The ballad of Sandy Denny: Return of the folk queen

Sandy Denny was the unlikeliest of pop stars. A little overweight, uncompromisingly tomboyish, notoriously clumsy, she was crippled by doubts both on and off the stage – fears she sought to quell through the copious consumption of drink and drugs. Her phobia of flying severely limited her ability to tour, as did her reluctance to be separated from her husband, a notorious womaniser.

Yet Denny, through the sheer power and beauty of her haunting vocal style became, alongside Dusty Springfield, the most acclaimed British singer of her generation. When she died, 30 years ago at the tragically young age of 31, the world was robbed of one of its brightest talents.

But unlike contemporaries such as Nick Drake and Tim Buckley, whose untimely deaths spawned cult followings that ev-entually blossomed into posthumous widespread critical and popular success, the singer has been largely overlooked by the musical world beyond folk.

Now, on the anniversary of her demise, former colleagues, friends and fans are hoping that the general public will finally wake up to the legacy of the woman dubbed "Britain's Joni Mitchell" – a legacy which has inspired stars from Kate Bush to Led Zeppelin.

A new BBC documentary due to be broadcast tomorrow states the case for Denny, bringing together tributes from one-time collaborators and present-day admirers. Written, produced and presented by friend and former flatmate Bob Harris, Who Knows Where the Time Goes? – The Sandy Denny Story, charts the arc of her success from student singer to feted star. It explores the still- unexplained circumstances of her death, which followed a fall at a Cornish cottage at a time when she had been abandoned by her husband, Trevor Lucas, who had left for Australia with the couple's baby, Georgia.

According to Harris, Denny struggled to survive as a woman in the macho environment of the time. "There wasn't a template for solo female singers in the late Sixties-early Seventies – they were breaking new ground in a male-dominated industry," he says. "But despite the fact she died far too young, the strength of Sandy's legacy is growing all the time. There is more interest in her music now than at any time since she died 30 years ago."

Richard Thompson, the musical powerhouse behind Fairport Convention, the band with whom Denny made her name, remembers a character capable of dominating a room full of pop stars but also one racked with anxiety over her looks, which were deeply at odds with the glamorous, stick-thin style of the day.

"I think she was insecure about her appearance sometimes. I think that she felt she wasn't beautiful – and she wasn't beautiful, but she was pretty and attractive to a lot of people but that wasn't enough for her. She could change in a moment from confident to not confident," he recalls.

Though she enjoyed a string of lovers, among them Frank Zappa, she was particularly stung by one music paper which referred to her as "plump", a jibe which helped consign her to a lifetime of yo-yo dieting.

Joe Boyd, the American producer and impresario who introduced Denny to Fairport, as well as discovering Pink Floyd, Nick Drake and John Martin, believes it is high time for a reappraisal. "In some ways she was the greatest of them all. The most talented, bursting forth even with her limitations – and the limitations were never musical," he says.

Denny grew up in south-west London after the war and despite coming from a largely non-musical household – a few 78s and Fats Waller notwithstanding – she developed a powerful obsession with the young Bob Dylan.

She studied at art college and trained as a nurse. Having taught herself the guitar – badly – she made her nervous debut performing at The Barge folk club in Kingston upon Thames, before graduating to the more fashionable The Troubadour in Earls Court, where she came to the attention of Dave Cousins of The Strawbs. But it was with Fairport Convention, who singlehandedly invented the British folk-rock scene of the late Sixties, that she will forever be associated. Denny sang on four studio albums with the band, three of which were released in 1969, the same tumultuous year that a fatal car crash claimed one member of the group and the girlfriend of Richard Thompson.

Among that year's output was Liege And Lief, recently voted the most popular folk album of all time and last year performed in its entirety, with Chris While standing in for Denny, to a sell-out 25,000 crowd at Fairport's annual Cropredy festival. The previous album Unhalfbricking, contained her masterpiece, "Who Knows Where The Time Goes?"

After deciding to leave the band she collaborated with her future husband in the short-lived Fotheringay, before recording as a solo artist with only occasional returns to Fairport.

In 1970 she came to the attention of Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant when they won the Melody Maker best male and female vocalist awards and she was the natural choice when it came to recording the female part in the band's "The Battle Of Evermore" on Led Zeppelin IV.

"It was one of those great moments when you have written something and someone takes it beyond to a place where it isn't some cheesy thing about a medieval battle, it is a beautiful exchange of two vocalists – really quite evocative," Plant recalls. "It was a spectacular moment for us. Our worlds joined, we had a great moment or two and disap-peared to wave across crowded rooms as years went by."

She was also a willing drinking buddy of Led Zeppelin's drummer John Bonham, another rocker who died young, and by the mid-Seventies drink, drugs and cigarettes were affecting her voice. Her failure to achieve mainstream success – despite recording pop standards such as "Candle in the Wind" – had left her disillusioned.

Despite the birth of her daughter, Denny's personal life was unravelling and her marriage crumbled. The drinking and drug taking had continued throughout the pregnancy, to the alarm of friends. She suffered three catastrophic falls in the weeks before her death, collapsing a month later and slipping into a coma from which she never recovered. The cause of death was a brain haemorrhage but it was clear that her life had been in serious disarray, something those close to her sought to cover up. Lucas died of heart failure in 1989.

Recent years have seen a slew of releases of archive material, including last year's Live at the BBC, a four CD set of previously-unheard work including extracts from her private journals.

The internet has been fertile ground for fans to celebrate her life and push her name. Some border on the ghoulish – a website dedicated to her Putney grave attracts thousands of hits each week. Others tour the landmarks of her life in the unremarkable suburban hinterland of south-west London. Cyberspace also provides platforms for fans to perform poetry and songs dedicated to Denny, and swap rare scraps of surviving film footage.

A comprehensive biography appeared in 2000, while her music was revived this year by Dutch singer songwriter Linde Nijland, who records and tours her work to much acclaim.

"For her it must have been so frustrating – she was promised something that wasn't coming – the fame she wanted. But when you see nowadays how much she still means to people, I think she accomplished a lot. She is still very much alive: they want to hear her songs and they want to sing along. She means so much to a lot of people," she says.

But Richard Thompson still likens Denny to Drake. "The sheer quality of Nick's music has finally surfaced. It took a long time and a couple of VW commercials to get it out there but there is a whole generation that swoons to Nick Drake and is influenced by him. I'm surprised it hasn't happened to Sandy."

The time, however, might finally have come for Sandy Denny.

'Who Knows Where The Time Goes? – The Sandy Denny Story', will be broadcast on BBC Radio 2 tomorrow at 10.30pm