Love, Death and the Lady

“I’m a conduit,” says Shirley Collins. “I understand this music better than anybody else.” On the eve of her miraculous return to music, the grande dame of English folk shares her whole story with Jim Wirth: an 81-year odyssey that also involves Alan Lomax, the entire cast of the folk revival, Dylan and Hendrix.

- Jim Wirth

THE voice recorder has stopped running in the living room in Shirley Collins’ cottage in Lewes when she tells the most magical story of the day. Back in the late 1970's, she visited a fortune teller.

“You are a Cancer?” she was asked. “Yes,” Collins replied. 

“Born in the first part of July?”; “Yes, the fifth.” 

“You have two children?”; “Yes.”

“Do you ride a bike?”; “Yes, but I’m, not riding it today?” 

“Is one of the tyres punctured?”; “Yes.” 

“Don’t get it fixed.” 

So it was that Gipsy Anita Lee saved the life of the most fêted and fetishised of all the English folk singers, and ensured that Shirley Collins’ singing career would – eventually – have another chapter. At 81, she is about to release Lodestar, her first album in 38 years.

The generations who have picked up on the knot of luminous, underground-compliant records Collins featured on in the 1960's and 1970's – Anthems In Eden, Love, Death And The Lady and No Roses – have caught glimpses of her in recent years. She has done lecture tours, received an MBE for services for music and curated festivals, but – barring a couple of guest appearances – she consistently drew the line at singing. So why break that silence now?

“It’s finding my nerve again after having lost it for far too many years,” she explains. “I’ve never stopped loving the music. Daily there were songs whizzing around in my head, even when I was working in the Job Centre. And I felt it was my duty to bring back some proper folk songs and present them again.”