Singer/Songwriter John Martyn Dies at 60

[Zoneboy]

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Scottish singer-songwriter John Martyn has died at the age of 60.

Martyn, who was awarded an OBE in the Queen's New Year's Honours List, was born in Surrey but spent most of his childhood in Glasgow, and attended Shawlands Academy.

He first made a name for himself in the mid-sixties London folk scene but went on to immerse himself instead in jazz and blues.


The results were his best known recordings such as Bless The Weather, Solid Air and One World.

A heavy drinker and drug taker, his health had been poor for many years and he had one leg amputated some years ago.

He suffered a broken neck when a heifer smashed through his car windscreen, broke his toe stumbling drunk on stage (he played on) , split his head swimming underwater and, finally, lost his right leg in 2003 when a cyst burst and septicaemia ravaged his body.

"I could see it coming, " he said of the amputation. "I had myself resigned to it well before it happened.

"But it could have happened when I was 15 and changed my life entirely. Even if I popped my clogs tomorrow, I've had a wonderful time. I can't argue at all about the way that life's dealt me."

Martyn moved to Thomastown, Ireland, a few years ago, after bankruptcy forced him to leave his previous home in Roberton, near Biggar.

Born Ian McGeachy in New Malden, Surrey, in 1948, his parents divorced when he was still a toddler and he was raised by his grandmother in a sprawling, 13-room tenement in Shawlands, Glasgow.

He regarded himself as "total Scottish"

Ralph McTell, the musician, identified a "deep hurt" in Martyn's music and character stemming from his parents' divorce and his subsequent farming out.

His parents were light-opera singers, all "hampers and stage make-up", and never rated Martyn as a vocalist, his slurred, honeyand- gravel stylings too much at odds with "proper" singing.

Of his drinking he said: "You have a drink before the gig to set you up, then you have a drink to celebrate the gig, then you have a drink in the morning to liven yourself up, then you have a drink on the plane . . . it's all soundchecks and aeroplanes and hotels. There's literally nothing else to do."

His music has constantly battled for a little elbow room amidst his lurid life - the drinking, drug-taking, two failed marriages, numerous affairs and children ("I don't think anybody regrets that") - have done their best to dampen down its glory, but have failed.

There was a point following the release of the sublime Solid Air, in 1973, when Martyn could feasibly have reaped significant commercial rewards by imitating its formula.

Instead, he followed it with Inside Out, an experimental, bewildering and sometimes brilliant foray into the furthest reaches of his musical mind.

A wonderful guitarist, on a good night in concert he remained compelling, still open to extemporisation and creative restlessness, and he finally found a "soulful"way to play his best-known song, May You Never, to his satisfaction.