On recording Just Another Diamond Day with Joe Boyd, traveling to Skye by horse and wagon, and the cult that grew without her knowledge

Transmission 137: Interview with Vashti Bunyan

The artist behind Just Another Diamond Day talks about her influences and collaborations, with Lookaftering’s reissue on the horizon

Title: Lookaftering
Artist: Vashti Bunyan
Genres: Experimental Music, Folk, Psych-folk
Label: FatCat Records
Description: Vashti Bunyan reflects on her career and creative experiences in an interview, with Lookaftering’s expanded edition set for release in February 2025.

Jennifer Vashti Bunyan is an English singer-songwriter whose work has spanned decades, marked by a long hiatus between her first and second albums. She initially released Just Another Diamond Day in 1970, a gentle and introspective work that gained limited attention at the time but later achieved cult status. On February 7, 2025, Fat Cat Records will release an anniversary expanded edition of her 2005 album Lookaftering. The album, originally produced by composer Max Richter, featured collaborations with contemporary folk artists including Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom. Bunyan’s musical trajectory includes two additional albums: Lookaftering in 2005 and Heartleap in 2014. In 2022, she published a memoir titled Wayward: Just Another Life to Live. Her work has been categorized across folk music subgenres, though she personally resists being labeled a folk singer.

Born into a world of post-war London, Bunyan began as a restless young musician who traveled across Britain in a horse-drawn wagon, writing songs that would become her first album. Her music captured something profound and elemental – a sense of wandering, of searching for meaning outside conventional rhythms. Though often associated with folk music, Bunyan herself resists such categorization. Bunyan continues to be active in music, with recent appearances including a Joni Mitchell tribute concert at London’s Roundhouse in April 2024 and an upcoming honorary doctorate from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in July 2024.

Featured image: photo by Christopher Fernandez

Your musical awakening came from discovering Bob Dylan’s “The Freewheelin'” in New York. What was it about that album that made you think “This is what I want to do with my life”?

Well it wasn’t really my musical awakening, I had been writing songs for a couple of years before I found that album in New York in 1964, when I was 19. What it did awaken in me was an awareness of the world around me, realising injustice of all kinds. It was the education I thought I had missed in my somewhat sheltered post-war upbringing. It also made me decide I wanted to be a travelling musician with a guitar over my back and no home to go to, a romantic idea .. but it did come real much later.

Jimmy Page played guitar on your first single – what memories do you have of that recording session?

Jimmy Page was a session musician for Andrew Loog Oldham at the time. I don’t really remember him.. but I do remember Big Jim Sullivan who also played guitar on the track. He seemed kind, made me laugh. I was so nervous to be in a studio with so many musicians. My best memory is of the three trombone players who barely had room to play when the room was so full.

Working with Andrew Loog Oldham and recording songs by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, what was that collaboration like, and did it impact your later songwriting?

It’s hard to describe the way it was then. Andrew had given me an acetate demo of the Stones recording of just one song of theirs – Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind – and said that was to be my first single. I was not happy. I wanted to record my own songs. There was no collaboration at all, I didn’t speak and no one spoke to me, I just sang. The only person I worked with was the arranger David Whitaker who I do remember well. We worked out the arrangement for the B side, my own song (I Want to be Alone) together at his piano. As for impact on my later songwriting, I don’t think so!

You’ve mentioned wanting to be a pop singer rather than a folkie. What kind of sound were you originally dreaming of making?

I think that B side came closest to what I wanted to sound like. I’d had dreams of being a pop-singer since I was very young. I did not ever think of myself as a traditional folk singer and I still don’t. I was writing good melodies and whenever they did get a pop treatment they worked well.

In 2025, Vashti Bunyan’s Lookaftering marks two decades since its release. Coinciding with her 80th birthday, FatCat Records will release an expanded edition of the album on February 7, 2025. This special release includes the original tracks and a second LP featuring rare demo recordings, an alternate version, and a live rendition of a song from the album. The edition also includes contributions from Bunyan, Max Richter, Devendra Banhart, and Dave Howell in the form of sleeve notes. A 16-page booklet accompanies the set, containing lyrics and artwork by Bunyan’s daughter, Whyn Lewis, whose illustrations echo the album’s themes.

Could you describe the environment or feeling while recording “Just Another Diamond Day” in the late 1960s?

In 1968/9 I was on the road with my boyfriend, our horse, our dog and a tiny wagon, heading from south of London to Skye. It was a journey of over 600 miles and took us more than a year. We were headed for some land that the singer Donovan had bought on Skye, off the west coast of Scotland, where he hoped to people it with artists, musicians and writers. I had written songs along the way and I recorded them with Joe Boyd in 1969. Joe brought in folk musicians from bands I had not heard of and I wasn’t that happy with some of the songs sounding so folkie but I was too quiet, too shy to say what I really wanted. I did love Robert Kirby’s arrangements for strings and recorders though, much closer to what I’d had in mind.

What was the atmosphere like in Skye during your time with Donovan’s circle, and how did that experience influence the themes and feel of Just Another Diamond Day?

By the time we got to Donovan’s place he was no longer living there, but he was there by chance when we arrived. My songs were all written on the journey – long before we got to Skye, long before we spent just an hour with Donovan – and his circle. We soon realised that there was no place for us there, and so we carried on to the Outer islands with our horse and wagon.

After the release of Just Another Diamond Day, what were your feelings when the album initially received little attention? 

The album was released at the end of 1970 – a year after the recording – to little publicity. I had a small baby by then and did not want to play live which was maybe one of the reasons it really made no impression. Possibly if it had been recorded and released at the time the songs were written it might have had more chance but it was too gentle, too quiet and was not what anyone wanted by 1970/71. I just thought I was no good at making music and so I left it all behind for the next 30 years.

What went through your mind when you learned people were paying thousands for original copies of “Just Another Diamond Day”?

I became aware of this by 1996/7 when I got on to the internet for the first time. It was hard to believe, but really I just thought it was because of the other musicians as they were well known when I was not. But then I started to read people saying things that I would have so loved to have heard said about the album in its early days – and I began to realise that there was now much more understanding of it. Such a good feeling of course. It made me able to listen to it again, and gradually become proud of the way we were, and proud of the music for being nothing like anything else.

Your work has influenced artists like Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom. How does it feel to have inspired this new generation of musicians?

I have said often that I don’t believe I influenced them at all. Joanna Newsom had not heard JADD when she made The Milk Eyed Mender, and Devendra is and always has been very much Devendra! What they did do was to make a place for me, to understand what I had wanted to do 30 years before, and I will always be grateful to them and others who advocated for me when JADD was re-issued in 2000.

On “Heartleap,” you finally recorded everything exactly as you heard it in your head. What was that process of self-discovery like?

I was lucky to have time to myself to figure out music software like ProTools and Logic, get the most out of each one, and learn that I had so much more to learn. So I could have gone on for ever, changing things, finding different sounds to play with, but I did have a deadline with FatCat Records that I had sailed through years before and so I thought I had better make some decisions and try to finish. Then it went to mixing, and when I listen now there are many things I would still change! However much I tried to do it all myself it still had to go through more processes and inevitably it was not exactly as I heard it in my head – but someone else’s.

Is there any particular musical idea or collaboration that’s been tugging at your imagination lately?

I have never been much good at collaboration, but Gareth Dickson – who has played guitar with me on stage for 18 years now – and I talk about writing songs together every time we see each other. Hasn’t happened yet, but there is still time.. hopefully.

Photos courtesy of Vashti Bunyan

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others