Preface: Your Fickle Friends Are Leaving .

I was eighteen when I first heard Sandy Denny, early in September 1968. I had been music mad since I was eight or nine years old, spending many long hours in that bedroom world with a radio, a reel-to-reel tape recorder and a record player for company. Sandy's voice raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I was an avid listener to John Peel's Top Gear and, that particular night, I was poised to tape the best bits because Fairport Convention were one of the featured groups. I'd seen them play a few times, all at Middle Earth in Covent Garden, but I had no idea they now had a new girl singer. She sang two songs, Joni Mitchell's 'Eastern Rain' and another called 'Fotheringay'; at some point in the course of the show John Peel must have said that her name was Sandy Denny. 'Fotheringay' was like a slap in the face; it stopped me in my tracks.

It was by no means the first time this had happened to me. I can still remember that visceral blast on hearing Johnny Kidd's 'Shakin' All Over', the Kinks' 'You Really Got Me' or the Byrds' 'Eight Miles High'. More often it was voices and moody sentiments that stuck with me. Having two older sisters exposed me early in life to Rick Nelson's 'Lonesome Town', the Everly Brothers' 'So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad)' and Elvis singing 'I'm left, you're right, she's gone', before discovering such things for myself: Roy Orbison's 'Only the Lonely', Billy Fury's 'Halfway to Paradise', Skeeter Davis's 'End of the World', the Four Seasons' 'Rag Doll', the Beach Boys' 'Don't Worry Baby' and countless other pop songs in which lonesome and sad was the prevailing mood.

Paradoxically, like all the best sad songs, 'Fotheringay' was also uplifting. I whirled back the tape again and again listening to Sandy's featured songs. I had never much cared for girl singers, not until hearing Grace Slick for the first time, again through John Peel. He often played Jefferson Airplane's 'Somebody to Love' and 'White Rabbit' on his Perfumed Garden show on Radio London; here was Britain's answer to Jefferson Airplane, with a singer who was Grace Slick's equal. No, Sandy Denny was better. Grace Slick's voice was sexy and just a little sinister but Sandy's could actually reach inside and wring out every ounce of feeling. It still has that effect on me.

By chance, I already had tickets for the Festival of Contemporary Song at the Royal Festival Hall at the end of the month, and Fairport Convention were on a tantalising bill. I'd bought the tickets ostensibly to see Al Stewart; I'd been a fan since hearing him week in, week out at Bunjies folk club and even went to his concert debut at the Festival Hall in 1967. Living in south London, it was a handy venue for me; you could just walk across the bridge and catch the last train home with time to spare. In June 1968 I had seen Pentangle there, and three months earlier, the Incredible String Band, supported by Tim Buckley. But here, lining up for the Festival of Contemporary Song, were the Johnstons, Joni Mitchell, Jackson C. Frank and Fairport Convention, alongside Al Stewart, who unveiled a new, eighteen-minute journey through his adolescent sexual adventures, 'Love Chronicles'. Despite the song's controversial use of the word 'fucking', nobody was noticeably shocked.

Joni Mitchell's debut album had only just been released; within a few years she would become the benchmark by which all female singer-songwriters would be measured, and none more so than Sandy Denny. My distant memory of Joni Mitchell was the power of her voice and a confidence that belied an almost gawky stage presence. She made a dismissive comment about an Irish group who had just covered 'Both Sides Now'; unfortunately for them, that group was the Johnstons, who had already closed their set with the song, as did she. I'd seen American folk singer Jackson C. Frank a few times at Cousins and Bunjies. He was a sullen bear of a man whose songs were appealing but beyond my emotional grasp. Few in the audience that night - or perhaps even beside her on stage - would have known that he had once been Sandy Denny's boyfriend.

Fairport Convention closed the show. Whatever effect listening to the Peel Session tapes had on me, to see Fairport live - with added Sandy - was something else. It wasn't just about her, either. They played 'Reno, Nevada', during which guitarist Richard Thompson let fly with a long, flowing, electrifying solo. If I remember correctly Sandy sang 'Eastern Rain' and a chilling 'I'll Keep It with Mine'. Both were on Fairport's What We Did on Our Holidays, released a few months later. What I most vividly remember, however, was how unbelievably exciting Fairport Convention were that night; the combination of the voices of Sandy Denny and Ian Matthews was incredible.

They sang Tim Buckley's 'Morning Glory' - this group also clearly had the best taste ever - but the real tour de force was their version of Leonard Cohen's 'Suzanne'. Fairport were no longer the frenzied West Coast-sounding group I'd seen bleary-eyed at Middle Earth. On one side of the stage stood Ian Matthews, motionless, almost in a dream, and on the other stood Sandy, equally lost in song; the two swapped the verses back and forth while Richard Thompson, buried beneath an enviable mound of tousled hair, propelled the song with a rhythmic staccato guitar over which their voices soared. When Sandy Denny came in with the line 'And Jesus was a sailor' it was magical. The next day John Peel repeated the Fairport session, which now included the same brilliant arrangement of 'Suzanne'. Stupidly, I didn't tape it; it was at least ten years before I heard it again on Fairport's Heyday collection of vintage Peel Sessions.

A few days later I went off to university to study politics. I hated it, for the most part; my obsession with music helped get me through the next few years. Leicester had little to recommend it but at least was in a broad catchment area that took in Nottingham and Birmingham, where, over the next three years, every great British band or musician - and the odd visiting American - must have played at some point. It's no exaggeration to say that every week there was a great gig happening somewhere within reasonable travelling distance: Family, the Bonzo Dog Band, Love, Liverpool Scene, John Martyn, Blossomtoes, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, Free, Caravan, the Move, Derek and the Dominoes, Eclection and so many more. I saw Fairport again twice - once more during Sandy's all-too-brief tenure and then the full-throttle Full House band. Even Fotheringay played one of their too few gigs in Leicester, at the stuffy De Montfort Hall in March 1970. For me, they were better than the Liege & Lief-era Fairport Convention I'd seen six months before.

More or less a year to the day after the Festival of Contemporary Song, I went along when Fairport premiered the Liege & Lief set at the Royal Festival Hall. Nick Drake opened but I would be lying if I said he made any impression whatsoever. We can all be wise after the event. Folk music would never be quite the same again after that night and nor would Fairport Convention, but I wasn't alone in thinking that I preferred the Fairport of old. What We Did on Our Holidays and Unhalfbricking will always be more moving to me.

My love affair with Sandy Denny continued through Fotheringay, The North Star Grassman and the Ravens and the Sandy albums. By a total fluke I was visiting my mum and dad in Belvedere some time in May 1972 and opened their local paper to see that Sandy was playing a gig at the nearby Well Hall Open Theatre that night, so of course I eagerly went along. The band included Richard Thompson, and even Linda Peters, as she was then, surreptitiously crept on stage at the end. She and Sandy sang the Everlys' 'When Will I Be Loved'. It was a total joy from start to finish. This was the Sandy that friends talk about so affectionately - chattering away, laughing, fumbling and fooling around but singing with impeccable warmth and grace. A tape of the show now reminds me that she sang songs from the Fotheringay album, a gripping 'John the Gun' from The North Star Grassman, and there were songs from an album she was just recording. I duly snapped up Sandy a few months later. It was delightful, but it was the last Sandy Denny album I bought during her lifetime.

I was a typical fickle fan of the day. It now seems as if a lot of us deserted her after 1973. We move on, our taste in music changes, let alone our agendas in life. I never stopped buying records but there was too much good music coming out of America - Little Feat, Steely Dan, the Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Gene Clark, the Flying Burrito Brothers and Jackson Browne spring to mind - and British music was in the grip of glam pop and rock that did absolutely nothing for me. I didn't much care for Fairport Convention any more either; my allegiance had switched to Richard Thompson's solo records and the albums he was making with Linda.

I find it hard to believe that I didn't hear Sandy's third solo album, Like an Old Fashioned Waltz, but if I did I most likely found it too mawkish. I must have heard enough to make such a judgement call, perhaps only the advance single, a cover of the oldie 'Whispering Grass'. I certainly didn't buy the album it trailed. I don't remember checking out Fairport's Rising for the Moon either, the album...