1965

Ejected
from art school
for playing guitar and songwriting. Up and down Tin Pan Alley, hawking songs
singing solo
quiet lovesongs in Soho nightclubs to no one listening then - singing at party - seen by theatrical agent, friend of Andrew Loog Oldham
Summoned to meeting
given Jagger /Richards
"Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind"
Vashti no Bunyan. Unsure of direction but had to see where path would lead
B side own song "I Want To Be Alone"
"Thank Your Lucky Stars" in black plastic raincoat
TV
Radio Newspapers
No touring
"The new Marianne Faithfull"
they said and
"A Female Bob Dylan"
(claimed to be neither of these )

then
nothing

1966

decided it had
been wrong
path

back to
singing alone
with guitar again
no big orchestra
no promotion
no World of Loog
but then Alasdair Clayre
and his poems and songs
Made Train Song
with Canadian producer Peter Snell
backed it with
Love Song
But no radio TV or Newspapers,
no one heard so nothing
again
back to ALO,Tony Calder and Immediate
to record Winter is Blue
Peter Whitehead filmed session
for his Documentary-
"Tonite Let"s All Make Love In London"
or song
would have been lost
unreleased
and
forgotten.
Got a dog called him Blue
after the winter

1967

happy Immediate days

"I thought - how does she expect me to sell poetry..why can"t she just
write a good pop song?" (Tony Calder 2000)

recorded
Coldest Night of the Year
for a single with Twice As Much
Unreleased
(Included on their 1970 album
"That"s All")

More songs written
Met Mike Hurst producing for
Immediate.
He chose
"I"d Like To Walk Around In Your Mind"
A good pop song

Unreleased by
Immediate
Again

Despair

1968

Unwillingly to job at King"s Road vet..

Too many rescued dogs. Father-" They go or you go" so left.

Then met up again Robert Lewis - art student hitchhiker - gave lift to 2 years before. Glow worms

With guitar to woodland and canvas house under rhododendron bush behind Ravensbourne College of Art on land belonging to Bank of England.

"We cant let you stay here what would happen if everybody came to live in the wood ?"

Wheels needed, horses don"t need petrol. Found. One baker"s van in need of repair and one Black Bess. Timothy Grub

Friend Donovan £100 iou. To Cornwall or Skye? Skye said the minstrel Donovan. There will be Renaissance - West Coast of Scotland.

Journey to Skye from Sidcup Kent started July 1968.

Long road through England. Few resources, digging gardens, painting farms, baking bread on stick fire.

Sure footed days.

Just another day- parked on rubbish dump at back of Rolls Royce factory Derby. Traveller family living there brought chips to wagon. Next morning the kids dressed in Sunday clothes to wave good bye and luck.

Bess dodged articulated trucks, dodgy police, angry residents locking up their chickens. Rainbow River

Understand, the songs were the dreaming in verges of grimy roads.

1969

wintering in Lake District. Rose Hip November

Invited to "tour" Holland, Belgium. Turned out to be pubs but found Derroll Adams living above a bar in Ghent. He said "Don"t hide your light under a bushel".

Wrote "Diamond Day" on train back via London. Took songs to Joe Boyd. Back to Lakes and horse, and left early March to carry on to Skye and Donovan"s islands- with advance from Joe and promise to record album of songs, later.

Later was after too long a story, after reaching Skye to find Donovan leaving, so travelled on further to Outer Hebrides. Isle of Berneray. Found place. Falling down thatched house by bay. Bought for £150.00- insurance pay out for fastcar ploughing into back of wagon on shores of Loch Ness.

Back to London for recording. 2 summers walking up the UK, 2 days in November driving down with Christopher Sykes of the camera and keyboard.

"Just Another Diamond Day" recorded at Sound Techniques.

Joe invited Robin Williamson of Incredible String Band, Dave Swarbrick and Simon Nicol of Fairport Convention to accompany on some tracks

Robert Kirby arranged String quartet and recorders.

Then..after all the music..back to life in Outer Hebrides winter.

1970

Rebuilding house in gales

Bess waiting on Uist- not welcome on Berneray

A Hebridean problem.. Each crofter allocated 2 cows on common grazing. One horse equalled 2 cows. If Bess were to be allowed to graze there..it would not have meant two less cows, just that there could have been two more cows There wouldn"t have been, but that was not point

So no Bess, no Berneray - a long story.

Back to London for birth of Leif Bunyan Lewis

Homeless

Choice - stay in city with child to promote "Just Another Diamond Day" or go to Scottish Borders, to house in row of houses with Incredible String Band

Left city and music, once more, and for good. Into winter, more dreaming, this time of Ireland"s west coast

Could get there by Bess and wagon

So did.

Onward

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.

V.B. June 2000