Vashti Bunyan
Issue #24
After 30-plus years, the British singer-songwriter finally gets the recognition she deserves
By Kristina Francisco
Published: June 1st, 2005 | 2:10pm
In the 1960s, Vashti Bunyan recorded Just Another Diamond Day, a simple folk album that gave way to her enchantingly childlike, melodic voice. Not released until 1970, Diamond Day received little to no recognition, compelling Bunyan to flee London by horse and buggy, thereby abandoning any chance at a music career.
In the decades to follow, Bunyan and her companion, Robert, traveled together by horse — and at one point lived in an old VW — and had three children. The two made a living off of what they could make and sell by the roadside. They rented farmhouses, workshops, and shops, and eventually bought and restored an old Scottish farm. When Bunyan and Robert later separated, she fell in love with her lawyer, "sold up," and went to live with him and his three kids in Edinburgh, Scotland, living a life apart from the music industry. But one day in 2000, Diamond Day resurfaced, and Bunyan found the notoriety that had eluded her decades before.
From her home in Edinburgh, Bunyan, in a surprisingly engaging voice, answers a few questions via e-mail, sharing everything she’s gone through and explaining how she got together with Animal Collective for their shared EP, Prospect Hummer.
What are you up to?
Listening to the first sketches of some new songs I recorded over the last while on my computer. A guitarist is coming by tomorrow to start working out some arrangements with me for a new album. I can’t remember how I played them. They’re love songs, songs about missing, and some thoughts. I started writing again about five years ago after a 30-year gap.
Like many others today, I first learned about you from Devendra Banhart and your influence on his work. Is it weird to all of a sudden have people know who you are?
Oh yes.
What’s that like after not getting recognition for so long?
I can’t quite believe it’s me I’m hearing about and reading about. Well, it isn’t really. It’s that very young woman from a long time ago. I feel like a fraud — like I’m gathering praise for something someone else did. How pleased she would have been if all this had happened back then.
Can you talk about the time in your life when you met [Rolling Stones manager-producer]Andrew Oldham and your debut single, the Keith Richards-Mick Jagger-penned “Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind”?
I had been thrown out of art school mainly for not going — and for being just as interested in music as painting. I tried for a long while to find a manager or to sell my songs, and one night I was singing reluctantly at a party given by one of my mother’s friends where (unknown to me) one of the guests was a woman called Monte Mackey. She was an agent who knew Andrew Oldham and called me to her office soon after to meet him. I wanted to record my own songs, but he asked me to do one written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. I was unsure about it, but my father told me to compromise and so I did — one of my own songs was put on the B-side. There was a promise that the next single could be a song of mine, but “Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind” didn’t sell, and I went back to working by myself and away from Andrew.
On your Web site, anotherday.co.uk, you write, “Unsure of direction but had to see where path would lead." From the different life paths you’ve taken, the choices that you’ve made, leaving music for a while, do you regret anything?
No. I have no regrets that I recorded with Andrew — it was a fabulous and life-filled time — only that by doing so I became labelled “the new Marianne Faithfull.” I didn’t think I was like her in any way, and it made it so much more difficult to establish my own place. Sometimes I regret that I was not stronger and more persevering with the music. Then I remember how much I did work at it and how long it must have seemed to me, so young. I made another single the year after “Some Things” with just guitar and cello — it was wholly uncommercial and of course disappeared. I missed the lights and flourish of Andrew and so went back to his management. We recorded several more songs over the next while for his new Immediate label — none of which were released, and I lost faith in myself. That’s when I met Robert and we fled London with a horse and a wagon, heading for the Isle of Skye and well away from the music business.
Why did you feel like you had to flee London?
Ideas of being away from the city and commerciality and a need to look for a place to make a world of my own. Robert’s ideas were more spiritual and mystical than mine. I was the practical one. I didn’t believe in marriage. He was my friend, traveling companion, partner, and father of my children.
Did you think you’d create music again after abandoning it?
No, I truly didn’t ever dream I would be doing this again. I so completely left it behind. I had no copy of the recordings. I had left everything — newspaper cuttings, demos, etc. — in a shed at my brother’s house. He sold the house and I thought, “Well that’s that,” but then five years later, he bought the same house back again and all my things were still where I had left them. They then lived in damp barns and lofts for a long while — until I faced up to looking at it all again when Diamond Day got reissued.
For many years I could not play my guitar because it made me too sad at my failures, and I could not ever join in with other musicians when they were playing. I kept quiet about ever having been a singer. My children knew very little about my musical past. If Robert ever mentioned it, I would glare at him.
How did the Animal Collective collaboration come about, and what made you decide to create again?
I was invited by Stephen Malkmus to perform at a two-day festival called Down the Dustpipe at the Royal Festival Hall in London in April 2003. It was only for 10 minutes, but it was the first time I’d been on a stage since 1968. It was one of the most terrifying moments of my life, but also magical.
Kieran Hebden of Four Tet accompanied me along with his friend Adem. Later Kieran was on tour in the U.K. and came to Edinburgh with a support band called Animal Collective — who he had investigated after spotting their album cover in a record shop and liking it. The music was pretty fine, too. We all met up, and later they asked me to do some recording with them of three of their songs. Lovely songs, and I had a lot of fun in the studio … singing like I didn’t know I could and being gently pushed by them all.
As to what made me decide to create again — I didn’t — it just happened when Diamond Day came out in 2000 and this time didn’t receive the ridicule and indifference it had met on its first outing. When I picked up my guitar, it sounded different to me and so I didn’t just put it down again. A good feeling.
You’ve traveled so much, wherever life took you. It sounds cliché, but what would you say to those who are aspiring to do what they love but feel like they aren’t getting anywhere?
I should not have given up on music. I should have had the courage to know that what I was doing was all right, and I should not have compared myself to others who I thought could all do it so much better than I could. It should not have taken 30 years for me to find that out — that everyone is different and everyone makes things differently and it is all getting somewhere.
But “should” is not my favorite word. I am just very lucky to have been given this second chance. To others I would say don’t count on it — keep going now.
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