By: Rick Landers
Vashti Bunyan
On occasion, well-crafted music by magical singer-songwriters needs more time to find its space in the world. Many now have discovered Nick Drake’s magic by way of an automobile commercial, another captivating musician from the 1970s who was lost for decades, Sixto Rodriguez, was found in his native Michigan working as a handyman. Sixto had no idea that he was bigger than Elvis, in the Republic of South Africa, where he eventually returned to a huge network of fans.
And then there is Vashti Bunyan and her early music from the mid-Sixties and 1970s, with some of her work produced by Joe Boyd, the man who produced Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, John and Beverly Martyn, Sandy Denny and many more, who are all now music icons of British songwriting.
For reasons Vashti explains in our interview, she grew disillusioned when her original songs remained unheard by more than a very few listeners, many who would later become life-long fans.
Early on Vashti was introduced to Rolling Stones manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, who recognized her musical talents, and who worked to help her make her first single, “Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind” (Jagger-Richards), with the B-Side a song penned by her, “I Want To Be Alone.” She would later record her hauntingly beautiful “Train Song.” (Columbia – 1966)
Vashti left the music scene, to live a nomadic life with her partner, Robert Lewis, in a horse drawn cart navigating life and their way slowly to the Hebrides. To survive, they became peddlers or antique dealers by trade, finders and keepers who extracted the remaining monetary value of things found; and would rehabilitate furniture to sell to a buyers’ market in America.
During this time, Vashti would write songs that would find their way on to her 1970 debut album, Just Another Diamond Day.
After a long hiatus that lasted decades, in 2005, she recorded and released her second album, Lookaftering and followed it up in 2014 with her third album, Heartleap.
And she found her way in life outside of the music machinery, an industry that can coin ambitions or crush a songwriter’s heart. But, it’s better for her to tell you her of her storied life, her dreams, her music and more here, as well as in her book, Wayward: Just Another Life to Live.
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Rick Landers: When living in England, similar to what you actually did, I wanted to get in a gypsy cart with my girlfriend and just travel around. You’d see the gypsy carts alongside of the road, I don’t know if they still do that.
Vashti Bunyan: No, no. Sadly not, not for a long time.
Rick: Let’s get into what you’re most interested in talking about, about your early days in music.
Vashti Bunyan: Yeah. Well, I started off just writing songs when I was at art school in the early ’60s, and it ended up with my deciding I really wanted to be a singer and songwriter, rather than a painter. The art school I went to was very traditional, rather boring, and music seemed a lot more interesting to me.
And I ended up being found by Andrew Loog Oldham, who managed the Rolling Stones at that time and bringing them to huge success. And he gave me one of their songs to record, against my will. I don’t want to record a Stone’s song, I want to do my stuff. I ended up doing a single of theirs and my song beside it. Nothing happened to it, it just really didn’t work. I kept trying, I kept trying, and then I met a Canadian producer [Peter Snell] who recorded a song of mine called, “Train Song.”
Vashti Bunyan: Nobody knew it then, it was never played on any radio, or anything. Well, once on Pirate Radio but nothing happened to it. And now, it’s been used for all kinds of things, which is just the most wonderful feeling for me, because back then I was told my songs weren’t commercial. It’s been fantastic for me to have that validation I suppose, even for me as such a young person as I was then, to have that validation now is incredibly lucky, I think.
Rick: Yeah. Do you look back and view who you … I’ll say who you were because we all change, are you surprised that you had the guts to get your guitar and get out in front of people? I don’t know if you’re shy or not, but it can be very difficult to get out in front of people.
Vashti Bunyan: I was very shy, I was very shy. And I think part of the failure for me was that I didn’t do any live shows at all back in the Andrew Oldham days and the “Train Song days.”
1965, ’66, I didn’t perform at all. I wasn’t allowed to, they thought that it would ruin me if I went on tour. And so I didn’t have that experience at all. I went on recording and they went on not releasing what I was recording, and that’s when I took to the road with a horse and cart, just giving everything up, giving up my family, my friends in London, everything familiar, and just took to the road. And yes, when I look back at that young person, I think, “Yeah, she was quite brave really.”
But, on the other hand, at the time, I didn’t think I was brave. I just thought it was the only thing that I could do. I didn’t want to be a secretary. I didn’t want to be a nurse. I didn’t want to do all the things that my family was pushing me towards. I wanted to do … Well, there was an end in mind for the journey, in that I had met Donovan Leitch, the singer, and he was setting up, not exactly a community, but he’d bought some land off the west coast of Scotland, off the Isle of Skye.
There were ruins on his land, and he wanted to people it with people that were sympathetic to each other, and not to have a community exactly, but just what he called a west coast renaissance. And so, with my partner Robert [Lewis] at the time, we decided to go up there with a horse and wagon, not realizing it was going to take us nearly two years to get there. And on the way, I wrote these songs, not in any way thinking I would record them, because I’d had such a bad experience with recording. I just did them for us, to keep us going.
Rick: This is after you had an album out?
Vashti Bunyan: No, I have nothing. This is before the album came out, yes. The album came about because I met Joe Boyd, the producer, halfway through the journey. He was the producer of Nick Drake and Fairport Convention and John and Beverly Martyn, and the Incredible String Band. I met him and he offered to make an album of the songs by time we’d got to the end of the journey. A year later, we made the album.
Vashti Bunyan: I didn’t know any of them. I knew nobody, I had no idea who he was even. I didn’t know who the Incredible String Band was. I didn’t know who Nick Drake was, of course later. Robin Williamson from the Incredible String Band played on the album, brought in by Joe Boyd.
And I had been out of the music business. I didn’t even read any music papers or have a radio or anything. I’d been away from what was happening in music. And to come back, it’d just been me and my guitar in the wagon. But on the side of the road, I was sitting by a fire, and to come back into a studio and record with other people was quite incredible for me.
Rick: Did you find it stressful?
Vashti Bunyan: Yes, very. Yeah, very. And then I went back to the Hebrides after the recording. I had a baby. I didn’t know what was happening, Joe took the tapes to America because he was moving back to America. I knew nothing about it until nearly a year later, I got an acetate demo of what Joe had put together.
Yeah, really. And I didn’t like it.
Rick: You didn’t like it? Oh.
Vashti Bunyan: No. I didn’t like the album.
Well, what I felt then and what has haunted me ever since, was that I felt it had been made to sound like a folk album because of the String Band and because of the Fairport guys in it, and because of the way that Joe saw me.
And by the time I’d heard it again, I’d had a whole lot more life. I’d had a baby, I was back down south. And the songs I did like were arranged by Robert Kirby, who had arranged Nick Drake’s songs. Those I really loved. But, the more folky ones, I thought, “That’s not me. That’s not me.” And I rejected it. I never promoted it, I didn’t do anything. Nobody ever got in touch with me about it.
Rick: Really, wow.
Vashti Bunyan: Vanished. And Joe doesn’t even know how many were pressed, probably about 300, or something like that.
Rick: Well, it’s interesting that you and Nick Drake, people put you in the British folk category. But, I don’t really consider Nick Drake a folk musician. He’s a jazz, eclectic type of a fellow.
Vashti Bunyan: Really, really. That’s what always annoyed me. Why did I have to get the term folk on my head?
Rick: They pigeonholed you.
Vashti Bunyan at the Norrebro Theatre. Copenhagen.
Vashti Bunyan: Yeah, really pigeonholed me. And so I make a big deal of it. And my music agent, whenever she comes up with a contract for me for a performance, she puts into the contract, “She is not to be promoted as a folk singer.”
Rick: I’m not sure where you would fit in with your music, or Nick really. You really don’t fit into a genre, I don’t think.
Vashti Bunyan: Sure, yeah. Well yeah, freak folk they’ve been calling me, which I don’t mind quite so much. But yes, it is quite difficult because people will say to me, “If you’re not a folk singer, what are you then?” I don’t know. Like you say, I don’t know where to put myself, really.
Rick: Yeah, you’re a songwriter.
Vashti Bunyan: I’m a songwriter, yeah.
Rick: Yeah, that should be enough. Let’s go back to when you were in the Gypsy cart. I always find this fascinating because I wanted to do that but I didn’t have the guts or the money or whatever to even get a horse.
Vashti Bunyan: We didn’t have the money either.
Rick: When you were writing songs, don’t you find that when you’re writing a song, there’s so much joy when you get the right words and the melody fits, even more than maybe any type of commercial success?
Vashti Bunyan: Yes. Oh, that’s what I was after. That was the joy in it, to find the words, to find the music, to make the songs that spoke about what I was experiencing at the time, which was to find out about the natural world, to find out about how life was before the internal combustion engine, to meet people who were in their sixties and seventies, who could tell me about the way it used to be. I was always very interested in rural stories, I guess.
Rick: Were you more of a Luddite then, you shied away from technology and…
Vashti Bunyan: Yeah.
Rick: And I just pigeonholed you. [Smiles]
Vashti Bunyan: You did, you did. I wouldn’t have thought anything of what I was. I never thought of myself as any … I wasn’t rebelling, I wasn’t making any social statement or anything like that. I was just doing what I had to do at the time, with a horse and a boyfriend and a dog, and then another dog and later on with chickens.
It was an extraordinary education for me, because I’d been brought up in London in a fairly comfortable upbringing. I was sent to private school and all of those trappings that I hated, I really hated it. And so I had to get away from it and find my own way, rather than carrying on the traditions, I suppose. I just wanted to find out for myself what I could do. And I don’t know that I did particularly, but I did learn a lot. I don’t have any regrets about leaving.
Rick: When you look back, do you find that you sometimes smile to yourself or even laugh, going, “Oh. Well, I can’t believe I did that.” Or quietly smile and go, “That young girl really had a very interesting life, that very few people had.”
Vashti Bunyan: I think what I love, looking back about it, are the contrasts that I made for myself between art school and then the whole pop music world of London in 1964 and 1965, so exciting and so much I wanted to be part of it. And then feeling like there was a rejection there of my songs, and so going completely the other way and going into a life where my focus had to be on food and water for the horse, somewhere to park the wagon every night, where to find whatever we needed, how to stop my dog getting run over, all of those things I had to concentrate on, which were such a contrast to how I had lived my life up until then.
Vashti Bunyan: Yes, exactly. And that’s exactly what I wanted to do. Although I wouldn’t have thought of it at the time, that all of that failure and rejection in the pop music world had made me quite ill in a way that now I would know it as depression or post-traumatic stress or whatever, by the things that had happened to me then.
But, I wouldn’t have had those words, and I had no idea what was happening to me. I only knew that I had to leave. And the only way I could leave, because I didn’t have money for a car or petrol or anything like that, horse. That’s what I had to do, and it really helped, really helped to get me better and to get my mind ’round the right way.
Rick: Yeah. Your book that you wrote last year, is that a history that you go back through that history? Let me ask you a little bit about maybe the research on that and how you viewed your past. And I’m going to come up with something which is basically related to Scotland. You’re in Scotland, you’re in Edinburgh.
Vashti Bunyan: Yes, Edinburgh. Yeah.
Rick: Yeah. It seems to me when people look back on their lives, they look back thinking they’re looking through a telescope, but what they’re really looking at is a kaleidoscope, which was actually invented in Scotland, which you may have known. And so you’ve got all these pieces, these fragments, and you then have to fit that together, so that you can see the telescope but you’re picking at pieces, at memories, those special moments. You don’t remember days but you do remember special moments, I think.
Vashti Bunyan: Oh, really. And that’s what the book is made up of, is it’s not completely in chronological order. And there are little stories here and little stories there. I start of course, when I was a child and I end up with now. But in between, there are all the people that I met along the way, from Andrew Oldham to … He’s just incredible. To the farmers, to the scrap dealers, to the landowners in Scotland, all these incredibly different people, and they’re all in there. I wanted to paint a picture more than write a book. Even now, I can’t believe I wrote a book.
Vashti Bunyan: Yeah. And also, I had to be very careful about all the other people. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. And also, this is my children’s legacy. And in fact, it was because of them that I started writing it ages ago, because I wanted them to understand what their parents had done and why. Because it was a bit of a puzzle to them. Why on earth would you have done what you did?
Rick: Well, I’m sure they’re fascinated by their mom in hearing these stories, and some I assume, they had never heard until you started writing.
Vashti Bunyan: Yes, that’s right. Yes.
Rick: You stopped for some time and you had three children, is that right?
Vashti Bunyan: Yes, yeah.
Rick: Okay. And so were you working at all or you were mothering?
Vashti Bunyan: Mothering and horses and dogs and chickens and the rest. Yeah. Yeah, it’s quite hard to explain what happened in that 30 years after Just Another Diamond Day came out, and I rejected it, to when I started making music again, which was 30 years later.
And my second album came out 35 years after the first. And so to try and explain what my life was in that intervening time is quite difficult because there were so many different things that happened. And I learned from some travelers how to buy stuff and sell stuff, and became … I guess, you’d call it an antique dealer.
Rick: Or an entrepreneur.
Vashti Bunyan: Yeah. Well, we went around the farms buying old furniture that nobody wanted anymore and restoring it, sending a lot of it to America because it was wanted there more than it was wanted here. That was in between all of those years where I wasn’t singing, I wasn’t playing guitar. My guitar hung up on the wall.
Rick: Oh, I was going to ask you about that, whether you continued to pursue just playing music on your own and just getting that special joy. Was it 2005 when you came out with your album?
Vashti Bunyan: Yeah.
Rick: That would be the 35 years. You stopped around 1970, which is a great year for music, especially British music, I think.
Vashti Bunyan: Oh, thank you.
Rick: In 2005, what prompted you to get back into it? And when you did, were you surprised how different maybe music was in 2005, or that you had a fan base?
Vashti Bunyan: I was so incredibly surprised when Just Another Diamond Day, which was reissued in 2000, actually found the people that I would’ve loved it to have found back when it came out. And also, the generation and the ages that I was when I wrote those songs, those young people were understanding it and taking it for what it was, instead of in its own day, it was dismissed as nursery rhymes, just lightweight, silly stuff.
This time, it was actually understood, and that meant that when I picked up my guitar, it meant something to me, rather than I hadn’t been able to even pick it up throughout those 30 years without that terrible feeling of sadness and failure. And I didn’t even sing to my children throughout that time. And so yeah, something happened with playing the guitar. My son had given me an old Martin, beautiful old thing from the 1890s.
Vashti Bunyan: I gave it back to him because it didn’t like Scotland actually.
Rick: Oh, yeah. Weather.
Vashti Bunyan: Weird, it didn’t like Scotland. And it was happy when I took it back to California.
Rick: Really?
Vashti Bunyan: But yeah, I forgot that, that my son lives in California. He got it there. He gave it to me, I brought it back to Scotland. It was clearly unhappy with the damp I guess, with a completely different climate.
Rick: Yeah, could be.
Vashti Bunyan: I gave it back to him, took it back to California.
Rick: Were you aware that your songs were on some compilation albums?
Vashti Bunyan: Yes, I was. I think I wasn’t aware of any of it till about ’96 when I first got on the Internet. And then I found that the music was actually still out there, instead of completely buried as I had tried to do.
Rick: Was it a little evolution for you when you first knew that and then you figured out that there was a cult almost for you? And then did that give you some traction and confidence to go, “Think I’m going to go back and see where I am now, really as an adult.” Even though you were probably 18 or 19 early on, still an adult I guess, but as a mature adult now, you’re looking at it differently. And I would assume that things resonate differently, even your songs probably resonate differently, I would think
Vashti Bunyan: Oh yeah, quite different. Well, I was invited by Glen Johnson of Piano Magic after Diamond Day came out again and he heard it, he asked me to go and record a song with him. And it was the first time I’d been in a studio. This was in 2002, I think, first time I’d been in a studio since the recordings with Joe Boyd. I didn’t even know if I could sing. And so I was standing in front of this microphone trying to sing his song. Oh, it’s still there.
Rick: It’s still there.
Vashti Bunyan: It’s still there. And I think when I left that session, I was literally walking on air and I called my daughter and said, “I’m going to do this again. I’m going to make another record somehow or other.”
I didn’t have any songs yet, but this was what made me understand that it was still there. It was like opening a cupboard that had been locked for all that time, and it was all still there. It was the most wonderful moment, I can’t tell you how great it was.
Rick: Maybe because you hadn’t been singing for 30 years, you may have lost your voice, because I can see some people playing and it’s like, “Oh, they should have stopped a while back.” But, it’s great that you still retained that polish.
Vashti Bunyan: I think it’s probably got a bit different now.
Vashti Bunyan: The last performance was when the book came out. I had a performance at The Barbican in London, and that was lovely, with a lot of friends that I’d gathered over the years to play with me. It was lovely. That was the last performance that I did. But, I’ve been taking the book around and doing readings and that’s great, don’t have to carry a guitar. That’s not the right thing to say.
Rick: And I love guitars, and I’m sure you love guitars.
Vashti Bunyan: I do.
Rick: How many guitars do you have now?
Vashti Bunyan: Oh, what have I got?
Rick: Uh oh, uh oh. It’s a lot.
Vashti Bunyan: I’m not that bad, I’m not that bad. I’ve got the three main ones that I play and a few others hanging about that I don’t play. But Gareth Dixon, who has played guitar with me right from 2005 we’ve played together, and he’s always looking on eBay and he said, “You never get your guitar, because there’s always another one out there, always.”
Rick: What are the three guitars that you mainly use or play around, noodle around at home?
Vashti Bunyan: I’ve got an old Gibson from 1972. What is it? Yeah, J-50.
Rick: Okay. I’ve got a J-45.
Vashti Bunyan: Yes, it’s slightly bigger. And I love it. I got it in Los Angeles actually, at the Guitar Center there. They’ve got a great section of vintage guitars, and it’s all cracked up, but it’s quite light for a guitar size. I’m very quiet, I’m a very quiet player. And so it gives out more than the little guitar. I got a little Martin 016 from 1964.
It’s lovely, it’s very small. Yeah, that’s great. And my old Gibson that I love so much, the intonation was a little bit dodgy. And I had a big concert to do in Singapore about, oh, 12 years ago, something like that. And I thought, “Well, I’d better get something a bit smarter.”
I bought a new Martin. What was it? I’ve got it written down. Oh, a D-52. That’s right. And it’s all very, very smart with lots of lovely little bits of inlay in it and it’s gorgeous. And I hated it. And it’s very fancy. Well, it’s a lot heavier than the Gibson. And I just didn’t get along with it. I don’t know why.
I’ve bought quite a few over the years and sent them on or sent them back. But the Gibson, I don’t know, there’s something about it. I took it to be seen by a really lovely guy in Glasgow because the intonation was really, it was a bit of a problem. And he’s put it right for me. And so that’s the one that I go to, although it’s big. And yes, it’s a dreadnaught. Yeah, there’s something about it I really love, maybe because it’s from 1972. I don’t know.
Vashti Bunyan with her children and their Collie.
Rick: Well, that could be too. What I like about the Gibsons, the 45s and the 50s, and there’s actually a J-35 that was made back in the late ’30s, early ’40s. Just the construction is great, the bracings are perfect. And then the spruce tops and the mahogany, that’s a singer-songwriter guitar, when you have the mahogany and you got some type of spruce top, whether it’s an Addie top or Sitka, or whatever. But yeah, that’s a perfect guitar and you’re drawn to it as a singer-songwriter I would think.
Vashti Bunyan: Yes, yeah. It’s just a really good friend.
Rick: What was the name of the company that Joe Boyd was with, witch something.
Vashti Bunyan: Witchseason.
Rick: Witchseason. Now, do you know those folks like Beverly Martyn? I know John’s passed away, Roy Harper, Roy and …
Vashti Bunyan: No, Mike Heron of the Incredible String Band, he’s a very good friend. Yeah, he’s the only one I know from back then. Well, Joe [Boyd] of course, I see Joe from time to time. But, Mike Heron. Yeah, I always liked his songwriting in the Incredible String Band. There’s just something about him that I really enjoy.
Although, I’ve only come to know his music or their music in the latter years, I didn’t know about it before at all. Yeah. I knew nothing about other people’s music after the horse journey.
Rick: Yeah. I had not heard of Nick Drake until a few years ago. Have you heard of Judee Sill?
Vashti Bunyan: Yes. Oh, yes.
Rick: I had not heard of Judee Sill and a few other artists like that until maybe three years ago. Tough life, tough life but wow. Wow. Did you know her at all or you just heard of her?
Vashti Bunyan: Well, probably in the last 10 years or so, I discovered her music. Yes.
Rick: There another fellow named … Oh man, Robbie Basho, B-A-S-H-O.
He has a cult following in the States. I just heard about him about a month or so ago, and he’s got almost this trilling voice. And it’s beautiful. And he plays incredible 12-string guitar. Look him up.
Vashti Bunyan: I will.
Rick: Do you know Lisa Hannigan?
Vashti Bunyan: Yeah, I do. Yeah. I did a show Joe Boyd was putting on a tribute to Nick Drake. We took it around the U.K., and yes, Lisa was on one of them. And yeah, it was fun. I had to do “Witch Will,” and it was very difficult. And then I did the “Mary Jane” one later, but to try to sing Nick Drake songs is a nightmare, because his phrasing is so particular to him, and if you don’t get it right or you get it really … It’s very easy to get it really wrong. And that takes such a lot out of the song. The way he sings them and his guitaring.
Rick: His guitar playing, I listened and go, “Is that two people playing?” on some of his songs.
Vashti Bunyan: I know. Yeah, that’s right.
Rick: Do you have any inclinations to tour, tour Britain or Europe or to come to the States?
Vashti Bunyan: Difficult to come to the States, the whole visa thing is really difficult. I did tour there twice in 2006 and 2007. That was great. That was one of the best experiences of my life, I think. And going to Europe now because of Brexit is almost impossible.
You have to have a visa for each different country. You have to declare all that you’re taking in, the equipment and have it checked on the way back and all of those things. It makes it really expensive for young musicians. And so they can’t do it anymore.
Vashti Bunyan: Oh, yeah. The last time I got a Visa, I had to get so many people to say, “Yeah, she’s going to do concerts here, here, here, here, here.”
Rick: Let me know if you will, if you decide to come this way. I can probably offer an assist. I read that, and correct me if I’m wrong or if it was misreported, is that your mother may have been a frustrated singer, much like Molly Drake. And there’s an album out now of Molly Drake’s singing, which is really beautiful. She was a pretty lady, and her daughter was an actress. Is she still an actress?
Vashti Bunyan: Yeah. Yeah, she is.
Rick: Yeah. What was your mom like? If it’s not too personal.
Vashti Bunyan: Extremely beautiful. But yeah, I wrote a song about it. Well, my father got a piano, an old piano, which was terribly out of tune. But my mother, I saw her, I was spying on her in a way, through a slightly open door sitting at this piano, singing in the most beautiful voice that I’d never heard before. And it made me think, this is what she was before she married my father, before she had to become a wife and a mother. She was a beautiful … I don’t know if she ever performed in public.
I’ve found photographs of her in extraordinary costumes, but I know nothing about it. But that was the feeling I got, was that she had to give it up. It wouldn’t have occurred to her to bring herself, her music, her beautiful voice out into the world, because what she had to do was to marry and have children and be a wife. And that’s what she did.
Rick: And I think that’s probably more normal for people thinking they play music and stuff, but going out and doing it, there’s probably a fear of not succeeding, a fear of failure, and looking back look back at you, and you had the courage to go do that back when you were a teenager.
Vashti Bunyan: Yeah, I was. Yeah.
Rick: It can be daunting to do that. Today, do you look forward to possibly touring, doing some more writing of songs or maybe another book, you got another book in you? Or is that the one?
Vashti Bunyan: There’s a period in the book where I went to Ireland in 1971 and traveled with a horse and wagon just for a year. And I haven’t told the stories in this book, but I want to write about those adventures that we had in Ireland with the horses and the wagons and the people. It was an extraordinary adventure, but it was too much to put into this book. I had just hinted at it, but I would like to write about that year because it was extraordinary, in 1971.
Rick: What about recording? Do you have more songs? Writers tend to have a lot of songs and they noodle stuff, they got a few nits, small things, and then they turn them into songs. Do you have an inventory of songs that you want to get back to, to finish.
Vashti Bunyan: I wish, I wish, I wish. I think what I have are a lot of words. And I don’t pick up my guitar very often. It frightens me to try and catch something, that I would maybe find something and then I would lose it. What I should do is sit down with a recorder and try and find it that way. But, I’ve never done that. Maybe that’s something I should try. I’ve got a lot of words, a lot of words. I will maybe try to do some more. But my last album, which was in 2014 …
Rick: What was that called?
Vashti Bunyan: It was said to be my last, Heartleap. And I’ve told that story in the book, that when it was getting mastered by this wonderful woman, Mandy Parnell, she turned to me and said, “For the next one, I’m going to come up to your studio and I’m going to put it right, because it’s really not okay.”
And I said, “Oh, I’m never doing this again.”
Because we’d been through a whole week of mastering and mixing, and God knows what, “I’m never doing this again.”
And the label guy, Dave Howell from Fat Cat, was there. And when he was writing up the promotion, he said, “This is going to be her last album.”
It is. But who knows, who knows? Everybody, not everybody, a lot of people say, “Oh, I’m never doing that again. This is my last and then … I’m never touring again. This is my last performance ever.”
And then they go back.
Rick: Okay. If Joe Boyd gives you a call and says, “Let’s do an album.” Are you going to say, “No”?
Vashti Bunyan: Probably. Oh, Joe. I don’t know. I don’t know. Yeah. I’ll ask him next time I see him.
Rick: Well, he’s in Ojai. You’re heading to California or …
Vashti Bunyan: Oh yeah, my son lives in Ojai. Yeah ,and I haven’t seen him for over three years. And we used to go every summer and stay a couple of months. But after lockdown, we’ve just been back. I’d really love to go back again and see him.
Who knows? With Howard Wolfing, he did my publicity when I was touring in America. And when my book was coming out in America, I contacted him to ask him if he would be my publicist for the USA. And I’m very, very happy that he agreed to. And so who knows what might happen? Maybe I’ll come over and do a few readings, you never know. I would love to do that. He’s been fantastic, he really is a lovely guy. Would you like me to send you a book?
Rick:: Oh, yes, that would be great, thank you.
Is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you would like to get out there? It doesn’t have to be promotion. It could be something that you want people to know about you and whatever. I don’t care what it is, whatever you want to talk about really.
Vashti Bunyan: Okay. Well, I could tell you one of the stories, it’s in the book, is about this beautiful little guitar that I was given that had been in my aunt’s attic for a long time. It was a beautiful little thing with flowers inlaid around the sound hull, birdseye maple. And it was slightly cracked up, but I loved it.
And that’s what I wrote a lot of the Diamond Day songs on. And when we were recording, well, it got broken on the way to the recording sessions. And Joe Boyd said that he knew a lute maker who could mend it for me. I took it to the loot maker and he was going to mend the neck. And that’s what I thought all that he was going to do.
And I was about a month off having my baby when one night I had a terrible nightmare that this guy had taken off the machine heads, which were beautiful old bone and brass and just really beautiful old things, and replaced them with white plastic and chrome country and western.
Rick: That is a nightmare.
Vashti Bunyan: That was my nightmare. And I woke up my partner Robert, and said, “It’s terrible.”
And we got the call the next day to go and collect the guitar. And guess what?
Rick: Oh no, don’t tell me.
Vashti Bunyan: It was real. He had, he’d taken off the old ones, because one of the posts was slightly cracked. He’d taken them off and replaced them with these bright white and chrome ones on this beautiful old, old, old guitar. And he’d stripped off all the white binding.
Rick: That’s sacrilegious.
Vashti Bunyan: And replaced it with black paint.
Rick: Black paint, that’s weird.
Vashti Bunyan: And my partner Robert, went into his … He wasn’t there, it was just his wife was there. And she didn’t understand why I was screaming. And he went into the workshop and he found the old ones on a hook and he took them.
And when my son was 16 years old, the one that I was pregnant with when this all happened, he found the old machine heads and replaced them on the old guitar. And he’s got it in Ojai. And I’ll send you photographs of it. It’s the most beautiful creature. Yeah, I kept it all the while. I never played it again because it just sounded wrong to me. But, my son now has it, and his son who’s now 16, plays it.
Rick: It’s an heirloom, yeah.
Vashti Bunyan: It is, it is. And it’s so beautiful. It’s a lovely little thing. I don’t know who made it, I think possibly French or German, but I’ll send you a photograph of … Well, there’s a drawing of it in my book.
Rick: Where’d you go to art school?
Vashti Bunyan: In Oxford, it was called the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. And it was in an old museum, in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. And it was very, very old fashioned and traditional. I wasn’t allowed to paint for the first year, and I had to be drawing all these Greek torsos, all these statues that were around the museum. And I didn’t like it much, I started writing songs instead.
Rick: It almost sounds like the Japanese, when people were building the samurai swords, guys couldn’t touch the swords, they had to do these menial jobs. And eventually they moved on to the sword making. It almost sounds like the same process. Is that a painting that you made behind you?
Vashti Bunyan: No, that’s my daughter. She’s an incredible painter.
That’s a painting she did of herself. Oh, she does the most beautiful work. And the last albums, Lookaftering and Heartleap, they have her paintings on the sleeve, that’s her. Yeah, she really did it. She’s been a painter since she was a little girl. She’s almost 50 and she’s still a most amazing painter. Yeah.
Rick: It’s very good. Do you paint at all still or draw?
Vashti Bunyan: I draw, I draw. Yeah. Well, I did some drawings for the book. Well, I wouldn’t call myself a drawer a painter or even a writer, I just do what comes to hand.
Rick: Well, this has been great. This has been fun, so I hope you enjoyed this.
Vashti Bunyan: Yes, very much. Very much.
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