VASHTI BUNYAN - ARTIST PROFILE
February 21st, 2006 by rui
Vashti Bunyan is an enigma in British folk music that has only been understood in the last ten years. Following explusion from art school in 1964 Andrew Loog Oldham, the Rolling Stones manager discovered her singing in London. Her music was delicate Judy Collins style folk music but Loog Oldham sought to shape her as a pop star. He got her to record a Rolling Stones song and released it on Decca and then as he formed Immediate he arranged for her to record many unreleased pop style songs. By 1968 this cynical attempt to make her a pop star left her dejected particularly as her heart was in folk music. She decided to give up her life and travel in a traditional caravan up to Scotland to join Donovan.
During that year she wrote a number of highly personal songs that documented her new experiences living close to the land in isolation. After encouragement from Derroll Adams she took her songs to Joe Boyd. Joe Boyd was the natural producer for her, already a legend by then producing The Incredible String Band, John and Beverly Martyn and Nick Drake. He recorded the album and bought in sympathetic musicians from Fairport Convention and Incredible String Band to assist on some songs.
The album was released in 1970 but with little support from the artist it didn’t sell and languished in obscurity for thirty years. The artist lived a life of travel and isolation left alone by the music industry. Over the years it became a legendary album to many folk collectors with album prices rising to high figures. In the last couple of years Vashti has once again taken tentative steps back into some involvement in music notably performing with highly respected ambient electronic band Piano Magic.
Vashti takes it form here…
“In 1997 I came by access to a computer and the Internet. They say that the first thing most people do is to put their own name into a search engine, and sure enough this is what I did. Over the next few weeks I found to my happy surprise that recordings I had made 30 years before were on CDs here and there, and that the album I made with Joe Boyd was now a rare and sought after creature, and not long forgotten as I had thought.
Emailing brought me back in contact with people I had lost many years ago, and with others who had known the album, and who wanted to know if it was available on CD. In my dreams I thought.
It took three years. In trying to establish ownership of the rights to the album I went through hoops. My main helper and advisor was Paul Lambden, Royalties Manager at Ryko Music. Ryko had fallen heir to the entire Warlock publishing catalogue, which includes Nick Drake, Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention and John and Beverley Martyn. Paul had come across a letter I had written to Ryko asking if anybody there could help me find out who owned the rights to the recording. He had never heard the songs and so asked for a tape.
I do not have a copy of the original album, I gave them all away years ago, and I only had very faded and incomplete tapes. Raymond Greenoaken - who edits the String Band’s magazine ‘Be Glad’ - very kindly sent me a tape of the JADD he has. I sent a copy of this to Paul not thinking anything much would come of it, but he called me straightaway to say he liked it.
This was hard for me to believe. Nobody seemed to give it a second thought when it was released in 1970. In fact it was not really released, it just edged its way out, blushed and shuffled off into oblivion. I abandoned it, and music, forever as I went on to travel more with horses and wagons, with children and more dogs and chickens, eventually finding a place to make a more permanent home.
Hearing somebody say - ‘I like it, it sounds distinctive, it should come out again’ was a shock. I listened to it again with different ears, trying to hear it as it might sound thirty years on to people who were not around when the album was made - when it was possible to live as we lived, to have those sixties dreams and to be able to make them real. Some of the songs may sound childlike, but that was the way we were. Life on the road had a glow. It was hard and wet and mud-filled a lot of the time, and I would not do it again by choice probably, but I am proud of what we did. We had no home and no money and so made it up as we went along.
I must have been the biggest pain in the arse to a lot of people over this last three years. Phoning, faxing and emailing, impatiently waiting for all the pieces of the jigsaw to come together. I could never have imagined how much it takes, and how long it takes, to get rights and licenses etc sorted out. At times I was tempted to bootleg it. Meantime a bootleg CD did appear, a bad one copied from a scratched album. At first I was mad, but I was advised to look on it as ‘advance publicity’, and surely this is what it has been. I don’t know yet who did it, but I am grateful for the fact that the album has been heard this last while by those who could not have heard it otherwise.
Now Paul Lambden, and Sean Newsham of Kitty Kitty Corporation, have created Spinney - a new re-issue label. JADD is their first, and I am truly grateful to both of them for putting so much in. I hope they are successful, not just for me, but for whoever they find for SPINNEY002 and onwards..
In all of this - Joe Boyd has given generously of his time, and emails, and I am forever in his debt.
People have asked if there will be any more music from me. Maybe, if I can find it amongst the life I have now. I am looking. I left my old Martin guitar hanging on walls for twenty five years before giving it to my eldest son. My daughter gave me a new guitar for my last birthday.”
Press Quotes
“collection of stunningly simple songs” [/b]- The Guardian[/b]
“It is a worthy successor. Rather than being a simple echo of her masterpiece, Lookaftering is distinct in its own beauty, shimmering with her soporific tones and floating on the gentle wonder of her melodies.â€
“an instant classic†- BCC
Taken from Vashti Bunyan Website
