Bridget St. John

Capable of deciding to move to New York within the space of a few weeks, or of going to live alone, after a divorce, in a cottage with no water or heating on top of a hill in the English countryside, Bridget St. John is a cult figure of the English singer-songwriter scene of the 60s and 70s, not least for the peculiar story of her life and career.

She starts out, in the late 60s, with all the hallmarks of a predestined talent: her friend John Martyn, whom she met at university alongside Buffy Saint-Marie, helps her record her first demo, and within a few weeks John Peel sets up his own label, Dandelion, essentially to release her debut album. Bridget would go on to release three albums on this label, all featuring top-tier collaborators, yet none would achieve the audience success they deserved (the same goes for Dandelion's other releases, and the label eventually folds). One more album follows for Chrysalis, then the move to New York. Here the English singer-songwriter's creative period comes to an end, and her ties to the English scene are abruptly cut off (she would remain a collaborator of the likes of Kevin Ayers and Michael Chapman), having been a regular guest on the London club circuit (sharing the stage with Nick Drake, for instance); from that point on, she would only return for the occasional low-key gig.

It sounds like a story straight out of Rodriguez, albeit without the economic drama of the Detroit musician, but in truth, even just listening to St. John's records, you can grasp the essential spirit of freedom and the balanced relationship the English singer-songwriter had with herself and her own art. Her debut album, "Ask Me No Questions", was recorded in ten hours, together with Martyn and two collaborators, with no rehearsal beforehand.

Bridget's timbre is one of the most distinctive traits of her music (and unusual in a female context, despite these being the years of Nico), perhaps one of the qualities that pushes her toward a shadowy, Drake-like songwriting, though often in a radically different spirit, as in the title track:

Ask me no questions, tell me no lies if you don’t mind, and come with me

There, where the sun flies

There, where the sky is bluer still is where we’ll be

Her debut is a raw record, mostly in a positive sense, brimming with a self-sufficient expressive power and these images of melancholic escapism ("Like Never Before"), which bear witness to an untamable spirit of independence ("Curl Your Toes", "To B Without A Hitch").

The calm after the storm

After the bubbling, hurried "Ask Me No Questions", the time comes to invest in a record with more work put into the arrangements and a more linear melodic songwriting, in a sort of reverse path to Nick Drake's. The producer was meant to be Paul Samwell-Smith (Cat Stevens), but it would instead be the more experimental Ron Geesin (producer of "Atom Heart Mother") who took the reins. "Songs For The Gentle Man" thus shows a much more layered style, with multiple vocal lines and background accompaniments, like gentle echoes projecting the record into a far more three-dimensional light than before. On the other hand, the album is also home to some of the English singer-songwriter's most melodic songs, such as the immortal lullaby of "Back To Stay", subtly embellished by the accordion accompaniment, or the psychedelic-pastoral touches of "A Day Away". Pride of place, however, probably goes to the simultaneously amusing and moving, Harrison-esque prayer of "The Pebble And The Man":

Little pebble upon the sand

Now you’re lying here in the sand

How many years have you been here?

Little human upon the sand

From where I’m lying here in my hand

You to me are but a passing dream

Also splendid is the idea of the "operetta-style" choir arrangement that embellishes the flight of Bridget's songwriting throughout the track.

Notable too is the presence of songs, or parts of them, without guitar, such as "Seagull-Sunday", one of St. John's most Drake-like tracks (but also probably her most modern), with a string arrangement perfectly attuned in spirit.

Overall, "Songs For The Gentle Man" is a record with remarkably refined songwriting (worth mentioning too is the sequence of impressions in the mini-suite "If You'd Been There"), especially from a guitar-playing standpoint (in this respect perhaps even more elaborate and adventurous than the more celebrated Nico, despite lyrical themes that are often more "plain" – see for example the short but dense "Song For The Laird Of Connaught Hall, Part 2"), and this provides an immersive experience found only in the great masterpieces of the era, to which the record has often been compared.

Despite the Dandelion series being reissued after Cherry Red acquired the rights, St. John's fame has not enjoyed the kind of revival that, for instance, Vashti Bunyan experienced (who had an equally important record, but one also suited to being appreciated at the time of its reissue): her public appearances in England continue (most recently at this summer's Green Man Festival, evidence of her relative cult status), as do her collaborations (she appears on Michael Chapman's latest record), but it seems unlikely that her story will turn out very differently from what it is right now. Certainly, it won't be any different from how Bridget herself imagines it.

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15/12/2019