IT HAS BEEN SAID that a musician has a lifetime to make their first album and a few months to make their second. The flipside of this cliché is the "difficult" second album, writes SINÉAD GLEESON
Singer Vashti Bunyan ignored the former and personifies the latter, given a 35-year gap between projects. Just Another Diamond Dayappeared in 1970 and its follow-up didn't surface until 2005. "It felt like more of a bookend, really. Just Another Diamond Daywas a very forward-looking album, whereas Lookaftering is about looking back," says Bunyan.
"Even after Lookafteringhad been mastered and I knew it was coming out, I lay awake for three weeks thinking, 'I shouldn't be doing this again'. I was petrified it would be shot down the way Diamond Daywas."
That record was a folk-influenced album of pastoral songs produced by renowned producer Joe Boyd. It had a pop heart, but is considered one of the best folk albums of recent decades. Bunyan has always rejected the label “folk singer” because she felt she was never accepted by that community. “They disapproved of me because I wasnt a traditional folk singer, and the pop acts didnt get me either so I fell between two stools. In a way, thats what I was trying to do though, to bring the two together.”
BORN IN LONDON and possessed of a lifelong love of music, at 18 she was expelled from art college for writing songs in class. A single penned by the Rolling Stones followed in 1965 and she was (reluctantly) marketed as a "dark-haired Marianne Faithfull". Forty years later it's hard to imagine such a muted response to Just Another Diamond Day. On its release, she says, feedback from those around her was piecemeal or non-existent. Even Boyd, her producer, never expressed an opinion on the songs. None of her friends and family told her what they thought of it and Bunyan says it was "a very different time. No one volunteered a compliment, opinion or any sense of encouragement, so I thought everyone hated it because no one said anything."
Dublin-based singer Adrian Crowley was entranced on his first listen. “It was strange hearing that record for the first time because straightaway it felt like it had been in my life for years. The sound, the flickering melodies, the arrangements . . . but essentially that voice created a kind of deja vu in the best possible sense. Its an album that lingers with you and the sense of comfort it bestows is pretty special.” Crowley is curator of the Homelights Festival, which will host Bunyan’s first Irish gig this weekend in Dublin.
So disillusioned with the lack of critical response, a bruised Bunyan retreated to the country, abandoning music. With her partner, she spent several months travelling by horse and wagon around Ireland between 1970 and 1971. Her son had just been born and the period was a major crossroad for the singer, with motherhood and music jostling for attention. She admits now that the decision was made for her.
"Right before I began recording Just Another Diamond Day, I discovered I was pregnant and never wrote another song. It was as if everything I had put into my songs, I now put into my children and the demands of domestic life. I didn't want it to be like that, but I couldnt find another way to do things. I really admire women who can be creative andbring up children. It's very hard to juggle both and it feels like dividing yourself in two."
For three decades, her life was mostly rural and devoted to her three children, who had a vague notion that their mother used to be a singer. Her daughter, who provided the artwork for Lookaftering, recently confessed that she and her brother once found an old tape of her music hidden in the back of a drawer. As the only tape player in the house was in the car, they used to sneak out and listen to it. Does she regret not making music in those years? "More than not making my own music, I really regret turning my back on all music. It had hurt so much and I felt like such a failure that all music became too difficult to listen to."
Many didnt share her view, and Bunyan become aware, via the internet, that the album had a cult following. Copies sold online for staggering amounts and the idea of a re-issue seemed timely. Having avoided her own songs for three decades, it wasn’t until she went into a BBC studio to re-master the album in 2000 that she “fell back in love with the songs”. With her first royalty cheque, she bought a Mac, recording software, a mixer and keyboard and started writing songs again.
The image of the singer tinkering away with modern music gadgets contradicts her pastoral image. “Yes, people find it weird that I’m interested in technology, but I always have been. I remember hanging around aged five watching my brother and father building a hi-fi. Years ago, I often used two tape machines to try and double-track things.”
As an echo of the previous decades, she admits that the new-found productivity coincided with her youngest son going to college. After the re-issue appeared, praise followed from a host of contemporary musicians such as Joanna Newsome, Devendra Banhart and Animal Collective, who would all later appear on Lookaftering. It was produced by German composer Max Richter and released by Fat Cat in 2005 when Bunyan was 60.
THE SINGER ISmodest about her influence on other musicians, but Adrian Crowley says it is evident in the work of acts such as Espers, Vetiver and Banhart. "There's a documentary about Vashti called From Here To Beforewhere Devendra claims she is responsible for making a 'holy record'. It's rare you hear such an exalted kind of praise for a fellow musician. It's a testament to her musical longevity that after so long away from the business she can return to the fold with so much to share with a new generation. It's a rare and unique thing."
Instead of taking up the mantle of musical matriarch, Bunyan feels instead that she owes this next generation a debt. “What people such as Animal Collective and Devendra did was to make a place in the wider world for my songs. They introduced my music to a new audience. In a sense, they provided the feedback that I never got first time around. It gave me courage to turn back in on myself and see whether I could still write songs.”
The themes of failure and self-doubt recur throughout our interview and Bunyan puts this down to her early experiences when she couldn't bring her "quiet, thoughtful songs into the mainstream". In 2006, she had what she calls a "personal victory", when a UK mobile phone company used the title track from Just Another Diamond Dayin an ad, introducing her music to a new, younger audience.
For Bunyan, it was validation, not in financial terms but because it reinforced what she had always thought about her own music – that it could be commercial.
Ahead of her debut Irish gig, she says she is “really excited” about playing live again, especially alongside friends such as Adem, James Yorkston, Andy Irvine and Minotaur Shock. A new album is in progress, with help from Andy Cabic of Vetiver, and Bunyan seems to have relocated her lost musical mojo.
“I’m incredibly excited by music these days. Often people send me things to listen to and I try to offer encouragement. There’s this idea that everything has been done before and there’s nothing new to be made, but I disagree.”
The Homelights Festival is at Whelan’s on Wexford Street, Dublin 2, this weekend. Vashti Bunyan plays Whelan’s tomorrow. See myspace.com/homelightsfestival
