Sandy Denny’s life and luminous talent celebrated by Linda Thompson

‘Sandy Denny: A People’s History’ has just been published, memories from fellow musicians, old friends, producers, writers, fans and admirers. Linda Thompson met her when they were both 16 and was devoted to her ‘til she died in 1978 – “she’s still with me, I talk to her all the time”. She looks back here at their lives in Soho bars, folk clubs and studios, the world they inhabited and the musicians they both knew. Among the many highlights …

… meeting Sandy in 1966, onstage doing Jackson Frank’s You Never Wanted Me. “Eight million cigarettes a day but such breath control!”

… why her singing and songwriting were unique

… high times at the Colony Club with Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon - “famously grumpy”

… “she didn’t put up with bullshit. Cross her and she’d deck you”

… memories of Nick Drake – “spectral and gorgeous”

… the repercussions of the Fairport car crash

… memories of her family home in Wimbledon (on the cover of Unhalfbricking)

… recording ad jingles for Ski Yoghurt and ‘flour so fine, it flows and it flows’ - £15 an hour, “a fortune”

… making demos of Nick Drake songs with Elton John, “so full of Valium I had to be held up to the mic”

… sharing a flat with Tim Buckley in Holland Park

… “anyone who can bear to listen to their own records must be no bloody good”

… and the script Nick Hornby started about the life of Richard and Linda Thompson.

Order ‘Sandy Denny: A People’s History’ here: https://burningshed.com/georgia-rose-lucas_sandy-denny-a-peoples-history_book

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