Vashti Bunyan
| Vashti Bunyan | |
|---|---|
Bunyan performing at the Summer Sundae festival in Leicester in 2006
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Jennifer Vashti Bunyan |
| Also known as | Vashti |
| Born | 1945 (age 71–72) Newcastle upon Tyne, England |
| Genres | |
| Years active | 1965–1970, 2002–present |
| Labels | |
| Website | anotherday.co.uk |
Vashti Bunyan (born Jennifer Vashti Bunyan in 1945) is an English singer-songwriter.
Bunyan released her debut album, Just Another Diamond Day, in 1970. The album sold very few copies and Bunyan, discouraged, abandoned her musical career. By 2000, her album had acquired a cult following; it was re-released and Bunyan recorded more songs, initiating the second phase of her musical career after a gap of thirty years.
Vashti Bunyan was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1945 to John and Helen Bunyan, and moved to London at six months old. Although she has been said to be descended from The Pilgrim's Progress author John Bunyan, this is a claim she has herself denied. In the early 1960s, she studied at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford University, but was expelled for failing to turn up to classes. At 18, she travelled to New York and discovered the music of Bob Dylan through his The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan album and decided to become a full-time musician. Returning to London she was discovered by Rolling Stones' manager Andrew Loog Oldham, and, in June 1965, under his direction, she released her first single, the Jagger and Richards penned "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind" (their own version later turning up on the outtakes compilation Metamorphosis), on Decca Records. Released using simply the name Vashti, it was backed with her own song "I Want to Be Alone". The single and her follow-up "Train Song", released on Columbia in May 1966, produced by Canadian Peter Snell, received little attention. Her only other performance of this time to find release was her distinctive vocal on "The Coldest Night of the Year" with "Twice as Much" (which eventually turned up on their second and final LP, That's All, appearing on Oldham's Immediate Records in 1968). After recording further songs for Immediate Records, which remain unreleased, and making a brief appearance in the 1967 documentary Tonite Let's All Make Love in London, performing her song "Winter Is Blue", she decided to travel with her boyfriend Robert Lewis by horse and cart to the Hebridean Islands to join a commune planned by a friend, fellow singer/songwriter Donovan ("...from South London up to the Hebrides. Initially to Skye but we carried on to the Outer Hebrides."). During the trip she began writing the songs that eventually became her first album, Just Another Diamond Day.
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