11 Sep 2018
Today John would have turned 70.
So here's a happy birthday to the man that makes Heaven a less boring place.
01 Feb 2017
Front cover photograph © Miguel Capelo
Syd Kitchen (1951-2011) was a South African singer-songwriter, guitarist and poet. He made a contribution to the Johnny Boy Would Love This tribute album by covering Fine Lines – one of the last musical adventures of his life. His biography Scars That Shine appeared six years later. Author Donvé Lee had promised Syd to write his life's story many years before he passed away. But she only got around doing it after his death. So we have a rather unique document here: a biography that sounds like an autobiography. Thanks to extensive research Donvé pulled it off: "It's not often you come across an autobiography that isn’t written by the subject, but Lee went out on a creative limb and, writing in first person, succeeded in capturing Syd in his own voice".
The almost final chapter is dedicated to the John Martyn tribute project and is reproduced here with permission of the author. The book got excellent reviews and is for sale on Amazon as an e-book. It is well worth a read, as there are many similarities between John's career and Syd's.
10 May 2004
This is a transcription of a cassette tape from an interview conducted in the Bay Horse pub in Glasgow. It was used for the biography Some People Are Crazy by John Neil Munro so some quotes may sound familiar. John was interviewed several times; this occasion was after the release of On The Cobbles (April 2004) and before the concert in the Royal Concert Hall of 10 May 2004.
11 Jan 1981
Dopo tre anni di silenzio il chitarrista folk Brittannico torna con un album Grace & Danger in cui ripropone le sue linee di folk-rock. John Martyn è stato recentemente in Italia per una serie di concerti. L'intervista a Roma.
To my knowledge the Isle of Skye Music Festival had three incarnations.
First traces point to 1985 and 1986 and John performed on the former occasion, as this poster proves.
DR HOOK frontman Dennis Locorriere was a surprise addition to former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings gig at the Arena last night. He joined legendary guitarist Albert Lee and the taciturn bassist on stage as part of the nine-piece outfit that ripped through 20 songs.
Contiene un disco di J. Martyn!
Se trovate ostico il titolo non preoccupatevi eccessivamente chiariremo tutto al più presto: Martyn è un grande artista certamente trascurato o sottovalutato, «Buscadero» compreso, dalla critica musicale.
He's got all the whiskey - Has he got the right?- not for me!
Of all the people we've seen this year, one of them, means more to us than any of the others. John Martyn; and his inclusion in Liquorice is both timely and essential. John's music is highly cathartic, and deeply emotive. His personal 'philosophy' of love as the only answer is manifested in a quite remarkable fashion within his superb songs. And coupled with this is his seemingly inborn dislike and mistrust of the music business and its nefarious activities.
John Martyn combines musical longevity with a perverse and pigheaded streak. Constant changes in musical direction over his 37-year recording career have meant his flirtations with charts and playlists have been few and far between, but fans will affirm his music is both addictive and intoxicating -a heady brew.
JOE BOYD has been responsible for bringing to our attention a number of brilliant musicians. People don't talk much about 'discovering' artists these days, but that's what Boyd did for the Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention. His latest venture has been to produce the first album by John and Beverley Martyn, Stormbringer!, a record which has been hailed by the discerning as one of the best to emerge this year.
JOHN MARTYN
(i.m. 1948-2009)
In the picture-perfect scenery of Challes-les-Eaux
in seventy-five, locked in private darkness,
I played your lost indefinable music
on a tired loop of tape: Solid Air –
its title track an elegy for a friend you couldn’t save,
while you were destined to survive.
With a brawler’s zest for living,
you absorbed the booze and heartbreak.
When I heard you had died I found you
in the afterlife of YouTube, restraining tears
for grief you’d caused,
knowing your muse, Serendipity,
had always been a harsh one, that even now
there could have been no easier way.
David Cooke
I received this a week ago and today, what would have been John's 61st birthday, seems a good day to publish this elegy. David writes:
IF THE publicity machine has not yet made him a Rod Stewart or a Gerry Rafferty, then a loyal following around the world has certainly made a cult figure of John Martyn.
John who? It is still a fair question in his own native city of Glasgow, where the former Shawlands Academy boy is perhaps less of a name than he is in London, Vienna or New York.
After rising to prominence with the late 60's electric folk renaissance, John Martyn uprooted songform and subjected it to a serious sonic makeover on a series of albums which rank alongside the best of Tim Buckley and Van Morrison for their radical fusions of folk, soul, jazz and dub. In spite of that, his best music, he says, is yet to come.
'I'm pontificating,' booms John Martyn. 'Well, of course, in a church you've got to pontificate, ain'tcha? Pon, pon, tiddly-pon. And the pontiff .... what? What's the pont of it all?'
Collectors Item released during the tour to celebrate John being in the business for twenty years.
