I've Always Kept a Unicorn: The Biography of Sandy Denny
Mick HoughtonHer music went far beyond this during the seventies, driven by a restless search for the perfect framework for her songs, first with Fotheringay, the group she formed but controversially left after recording just one album. On leaving, she immediately collaborated on a historic one-off recording with Led Zeppelin on ‘The Battle of Evermore’ – the only guest vocalist ever to record with the group. Four fascinating, mercurial solo albums followed as well as an ultimately misguided return to Fairport Convention before her tragic & untimely death, aged 31, in 1978, in circumstances still shrouded in hearsay & speculation.
Sandy emerged from the folk scene of the sixties – a world of larger-than-life characters such as Alex Campbell, Jackson C. Frank, Anne Briggs & Australian singer Trevor Lucas, whom she married in 1973. Their often turbulent relationship is at the core of Sandy’s later life & work, as she tried to reconcile a longing for the simple life & motherhood with the trappings of a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle & a fear of the fame & success which others expected of her.
This is her story told with the help of more than sixty of her friends, fellow musicians & contemporaries all of whom spoke with great candour, some with too much candour, & all with a mixture of joy & sadness when talking about Sandy.