The Man is gone – John Martyn

I got a call from a brother to tell me, i knew the second he started talking what he had to say.

We won’t get to see the man together now as we always said we would and that is a crying shame, for which i won’t forgive my stupid procrastination.

The second the news sunk in everything just seemed to go a little dimmer and the world is a less interesting place to be, starting now.

I’ll admit it will be a while before i can listen to the big man again, i was stood in the shop not long after hearing, thinking about it…i hummed a little bit of “Couldn’t love you more” to myself, and suddenly i was crying….in public…like a woman or a homosexual or something.

So a period of silence i feel.

It’s not considered good form to be an overtly emotional soul, especially on the internet, it at once opens you up to jibes and mocking, we should all remain guarded and aloof, maintain a hip façade of 21st century cynicism and let nothing show.

John Martyn didn’t do that…rarely in his life, though he jested and joked and was glib and quick tongued especially when drunk, and certainly never in his music.

He was heart on sleeve all the time and sometimes sang like an open wound.

His honesty and intensity were two of his finest traits.

For me he was the greatest musician of this or any other age.

As a guitar player, it began and ended with him, he wasn’t the best i suppose, no poll will ever throw him out there as such.

But for me he was. Every chord he put on record seemed to have more soul in it than any number of extensive virtuoso solo’s.

He was never flashy, he didn’t play all the notes, he played the right ones.

The driving acoustic Rhythm of “May you never”, the gentle lullaby of “my baby Girl” the brutal funk ass kicking on something like “Look on”, and everything in between, all of them perfect.

I won’t deny that his later stuff, while always superb, the man couldn’t make a boring record, it was not all his very best, but if i tried to pick an album to recommend it would be impossible, basically everything from London Conversation in 1967 to Foundations in 1987 is essential.

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Then you have the voice.

I think i first noticed John Martyn when i was about 6 or 7, my father used to play him and he was amused that i loved the song May you Never.

But it was the voice i noticed.

On his early albums it sounded to me as a child like a huge bear hug…..plus the album covers showed a man who looked like my Dad, all wild hair and beard.

He would wear suits and still look like he slept in a hedge.

So did my father, he would combine a jacket with his faded purple “crusaders” baseball cap and go to business meetings.

I thought he was the coolest man on then planet then…it ran John Martyn, Clint Eastwood, My dad.

So i associated JM with my Father, even to this day when i listen to the right album at the right time of night i can still smell a faint aroma of his Decanter of Scotch from which i took early stolen nips and felt illicit and sick, and the addition of the late night cigar my Dad would enjoy in the darkened dining room, his Huge 70’s head phones on.

As i grew up the sounds of John Martyn in the house became familiar and welcome.

The smell of Sunday lunch being cooked, all the windows and patio doors open, my mother laughing at my sister and i playing whatever nonsense in the back garden with our idiot Labrador ,while my Dad would read the paper and occasionally pipe up, tell us to watch it or he’d have to get up to us…we’d goad him until he sat forward, then run away laughing and shrieking….

Meanwhile John would be in the background, “going down easy” or telling us about a mysterious Jelly roll maker.

Nights when my father would go somewhere for work and he’d let me go along for the ride, he had a Capri with seats that had this feel i can still recall we’d be driving through the dark, past my bedtime and he’d drive too fast cause he loved to…He’d put John Martyn on the stereo and if i was lucky it would be “Johnny too Bad”, the voice now slightly changed, he sounded mad and bad and probably dangerous…it was my favourite at the time, i think my father knew, cos it was usually that one.

A few years later it changed again, my Parents divorced and my Mother was gone.
I’d wake up at night and hear music downstairs…only the voice was broken and sad, it sounded like the loneliest man in the world as he talked of Sweet little Mysteries and pleaded, “baby please come home”, and I’d pad down there barefoot and find my father….he’s be sat in the dark, crying sometimes, angry others, now and again just passed out, the cigar dead in the ashtray and the scotch spilt on the carpet.

I’d try to wake him up and get him to bed those times, often he wouldn’t stir and I’d go to the airing cupboard, i couldn’t reach the blankets so I’d end up getting a big beach towel and putting it over him…a childs idea of keeping him warm i suppose..

I’d listen to the music and watch my father sleep, I’d maybe cry a bit myself, i knew he maybe shouldn’t drink so much and i was scared one day he might not wake up and i wouldn’t know what to do, and i’d watch until the record finished and the last sound of the needle coming off the groove would send me off to bed leaving him to sleep it off.

My father took me to see John Martyn in time, we would drive to London at night to see him after school, just he and i and afterwards we would stop for a Curry somewhere before he headed back up the Motorway in the rain.

I’d try to stay awake to listen to Grace and Danger, or Small hours… I’d take in the the lyrics by now and wonder about girls who were “very very lovely who would take me home”, and wonder how that was going to be …but no matter how hard i tried, the motion of the car, the lateness of the hour, the drain of the adrenalin and the voice would send me to sleep long before we got home.

I often think about that now, what my Father must have thought, speeding past the Little Chefs of Britain with his son sliding off the seat asleep beside him.

Probably nothing

The greatest John Martyn show i saw was the last with my father…he had a new woman, and i was older, it had provided the first difficulties between us, i would stagger in drunk, he would find this hard to bear and grew angrier, i hated his choice of partner, who in turn hated me and we grew further apart.

But that one night we went to the old Irish centre, in Digbeth in Birmingham, a fairly cosy venue.

He bought me a pint of Guinness and was not pleased about it i sensed.

John Martyn came on and it was to be an acoustic set, with Danny Thompson playing too, the legendary double act.

Some shows we had seen, John had been drunk, and the wrong side of incoherent, or he would not play guitar, and let too many keyboards take centre stage, or bland saxophone.

But not that night.

That night he rolled it all back.

He was brash, and bawdy, and tender and threatening, playful and heartbreaking.

He was on fire, and i knew that the voice could do what it wished at will, it could rise and fall and batter or caress, and i realised it was going to be exactly the same as God’s if i ever met the big bloke.

It was halfway through a version of John Wayne, that was ripping the fucking roof off, i was reeling and i looked at my Father and he looked at me, and we shared a look that just said…”this is unbelievable”…and we laughed madly and shook our heads in nothing short of awe

… and then the moment was gone.

I can’t begin to tell you the number of Melancholy drunken nights that John Martyn got me through since.

I have grown up listening to him on at least a weekly basis, if not much more.

When things were shit, or someone had trampled my heart or i had fucked something up, i knew that the only possible course of action was a bottle, the dark and Mr Martyn.

And i freely admit i would sob like a child.

I have shed more tears in the gloom to John than could be imagined.

But he never made me gloomy…his music is not depressing, he is not a martyr.

He made bad times bearable, because in every word he sang, every note he wrote, no matter how emo you were being you could feel there was a wild woolly songwriter out there who just knew what it was you were feeling and could sympathise, had his own troubles to tell and would probably get his round in if given half the chance.

My father and I have long since fallen out, we don’t speak, the slights and history are long in the past, I forget what it is we clashed upon sometimes, these days….it has been years.

I hear of his activities from other family and always ask after him, i hear he does the same for me sometimes and i realise then how fucking stupid the situation is, but then it is what it is.

The first thing i did when i found out John had died though…i texted my father to tell him.

I didn’t think for a second he would reply.

While i was writing this mournful screed.

He did.

So thankyou for that…one last time…RIP John Martyn.

Raise a toast, for he had soul.

I’m going away to leave you
Going to leave you in disgrace
Nothing in my favour
Got the wind in my face
I’m going home
Hey, hey, hey, over the hill
Over the hill
Hey, hey, hey, over the hill.