Wylding Hall (13 page)

Ashton

The photos were truly frightening. Not the first group, where we’re all playing around in the grass, throwing roses at each other and laughing. I love those pictures. I think they capture what was best about Windhollow Faire, what was best about all of us. That was our golden moment—we were all young and beautiful and gifted and so incredibly fortunate to have found each other. That was the peak. It was pure serendipity that Billy Thomas was there with a camera to capture it.

The other photographs … I hardly like to
think
about them, let alone talk about them. When we had the vote as to whether it should be the album cover, I was the one voted no.

I know that seems out of character. I’m the one always laughed or lost my temper when anyone would start to go on about the occult. I believe that there is a rational, scientific explanation for everything. But I have never been able to understand or explain those photographs.

So, I voted no. I would not be swayed. We all agreed that the other two photos should remain unpublished. Technically, Billy owns them, but he agreed that he wouldn’t ever make them available to the public. Especially now, when they could go viral in a heartbeat. He’s a man of his word and I trust him. He never had a career as a photographer—he became an estate agent back in the village, as you know. So it’s not like these are lost photographs that would revive his career. Or ours.

There were three pictures in which you could see her. The first one, she’s at the back of the garden, towards the woods. On the right-hand side of the frame, same as Julian, who was staring up at the sky along with the rest of us.

You might almost think she’s a statue. She’s facing the camera directly, hands at her sides, bare legged, wearing the same white dress as when I first saw her. Too far off to get a proper look at her face. There was a bit of a breeze, you can see the grasses rippling and everyone’s long hair blown by the breeze. Her hair, it hung lank and straight to her shoulders, unmussed by the wind, and the dress straight to her knees. That’s the photo on the album cover.

The second one, she looks exactly the same. Only now she’s about fifteen feet closer to the camera, maybe ten feet behind Julian. Who does not appear to have moved a fraction of an inch. None of us have. We’re all in the exact same positions as the previous photo, all still gazing at the sky.

The only way you’d even realize any time has passed is if you look really carefully. You can see Julian’s hair has been blown across his cheek, and Lesley’s eyes are closed—she blinked. The light is nearly unchanged: a few more tiny shadows thrown across the grass as that flock of birds flew in front of the sun. I’m still shading my eyes, staring along with the rest. It’s very clear that Billy took that photo immediately after the first one, a millisecond later.

So how did the girl move so quickly across the lawn? It’s like she’s a chess piece someone slid across the grass in a straight line. You can see her better in this one. Her white dress was soiled at the hem, her hands are clenched into fists. You can see her face. Her eyes are open and you can see there’s hardly any iris in them at all. They’re black and staring right at you without any expression. Her mouth is open. Not all the way open, but her lip curled back so you can see a bit of her front teeth. Like a dog starting to snarl.

In the final picture, she’s right behind Julian, still moving in that unbroken line across the grass. A bit to the side so you can see her clearly, perhaps a foot away from him. He doesn’t see her. None of us see her. We’re all still gazing up at the sun.

But now she’s so close, you can see that her eyes are utterly black. No iris, no pupil, no sclera. There might be something in there, but I don’t want to think what it might be. Just these round black holes. Her skin is so white the capillaries look like a web covering her face. Her hands are turned outwards and her fingers have started to unclench, white fingers with sharp little nails. Her mouth gapes open as though she’s screaming. And you can see that inside it she has more than one row of teeth.

Lesley

It was too ghastly for words. I was sick to my stomach, first time I saw them. They all stayed in there arguing, as though that might explain anything. I could hear them from across the hall and that was bad enough. Just knowing those photos existed was bad enough. The only reason I went back inside was because Will finally came to check if I was all right. He said we all needed to decide together: What were we going to do with the pictures?

Chapter 15

Tom Haring

We put it to a vote. Ashton voted no. The others all said yes. And me, of course. It was only after we voted to use it as the cover art for the album that Jon asked, “
What
album?”

I don’t know, it sounds mad, but I’m a bit mad. You had to be, to be successful in the music business. But all at once it came to me that we should release the tapes we’d recorded in the garden that day. No one had ever done such a thing—Dylan wouldn’t release his basement tapes for three years. To release an album of songs that were essentially demos sounded like career suicide for a band that had only released one studio album from a smallish record company like Moonthunder.

Les asked, “What about Julian?”

“What about Julian? Sod Julian!” I shouted. I was starting to get stroppy. We were all exhausted, half-drunk, hoarse from arguing, and scared out of our wits.

And I had a very strong feeling that Julian was not going to be coming back. Call it a premonition, call it common sense, call it a perfectly reasonable reaction to those three photos—call it whatever you like, but I thought he was gone for good. Gone for the foreseeable future, anyway.

I’d been talking up Windhollow Faire’s follow-up album for months. I’d paid for advertising, scheduled studio time, contacted session musicians. If the album didn’t appear in the next few months—if we waited for Julian to return before doing a proper studio take—we would miss our chance to cash in on Christmas sales. I was broke. The band were broke.

But I had heard those rough tapes—I was the only one who had. And while the sound quality was iffy in places, overall the songs held up well.

Better than that—if you discounted the sound of bees and wind in the grass and Billy laughing in the background and the in-between-songs chatter, the performances were brilliant. The songwriting by Julian and Les was superb, and the covers were well-chosen. Only nine songs all told, but enough to fill up two sides of vinyl.

I knew that if I couldn’t convince the band right then and there, the chance would be lost. They’d go their separate ways, which is pretty much what they did end up doing, and I’d be left with nine beautiful songs that no one would ever hear.

Jon

Tom talked us into releasing the live recordings from Wylding Hall. Actually, he held us hostage—he wouldn’t let us leave the office until he played them for us.

He was right: they were pretty brilliant. We listened to the tapes twice, all the way through each time. After the freak-out over Billy’s photos, they were a breath of fresh air. We’d all been up for twenty-four hours by then—not for the first time, but it was a very emotional experience.

Imagine if you could go back and repeat one of the best days of your life—that’s what it was like. Lesley cried, hearing Julian sing, but we still assumed he’d be back. At least I did. So, we took a vote and everyone voted yes. And then we all went home.

Everyone was completely knackered. Lesley couldn’t keep her eyes open, and I was walking into walls. Tom saw us out; he promised he’d talk to Billy and sort everything with the photos and get contracts to us as soon as possible.

And so he did. Six weeks later, twenty-fifth of November,
Wylding Hall
was released. The feast of St. Catherine, she of the Catherine Wheel, which is a type of firework and also a torture device. Which seemed appropriate.

Chapter 16

New Musical Express, December 1972

Short Reviews: Windhollow Faire, “Wylding Hall”

Review by Patricia Kenyon

London-based folk outfit Windhollow Faire upsets the trad applecart with
Wylding Hall
, follow-on to their eponymous debut album.
Wylding Hall
expands the boundaries of psychedelic folk far, far beyond the likes of Strawbs, Fairport Convention, and even the Incredible String Band. With their new record, Windhollow doesn’t open the sonic doors of perception so much as blast them apart with a deceptively bucolic plein air
album, courtesy of maverick studio Moonthunder Records. From the album opener, Lesley Stansall’s exquisite “Cloud Prince,” on through Julian Blake’s eerie closer, “Thrice Tosse These Oaken Ashes,” the album more than delivers on the band’s promise. One for the ages.

Patricia Kenyon

What a beautiful album that was: like a midsummer day in the middle of winter. All the reviews were strong.
NME
ran my piece on the band the same week the disc was released, along with my review of
Wylding Hall
. They got a nice little boost from that.

The cover helped—that striking photograph of everyone staring at the sky with that unearthly light, like they were watching an atomic blast.

And the girl in white—everyone was talking about the girl. Who she was, what she symbolized.

I recognized her the instant I saw the cover. She was the same girl I’d seen in the library at Wylding Hall when I was there that summer. But I had no more idea than anyone else as to who she was.

Back then people pored over album covers like they were tea leaves or tarot cards. What does Led Zeppelin’s fourth album mean? What’s it even called?

Everyone had a theory about the cover of
Wylding Hall
. By then, everyone knew that Julian Blake had gone walkabout, and somehow people linked that with the white girl. I certainly did. I tried calling Les and Jonno and the rest to ask them about it, but they wouldn’t return my phone calls. Tom Haring just laughed at me.

“It’s a mystery, darling. Why would I solve it and spoil the fun?”

He meant spoil the album’s sales. People were buying it as a Christmas gift—I gave copies to my two brothers, and I knew some folks who found duplicates under the tree. It was definitely on heavy rotation on BBC’s Radio 1 during the Christmas hols.

The only thing the band didn’t get out of it was a hit single. Sometimes you get a hit right away. Just as often, it takes a few months for word of mouth and airplay to build interest.

Also, you need to perform, and Windhollow Faire didn’t do that. I’m not sure why. Julian Blake was an integral part of the group, no doubt about that, but they could have found someone to fill in for him. Richard Thompson, Roy Harper. Even just the four remaining members could have done something.

And the album never got enough airplay. BBC’s Radio 1 and Radio Caroline played it, but it never broke into the big commercial stations. After a few months, it all sort of disappeared. Led Zeppelin’s
Houses of the Holy
came out and everyone was talking about that—had they produced another “Stairway to Heaven”? We all had to buy the new Zeppelin album to decide.

In the meantime,
Wylding Hall
lost momentum and never regained it. The album got buried and, within a few years, mostly forgotten.

Ashton

Tastes change. First glam rock was big, then punk. There was still an audience for acid folk, but it got squeezed by the next big thing, whatever that turned out to be. We’d never been in the folkie mainstream long enough to build up much of an audience there. I begged the others to play a few gigs with me, but they refused. Everyone has their reasons, I understand that, but they tossed that album under a bus.

In the long run, that worked in our favor. A few years ago, when Devendra Banhart and Mumford & Sons and Roxanna Starkey began talking it up, vinyl copies were going for a hundred pounds—if you could find one. Our record had seemed to be everywhere that Christmas, but when we got our royalty statements, it turned out that only a couple thousand copies were sold. It never went into a second pressing.

But since the nineteen eighties, some people had been passing around bootleg copies on cassettes and CD. Tom Haring jumped all over that. He threatened folks with legal action, then got in touch with a few of the famous people who loved the album and asked them to blog or tweet about it. He remastered the tapes and released
Wylding Hall
online as a twofer with our first album. A lot of bands started to cover “Windhover Morn” and add our songs to their set list.

That’s when we finally began to see real sales and real money. That’s when fans began to come out of the woodwork. That’s when the cult of Julian Blake exploded.

Chapter 17

Will

Oh yeah—Windhollow Faire, the missing years. None of us actually disappeared, you know, except for Julian. Me and Nancy split up a year after
Wylding Hall
. Les was still living with us in Brixton and something was bound to happen. I mean, Les was seventeen and at the height of her beauty. Who could resist her?

We all handled it in relatively civilized fashion. Nancy moved out and Les stayed on. After the first year or two, the dust settled. We’d see each other at parties or gigs and it seemed kind of futile to pretend we didn’t know each other. Far too much water under the bridge for that. We’re closer now than we were then—Nancy is like a sister to me and Les.

It was a bit more sketchy with the others, Ashton in particular. He couldn’t forgive us for not performing as Windhollow Faire, especially when Les and I formed Greenleaves and had a hit with “Copredy Carnival.” He went on to do a lot of session work, a lot of jazz recordings. Good bassists are scant on the ground. We made it up eventually, and we’re all good friends now, but there were years we didn’t speak to each other.

Jonno struck off on his own and joined the Blazing Hammers. Got back to his rock and roll roots. They’ve kept him busy ever since, still draw a crowd in some places—they’re big in Brazil.

Nance moved to Florida years ago, to a tiny village called Cassadaga. A spiritualist community, psychics and witches and what-have-you. Mediums. She makes a good living from it, and I say more power to her. Les and I have visited several times and it’s lovely. Palm trees, not too far from Daytona Beach. She does readings online and over the phone; you should check out her website—oakenashes.com

Jonno

Billy and I stayed in touch over the years. He comes up to London whenever the Hammers play, saw us overseas when he was on holiday. He’s an estate agent in the village now. It’s become a big place for retirees and second homes. He’s done quite well. He knows the area like the back of his hand, knows everyone in town.

The photos were just a flash in the pan. He never pursued it, far as I know. It would be an expensive hobby for a farm boy. When Barry and I started looking for a place outside of London, we called him up and ended up getting our house through him. So, now we see him and his boyfriend quite often. I was down in the spring, and that’s when he told me about the construction at Wylding Hall.

Billy

Wylding Hall has absentee owners now; they live in Dubai. I keep an eye on the place for them. They want to put plumbing in the old wing, but they needed to get permission from the local council before they started tearing up the grounds. Some of the old-timers don’t like the idea. I know my granddad wouldn’t have approved.

Tom

I worked out a deal with Billy Thomas. I paid him outright for fair use of his photograph on the album cover, a quite decent sum for an amateur. Then I paid him another thousand quid to hand over the negatives and the original prints. He asked me what I was going to do with them. I said I’d keep them, all except for the last two. Those I intended to destroy.

He didn’t put up any argument. He’d seen the pictures—for all I knew, he might have known something about that girl. Local knowledge. Whatever his reasons, he had no objection to the terms of our deal. A thousand pounds was a huge amount of money in 1972. I hadn’t exactly set him up for life, but the money gave him a stake for whatever he wanted to do after school.

He didn’t seem like the uni type, so I suggested he take some of it and travel once he’d graduated. He did—knocked around Europe for a while on a Eurail pass; I think he went down to Tangier at one point. Settled in London for a few years, then decamped back to his hometown and hung out a shingle as an estate agent.

I destroyed the photos—but only the last two. Set them on fire that afternoon in the Moonthunder office, right after the others left. Burned them in the waste bin. A terrible stink they made, too.

There’s no chance I’ll forget what they looked like. That girl’s face is burned into my mind’s eye like a hot spark. I could see her clear as yesterday if I closed my eyes and thought about it. But you couldn’t pay me enough money to do that, ever.