I wrote two weeks ago about an article in the Israeli newspaper "Ma'ariv" about Nick Drake. In today's arts supplement, it was the turn of Sandy Denny. Whilst it's true that there's no such thing as bad publicity, this article was so inaccurate that I became very annoyed. Instead of writing about the classic Denny songs, her participation in Fairport's groundbreaking "Liege and Lief" and her twice winning the "Melody Maker female singer of the year award" (1970/1), we got to read about her drinking and smoking (twice), her husband who ran off with her infant baby and a little about her "fall down the stairs". Naturally "The battle of Evermore", the first (and only?) Led Zeppelin track to be recorded with someone outside of LZ was mentioned.
The final nail in the coffin? The "fact" that Sandy's best song was "Listen to the song of the sea". Excuse me? I've never heard of such a song. To be fair, it might be a problem with copyediting and punctuation marks, in which the sentence becomes "Listen to the song 'The Sea'". Whilst I have no problem in considering this Fotheringay song as one of her best, I wouldn't consider it to be the best.
I fired off an angry and frustrated letter, but I don't expect to receive any reply. I certainly didn't get one after the Nick Drake article. I even offered to copy edit any future articles about Witchseason artists, figuring I probably know more about them than anyone else in Israel.
1 comment:
Sounds like journalism of the laziest sort. Oh dear. I hope they take notice of your complaint this time, No'am. I recently paid a visit to Byfield (the village where Sandy lived in her later days) - pictures on my blog if you're interested.
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