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To the behind the Song podcast, taking you deeper into classic rock's most timeless tunes. Here's your host, Janda.
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I'm Janda, and in this bonus episode of the behind the Song podcast, let's get into the incredible life and very tragic, very odd ending of Sandy Denny, the only guest vocalist to ever appear on a Led Zeppelin studio album. It's her voice you hear accompanying Robert Plant on the Battle of evermore from Led Zeppelin 4. This appearance cemented her place in rock and roll history, which is a testament to the respect she was given as a singer and musician. But let's trace back her career up to that point. Born In Wimbledon in 1947, he she picked up guitar and piano at an early age. She was studying to be a nurse at college when she started playing in the folk clubs around London, playing songs by artists emerging in the landscape at that time, like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. But she was also starting to write her own songs too. She left college to pursue a career in music, and within a couple of years she was signed to a deal with Saga Records. She joined the band the Straubs and recorded one of her earliest songs with them, a song called who Knows where the Time Goes. During this time, the American singer Judy Collins, who is the subject of Crosby, Stills and Nash's Sweet Judy Blue Eyes, covered that song as the title track to her album, which went into the charts in 1968. The Judy Collins version of that song was released before Sandy Denny's version, either with the Straubs or with her next band, the Fairport Convention, the band she's most closely associated with, hugely influential in British folk rock music, due in part to Denny leading the way to include traditional folk songs combined with modern compositions in their repertoire. Here's Sandy Denny's version of who Knows where the Time Goes with the Fairport Convention who Knows where the Time Goes. Judy Collins wasn't the only person to cover this song, although she was the first. Nina Simone covered it in 1970 and later so did Sinead O', Connor, David Gray, Cat Power and many more. When Sandy Denny released the song herself, it failed to chart, which would be a problem then and in the future when it came to her work and how it was received commercially anyway. Denny left Fairport convention in late 1969 to form the band Fathering Gay with a desire to record more original songs, a difference in direction from her previous band. They recorded one self titled album which was released in 1970, but broke up while recording the second after mismanagement. Meanwhile, Led Zeppelin were working on their fourth album, the monolithic Led Zeppelin 4, or ZOSO. According to Robert Plant, he said it didn't sound right to him to be singing both parts of the song the Battle of Evermore. So he and Jimmy Page reached out to Denny, who, who they greatly admired, to join them in the studio. What resulted was the haunting question and answer vocal between Denny and Plant. A song that sounds as it was intended to sound, like a spirit that rose up out of the fog in an English meadow one moonlit night. Totally timeless. This was the only time anyone ever sang with Led Zeppelin on a recording. And to thank her for her work, Zeppelin gave Sandy Denny her own symbol on the Led Zeppelin 4 artwork. Complementing each of the four members of the band's own chosen symbols, Denny's is three downward pointing triangles connecting in the middle forming an asterisk, and it was placed on the inner sleeve of Zoso. The asterisk was chosen to mark her contribution as a guest vocalist.