Product Description

With Fairport Convention, Fotheringay and in her own solo career, Sandy Denny had one of contemporary music’s finest voices, and Melody Maker twice voted her best female singer. She was also a highly acclaimed songwriter, composing most of her own material. However as one of the few women in the fast-living, hard-drinking music industry of the era, Sandy was forever torn between the thrill of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle and a desire to escape to a simple family life in the country. Sadly, Sandy never did reconcile her life’s conflicting forces, and died aged 31 in 1978 in circumstances surrounded with mystery.
Sandy Denny remains the finest female singer-songwriter this country has ever produced.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #759352 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Uncut
With intimate accounts from friends and colleagues, this is a bold but never sensationalised look at the finest British singer-songwriter of them all

The Herald
[This]is essentially yet another sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll tale, with stage fright and alcohol chasers…. Compelling

From the Publisher
Gripping biog of the best English female singer-songwriter
Clinton Heylin's biography (details listed above were initially incorrect and will shortly be corrected) No More Sad Refrains, draws on hours of fresh interviews with Sandy's closest friends and musical collaborators, access to her diaries and unreleased work, to produce a moving portrait of a complex, driven, but fatally flawed genius, who remains the finest female singer-songwriter this country has ever produced. "My favourite singer out of all the British girls that ever were." Robert Plant

Customer Reviews

A moving story
If you have ever enjoyed Sandy's music, you should read this, but be warned. It is very depressing to read about someone so talented and so hell-bent on self-destruction. Despite the total contrast in their voices, Sandy consciously modelled herself on Janis Joplin, and the ensuing lifestyle wreaked the inevitable consequences. If I have one criticism of this book, it is in the sometimes shoddy writing/editing. There are a number of spelling and grammatical errors, but by far the most annoying feature is the way Heylin insists on inserting his own words into other people's quotations - ostensibly for reasons of clarity, but in most cases completely unnecessary. I don't have an actual example to hand, but to give you the idea, if someone says something like "She was a bit of a heavy drinker", it's likely to come out as "[Sandy][at that time] was a bit of a heavy [brandy] drinker". It adds nothing to the meaning, and after a while becomes highly intrusive and irritating. That aside, it's a very good (if sobering) read.

An extremely readable "must."
Sandy Denny has to be one of the greatest British singers ever. Her voice had a haunting quality and a truly natural sound and was able to make your spirits soar or break your heart.

This book acquaints you with the woman behind the voice. As the author says, "Solo the voice could now be heard in all its resonating purity, driven by an unerring instinct, but the secret Sandy remained a deeply unhappy person, for whom the songs remained her only release."

There are lots of touching anecdotes, like the time Sandy invited her friend Bambi Ballard to a studio at one in the morning to play the songs of the album "Sandy." After each song the insecure Sandy asked "You don't want to hear any more, do you?" Bambi Ballard, the sole audience, with tears running down her face had to reassure her that each song was lovely and to urge her to play another.

The book also corrects the notion that Sandy fell as a result of falling downstairs - and helps to explain why the some of the facts were played down.

In short if you like Sandy Denny's music, this book is a "must" and is extremely readable.

Sandy Denny - who had no thought of time
When the book arrived this morning, I intended to read it "soon"; for now, I would just dip here and there for comment on particular songs, or stages in the life of Sandy Denny. The excellent index found a few plums for me: each plum became pages, a chapter, more. Finally I realised that I had, in fact, read the whole book - though not from cover to cover.

For anyone who might be new to Sandy Denny, Fairport Convention, Fotheringay, I would suggest starting at the shattering beginning and going on to the devastating end of this biography. If your idea of "folk music" involves pretty young girls and men in Aran jumpers singing with their fingers in their ears, this book may not be for you. Then again, it might give you a more realistic view of the music scene, and the pressures and temptations facing anyone who embarks on a career therein.

Sandy was human. She was flawed and imperfect, and she did things that perhaps she shouldn't have done. She was lonely, and unhappy, and insecure, and she died far, far too soon. If you read this book to the end, you must surely spare a tear, or a prayer, for her short thirty-one years of life, and for the years that might have been.

When you have done that, put on the music. Any album, your favourite album, possibly the double CD that bears the same name as this book. Let the sound of that voice wash over you once more. You may understand some of the songs a little better, the passion and pain may be a bit clearer for knowing more of her life. Whatever her faults - and she had plenty - Sandy had a voice that was pure gold, and the tragedy was that she didn't believe it.

I do have a few reservations about this book - it appears to have been published without ever being proof-read, and is full of misprints, mis-spellings, bad punctuation and even whole phrases in the wrong place. But it is also full of compelling quotes from friends and lovers who were there, who saw what was going on, and the reader is drawn on and further on by their painful honesty. It deserves to be re-printed, after correction, but most of all this book deserves to be read, and the music played. And played again, and understood.