Listen, listen

I have been working, in my mind, on a theory for some time that Listen, Listen by the late great Sandy Denny was a response to the Light Up the Fire album. The truth is even stranger.

The song is about a messianic individual, a mediaeval traveller of some kind, a Pied Piper or a recruiter for the Crusades.

Its chorus goes: "Listen, listen to him do,
He is the one who is for you.
Listen, they say,
He'll come and take us all away."

One verse states: "I am a traveller by trade,
I only have what I have made.
A fortune teller too they say,
And I can take you all away."

It was released as a single in September 1972 as the lead single from her solo album Sandy.

Significantly its musical accompaniment is heavy with mandolin, just like Light Up the Fire. Indeed it's the closest comparison I have ever found to tracks like When the Morning Comes and Roundabout. (Click on header for more....)

Although dismissed publicly as just a Christian stunt, Light Up the Fire and its production by John Pantry was widely respected - and the album continues to attract interest on the prog-folk scene. I'm biased but it remains one of the greatest albums in my collection.

Have you noted the timings? Listen, Listen and the Light Up the Fire single both came out simultaneously. It's highly unlikely that either influenced the other. In September 1972 Light Up the Fire reached the foothills of the UK charts at about number 30.  In the same month the Radio 1 DJ Tony Blackburn made Listen, Listen his single of the week but it failed to chart at all. Both singles deserved to do better. It's doubtful that Tony Blackburn played Light Up The Fire very much and might have welcomed Listen, listen as a sceptical response to its evangelistic message in the same genre.

Denny was a troubled genius who was periodically lead singer with prog-folk pioneers Fairport Convention and her life ended tragically and prematurely a few years later.

Listen, listen was my introduction to her work when I heard it played on Pandora.com who offered it up to the Parchment radio channel we created. As a result I bought the compilation of Denny's work: No More Sad Refrains.