Good evening and welcome to the British Library. It's very nice to see you guys here in the theatre and to all of those around the world watching online. It's great to have you with us as well. We're absolutely thrilled to be launching two new, or helping to launch two books tonight. Obviously here at the British Library we love books but we also love music. The library has one of the world's biggest collections of music, alongside the natural sounds and the voice sounds, it's the National Sound Archive. Books about music are really, really what we like. Tonight we got two extraordinary books, which we're going to be discussing tonight, this woman's work, and a Welsh De Bynuwns memoir, Wayward, both from the amazing White Rabbit Books imprint. Mae'r ddaf yn y cwmhysgol oherwydd mae'n ffordd o'r tynnu i'r Llanferan, a'r ddragliannol i'r Cyfrifod Ysbryd, ac yma'r pethau'r ddau'r ffordd. Mae'r byddai ar gyfer o'r bobl yn ei ddweud o'r gwrs, ac mae'r gweithio i'r unrhyw gyda'r gweithio gyda'r gweith... You can find a tab that says books and you can also buy them there. At the end of the first half we have some chance to see some questions. Likewise if you are watching at home you can put your questions in the field below the video screen and our Chair Jude will be able to read them out. Then at the end of the second half you will be able to put your questions to Vashity. That's pretty much it from me, but except to introduce our Chair, tonight Jude Rogers, who is also from the fantastic white rabbit books about to publish her book, The Sound of Being Human, which is creating a lot of interest. You may have read about it in yesterday's papers. Jude is a music writer and a writer on many things. She's pretty much written for every national newspaper and every bit of the music press, so she's hearing very, very good safe hands tonight. So please welcome to the stage Jude Rogers with Shanae Gleeson and Saki Seawall. Thank you very much. What a lovely introduction for all of us. Thank you. Thank you everybody for coming tonight, whether you're here in the room or online. I am here with Shanae Gleeson, Saki Seawall. We're going to be talking about this anthology. Saki is going to read from her fantastic piece as well in a little bit. But first of all, this is a book which Shanae has just seen the finished copy of for the first time because it's out this week, so she's very excited. Now, this is a book that you edited with Kim Gordon, who is the woman. I'm on the cover of the book there. How did you come together to make this book? Tell us the story. Well, Kim is actually an artist as well, and I mean, a lot of people, she's so synonymous with Sonic Youth for so many people, including myself. But before she was in Sonic Youth, she went to art school and she's been a practising artist for a really long time. And she came to Dublin in 2019 to the Irish Museum of Modern Art. She had a solo exhibition, and they contacted me and said, would you do a public interview with Kim? And Body Head, her band, her amazing kind of experimental band we're playing in the courtyard outside. It's an old military hospital, it's kind of like a quadrangle thing. And we did the interview, it went great, and then there's a tiny little pub as there always is in Ireland, around the corner from the gallery, that myself and Coco, her daughter, was over at Lane Cannes, his friend Heather Lee, who ended up writing the introduction to the book. We all kind of went for a drink there. And in Ireland, you're not supposed to talk about politics or religion in the pub, but you could talk about music. So we did, and we had a kind of chat. And I knew that Kim was going to London to see the Braxton, our amazing publisher, because he had published Girl and the Band, a book I loved, and I had interviewed Kim about it at the time, and he said, he'd like Kim to do a book, and she was like, I don't know if I can do a book on my own, I'd edit an anthology, so it seemed like the two of us together might work, and we liked each other a lot, and yeah, it came from there. So there you were in the pub hatching plans. And you mentioned briefly, you knew her before, but I interviewed you both for the Guardian, obviously you via Zoom in Dublin, Kim in LA. But you met eyes before, and I love this, the fact that you were a fan as a teenager of Kim, and her personality and her energy is something that very much informed the spirit of the book as well. Yeah, I think so. I was growing up, my teens were, it's a different book that I published before, a lot of times I spent in hospital, and the two things that kind of kept me, I think alive and sane were books and music, and they were literally the two either side of a set of lungs for me, and Sonic, you threw a band, I discovered around 15, and the first time they came to Dublin, they played this really small, grimy sweaty venue, and I think I talked to you about it at the time, like in your memory, I thought it was like 200 people, and people on Twitter were talking about it going, it's 500, it's 600, but it was definitely still, you know, the crowd was maybe 80% men, and there was a lot of sweat dripping off the ceiling onto your head, that happened to McGonagall's all the time while I loved it. A total fire hazard, you wouldn't get away with a venue like that now, but I remember like being in the queue outside, and the tour bus was there, and Kim got off the bus, and I think she kind of clocked me because there weren't many women in the queue, and 16-year-old me just came on, there she is, and I saw them the following year, they played a different venue with Nirvana where they support, and their weird connection to the book is like I used to send off to Seattle for the So Pop Singles Club and buy all my early, like I've that weird expensive version of Bleach that has a different track on it, that's for eBay when I'm old and free, and Megan Jesper who's in this book said like, I used to stuff the envelope, I probably sent, I remember sending things to Ireland, you know, the ads in the back of the enemy, so, and that's the thing, like this book has loads of weird overlaps and conversations and echoes and mirroring in a weird way, lots of people mention the same kind of artists, there's lots of stuff mentioned in Zaki's thing that's in, you know, things that I mentioned, or yeah, so it's really brilliant to me, because Kim's been brilliant to do this book with, and yeah, it's been brilliant. The thing that struck me about that anecdote as well, you know, this high proportion of men in this crowd and these two women clocking each other, it just made me think about how, you know, music is talked about in general, such a male thing, you know, I've heard, I used to work for a music magazine which was classed in WHMS as a men's magazine, you know, this was in the 2000s but I wouldn't be surprised, it's still the case, and you know, still I'm a woman who's been working as a journalist for nearly 20 years now and I've had several off-the-record conversations with other female journalists, some of whom might be in the room, about how still it can feel like, even when you've got a lot of experience, it can feel like a bit of a shut-up shop and it may be, you know, I know you obviously work in a different field, in a Zaki or a broadcaster, what a fantastic broadcaster, brilliant.  It's quite a different anthology of women's writing, I find it, there's been women's anthologies before, but this is not just female music journalists talking about women, it's women who are first time writers, people like Megan Jasper who worked at Subpop, and there's some, you know, quite well known writers like Anne N Wright, you know, won a book of prize, brilliant piece about her, how much of a fangirl she's of Laurie Anderson and that is such a wonderful piece, but also I know you wanted to get younger writers and new writers through, and obviously, you know, people like Zakiya in the mix as well. Tell me a little bit about, you know, how you put together the team of people, your perspective before we get to have a reading from Zakiya. Myself and Kim, it was split down the middle, there were 16 pieces in the book and we just took eight each and we decided you could ask who you wanted, you could try and not make it old people who look like, you know, me and Kim because that would be a really boring book to me and other people, I would think. I also know that, like, I was a music journalist for years and I, towards the end of that before I start moving towards writing more about books is that I did a lot of bands and a lot of people and, you know, I had two people like, you know, Dolly Parton and Kate Bush and Nick Hay, people who've got a lot to say, but a lot of bands didn't have a lot to say and I found that deliberately, in a way for me, picking people who are not necessarily music writers and yet some of the best essays in this book, Jen and Liz Pelley who are incredible music journalists and writers, a book like this needs that kind of linchpin I think as well, but I think it's really interesting to ask somebody who's just very good at writing to ask them about a specific kind of subject, whether you ask them to write something about sport or music and I didn't know that Anne would say yes because I've never really had any conversations about music with Anne and then when I did ask her she was like, I'm really into music and again people wouldn't think that about her and that's the thing we don't know, the pockets of things that people are interested in. So it was eight writers each, we didn't give them any brief, we said you can write about what you like and we only checked at one point to make sure two people weren't writing about the same thing and I think, you know, I published a book of essays myself and I often say that, you know, an essay, even if you really want to make it about one thing it's impossible to do that, it's never a singular thing, it's always, it's a very fulcher meeting, lots of things orbit around it and you might decide I'm just going to write about Kate Bush or I'm just going to write about Kanye or, you know, Lil Nas X or whoever it is and it'll end up being about multiple things because often you funnel your own experience into it. It's the nature of the essay, it's a very kind of malleable and bendy kind of form and that's why I think so why not add music into it and I do want to say also before it doesn't get said that Jude's book is coming out as an amazing and she had a brilliant piece yesterday in The Observer which talked a lot about the neuroscience of music and how we feel about it and how we remember and what we think about things when we hear a song and how it can transport you and I don't think, I don't think looking at a painting makes you feel the same way as listening to a song, it's a very kind of deep cerebral sort of experience that will take you back to like a Christmas or a childhood friend or whatever and it's a really deeply embedded thing but do read her piece in the paper, it explains it better than I'm explaining it so, yeah. So Zach, you tell me about how you came to be involved in this book, you know, was it a shanaid on the phone kind of nagging you or were you just excited to do it straight away? Well it was sort of a new venture for me because as you know I work usually with audio rather than in the written form so I think it was Lee actually who published it, got in touch with me and with this incredibly open brief of sort of right about music which is kind of like a wonderful invitation but also quite terrifying because you think oh my music! You know so broad but actually around the time of the invitation my dad had sent me this recording of my mum singing before I was born and that reminded me of this other tape that I've sort of grown up with of my mum singing voice which then became the sort of starting point for the essay so it was sort of the timing was all kind of you know magical and yeah I just basically I just started and as you say you know you start off writing about one thing and suddenly I think because in particular this tape that I speak about in the essay is so kind of evocative for me it's sort of so much just sort of flooded in and it was yeah it was a very you know it's quite a powerful experience for me I think especially because the essay is so personal. And you've obviously made you know documentaries before I don't know if it's still online but my Albion Zachis series on Radio 4 about a year or so ago was incredible it was one of the best music series genuinely I've heard about um ideas of identity and about you know your family in Wales and the Caribbean and in London and you know this is wonderful but obviously you know this is it's a fantastic piece of writing. Would you read some? Yeah I'll read a little bit. Yes. Oh in the real book it's very exciting. It's exactly bending for the first time. Okay so I don't remember the first time I heard it but I've listened to it 100 times before. The crackle of tape hiss like some old ethnographic recording. The jangoli guitar intro that sounds like it's been played at the other end of the room. The clattering of cymbals and then her voice. Ethereal and soulful. Familiar and yet strange.  The bass and the drums and the flute and the keys are all much louder and yet to me barely audible. I can only hear her voice. She sounds so high pitched and young like a different person almost. Her voice is much lower now it sounds like it emanates from the deepest parts of her or deeper still from the very centre of the earth. Back then so delicate sinuous soaring high above the rest of the band striving for something just beyond her reach. She sounds happy but there's something telling in her vibrato in the way it swirls and quakes. My mother a ghost immortalised on tape. I think it was recorded at a rehearsal. The quality isn't great but I like the feeling that I'm there in the room with them all somewhere amidst the cables and the instruments and the half-smoked spliffs. Perhaps I was there in some form. The promise in a loving glance exchanged between her and my dad. It was definitely recorded before I was born though. Everything had been filled with hope before that. They were about to sign with a record label and were gigging all over the country. Legend has it that she performed until she was eight months pregnant. Perhaps if I tried hard enough I'd be able to remember what it felt like. Bouncing around on stage in her belly hearing the hum of her voice through all the fluid and flesh. Thank you. Do I shout out my mum who's in the room now? Yeah mum is in the room. I need to do a bow now. We've talked about this before, Sinead, but music is a way into so many different subjects, isn't it? In this book there is music and politics and the music of exile. There is music and feminism, of course. That's going to come through this music and identity. Tell us a little bit about the piece that you wrote because when you're editing a book, choosing what you're going to write yourself must be quite tough. I was hoping that I wouldn't have to write anything, but Lee Braxton was very insistent. Again, you probably have the same experience. It's really hard to focus in on one thing where you have a subject that you love and there were a couple of topics I was thinking about and then I think lockdown definitely affected that in some way. I decided to write. It's funny, somebody else has written a piece that I've seen that's coming up that talks about this book and makes a really good point about the idea of legacy and history and who gets recorded and who doesn't, which I think is really important in terms of especially the music her co and Alan Lomax, which also, you know, this is Cunningham essay and all the Almanac singers. There's loads of little, again, those little echoes in the book. So I felt that I wanted to write about somebody that nobody knows. I love when I find an essay about a weird thing that I know nothing about and you read it and go, God, I now want to go off and find out about eclipses or whatever it is or some strange island that nobody ever goes to that's tidal or something. My husband is a composer and producer and we've worked together before on things and we've worked together in the last year with a couple of artists and he is a massive, he makes music, he's put out music, electronic music and he's really obsessed with Wendy Carlos and he'd been always talking to me about her and I just got quite obsessed about finding out about a person who was not only brilliant but probably in fact definitely overlooked by virtue of being female I think in a lot of ways, by virtue of being also I think a transwoman working with Hitchcock on more than one film but also deliberately deleting her own visibility from online. So I talk in the essay about the fact that you might want to spotify, you'll find two songs from The Shining, she composed The Shining, Tron, Clockwork Orange but has deliberately been taking her own music away, moving herself, making herself, which is the contrast of the world we're living in now. Everybody's living these curated Instagram, Facebook lives and desperate to tell people who they are and what they do even if that's not very much and yet she is a real kind of auteur and out player but is making herself more and more invisible and I fear she's still alive, she's 83 and I just wanted to write about how there's not enough written about her legacy slipping away because she's kind of chosen it in some ways but also you might know about Moog synthesizes, if you're nerdy and geeky about synthesis and music or into any kind of lots of bands you saw on top of the pops in the 80s miming with synths. Bob Moog was only able to make Moog synths because Wendy Carlos was a physics and a music genius that was her degree, double degree and made his synthesizers better so a really fascinating and complex kind of person that those people don't know about and I hope so I could have wrote about some, I could have wrote about Shanaid O'Connor or Kate Bush and I might still do but Wendy for me felt like the person and again listening to her music and The Shining and in the lockdown and stuff and at home and with the studio at the end of our garden where we're listening to her a lot it just seemed like the right thing. Again this is the thing that happens with when you're commissioned to write something, the right time comes like if you'd asked me a year previous or before you know maybe I'd write about something else but it felt like the subject for the time. And also you need to talk about it you know doing lockdown and your responses to music you know changing during that time and not many people would listen to The Shining soundtrack to you.  And a writer is a writer stuck somewhere trying to write a book which I was trying to do but I turned out so differently couldn't I? Yeah yeah completely. In terms of the mix of writers as well you know obviously you've got the American and British influences coming in but you've also got other writers from around the world was that important to you to get different perspectives you know it's an interesting book to read some of the subjects do touch on music and politics and you know it's importance to identity and I think when we when I interviewed Shanaid and Kim it was about a week after the ward broken out in Ukraine and there are pieces there that have resonances you know that you know about how music is such an important thing and how it is something that is you know not tolerated in repressive regimes and you know individual musicians like Victor Yarra has mentioned one of the pieces absolutely. He was tortured and you know musicians who were killed it was very important for you to get you know some political content. Yeah I mean for sure because I think people forget all the time that that that music and the song can be so political. Again I grew up with an older brother on the other side of my bedroom just playing Billy Bragg songs all the time on his guitar and you know also if you grow up in Ireland you know a lot of the songs you hear are very political a lot of them are very not very nice by the British and so lots of song and narrative has a place to make telepolitical story and Fatima Boutou's essay in the book is is is kind of about like exile and about politics and what's happened in Pakistan but it's also about leaving the place that you love and the feed again that triggering of memory and how going away from a place will remind a song can take you back to where it used to be. Also people smogling songs out of like there's she talks about a song that was recorded in a stadium that you could you can find it on YouTube there's no footage of it but it's a really grainy somebody recorded I don't know how they did an old tape recorder that would have got you shot if you'd have played it at the time and again that idea that political music can have a very potent and life-changing effect so I think that and then Eon Lee's piece which is a different kind of piece about coming to America from China and learning learning to speak English by listening to pop songs but also the memory of listening to Chinese propaganda songs like how how potent the propaganda can be like you know the great leader stuff and again we're looking at a completely brutal totalitarian genocide thing happening in front of us at the moment trying to raise the identity of a whole country and so hearing the Ukrainian national anthem at the moment feels like a very completely powerful and political thing and you know Zachary you write as well about folk recordings I love the bit how you write about Alan Lomax's recordings and thinking about you know the kind of you know the the saving of music and the kind of um put you know setting down of music um I wanted to ask you you know um in terms of you know this book coming out now um you know either said I've been a journalist for 20 years and it seems the last five to ten years something has changed in the way that women's stories are coming out about music um you know you're a broadcaster um who you know there seems to be operating world where there are so many more women coming out and doing things could you tell us a little bit about that because um how old are you now if you don't mind me asking oh oh i'm 28 over one more day it's my birthday on wednesday so i'll be 29 happy birthday we all thank you no let's say and the book comes out on the day after my birthday which is oh very nice yeah nice best but it feels like um there's something changing in your generation of broadcasters and writers that you know from you know from from my perspective anyway you know I look online it's um you know online journalism some of the websites and there's so many such a more diverse range of voices you know it's not just you know offence to all the lovely white gentlemen here tonight including Lee Brackstone who absolutely has been really instrumental in getting lots of women's together um but you know it's vastly changed is it is that a fair assessment you think or is others still and is it still a world that's quite hard to navigate when you're a woman um I would say I think it has changed I think it's very open in a sense I mean there's still obviously all the old kind of doors closed etc etc but I think particularly with the sort of rise in you know there's so many more platforms in the radio for example there are so many kind of independent radio stations and that kind of gives more space for people to sort of approach music or share music in a different way I think I think a lot of people that I know perhaps have been afraid maybe to write or to kind of do a you know a radio show because they don't have all the facts or they don't know or they haven't been on discogs for out you know looking at all the dates and suppressings and that sort of very kind of analytical or collector like approach to music and I feel like the sort of breadth of platforms means that actually we can there are spaces for people to you know tell tell stories in slightly different ways or choose music and you know have a more kind of feeling approach not to say that that's all women have you know a feeling approach but um that sort of frees up the possibilities um not you don't have to sort of know every single fact and figure about a particular band to write about them and I think that's also something that comes through in the book is that there are some very there are some you know far more kind of studious approaches that kind of more traditional journalistic styles and then they're very personal pieces and I think you know it's all of those approaches that kind of give a balance you know because music is it's on the one hand we can look at the the pressings and the dates and the and the facts and you know also there's something incredibly emotive indescribable and sort of mystical about music and its effect on us as well and I think it's all bringing those two things together is is always a nice oh absolutely and that is not generally something that is allowed music journalism and criticism because you know it has to be objective it has to you know not let emotion into the mix which is something I sometimes find quite hard when I have to be be a critic you know there's a place for criticism of course there is and in terms of um that world um you know opening up um Shanaid um you know what have you seen in kind of um you know you obviously talked about your you know workers and music journalist interviewing Kate Busch oh my god you know I just wanted to do a two hour interview about what that was like actually what was that like to give us a little it was it was twice which sounds terrible it was twice yeah it was only on the phone all right all right but lovely um but also you know Kate Busch's mother was Irish and I think she really was keen to talk to Irish journalists as well but no as lovely as you expect like big big chats great tell you after you know you've been a music journalist you know um did you see this book as a chancellor kind of represent the world it was now a more a more diverse range of voices um in terms of you know including people who are older writers um you know people like and then writers being around for a while and younger people to get that to get everybody in the same page oh yeah I mean I think if you put together any whether it's a compilation or a Spotify mix or whatever it is if you put like 20 or 15 or 40 of the same people in it that's not interesting you know it's really not so to me it was like you know and I think like Marco Jefferson who has an incredible memoir coming out and wrote a brilliant book about Michael Jackson uh for granted uh her memoirs out in in May we're hoping to do something in in Dublin um I just again just it's sort of pick people you like like you pick like Rachel Kushner is also someone I've always loved only um you're it just seemed to me like a really obvious thing to pick people that you know who can write really interesting stories but again books and I mean I've edited anthologies before that were like fiction they were short stories and stuff and again they existed because the Irish canon was very like male dominated or the same kinds of stories um and so every book that kind of be gets another book and I hope that like after this book somebody else will do a book like this and then we'll have a completely differently subjective experience to me or the other writers are came within it and and do something else with it because that I that's my experience books beget books and again that kind of visibility like there's would have been really hard to get a book of Irish short stories by women published 10 years ago and then I did a couple of them and then there's been loads since so I hope that this book starts another conversation again again around voices that are like I'm very conscious of being like a cis white woman but so because we need other stories apart from the stories that I might edit we want we need different others I think actually Zachi should edit the next collection for white rabbit I'm just putting it out there right now but um yeah so it's yeah I think I think that can that can happen because I we're always always learning and learning you know you need to read kind of anonymously and and broadly and I hope I love anthologies because they're they're like a grab bag they're like a mix tape sorry for the terrible analogy but they are you don't know what you might not like every essay or piece in it but you're probably going to learn something even with the every piece you read within it and this is quite a diverse mix in terms of the format of each of the tracks or to each of the chapters sorry yeah um because you have um you might mention the Margot Jefferson um piece about Ella Fitzgerald which is lyrics and it's beautiful it's and it's quite formally interesting then you have the piece about drill which I know your son was very couldn't believe that his mum had commissioned a piece about it and rare rarely cool to teenage children but he was like there's lots of people in this essay that I actually like um um but then you know I remember like it over the lockdown pulling all over at the vinyl I did the shed to look at stuff and he was like oh you have the first Naz album like ah moment of coolness that you'll never ever get um but yeah no I and I think that this is it's an ongoing conversation like I could I could write a whole separate book about my dad the impact he had on me my dad was like had a full-time job it was a bass player and played in bands and was you know making us watch stop making sense when we were 10 and playing loads and loads of music to us and I you don't I think everyone you talk to most people who write about music or interest in music how's that person it's the older sibling the uncle the parent who just kind of went he needs listen to this and we all need those kind of people and I had it in my dad and I had it in my my older brother um and I think that's probably like did your did your mum love music because apart from the singing and stuff to change those music we could ask you know definitely I grew up in a very very musical household but there's a thing in so much music mentioned in your like your essay like that when I was looking at all the references yours is probably one of the biggest for how many yeah well I think it was you know when I started writing I didn't know what they didn't know what the end point was going to be but I think it was this idea that um you know this tape I had of my mum singing was a sort of portal a way to connect with a version of her that was you know from of the past and my mum has mental health issues so that's the kind of the crux of the essay was that this tape enabled me to connect with a lost part and then that sort of opened up that this idea well there's actually so many formative pieces of music albums or that I've discovered that actually helped me to connect with other sort of fragmented lost discarded forgotten aspects of my identity and heritage and I sort of write about my experience of working in a record shop um could honest john's which is down the road on port of Bellarote in London and this sort of process of discovery and this sort of you know actually you know discovering my blackness through music imported from 1970s America or you know discovering these Alan Lomax recordings of my from an island where my mum's parents are from Caracou in the Caribbean that I didn't have much connection to growing up so that that that sort of it revealed itself through the process of writing that that actually music has been incredible incredibly important for me to sort of yeah reconnect severed links and I think that's something that lots of people will be able to connect to whether it's you know a family member or a place and as you say it's so evocative like a smell it can take you back instantly for sure to something in the past so so yeah and there are these you know as you say connections between the chapters even though some of the stories are very very different obviously um what was the most surprising essay you got back or anything that's um you know you're thinking oh you know there's because there's there's quite I was going to say provocative but no you know there's there's lots of interesting things about the body and there's writing about you know I'm thinking of um Juliana Huckstable's piece which is very physical yeah that's an incredible piece and and again this is Juliana's essay had the effect that I think I hope the whole book house on people in that Juliana wrote about a woman called Linda Sharrock who made an album with her husband Sonny in the 70s called Black Woman and Juliana was going out with this guy who said oh you need to listen to this album and played the whole album for her and she said it was this year bone shaking foundation crumbling experience um it was sexual night as well that was probably part of it too but it was also like some a woman because lots of that album is about how you use sound there's lots the song she mentions is not there's no lyrics in it but it's just a woman and a black woman using her voice and doing this incredible kind of gymnastic sort of ululation a sort of really primal beautiful I find the way she's I as soon as I read the essay I was like straight on the internet and looked at every clip I could find and listened to everything I could find and it's unbelievable and it's like you know I I also want to make the point that like Laurie Anderson who's a subject of Anne Enright's essay 75 this year so is Linda Sharrock there'll be a lot of attention on Laurie Anderson who is wonderful but I hope there's lots of attention on Linda Sharrock as well because that's a brilliant and quite an experimental kind of essay in lots of ways and I'm so glad because Julianne again like him is an artist most of the time and a DJ she's always DJing um but I think that's yeah that's that was incredible and again like that too people feel not confident I think sometimes about writing because Julianne was like can I speak to you on the phone about this can we talk and when she said I don't know if you like it and I got it I was like oh my god um but then that's a natural thing and I think there's women feel that a lot more than men do that idea of like I won't be good enough who's going to read this I don't know if I can even write um but every essay in the book was of a an immense standard so yeah and that's it that's the danger when you no brief what are you going to get back maybe I don't like it but everything was was just above and beyond I was we're came in I really lucky I was like you mentioned the word rabbit hole and I know Shanaid you said before this this you know is a book that takes you down rabbit holes you know it introduces you to new artists it makes you listen to other artists the first thing I did um when I started reading this was just making a I started making a Spotify playlist and then I found out from Shanaid the Shanaid was making a comprehensive playlist I'm making a massive way to be online soon but like really big yeah and yeah we'll take you ages to do it but um it's a fantastic book for just reminding you about music you might have liked or introducing you to new artists that you they're just fascinating and intriguing you might want to uh dip into more it's a very generous book which um I found really interesting because a lot of music journalism books or music writing books are very like you know as you were saying earlier on I know all the stuff I know all this and it does mine this makes me really really clever and it's like no I know this and you might like it too it's got a great spirit about it um we've got time for some questions now um I have an iPad somewhere um to look at the online questions which I thought was the other one is not here um but um if anybody has questions in the audience do raise your hands and be brave I'll be planting a pea pot oh there's a hand up there there's a hand yes thank you hey um I loved your podcast my albin it was great I just love it so much it kind of plants the seed for what I've decided to my dissertation on my MA so I'm just wondering whether you've got any further plans to do podcasts because it was just great uh not currently I am I did I I did put forward another um big bombastic uh series for radio 4 which I think was was rejected based on the current climate of it but it was a bit too political for them oh yes so yeah surprisingly um so that so that one is is sort of gone back underground but um I am sort of thinking about writing uh something of similar themes on kind of Britishness, nationhood, identity, folk culture, empire and things like that so that's kind of stewing slowly although I think I need to turn up the heat a little bit. I want to read more about you on pentangled because pentangled in a way is absolutely wonderful absolutely wonderful. Do we have any more questions? Yes there is a microphone up here yes down here oh we're both the person at the top and then we'll come down to you sorry hello um Jude you mentioned that the landscape for discussing women and their relationship to music has shifted dramatically over that I think to the last five years and I I wanted to know what Sinead and Zaki has futures ideal futures for discussing women and music and their relationship to women it might look like. I went to see Kate Laban playing Dublin by the two weeks ago and I was out afterwards I was talking to the promoter land there were three or four young women who wanted to you know chat and we were talking afterwards who were all music journalists and I just know when I was being a music journalist and there was there was literally like one or two was one a friend who's a friend of mine writing for the Irish Times and then me and that there wasn't anybody and again it's like if you don't see it you can't be it so the landscape in Ireland again like lots of places was music journaling was a very male bastion and that's really changed and I think the internet has democratised things a lot and things like you know Twitter and TikTok and all those places that you don't need you know an editor to commission you can find your own way and you can talk about the things you like and you can tell narrative stories about music so I find that that's getting a lot better and again like with everything else I just think more different types of voices are always important not the same kind of people who come from the same backgrounds look the same talk the same and that'll always be interesting to me but I was really reassured to meet all these young women who are all music journalists in Ireland it's not a thing anymore it's not even a conversation but it was a big thing when I was trying to do it for sure I don't know about you what is it like I mean I guess what I would say is I agree I think that yeah as I said earlier the sort of the sort of number of platforms or the accessibility as you say you can sort of have a much more DIY approach you can start a podcast you can you know you can you can find an audience but but then you still have to look at you know who anyone can find an audience but who are the people who are actually still getting paid published and and not so much on the you know the journalistic front but I've been asked this question about like you know female DJs or artists and you know you still there's still so many festival heads you know where all the headline slots or it's all it's all men and you know although in some little small circles and then kind of perhaps um in our in our networks it feels like progress um and not to downplay that progress but I think it's when you look about who really gets to the top and who is actually who is making the decisions and where the money is I think maybe that's still a little bit a minor point as well which I think is evidence by this book not all places are places are publishing two and three thousand word close long investigative deep criticism of music it's not really there anymore um I'd love to see more of that and if I can add a point as a as a woman in music journalism um online and in um lots of newspapers the writers um are you know there's so many more women which is great um but there is a magazine um out this month um a monthly music magazine celebrating a birthday which has one woman on the cover it has loads of names and there was one woman on the cover in a very small bit near the bottom and that happens every month I think you monthly music magazines they're an area which need more women and that's haven't you said you've said as well that like you and another you know only get asked to interview women sometimes as opposed to just you know there are some editors in the past who have um I have another I won't won't mention her by name because she probably won't want me to mention this in public she might she probably does actually if I'm not going to just in case but um we just say um if I've been asked to interview Laura Marling who's a fantastic musician and basically we get the Laura Marling call from certain editors and that's it female singer songwriters we get interview it's like you know I wrote a piece about Georgia Maroda for the Guardian last week no it doesn't matter but that that still happens even with somebody who's been doing this for I've been doing it nearly 20 years so there are still things to that need a lot of change and I will continue ranting about this more in the next year any more questions there was a gentleman dead here and we have one more time for one more question after that thank you you're so right about music magazines thank you oh good thank you so it's kind of a follow-up maybe from the previous question but it's more about the behaviour of this is probably too generic a question you're not going to be able to answer it but the behaviour of men in audiences at concerts um I was at a concert recently by the well-known very popular band Six Music Darlings and I was absolutely seriously taken aback at the behaviour of the the young lads who kind of just harassing and haranguing the girls who are in the audience and kind of pushing them back and doing the whole kind of moshpit stuff is there any sense that that's ever going to get better because for an old bloke like me you feel like it's any better than it was back in 1978 who's most in mosh pits from the three of us I haven't been in many mosh pits I haven't moshed in a while I mean it's a problem it's a problem because you know in a way a dance floor can be it's a kind of little microcosm of the world outside and in fact it's a bit like being on twitter in a way a dark room where people can sort of think they can get away with stuff they wouldn't really get away with in broad daylight or you know face to face whatever so I think there especially as a DJ and with a lot of friends of mine you know who are female DJs that you know I've actually got a friend who has just sort of taken a break because she you know the way that she was treated it's either people don't take you seriously the bouncers don't take you seriously when you're sort of been lugging your records and they sort of think oh you're not one of the DJs or whatever or they don't even let you into the booth or that you do your set and then after my friend had a particular experience she did her set and then after she just got groped in the club and it was sort of like you can't there's a sort of a contradiction where people sort of want to put female DJs you know on the stage but then they don't actually create places spaces that are safe for them to be free to dance and so there is I think it's like greenwashing you know it's a sort of thing where you're willing to sort of promote or change make superficial changes but then if the spaces themselves are not you know hospitable or or safe for for women then you know there's a kind of there's a there's a conflict so I think there's still a long way to go and I think it's just alcohol I think it's just the word it's sort of it's a it's a bit of a free space where people the worst of people or the best of people can sort of come out unfortunately yeah I think I've seen a couple of bands uh you know all male bands talking about on Twitter so if you come to our shows please respect women and stuff and I think you do think you need more of that um but maybe just be a decent human being and don't do that stuff you shouldn't have to be told by a band on Twitter not to do it so yeah maybe these conversations are happening which they weren't yeah 15 years ago actually and we're going to have to stop there if anybody has any questions um subsequently um if you're here in the room I'm sure you can talk um to zackie and shane later if you're online um well you might be able to tweet them but it's up to them um but thank you very much for um for this book and for the chat um zackie and shane and um give me a now we're going to have a swift turnaround I believe you're not here please thanks mum she's not my mum obviously now I'm delighted to introduce to the stage the wonderful Vashti Banyan I have to stand up there give you a you know the standing you deserve how are you Vashti I'm fine thank you thank you thank you now I'm going to steal your book for a moment oh the finished copy is beautiful I haven't I've only got my proof copy um this is a wonderful memoir and I'm not just saying this because Vashti Banyan is sitting next to me it's it's it's a story that a lot of people will who know about Vashti will feel like they probably you know know quite a lot of it you know here's this woman who runs away and a whole store on wagon up to the island of Hepordesa it's this magical wonderful story and obviously if any of you know Vashti's just another diamond day it's an album which is an account not the account an account of that trip um wayward however is something quite different something a lot deeper something that goes into some of the nuts and bolts and the detail um not just of that journey but what came before um and you started writing it a long time ago 28 years ago yes I wanted to write it for my children um and I wrote a fair bit of it and I sent the synopsis off to a few people and got nothing back and so of course I just gave up but well no good like the album no good and this was a period obviously this is this is 28 years ago this is 1994 you haven't made music for years you haven't sung for years yes um you have three children one of whom was still quite little then I think um but your life was very different very very different very different and it was only when I got onto the internet in 96 when I put my name into a search engine it was out of this stuff then you're quite a pioneer 96 is it and up came all these references to to just another diamond day and to other uh singles that I'd made that had never got anywhere um and that set me off on on music again uh to finding out who it all belonged to whether we could bring it out again and uh it did just another diamond day came out again in 2000 and it gave me a whole other musical life where I'd had 30 years of no music at all and so the thought of writing the story just went away and I thought uh and then I made another album for in 2005 and I thought I'll get back to writing after that and I didn't and then I made another album and I thought I'll get back to writing after that and I didn't until the beginning of lockdown and then it happened so you had a call from um Ciaran Evans you made a wonderful film about Bashti if you um I I've saw it at the time and also I saw it earlier in lockdown the first lockdown in 2020 because um the social which is a fantastic institution in central London um went online obviously and showed the film again and Ciaran Evans is director and it was made in about 2008 is that right late 2000 yes we took about four years to make it actually but it was about the journey we went on the journey that I had made with the horse we did it bit by bit by bit and yes this beautiful film came out called from here to before and at the beginning of lockdown Ciaran called me to say that he wanted my permission for putting a putting it up online for a few weeks and he said so what are you doing just now and I said well I'm writing but I wasn't I lied he said well I know somebody who would really like to to look at what you're writing and that was Lee Braxton and so I sent some things to Lee and this is the result why do you think you said to him you're writing? I have no idea I can't remember I think I had to say I was doing something wasn't this you know deep desire that you were expressing to Ciaran um no what has it been like to write it because you know we get a lot more detail about your early life your family and some of the very tough things you went through yes uh well I think initially Lee thought that it should just be about the journey with the horse and going up to the Hebrides and I thought well no that story by itself you know it really needs the beginning and the after the before and the after and that's what I did in the end when I started writing about my childhood um I really enjoyed that and then to to move into the journey and then all the all the times afterwards I really enjoyed that as well I had quite a few bits of writing about the journey that you know I'd been doing over the years but the the bit about my childhood and the bit about the music afterwards I'd never written about and I enjoyed doing that you had quite an unusual childhood in some respects well first of all you have um old brother and sister who are called John and Susan and then you come along and you're called Vashti which well I interviewed um I interviewed Vashti for the um the Guardian recently and uh you were saying you know kind of um sometimes you still see a name written down you think yeah John Susan and Vashti why do they do that to me why do they do that why did they do that to me but you were named after your dad's boat yes yes well Vashti was the name that had been found by my grandfather in the bible in the Old Testament in the book of Esther about a queen who refused to dance for her husband the king uh in front of all his friends she just refused and she was actually kicked out and he married Esther instead but my father's father when my father was going to marry my mother he nicknamed her Vashti because she was awkward and as he said disobedient I don't know I don't know I don't know I didn't know her then but um yes so Vashti was then given the name Vashti was then given to my father's boat and then when I came along five and a half years after my sister Susan for some reason they decided to call me Vashti I don't know why obviously in the late 60s you've been Vashti he was you know mid late 60s so what a gift an absolute gift well it has been it has been it wasn't a gift when I was at school it was awful but yes it has been in my later life can you tell us a little bit about your parents because I find it fascinating finding out about them you know quite complicated interesting characters you know your father himself you know an inventor a bit of a rogue you said yes yes well yes he was but he was an amazing man he was a wonderful wonderful man um but I had a violin that I uh that my brother actually helped me buy in Portobella road market for £2 he gave me the money to buy it and I learned violin a bit at school at my day's school and then I was sent to boarding school and I took my violin with me but the teacher there just had me play twinkle twinkle little star every single week for a whole term so I left my violin at home for the next time by time I got home again my father had sold it to somebody who came to the door looking for old things and he also bought me a piano for passing my O levels and again when I got back after the first term of studying for A levels he'd sold it to a posing dealer and that's kind of what I remember about him an awful lot apart from the fact that he was a wonderful man and his ideas were before their time he sold my piano yeah and my heart did break for you and I mean I couldn't play it or anything but it was a beautiful beautiful creature inlaid with swags and little candlesticks and it was a lovely thing I love that in your book you know you talk about these obviously very difficult aspects of family you know taking away something that's important to you but um you know your father was trying to invent things and he was dentist and he was always trying to help other people so he had those different factors coming in and it's quite rare to read about some of the experiences of love for a parent and you're talking about the difficult aspects and then your mother obviously whose story really touched me and I think it's quite fundamental to your idea of who you are because you didn't want the life that your mother had to tell us a little bit about her. I felt that she was she was a dancer she was a wonderful singer and then she married my father and she was never able to to have that part of herself again and I wrote a song about her about watching her through a slightly open door as she danced by herself and and the piano that my father got me my mother could play that and I watched her play that and it made me made me very sad in later life that my mother hadn't been able to do the things that I've been able to do and that Nick Drake's mother Molly Drake who wrote the most beautiful beautiful songs her songs have been published after she died you know and it was the same for her that she was a wife she was a mother and the other part of her didn't matter and that made me sad for my mother but she had a she loved being a mother so am I sad for the wrong reasons I don't know am I sad because I put myself where she was maybe she wasn't sad about it at all I don't know I don't know but I was sad for her and you talked in the book about your teenage years and you know this very traumatic thing that happens when your mum has a stroke and it's and you hadn't been having a great time with your mental health as a teenager and um that book that part of the book I just had to put it down and just take a breath you know just thinking of how is because it obviously has a huge effect and would you mind telling people haven't read it telling it although that's a little bit of that context about that yes I I think I haven't mentioned the word in the book depression or post-traumatic stress or any of those things but I went through a really really bad patch and the family doctor put me on well first of all he put me on bananas and steak which didn't work and then um he gave me libraium and valium and some new antidepressant and it made me utterly crazy I could not keep still and I said in the book the only relief was going up the down next escalator in Marble Arch tube station because at least I kept still in the same place and screaming at my mother that nobody could understand this kind of agony and I didn't know how to describe it even she went downstairs to see if there was any milk downstairs so she could make me some cocoa and she had a stroke on the way back up and she was never the same again and I stopped taking pills and it kind of shocked me into the rest of into the rest of my life but I don't know quite what happened but um I began to get better after that it was such a shock I think that I had done that to my mother I felt that I'd done that to my mother that you've done that obviously you're not in a great case yourself this is around so this is you know the around the time that this is the mid 60s when your pop career let's talk about um that time which you write up beautifully in the book this this I before we do that actually the bit where you go to a Cliff Richard gig oh it's wonderful there's this young young girl just absolutely for it to be at this Cliff Richard concert and you see him afterwards and backstage and he's not very happy but I know he was he was leaning against the dressing room table and there were all these people in the dressing room smoky horrible dressing room and all these old people in it and there was him dark eyed looking like he just hated everybody and especially hated me I was 16 and I just couldn't understand and I felt really sorry for him uh that he would he must have been hating his life and I wrote that in the book and I've got this wonderful photograph of him lowering and I just oh he was just so wonderful to me then and I sent the book well Lee sent the book to Bob Stanley um Bob Stanley wrote to me and said well you know his father had just died all right wow so it wasn't it wasn't no it wasn't me it wasn't because he oh because he hated everybody it was because his dad had just died so thanks Bob I love to do that of the 16 year old Vashti Banyan at a Cliff Richard concert for me with such joy I mean you had um you had neighbours who worked in theatres and you went to Blackpool or you saw concerts and and obviously then you have this shortly pop career which sort of the mytholog your story we've talked about this it's been mythologised a little bit you know this wonderful romantic journey but obviously in the background of your actual journey which will tell me a minute there's other things going on um and your pop career you know was this you were exploited and all this kind of stuff and obviously there is that going on but also yes you enjoyed it somewhere oh I loved it I loved it and I've been portrayed as this little fragile folk singer who Andrew Llewgoldam took and tried to make into a pop singer I wanted to be a pop singer I never wanted to be a folk singer or to sing little folk songs as I as I saw it I wanted the world that he showed me and I loved it I absolutely loved it and I could read a bit about it if you like it will be wonderful yeah okay well I've got it here I don't know quite how much I'm allowed to read there was a party given by our old neighbours the blacks the impresarios and stage people at apple tree quick apple tree wick just before my 20th birthday my mother persuaded me to go with her and I reluctantly took my guitar and sat down on the edge of a guilt chair in a room full of once famous actresses singers people of the stage mink coats diamonds and pearls patent leather shoes gin and tonics mom happily back with friends I chose to quietly sing how do I know probably hoping to raise some perfect eyebrows with its reference to having babies by different fathers and still being free I remember making no impression amongst the clinking glasses and high laughter but I must have done on one woman there an agent called Monty Mackey from the Al Parkham agency in Mayfair Mrs Mackey knew Andrew Lwgoldam 21 year old manager of the Rolling Stones and ex-manager of Marianne Faithful I was called to the Mayfair office to meet him and sing some of my songs there I was surrounded by the theatrical plush typical of the day the swags of red velvet and golden tassels a grand piano with silver frame signed photographs from grateful and loving clients a white marble fireplace with an all night electric fire Mrs Mackey sitting silently behind her large desk and there was Andrew standing shining with his back to the mantle glass and goat fray mirror I doubt we exchanged glances and there were no words me long white socks small skirt holy jumper old guitar moody du meunger and croaking voice Andrew blond and perfectly otherworldly looking down or at the ceiling sent away after a few songs I had no thought that anything would come of the meeting but next day I was again summoned this time to Andrew's office in Ivercourt at the other end of Gloucester Place he handed me an acetate recording of the Rolling Stones some things to stick in your mind this was to be my first single a Mick Jagger and Keith Richards song but I want to record my songs one of mine could go on the B side said Andrew and my second single could be one of my own I was not happy I went home and complained at my father he said quite uncharacteristically compromise dear girl I did I set out on a path I had not planned but it surely had its moments the contrast between the traditional impresario's world that I had glimtsed through our neighbours the blacks and their and their friends with this Andrew Llew Godd am sweeping it all aside resting the reins and reclaiming music for the young it wound my contrary little heart I was just 20 Andrew a year order he had already brought the stones to dazzling success and I was surely dazzled but also aware I was around something quite world changing and I was quietly delighting and being a small part of the big fuck you as much as I was terrified by them all Andrew and his wordless way with me Mick Jagger imitating my small voice with his head to the side and both hands together to his ear the many many musicians all crowded into the studio it felt good that these young people were taking the place of the old Andrew Llew Godd am strode this new world within a reverential grace he made me laugh when I wasn't weeping later it swelled my heart as I watched him walk up to a stiffly uniformed doorman in the park lane hotel holding a large joint and asking for a light before sweeping through the revolving door into the London streets in a cloud of illicit smoke in the letter to my sister I confessed to being a little in love with Andrew but since he and I barely exchanged a word I remained a small skinny being merging with the studio walls silent wide eyed and almost not there I sang why does the sky turn grey every night sunrise again in time why do you think of the first love you had some things just stick in your mind why does the rain fall down on the earth why do the clouds keep crying why do you sleep curled up like a child some things just stick in your mind why when the children grow up and leave still remember their nursery rhymes why must there be so much hate in their lives some things just stick in their minds Mick Jagger and Keith Richards 1965 wonderful writing it's just wonderful and that's such a passage that captures your rebelliousness and your heart and your shyness but also your loving being absolutely loving being there yes so let's get on to the journey so um you live in a field behind an art school for a little while in a wood under a road to Dendrin bush yes I did with your then with my then partner Robert Lewis who you met as a somebody who you another old an old boyfriend of yours and you picked up as a hitchhiker and you just kept in touch he had a rebellious spirit that um connected with yours and also had had a you know a difficult a hard time yeah really and both of you knew the thing to do was to go now obviously the the inspiration for this was Donovan's uh yeah the land of Donovan the land of Donovan yes he had bought a bit of the Isle of Skye and some islands off the coast of the Isle of Skye and he wanted to create some not exactly a community but just a collection of people with of like minds creative people or painters and writers and he thought it would be a west coast renaissance and he was a friend of a friend of Robert's at his art school um and when well Robert and I had already found a horse and a cart that we wanted to buy but we had absolutely nothing um but when we met Donovan and he talked about this place on Skye that he wanted to people with people like us he lent us the money to buy the horse and the cart they all he Donovan and his friends all went up in the land over um it never occurred to me and Robert it might take us a bit longer and it did it took two summers in the winter to get there by that time a lot of people had gone but there still wasn't a place for us to stay there and you know the whole journey that I described in the book when we got to the end of the journey and there wasn't a place for us you'd think it would be heartbreaking but it wasn't because we had changed so much along the journey um become very self-sufficient really and it didn't matter and we just carried on to the outer hebrides where we did find a place to stay you talk about how one of the reasons the journey started as well is because you're you had a dog blue ah yes my dog animals are a big partner in this book and um obviously you have blue um your dad who's not a very well behaved dog and your dad doesn't want him and you live in the house anymore well no it was because my dog cracked in the surgery door when a patient was due because I hadn't gotten out of bed to take him out and so my father said well either the dog has to go or you have to go and so I went and lived under a rhododendron brush with Robert and then you buy Bess and the story of Bess is almost like a book by itself it's quite lovely Shanaid Gleeson and we're talking about how we're just Bess is in our hearts now and we'll never leave oh I'm so glad she was the most wonderful wonderful creature and your life is basically about you know surviving and subsisting you know there's a lot of people think you know you're going on a journey to sky you know and there's lots of people who did that with means they had money they had money you had no money we didn't have anything at all you had a few things you could sell but then on the journey you were collecting things and selling things yes and yeah and uh digging gardens and cleaning windows and things like that and you had to look after the animals and that's what kept you going yes it kept us going and it made me so much better as well to know that I had to look after the horse I had to look after the dog we had to find grass we had to find water we had to find wood for the fire and all of that made me uh well it took my mind off me and and I was it made me so much better uh just bit by bit through the journey um facing real things real people real policemen who were horrible to us and all of those things and also finding the most incredible kindness along the way of people who really did accept us and some people just thought we were gypsies and that we were going to steal their children or the chickens or something uh but there were other people who were so kind and accepting and liked what we were doing um yeah some of those there were some wonderful I think characters you know they're not characters they're rounded people in this book you would come off the page um you know I would say well Wally but Wally is quite far along the journey um but um tell us about some of the people who you know like their kindness you know helped you survive you know yeah well well yeah I think that the main people were uh when we got to the end of the first summer it was getting really really cold and wet and the dogs were wet and we didn't have a stove or anything like that and so nowhere to dry our clothes or anything and someone told us about a caravan site where we might find a caravan with a stove in it and that we'd be able to rent for the winter couldn't find it um asked a man at the side of the road for directions and he was curious because we were in an old Austin at the time 1930 something Austin belonging to a friend um and he looked at the car and he looked at us what are you doing we said we were on our way to sky but you know we got to stop for the winter oh well me and my wife are going up to the outer hebrides tomorrow uh you'd better come and have a cup of tea and meet her so we went in to meet her iris mcfalen and mac mcfalen and they gave us their house within about 15 minutes knowing nothing about us they gave us their house to stay in for the winter while they went up to the croft they'd bought which was a ruin had a tree in one side of it they lived there for the winter while we lived in their house with an auger and a bathroom and beds it was just wonderful and why did they do that and who would do that now to people that they'd never met um they just liked what we were doing and that you know the kindred of them doing their crazy thing and us doing our crazy thing or heading for the same dream really um they were the kindest people if i've forgotten and um you mentioned in the book you know these incredible women you know lots of older women who are wayward oh yes and inspire and still inspire you you know really inspire me it's certainly when we got to bernary in the outer hebrides and this is after you've been to sky and there was no way for us and we carried on to the outer hebrides and the the women on the isle of bernary um they they they did inspire me because they were they were quiet and they looked as if they were doing what they were told but they were rebellious i was saying the rebellious in undercover ways like helping the hippies at fairy cottage and that you know they they they the younger people on the island were afraid that robert and i were making friends with the older women so that when they died we would be given their crafts and that that could not have been further from the truth but that was why we weren't liked by the younger generation they thought that we were going to come in and steal something from them and and yet the the women that we befriended who fed us gave us milk um stories the stories that they gave us were were magical and i will never forget those those people although i only stayed on bernary for six months because i was pregnant i got scared um of having a baby in an old falling down cottage with an earth floor and i thought you know i would be helicoptered off to in vines and i went back to my adored brother down in sussex and uh left the hybrid used to left that life altogether took off on another one and you you know reading the book you know i'm i'm like i'm going did you ever think about giving up you know because there are sometimes we do come off the journey there's somebody who offers you some gigs and you leave to do the gigs but then you come back you know obviously you've got the animals to look after but so you don't think i'll stop here with the animals you know we have to keep going you know there's there was the the determination to get there yeah and it was kind of the the animals because robert and i most definitely didn't get on an awful lot of the time and so there was no question of us splitting up because then who was going to take the horse it was going to take the dog and so it kept us going really it was pretty good way of staying together with somebody just to have a horse yeah and you talk about you know that relationship and you know what happened later which i will leave you to read in the book um in terms of music now obviously music is accompanying you on this journey or you know got the songs and i was very privileged to when i went to vashti's house in edinborough see the book your song book which is one of the beautiful things it's stitched together beautiful handwriting all your original lyrics some songs that didn't make it and it didn't make it and i didn't take any pictures of them for my archives i was just like oh these are all these songs that they never and um but you know just you know it was obviously a companion um and you know the album you've said this in the book the album that came out is a kind of it's a version of the story and yeah it's a you know it's it's about the dream isn't it the album it's definitely about the dream and it's definitely didn't have much reality in it but it was i wrote the songs to keep us going really and the the happiest song like jog along best i i wrote sitting against a stone wall in the mist and murk of a lonely glen in scotland uh with midges and i wrote this incredibly happy wee song and that i wrote it to keep us going i i had no idea of recording any of it but just to keep us going um and i kind of did and then you do record them your joe boyd showed interest in your songs you know back in the mid 60s but you didn't want to do anything to do with making music after your experience um your pop career um but he's you know he stepped to his word and you stepped to your word and you have recorded them um when you know obviously that album is a wonderful album and it's much loved um you know so many i heard of that Vashti's gig on the weekend as if anybody here or online was at Vashti's concert at the Barbican but i was told there's lots of younger people there yes um so you know your music has been introduced to new generations and what is it like to sing songs from that record now you know knowing that you had this large part of your life when the last thing you would want to do was to sing those songs i never never ever dreamed of singing of performing those songs at all and particularly jog along best that i just mentioned um the the guy who plays guitar with me gareth dixon when we were on tour in america he and another guitarist would play the chords of jog along best because they they really liked just playing around with them and i would say no no no no i'm never ever ever going to play that one ever ever ever ever and then the other night at the Barbican we did and it was it was absolutely wonderful because the the violins and the recorders everybody was playing on it and the keyboard everything everything and everybody that was around me on the stage and i just thought i could never have dreamed that this would happen that i would be singing jog along best with all these other musicians on the stage in the Barbican so yeah it was it was wonderful wonderful feeling and a full house fantastic and obviously then you made your music you made two more albums which are wonderful the second which um you produced yourself going on a music production course that um you told me the teacher said oh you're not going to be able to do all that i didn't actually go because he wouldn't let me oh sir oh i see so you to talk yourself i didn't i had to teach myself yes i tried to apply i applied to that course he said oh no you know you're far too old you will you won't be able to understand it and so yeah i did it took me seven years but i did it um what's next you know you've written a book and they're still you know your your creative juices are flowing you can't stop now oh well i know you want to rise because you've got a busy weekend um what now i think this Barbican show has been ahead of me for so long but now and i couldn't even see beyond it you know i was so terrified um and now it's done and i can't quite believe this it's behind me and i i don't know i can't see the rest of it i can't see the rest of my life now because that was such a big part of it and then when this arrived at my door i thought wow i actually did that but what else what else will i do well the other thing actually that did happen was that i picking up my guitar again which i hadn't for two years to to rehearse for for the Barbican i thought oh this is all right and then the little keyboard that i had to use to to tune the guitar i thought oh it's all right so i don't know i don't know if something it does seem to go in cycles so let's hope um for the moment enjoy your book being out and people reading it and enjoying it and it's been getting great reviews quite rightly because it is wonderful um thank you thank you jude congratulations on the book um we have a bit of time for some questions now anybody has a question to ask there's a question here i don't know if you can see there's a mic there's a mic coming along oh 55 years ago i'm sorry this is a bit of a speech as well as a question oh keep it keep it short okay 55 years ago i was i was going to go to a franciscan monastery to hear a keyboard player and i was persuaded by a certain guy with a big tie to work on a session and the session was with a young lady called bashti and the session the the song went baby baby it's late and you'd better go it's after three and you can sing the rest the coldest night of the year i worked with you on that coldest night of the year how wonderful lovely to see you i love i love that recording so thank you thank you i think i'd had john poll jones jim sullivan jo meretti and nicky hopkins nicky hopkins andy white who played you know was it jimmy page i don't know yeah all those all those guys working with you how beautiful thank you for the moment well that was andrew all them yeah yeah his his production that's right yeah pie studio huge huge how times of uh how times changed for about 55 years later how did you see you beautiful to see you thank you thank you so much thank you thank you very much wow and i don't know should i met somebody she hadn't seen for years earlier so this is like a reunion who will i meet tonight um another question there was one up here i think yeah well the things that you'd forgotten but in focusing on your past and on the book came back to light they've always been been in there um sorry i can't really hear terribly much what you were asking me no i said uh were there things from your past that you'd forgotten that in going back and focusing on the writing sort of came to the surface that came came to the surface not really because i think i've always held the story um i may not have got it right in places i may have remembered some of it wrong but um yes it wasn't difficult to to get back to those stories because they've been in my head and i've probably told other people the stories many times um and i'm i'm sure there's a lot i've forgotten but the things i have remembered i've remembered pretty clearly i hope i've got them right i will probably hear from some people well no actually it didn't happen like that and it wasn't then it was now and uh but uh hopefully i've got most of it right and you've had some of the you had some stuff um that you kept from those years that you called it and i wanted to ask actually what your children think of your book because you wanted to write this for your children initially yes you took a little while but you did try it it took a while yes um i don't really know yet um yes exactly exactly yes and they didn't know anything much about my musical past at all and yes that's why i tried to write it for them to explain a bit of how their lives had been um and actually when just another diamond day came out in 2000 my my youngest son was just 14 and he said you don't know what it's like for me to have it be known that my mother was a hippie but he has to give me do we have any more questions we've got a microphone coming down for you just you know just wondering whether you think such a journey the quest that you did back there was something that would be possible today and how you know how that would be today i mean it's kind of an impossible question but you know it just seems like something some sort of thing that i dream about doing i think it would be very hard now i think it also i think we were so innocent we had absolutely no idea how to do any of this and we just we just went ahead and did it but i think now people would be more aware maybe of the dangers i wasn't aware of any danger at all on yet of course it was all around me um but i think people are more aware now of danger and so it might be a more difficult decision to take to to make that kind of journey and when i made the decision i didn't think i had any other choice i had to i had to go um maybe people aren't so much in that position now i don't know i don't know but i wouldn't at all like it if any of my children had done something like that so i don't know but you also said to me when we spoke for the garden interview recently you know you wouldn't change that you've done it for the world you know what you learned yeah what i learned yes and you also said this was when was this we spoke in late February you said oh well i sometimes i still have that urge to just run away let's go my books out in a month i'm terrified let me just run away oh the day before the barbican show yeah and you obviously you did stay in Scotland you know you live in Edinburgh now and you did live until your musical career came back you know you were you know living a fairly unconventional life which is also in the book as well yes yeah yes yes i've been much more normal recently um i know obviously we've been talking about the book but do you buy it i was it was surprising it was incredibly sad at points it's very funny at some points and michael palin and terry germsyd and how it comes when you know them i love that bit i'm Cliff Richard you know we've talked enough about Cliff Richard but um it's a wonderful surprising and fantastic book and i really genuinely recommend it it um blindsided me it was it was wonderful um it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you nasty and thank you everybody dear thank you thank you tonight thank you everybody thank you cool