A new mini-album celebrates her lost 'brothers': Nick Drake, John Martyn, Kevin Ayers and Michael Chapman. Bridget St John explains all to Uncut...
A new mini-album celebrates her lost ‘brothers’: Nick Drake, John Martyn, Kevin Ayers and Michael Chapman. Bridget St John explains all to Uncut…
UNCUT: On Covering My Brothers, you pay tribute to four artists who were important to you. Did you feel like a sister to them?
BRIDGET ST JOHN: They were my brothers – never lovers! They were people that stayed in my life, other than Nick, who died so young. I saw John Martyn three months before he died, he came to New York [where St John has lived since 1976]. Even though I didn’t see them all the time, the connection was there, like it is with good friends.
You’ve really put your own stamp on these songs, including an experimental take on Michael Chapman’s 10-minute “Aviator”.
I only cover a song if it has got inside me. I can sing these songs because I relate to them as if I’d written them. “Aviator” was about a personal thing for Michael, a problem with the Inland Revenue, but for me it’s about the world and what’s going on now. So I changed a few words, with his wife Andru’s blessing. Michael’s version is much more aggressive than mine – I think he was really angry when he wrote it!
You cover Nick Drake’s “Fly”, and you knew him back then too – as much as anyone could…
I related to him very strongly because we were both so shy – it’s hard to be so shy and be onstage. I don’t think I was as introverted as him, but I felt he was a kindred spirit.
Yours and Kevin Ayers’ voices worked very well together – almost like male and female versions of each other.
I always loved playing with Kevin. I’m not a perfect singer, I often don’t sing exactly on the beat, and I think we just could feel where the other one was. Here, I play “Jolie Madame”, which we recorded together originally. I can speak French, but Kevin was properly bilingual, so it was completely finished when he played it to me.
The oddity on this EP is your version of John Martyn’s “Head And Heart” – a demo you made for 1974’s Jumblequeen, lost and recently discovered.
John was originally going to produce the album, so I recorded some demos for him. There were six songs, and “Head And Heart” was one of them. I’d totally forgotten doing it until last summer when Mhairi, John’s daughter, got in touch and said, “I have this reel-to-reel.” I really like this version.
John was the first of these four you met, wasn’t he?
I met him in 1967, when I was at Sheffield University, through Robin Frederick who also knew Nick Drake. He was the one who took me to Al Stewart‘s house to record my first demo, which got to John Peel, which led to everything opening up for me. John Martyn helped me buy my first steel-string guitar, because I only had a nylon string. I did several gigs with him, until it became clear that he was so far ahead of his time, with the Echoplex and his way of playing… his audience didn’t relate to me so much, as a quiet singer-songwriter, so we did fewer gigs together, but still some, and sometimes with him and Danny Thompson.
Did you try and keep up with their hell-raising?
No, after two glasses of wine I’d need to go to bed! But all my ‘brothers in music’ had kind hearts. They might have had rough edges, or deeper than rough edges… but I think I’m drawn to the good and the depth of people.
What have you got coming up after this release?
I’ve got a couple of songs I definitely want to put down, so I’ll probably go to the studio upstate, where I recorded “Aviator”, in May or June.
Covering My Brothers is available on 10” vinyl by Shagrat Records
