Top Of The Box

John Martyn sadly died today aged 60. Born in New Malden, Surrey he spent his childhood alternately in Surrey and Glasgow from the age of five, after his parents divorced.

In a career that spanned forty years he released no less than twenty-one studio albums.

John Martyn signed to Chris Blackwell’s Island Records label in 1967 and released his first album London Conversation, which includes a cover version of Bob Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright.

There is one album that is never far away from my CD player, even thirty-six years after it was originally released.  Solid Air is a beautiful album. Tracks based around one man’s beautifully haunting voice, his acoustic guitar and bass player Danny Thompson.  British folk music with a slice of jazz.  But the album concludes with a live track, I’d Rather Be The Devil where Martyn’s acoustic is replaced by a reverberating echo-chambered electric guitar – nice!

The title track Solid Air was written about his friend and Island Records artist Nick Drake, who sadly died in 1974 of an accidental overdose of prescribed anti-depressants; and nowhere more does John Martyn’s voice and guitar picking sound more like Drake than on Go Down Easy.  But my favourite John Martyn track is the wonderful, May You Never.

Solid Air was a commercial success, but John Martyn was continually looking for new paths to tread.  In 1977 he released the album One World including collaboration on Big Muff with legendary dub reggae producer, Lee “Scratch” Perry.

In February 2008 John Martyn received the lifetime achievement award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk awards; and to commemorate John Martyn’s 60th birthday last September, Island Records released a 4 CD compilation titled Ain’t No Saint.

Here’s John Martyn performing May You Never on The Old Grey Whistle Test from 1973.