully on the lawn under a tall, old beech tree. The misty church spire in the distance underlines the image's assertion that this is rock music unlike any other, rock music from a different lineage. 
Now aged 85, Neil Denny looks much the same today as he did back then. But now he lives alone in a maisonette in a quiet Hampton cul-de-sac and admits to being bemused by the circumstances that have led to him outliving his wife, his son and his daughter and seeing the family line continue on the other side of the world. The carefree times in that picture seem impossibly distant. 
I ask him how he's coped. "You put on a sort of act," he says as he stares out of the window. Then he says to himself: "Why am I still here and all those good people are gone?" 
Resting on the floor beside his armchair is a copy of the superb boxed set of Sandy's work, Who Know Where The Time Goes. He picks it up to look at the booklet, revealing, as he does so, something else propped up by the chair: a gilt-framed photograph. A curly-headed, slightly startled-looking toddler looks out into the room. She is cradling a doll's cot in her arms.
*
2002 POSTSCRIPT: 
When this story ran in 1998 there were elements which I didn't wish to include, involving Sandy's complex relationship with her mother. 
My main reason was not wanting to offend Neil Denny, who adored his wife and would not have believed, or benefited from, any criticism of her; furthermore, the information I'd been told was tough to corroborate. However, I've since heard variations of it from several sources, and though there may be an element of rumour about it, I feel that if it is true it's crucial to an understanding of Sandy's character and how she died.
Basically, Sandy and her mother were constantly at loggerheads, Edna Denny was extremely critical of her daughter throughout her life, and was particularly harsh about her weight and appearance. Sandy went so far as to tell friends that she hated her mother, however, she loved her father but would only visit her parents when she felt confident enough to do so. Edna was an ultra-conservative woman who would agonise over social status and what the neighbours thought. Apparently, the fall which Sandy suffered a few weeks before she died, causing the injury which some friends believe led directly to her fatal haemorrhage, occurred while her mother was present. Sandy had been drinking to summon courage for the visit and fell down the stairs, striking her head on flagstones on the kitchen floor. Sandy told people that, even though she was in some pain, her mother had refused to take her to hospital because she didn't want to be seen with a drunken daughter. Friends speculate that if Sandy had received some medical attention after this fall, the injury that flared weeks later might have been discovered and her death prevented.
Though I strove to make my portrait of Sandy as balanced and positive as possible, paying what I felt was due respect to Neil Denny and his memories, I heard later that he had been upset by it, revealing to him, as it did, many aspects of his daughter's life and personality that he had been ignorant of or had chosen to bury over the years. I'm sorry that it made him unhappy, but glad that I softened the story. Neil Denny died in 2000, unreconciled with his granddaughter and her family. Interviews he conducted with folk archivist Colin Davies, telling his side of the story, are available through Sandy Denny fansites.

© Jim Irvin, 1998

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