Vashti Bunyan (born Jennifer Vashti Bunyan, 1945) is an English singer-songwriter. Beginning her career in the mid-1960s, she released her debut album, Just Another Diamond Day, in 1970. The album sold very few copies and Bunyan, discouraged, abandoned her musical career. By 2000, her album had acquired a cult following; it was re-released and Bunyan recorded more songs, initiating the second phase of her musical career after a gap of thirty years. She subsequently released two more albums: Lookaftering in 2005, and Heartleap in 2014. Early life and education Bunyan was born in South Tyneside in 1945 to John Bunyan and Helen Webber, the youngest of three children. She was told that she was named after a boat that belonged to her father, a name that was also a nickname for her mother inspired by queen Vashti. The family moved to London when she was six months old. Although she has been said to be descended from The Pilgrim's Progress author John Bunyan, this is a claim she has herself denied. In the early 1960s, she studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford University, but was expelled for focusing on music instead of art. Musical career 1960s At age 18, Bunyan travelled to New York and discovered the music of Bob Dylan through his The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan album and decided to become a full-time musician. Returning to London, she was introduced to The Rolling Stones' manager Andrew Loog Oldham by an agent. In June 1965, under his direction, she released her first single, "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind", penned by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Released using simply the name Vashti, it was backed with her own song "I Want to Be Alone". This single and her follow-up "Train Song", released on Columbia in May 1966, produced by Canadian Peter Snell, received little attention. Also at this time, her distinctive vocal appeared on "The Coldest Night of the Year" by Twice as Much, eventually included on their second and final LP, That's All, released by Oldham's Immediate Records in 1968. After recording additional (and unreleased) songs for Immediate Records, and making a brief appearance in the 1967 documentary Tonite Let's All Make Love in London with her song "Winter Is Blue", she decided to travel with her then-boyfriend Robert Lewis by horse and cart to the Hebrides to join a commune planned