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Solo

[Sandy Denny]

“A song which depicts, I think, that knowledge we all have inside, which is, that nobody can live your life for you. But at the same time, let’s try to help one another, all the same.”

There are a lot of Sandy Denny recordings of this strong song. Sandy plays piano on most versions, and seems to mock herself in the lines “I’ve always kept a unicorn and I never sing out of tune”:

  1. The original studio recording of May 1973 at A&M Studios, Los Angeles with Sandy, piano; Richard Thompson, guitar; Pat Donaldson, bass; Dave Mattacks, drums, appeared in June 1974 on Like an Old Fashioned Waltz and was later reissued on the Sandy Denny anthologies The Best of Sandy Denny, No More Sad Refrains, and A Boxful of Treasures.
  2. A solo live studio recording from 11 September 1973 for the BBC Radio 1 show “Sounds of the Seventies”, hosted by John Peel, was broadcast on 25 September 1973. It was first published in 2007 on the 3CD+DVD set Live at the BBC.
  3. A live studio recording with Hughie Burns on electric guitar from 14 November 1973 for the BBC Radio 1 show “Sounds of the Seventies”, hosted by Bob Harris, was broadcast on 17 December 1973. It was first published on the cassette The Attic Tracks Vol. 4: Together Again and later included both on The BBC Sessions 1971-73 and on the 3CD+DVD set Live at the BBC.
  4. The live performance on the Who Knows Where the Time Goes? box set was performed by Fairport Convention at the Troubadour, Los Angeles in February 1974 (with Donahue / Lucas / Mattacks / Pegg / Swarbrick).
  5. Two more live versions of May 1974 at Ebbets Field, Denver, Colorado were published in 2002 on the 2CD set Before the Moon..
  6. The sixth version appears in the It All Comes ’Round Again video, where Sandy plays the song with Fairport Convention. This version was filmed at Birmingham University in 1974, and is very murky, both in sound and in vision. This was for a long time the only known video of Sandy Denny. In 2006, this performance was also included in the DVD Sandy Denny: Under Review, together with short video footage of Like an Old Fashioned Waltz.
  7. The last, and also live, recording appears on The Attic Tracks Vol. 3 and Gold Dust - Live at the Royalty and features Donaldson / Hendry / Lucas / Mattacks / Palmer / Willsher. This was recorded at the Royalty Theatre, London on 27 November 1977.

Cover Versions

  1. Title track of Sue Glover’s LP Solo (1976)
  2. Carin Kjellman’s Swedish translation on her solo LP Carin Kjellman (1985)
  3. Fish on his records Songs From the Mirror (1993) and Yin (1996)
  4. Lynni Treekrem with her Norwegian translation Aleine on her album Tusenfryd (1994)
  5. Fairport Convention with Cathy LeSurf live at Cropredy 1997 on their 3 CD set The Cropredy Box (1998)
  6. Iain Matthews with No Grey Faith on their album Secrets All Told (2000)
  7. Keiko Walker on her album Both Sides Now (2004)
  8. 2Duos on their album Until the Cows Come Home (2009)
  9. Annie Grace on her album The Bell (2011)
  10. Kathryn Roberts & Sean Lakeman on their album Personae (March 2018)
  11. The Julie July Band on their CD Who Knows Where the Time Goes? (July 2018)

Lyrics

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