‘Wayward’ by Vashti Bunyan
Published in 2022 by White Rabbit Books. Buy direct here.
These days it feels like everyone professes a love for Vashti Bunyan, but it should be remembered that for a long time it looked as though she would become a name lost in the dingy vaults of Pop and Folk music’s catalogue of scarcity, venerated by a few lost souls who would keep the faith in her through an underground network of Chinese whispers. It is entirely possible that I am misremembering this, but it did feel that for while in the late 1980s and early 90s her name was treasured, ironically, as some kind of obscure star of anti-stardom. In todays parlance, perhaps, as an icon of the anti-growth coalition. Yet somehow (inevitably, thanks to the Internet) that underground mythology of Vashti Bunyan took hold and grew to epic proportions. Bunyan was the one who turned her back on it all, who left it all behind, who disappeared ‘off grid’ (as no-one ever referred to it then) and eschewed Modern Life for something simpler. The one who made a quiet masterpiece of a record in ‘Just Another Diamond Day’ and then retreated into further isolation. Or so the myth went.
As time stretched onward then it seemed sometimes as though Vashti Bunyan had become a byword for pastoral whimsy, a lazy reference to throw in whenever someone heard a woman singing gently on top of a minimal backing. Me? Guilty as charged. But then again so what? Those are sonic references and inescapable, perhaps. And being lazy is sometimes undervalued. Of course it all misses Bunyan’s roots in London, the connections to Joe Boyd, Andrew Loog Oldham and the Stones, the influences of the stylish French New Wave. Which is partly why it was so pleasing to hear her in St Etienne’s ‘Finisterre’ film back at the start of the 21st Century. In a lovely extract she talks about her childhood love of farms and the countryside but concludes by admitting that she does love coming back to London. She loves the city. It’s also why her ‘Wayward’ autobiography is so compelling.
To call ‘Wayward’ an autobiography, though, is perhaps misleading because really Bunyan simply focuses on that period in her life for which she is most well known: following the hippy dream of a self-sustained lifestyle and writing and recording that classic album. It is certainly quite delightfully pleasing and illuminating to see the subjects of those songs fleshed out, as it were, and given solid context within the body of ‘Wayward’. The songs and the book work beautifully in harmony, each supporting the other, reflecting colour and detail back and forth like a comforting conversation by the fireside. Paradoxically, the two combine to peel away the layers of mythology whilst simultaneously adding new washes of magic. The fog clears and regroups in an instant. We glimpse the vision and then promptly it dissolves once more into different form.
A slim tome, ‘Wayward’ is a quick and delicious read that, again, paradoxically both amplifies and dilutes the mythology of that flight to the Hebrides by putting the story down in such an elegant matter-of-fact manner. You get the sense that whilst Vashti Bunyan knows this is a strange tale in many respects, it’s also not so strange at all. Perhaps at heart it is the typical story of all artists who necessarily fluctuate between needing to make sense of (their) life through their chosen medium, wanting others to notice that work, yet being also desirous of an existence outside of everything. Throughout the book there is a pull, a tension between opposites. Different ways of living. Alternative definitions of success playing against each other. Conflicts, ambitions, loves, fears, betrayals. Most of all, perhaps, the fear of not adding beauty and magic to the world. A simple fear, in some respects, but very powerful.
There is a heartrending part near the end of the book where Bunyan reflects on reading the only review of ‘Just Another Diamond Day’ she was aware of on its 1971 release. “[It] said it had made the writer feel depressed. I was reading it… and thinking, ‘I’ve just made somebody feel unhappy. I’m not doing that again.’ I remember vividly closing that paper and vowing I would not pick up a guitar again.” That Vashti Bunyan did not quite keep that vow for the rest of her life is to our great benefit, of course, but she held it for long enough for it to matter. That fragility of ego, the brittle heart of our hopeful dreams, is not to be underestimated. How many others have withdrawn after similar bruises and never resurfaced? In a contemporary world where anger and conflict seem to be encouraged as a means to drive monetary profits, perhaps it is worth remembering that kindness is a powerful ally in the face of darkness. Peace, love and understanding. An unattainable hippy dream it may be, but these days I’ll choose that over reality in a heartbeat.