Songbook: Who Knows Where the Time Goes

In the short while that Sandy Denny was in Fairport Convention – between 1968 and 1969 – she contributed one of their most famed recordings and songs: ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes?’ She’d written the song, a torn reflection on time passing, between 1967 and 68, first performing it with the Strawbs and allowing Judy Collins to record it first. Simon Nicol, multi-instrumentalist and founding member of Fairport, remembers hearing it for the first time in the summer of the year Denny joined the band. “I dropped in [to visit her] and she sang me the song. We were sitting on her bed and she was still reading [the lyrics]… I think she was still tweaking it… Even though there was a recorded version by that time with the Strawbs. That was my first exposure to the song, on a sunny afternoon with the windows open in this little adorable flat. I remember feeling how beautiful it was and I realised the strength of her performance as a soloist. Even though there was no audience, she was really inside the song and it sounded so beautiful. I mean her voice, when she sang, it filled the room without being loud. There was a real quality and depth to her singing. Which you can still hear.”

Fairport recorded the song on their third album, creating the version that most people would come to recognise years later. “It was an almost perfect studio recording,” recalls Nicol, “It really stands the test of time… There’s a relaxed intensity to [it]… And the dynamics of it are so natural.” Nanci Griffith, Eva Cassidy, Nina Simone and others all went on to cover it, with Simone’s version, of course, being particularly powerful. 

Denny sadly died in 1978 in unhappy circumstances. After that, recalls Nicol “We didn’t go near [the song] for a long time.’” Now, though, there is solace to be found in performing it again. “It means a lot to people,” he says of the warm audience response when singing it today, “It is a song which I genuinely love singing. And I feel it’s a real privilege to be able to carry it forward. Because when you do that song, it does really bring her back into the room. Her personality is writ through it.”