February 1967, Aix-en-Provence, France
What I remember most from those days was a sudden, explosive sensation of freedom. The well-bred Brits worked hard to ditch their boarding school pallor. The German kids loosened up their stiff spines by studiedly slouching against the sun-drenched walls. The Americans tried to forget hometowns with names like Kalamazoo, where Middle America had been slowly squeezing them into button-down suits.
Slowly, we began to blend in, picking up slang and small mannerisms. We studied each other, looking for new ways to be. Amid the carnival colors and exotic accents, being an American girl with a guitar didn’t seem terribly interesting. I shed my California beach tan, sewed a couple of hippie dresses and bought a mod pantsuit and french minidress.
The music in the air was equally eclectic, from Jaques Brel and Johnny Hallyday to the blues and folksongs of the buskers. At a local club, I sang the usual blues and folk songs mixed with my own original songs. One evening in February, after a set, Nick Drake introduced himself. Over the next couple of months he would turn up at my flat with his guitar, often late in the evening, to play music, share a glass of wine and a joint if there was any Moroccan kief laying around. (There usually was.)
Meeting Nick in Aix
By the time I met Nick in February of 1967, Bob Dylan had gone electric. Donovan was tripping down Sunny Goodge Street. The Rolling Stones were reinventing Amercan Blues classics. Burt Jansch was strolllin’ down the highway. And Dino Valenti had urged us all to get together and love one another. Folk and traditional music styles were evolving fast – looking backward and forward at the same time.
Most kids with guitars knew the same songs, learned from the same record albums. But with all the evolution and revolution in the air, it just seemed natural to get creative. Why play an old song when it was easier to make up a new one? I’d been writing my own songs for a couple of years. Making up blues songs as if I had a right to sing the blues (I didn’t) and searching for lyrics, chords, and melodies to express the avalanche of emotions I was feeling but couldn’t handle.
Nick had chosen a different path. He had mastered the intricate blues guitar fingerpicking technique of Dave Van Ronk and Reverend Gary Davis. His playing was impeccable, fluid, far outstripping anyone else around. He had also studied Jackson C. Frank more closely than anyone I knew. Soon he would base his song “Day Is Done” on Frank’s “Milk and Honey.” He filled out his repertoire with a couple of Bob Dylan songs but picked up the tempo and changed the groove so much that they were difficult to follow.
Like the troubadors that haunted the ancient streets of Aix, we used music as a way of expressing our personal taste and feelings. We didn’t hesitate to “borrow” a traditional melody or create something that blended folk song with current singer-songwriter styles. You can hear a wonderful, much later, example of this in Nick’s “From the Morning,” a song with a finger-picking style that harks straight back to the sing-along folk songs of the mid-1960s but has a unique and powerful lyric theme.
Nick never played any of his own songs for me. Based on the “Aix Tape”— a recording he made in April or May of 1967 most of which is included in the FAMILY TREE album—he was just beginning to write his own songs. The first two were probably “Strange Meeting II” and “Leaving Me Behind.” The latter is his first attempt to “float” a vocal melody over an intricate guitar part – something that will be characteristic of his later songs.
Also on the tape is a recording of my song “Been Smoking Too Long.” He seemed to enjoy the song and it allowed him to show off his great blues guitar skills.
When Nick failed to turn up one evening after asking me to meet him, I went home upset and wrote “Sandy Grey,” a song about an elusive character with loss and rootlessness in his genes.
It’s not meant to an accurate telling of Nick’s story because I didn’t know anything about his life. I used my songwriting to express my frustration and my perception of his character. The name Sandy Grey, with its suggestion of drifting sand and indefinable color, summed up the elusive character he seemed to be.
John Martyn & Sandy Grey
Listen to Sandy Grey on Spotify.
After Aix, I lost touch with Nick. I traveled to London with Bridget St. John, who I had met in Aix. I met John Martyn at a club called Bunjies where he was playing. I had no place to stay so John invited me to crash at the flat where he was staying which belonged to his manager Theo Johnson. Theo was out of town and the flat didn’t look much lived-in anyway. There was no food in the kitchen, a couple mattresses on the floor, a beat-up sofa in the living room, an Italian poet hanging about, but most importantly, there was a turntable. John and I would play albums and listen for hours.
We played our songs for each other, too. John had a voice like liquid gold and an easy, rhythmically catchy style of guitar playing. He liked “Sandy Grey” and decided to put it on his album. Since he hadn’t met Nick Drake yet—and it never occurred to me that he would—I didn’t tell him about the elusive character who inspired it.
Back in California and struggling to get a foot in the door of the music business, I found Nick’s first album, FIVE LEAVES LEFT. I thought about writing to him to tell him how much I liked it. But I didn’t. My turn to slip away. Years later, when I finally heard his home recording of “Been Smoking Too Long,” I discovered I finally had something of him that didn’t melt away. It is a thing I hold onto with much love.
Recordings, Lyrics, and Chords
I’ve recorded “Sandy Grey” a number of times over the years. Just for fun, here’s one recorded in late 1967 and the other 40 years later for my album WATER FALLS DOWN.
Sandy Grey Home Demo, 1967 Play MP3
Sandy Grey, 2007. Video dedicated to John Martyn.
Sandy Grey – Lyrics
Words & Music by Robin Frederick
Oh Sandy Grey, are you going away
Leave me a message before parting
Time has changed you
And the things that pained you
Are the things you think of as you’re starting
Oh Sandy Grey, it’s only this I pray
That you might stay here one more day in laughter
Won’t you hang around and hold me
Repeat all the lies you told me
Do your rambling after
Oh Sandy Grey, don’t leave me just today
Don’t think on the road you’ll be going
Think of all the time
And the days we’ve had to mind
Of the future there’s no way of knowing
Oh Sandy Grey, I thought I heard you say
You ain’t heard one word that I’ve been speaking
There’s no use in tryin’
You’re escaping from my mind
And I’ll never see the road you’re seeking.
Oh Sandy Grey, are you going away
Leave me a message before parting
Time has changed you
And the things that pained you
Are the things you think of as you’re starting.
CHORDS (original version): The intro is a G chord alternating with a Gsus4/C. The rest of the chords are…
| C | G | F | C |
| C | G | Dm | Dm |
| C | G/B | Am | Am |
| F | F | G | G |
© 1967 Robin Frederick. (ascap)
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Robin Frederick is a professional songwriter, music producer and recording artist. Nick Drake’s recording of her song Been Smoking Too Long appears on the FAMILY TREE album. John Martyn’s recording of Sandy Grey appears on his album LONDON CONVERSATION. She is also a contributor to the album notes in the re-release of the FRUIT TREE box set and FAMILY TREE CD, and the book REMEMBERED FOR A WHILE.