{"id":4317,"date":"2020-07-07T10:52:54","date_gmt":"2020-07-07T10:52:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/?p=4317"},"modified":"2020-07-07T15:00:45","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T15:00:45","slug":"john-martyns-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/john-martyns-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Hours: John Martyn’s Hard World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
The biography, the semi-official live CD, the CDRW & the gig ticket.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For the last three days, I\u2019ve immersed myself in Graeme Thomson\u2019s excellent new biography Small Hours: the long night of John Martyn<\/em>, and Martyn\u2019s music, which I\u2019ve been listening to for 46 years. If you don\u2019t know John’s work (though why else would you reading this?) here\u2019s a playlist<\/a> I made shortly after he died, aged sixty, in 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I discovered John Martyn in the mid-70s, when I was sixteen, and met him when I was 18, at a benefit gig for Liquorice<\/em>. Writing for this fanzine had led to my studying in Nottingham, where I was in my first term at uni. I was on general hosting and recording duties. Martyn sound checked with a solid electric guitar, which he’d never used on stage before. One of us rushed to the cassette deck, but only caught the last two minutes of his improvisation. Later, I watched him snort something (heroin, I found out later) and found myself in an inadvertent staring match with him. When he met my gaze and stared at me intensely, I didn\u2019t break my gaze, unsure how to behave in this odd version of an old children\u2019s game. After an eternity, he abruptly turned away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That night, following a fine show by Bridget and a mesmerising one by Kevin Coyne, John played a terrific set, one that included two songs which he didn\u2019t release for decades. You can hear it on a semi-official CD called Nottingham 76, which seems to come from a third or fourth generation copy of the original (of which only two copies were made). I never made a cassette copy of my copy. By 2000, one of my two cassettes (the BASF Chrome one, which also had all of Bridget St John\u2019s beautiful set) had disintegrated. The other, with 45 minutes on one side, and the encore of \u2018Solid Air\u2019 on the other, still sounded fantastic. I made a CDR of it which I sent to Martyn curator John Hillarby, who wrote the sleeve notes for the Nottingham CD, a copy of which he sent to me. The show has a lively, lubricated, late night crowd (the gig ended after midnight), with one bloke constantly calling out for \u2018May You Never\u2019, a request that Martyn continually bats back with wicked glee. \u2018Later!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you go to the long established Big Muff website, you can find the interview Talking Through Solid Air<\/a><\/em> I did with Martyn in January 1978. I\u2019ve written about this on here before<\/a>, so won\u2019t tell the story again, except to add that the interview wasn\u2019t prescheduled. John didn\u2019t remember me or my article about Nick Drake, which he\u2019d evidently praised. But, on arriving, he did ask the student organisers if anyone had any spliffs. I was hanging around and had brought a couple along. He asked what kind of dope was in them. I told him \u2018double zero\u2019. \u2018That\u2019s just Moroccan,\u2019 he said, to which I demurred, but the joints got me the interview, during which we smoked them both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I saw him four times over two years. He was at his most magnificent at the University of Leeds in March 77, previewing songs that would appear on \u2018One World\u2019, including the magnificent electric version of the title track which I berated him for not releasing. I thought for years that the electric band version had been lost (it\u2019s not on any of the archival releases \u2013 I\u2019m sure because, sad bastard that I am, I have them all). But while researching this piece I found this amazing performance<\/a>, from the same week I saw them, with Danny Thompson playing up a storm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went to many more shows in the next three decades, including the 1980 Grace and Danger<\/em> tour (on which his new band did only number from the album) and a 30th<\/sup> anniversary reunion tour, where a one-legged Martyn played \u2018Solid Air\u2019 in entirely the wrong order. But I went through a period of not seeing him, as his albums had lost their spark and his band gigs were less than thrilling. Catching him<\/a> at Glastonbury 2000 made me realise that he had a great band again (he gets a cameo in my novel about that year’s Glastonbury, Festival<\/a>), so soon after I went to see him at tiny Newark Palace Theatre, where he and his band of jazz musicians played up a storm, although Martyn\u2019s singing and banter were almost totally incoherent. At the interval we asked the woman behind the bar what else was in each of the half pints of coke he kept knocking back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u2018Eight bacardis,\u2019 she replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have been a couple of John Martyn biographies before, but both got poor reviews and I couldn\u2019t bring myself to read his ex-wife Beverley\u2019s memoir, which laid out his violence and neglect of his children. Small Hours<\/em>, thankfully, is the biography that the artist deserves. My only quibbles with are minor (no index, occasionally hard to follow chronology, but mainly, I wish it were longer). While Thomson recognises that Martyn was highly intelligent and could be charming, he clearly demonstrates that he was also unhinged, an increasingly chronic alcoholic, prone to violence, deeply self-destructive and, especially when it came to the women in his life, could be a total shit. Little of what we learn is surprising, though I was taken aback to find that, touring in the early 70s, when his marriage to Beverley was at its best, he began an affair with seventeen year old support act, Claire Hamill, one that continued on and off for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomson writes well and has interviewed the people you’d hope he would. Another of my musical heroes, Richard Thompson, blessed with the memory of someone who didn\u2019t drink or take drugs, contributes often, little of what he says being kind, although most of it sounds fair. Thomson gives a balanced assessment of Martyn\u2019s life and work. My main complaint, frankly, is that it should have been longer, with even more space given to the 70s work. The genesis of the song \u2018One World\u2019 for instance, is interesting. The hard electric version I loved (the OGWT one<\/a>) was preceded by a song with a different lyric but similar tune, called \u2018Anna\u2019, and has a self-mythologizing lyric that tells you a lot about how Martyn saw himself: \u2018Grew up in a dirty town where they like to kick you when you\u2019re down\/If you show an easy side they take a knife and cut you wide.\u2019 But Thomson\u2019s account of the One World sessions and his assessments of the work are insightful and astute (I liked, for instance, how he uses Martyn\u2019s cover of the traditional \u2018Spencer the Rover\u2019 as a way to discuss how Martyn could never write story songs, in the way that say, Richard Thompson does, and that many Martyn songs have an unfinished, semi-improvised feel: which is, of course, part of their charm.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I only felt Martyn\u2019s anger for a flash, when I brought up Nick Drake, who was a sore subject with him. He hated how his friend, so starved of critical attention in his lifetime, was being acclaimed only after his death. Thomson has a theory that John wanted to be Nick Drake. He also casts doubt on Martyn\u2019s last meeting with him. Martyn didn\u2019t tell me about that, but he did discuss it once in a 90s radio interview. Moreover, what he says about the last meeting is backed up by Drake\u2019s father\u2019s account in Remembered For A While.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One shocking revelation in the book is that, on getting a call about Drake\u2019s death, John laughed, then called to Beverley, \u2018He\u2019s done it.\u2019 People have odd reactions to death. It\u2019s understandable, though, if, spending years on a biography, you come to dislike its subject, and there\u2019s no doubt that Martyn could be a bullshitter. The way he treated his children and stepson was monstrous. Towards the end, he seems to have reconciled with Vari, about whom he wrote \u2018My Baby Girl.\u2019 His son Spencer worked with him and soon found himself sucked into substance abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are endless tales of appalling behaviour, selfish, unhinged stuff from a man who attracted hangers on, loved to hang out with criminal types and devastated several lives. And yet, and yet. What songs he wrote in his prime, what a beautiful man he was, and what a wonderful musician. You\u2019ve got to separate the art from the artist, or you\u2019re left with very few artists to admire. And, of course, Martyn had a very sweet side, which didn’t only come out in his songs. Nice to read that John had a warm reunion with Bridget St John not long before he died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mentioned that one of two Liquorice tapes (including all of Bridget’s set) was destroyed, but the second wasn\u2019t, so here\u2019s the final section, from when I transferred it to CD about 18 years ago. The copyright on this stuff is dubious, but I pressed \u2018record\u2019 that night, which, morally at least, gives me some right to post it here. Sadly, the two minutes of soundcheck is long gone and the 17 minute \u2018Outside In\u2019 is too long for my file size limit. Below you get \u2013 in order – \u2018Over the Hill\u2019, a beautiful medley of \u2018Make No Mistake\u2019 and \u2018Bless the Weather\u2019, \u2018May You Never\u2019, a fiery \u2018I\u2019d Rather Be The Devil\u2019 and a beautiful encore of \u2018Solid Air\u2019. But first, from the semi-official, lower quality release, a song he debuted that night. As I recall, he\u2019d brought along an old acoustic guitar to play what he called \u2018My Val Doonican number\u2019. I heard him play this again five months later in Leeds, but he didn\u2019t record it for another thirty years, in a much inferior version with changed lyrics. It\u2019s a beautiful lullaby called \u2018One for the Road\u2019 and it’s Martyn at his most loveable, the pastoral idealist who broke through with \u2018Bless the Weather\u2019 and, for the next few years, made innovative, mesmerising music, full of love and rage. You wouldn\u2019t want his devils in your life. But oh, those angels\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n