Wayward : Just Another Life to Live

Published 06/07/2023 | Paperback / softback,
Description:

‘Magical and transporting . . . Wayward proves that Bunyan has lived the best possible life, on her own idiosyncratic terms’Maggie O’Farrell’A gorgeous account of outsiderness and survival: a map of how to live outside the boundaries and of striving for an authentic artistic life. A quietly defiant and moving work’ Sinéad Gleeson’An epic in miniature . . . I loved – and lived – every sentence’ Benjamin MyersIn 1968, Vashti Bunyan gave up everything and everybody she knew in London to take to the road with a horse, wagon, dog, guitar and her then partner.

They made the long journey up to the Outer Hebrides in an odyssey of discovery and heartbreak, full of the joy of freedom and the trudge of everyday reality, sleeping in the woods, fighting freezing winters and homelessness.

Along the way, Vashti wrote the songs that would lead to the recording of her 1970’s album Just Another Diamond Day, the lilting lyrics and guitar conveying innocent wonder at the world around her, whilst disguising a deeper turmoil under the surface.

From an unconventional childhood in post-war London, to a fledgling career in mid-sixties pop – recording a single written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards – to the despair and failure to make any headway with her own songs, she rejected the music world altogether and left it all behind. After retreating to a musical wilderness for thirty years, the rediscovery of her recordings in 2000 brought Vashti a second chance to write, record and perform once more.

One of the great hippie myths of the 1960s, Wayward, Just Another Life to Live, rewrites the narrative of a barefoot girl on the road to describe a life lived at full tilt from the first, revealing what it means to change course and her emotional struggle, learning to take back control of her own life.