Picked this up the other day, sounds fantastic and the quality of the music speaks for itself.
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Solid Air is one of my all time favourite albums, I love the way it’s so perfectly unpolished and real. The version of May You Never from that album was played at the funeral of a close friend is forever etched I’n my memory.
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Yes, it is excellent and really well recorded imho. Plus John Giblin on bass is brilliant.
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Saw John Martyn quite a few times. First time was late 1969 or early 1970. Heard him sing May You Never in a Richmond folk club in about 73 or 74. Magical. He could be tempremental. He was half way through Mr Jelly Roll Maker and stopped saying it was too difficult!
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Saw him a couple of times in the mid/late 90s in a small venue in Worcester. The first time, particularly brilliant. He then comes down for a meet and greet and flog a few CDs. Obviously completely p*ssed.
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The thread prompts a a happy recall of a JM gig in Freshers’ Week at St Andrews in October 1980. We all sat cross-legged on the floor of the Student Union, amidst a novel and strange, heady smell. And waited. And waited. He eventually sang of the pain of the Sweet little mystery and of When that hurt in your heart has gone. We were unformed and didn’t know what pain was. But it was quite the primer.
Then in 1986 in The Dominion in Tottenham Court Rd, the band wore suits and played synths. Thankfully, we the audience had seats. The pain, at least in the hips, had gone. We were more formed and understood more what it could be to have the voice of an angel and also to be so flawed.
The record added to my wish list, thanks.
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‘Heaven and Earth’ - Inventive to the end. I think I have all his albums since first hearing ‘Grace and Danger’ in the early 80’s…a title which I’ve always thought neatly sums up his complex character.
G
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Another memory. Saw JM in about 1972. He was playing Bless the Weather songs amongst others. Before playing Bless the Weather itself he told the small audience he was travelling on a train going north trying to think about song lyrics when a bunch of squaddies drinking cans of beer were annoying the whole carriage with their raucous behavior! JM retired to the toilet with a puff of something where he wrote Bless the Weather.
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