John Martyn's singing style and innovations with echo-effects and fuzz-box guitar pedals in the early 1970s were influenced by the free-jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. On the albums Bless The Weather, Solid Air and Inside Out, he set out to replicate Sanders's incredibly long sustains with his voice and guitar playing.
HE comes on stage in his wheelchair, his arms held out like a plane. By his own admission, John Martyn is often flying.
The collapse of a marriage (or two) has proven to be creatively satisfying for the likes of Abba, Fleetwood Mac and Marvin Gaye, but few accounts of love-gone-wrong come anywhere close to the emotional impact of Martyn's 1980 release
John Martyn has mortality on his mind. "I spent last night praying for death," he told the crowd at this most eagerly awaited of Celtic Connections shows, before speculating that he might just expire on stage right in front of them.
Pushed on, playing aeroplanes in his wheelchair, Martyn kept up a steady flow of gallows humour.
John Martyn's 1970s folk-fusion experiments with the Echoplex guitar pedal have lent him the lazy label 'godfather of trip-hop', but this is to damn him with ludicrously faint praise.
David Cheal reviews John Martyn at the Corn Exchange, Cambridge
On the sleeve of his classic 1973 album Solid Air, John Martyn looks young, fresh and alive, his skin cherub-smooth, his features sharp and defined.
Today, aged 58, the Anglo-Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist is a big, big man, with a face ballooned and ravaged by time, and a body that's largely wheelchair-bound following the loss of his lower right leg through an infected cyst in 2003.
I suppose it may be difficult to support John Martyn. Yet somehow John Smith, tonight's supporting act, manages to cram references to Star Wars, Tim Buckley and the problems with registering your own name as a domain (http://acousticsmith.com/) into his set and pull it off with a great guitar style and a sweet deep voice that takes you back to the singer songwriters of the Seventies.
17 Jan 2007
John Martyn is a folk singer and experimental guitarist, best known for his influential 1973 album Solid Air. He has worked with Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Eric Clapton and David Gilmour. His body has suffered years of alcohol abuse and he recently had a leg amputated after a cyst burst. He is touring the country from Sunday, finishing at London's Roundhouse on February 3, performing the Solid Air album each night.
01 Nov 2006
In this archive feature from Uncut's November 2006 issue (Take 114), Martyn talks us through the cream of his crop of exceptional albums, including Solid Air, One World and Grace And Danger. "It's about that need to be disconnected, to get somewhere else. The source of the sauce, if you like…"
Interview: Paul Moody
