Sponsored by
MUSIC INTERVIEW: Vashti Bunyan
"We've just come back from Japan and Singapore," says Vashti Bunyan in her soft Edinburgh accent. "The next dates are all in the UK and Europe. I'm really looking forward to it."
The folk singer's career has been building and building since the release of her debut album Just Another Diamond Day on CD a decade ago and she's thoroughly enjoying it.
And well she might – for Vashti's is a music industry story with a difference.
It began back in the mid-1960s when the then 18-year-old was thrown out of art school – for spending too much time writing songs and playing guitar. Inspired by Bob Dylan, she attempted to become a singer, in the folk-pop vein.
Things looked promising when, in 1965, she was taken under the wing of the Rolling Stones manger Andrew Loog Oldham. "He was 21 – I was 19 when I first met him," recalls Vashti. "He was extraordinarily in charge of his world. He was grabbing things from the old guard in the music industry and running with it for the young.
"I thought he was amazing. I never spoke a word to him – I was terrified of him. He was such a prince."
Thinking he'd discovered another Marianne Faithfull, Oldham gave her a Jagger and Richards song, Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind, to record. Sadly it flopped – as did the follow-up, Train Song. Oldham though persevered, signing her to his new independent label Immediate and recording three further singles. The problem was none of them were ever released and a disheartened Vashti "gave up on it all".
In 1968 she and her then boyfriend Robert Lewis Loaded their belongings into a horse and cart and headed for a commune in the Hebrides. The journey took an epic two summers and one winter. "I had no idea it was going to take that long," laughs Vashti now. "If we had known at the beginning of the journey we might not have done it.
"We were very innocent. We did not make the journey to be a great big statement. It was only thing we could do at the time because we did not have any money – and horses don't need petrol or train fares."
They did break, however, for a few weeks at a house in the Lake District. It was there that she met the young American record producer Joe Boyd, discoverer of Nick Drake, who offered to record the songs Vashti had written on her travels for his label Witchseason.
When the commune didn't work out, Vashti returned to London to take Boyd up on his offer. The album Just Another Diamond Day was recorded in three evenings with the producer's "family of musicians" from Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band. The string arranger was Robert Kirby, who also worked on Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left and Bryter Later.
Vashti remembers the sessions being difficult; she had no say in the production and "didn't even hear (the album] for another year" as Boyd mixed it in America. "In the meantime I had a baby," she says. "By the time I heard it again I was fairly detached."
Boyd looked after her with a house in Scottish borders but the album was forgotten after its release in 1970. "When Diamond Day came out nobody mentioned it," Vashti says. "I was totally invisible – so I felt I should give up on music altogether which is what I did."
For the next 30 years she lived a quiet life in Ireland and Scotland, raising two sons and a daughter. In 1997 she tapped her name into the computer and was surprised to find Diamond Day had acquired a cult following. Eventually, with the help of Paul Lambden at Ryko Publishing, she managed to track down the mastertapes of the album and in 2000 it was released on CD.
Over the next five years her reputation grew - helped by the American 'freak folk' singer Devendra Banhart, who assisted with Diamond Day's release in the USA, and Glen Johnson of Piano Magic, who invited her to sing on a couple of songs.
In 2005 Vashti signed to Fat Cat Records, and recorded the album Lookaftering with admirers such as Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Adem Ilhan and producer Max Richter. The experience was considerably happier than in the past. Richter, says Vashti, was "a wonderful guy, very patient".
She was nervous, she admits, given that "I had not sung or written or picked up my guitar (in 35 years]. I had not even sung to my children. I taught my eldest son to play guitar but that was it." Yet the album came out to widespread acclaim. She now tours the world and is working on a follow-up, which she hopes will be out next year.
Writing is a slow process, but a good song, she says, is about "condensing a feeling or a story into a few words as possible". "When I was young that was most appealing about pop songs – that they could say so much in a few lines - that's what I strive for."
This month Vashti plays six dates around England. Could she ever have imagined her career would have turned full circle in her 60s? "It really, truly, hand-on-heart is something I could never have dreamed of," she says. "I never dared to play live – I was always very shy. It's an extraordinary gift to be able to pick up where I left off.
"On the other hand," she laughs, "it makes me feel like my contemporaries are such mature musicians and I'm not. I still feel very much at the beginning. I feel incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to develop and do all these things I never did."
Vashti Bunyan plays at the Howard Assembly Room, New Briggate, Leeds on Apr 9. Doors 7.45pm. Tickets 12. Tel: 0844 848 2727, www.leedsgrandtheatre.com
Click here for more
Email to a friend
Print this page- Politics: Mark Hookham's Westminster blog - 5.33pm
- Castleford RSPB Fairburn Ings: High wire act Swallows’ summer parade
- Worker dies on North Yorkshire Moors Railway
- Video: Restaurant reopens on Leeds Harry Ramsden’s site after £500,000 refit
- Chocolat author will tempt guests at Leeds Big Bookend Festival
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Leeds
Friday 25 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 8 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: East
