John Martyn and his Band - Fairport's Cropredy Convention 2006 - 11/8/2006

Just had to do this straight away, the rest of Cropredy and WOMAD will follow soon, but....

There some names who have inexplicably remained in a distant orbit around my life for all of it's 45 years to date - Bill Bruford, Wishbone Ash, Steeleye Span and, until now, John Martyn. Up until very recently, had you asked me about John Martyn, I would have conjured up a mental image of a bloke in a beard (circa 1975) who plays guitar and sings with a bit of a reedy, high voice, and that would have been it. Advance notice of an impending celestial shift came a few weeks back when John Martyn appeared on Mark Radcliffe's evening show on BBC Radio 2, which provided an updated image of an older, rather cantankerous bloke in a beard, and a wheelchair, who still sings with his distinctive voice and plays guitar, but that he does it all rather well and with a good band.

On Friday 11th August 2006, the distant comet that is John Martyn was torn out of his far orbit and flung Johnwise to within a few yards of me, an event of such gravity and magnitude that I am still reeling from it.

Start at the end - John Martyn has just finished his set, with a wave and Tommy Cooperesque ha-ha-ha, he is wheeled offstage to deafening applause - there is no encore, he leaves us there ruthlessly, stunned, to bleed slowly, to stand with many others uttering expletives, immobile, shattered and knowing that life can never be the same again, that tomorrow morning, there would be a new star to consider and to gaze at, to listen to, and maybe even to worship......

We had wanted to be in the thick of it, and we managed to get quite near to the stage in what was a big crowd standing at the front of the arena. It all started pretty normally with "Cool Tide", John was sat next to a selection of effects, one of which was clearly defunct as the ever attendant roadie was called in to sort something out before the second song "I couldn't love you more" which featured some of John's famous echo effects.

The band consisted of 5 members, including Gerry Conway guesting on a vast array of percussion instruments. I couldn't tell you who the rest were right now, except that the bassist was Thomson and his work on the fretless electric was magnificent - I wrote it down at least 3 times in two pages! The next song was slower and thoughtful ("Lies?") and while you could see the pain on John's face at times, it was more than apparant that he still has his humour very much intact, the song's lyrics sounded very Dylanesque to me. Ben Harper's "Excuse Me Mr." followed, with Gerry Conway's cowbell sounding throughout.

Things turned more jazz like at this point, with each of the players taking a solo in "BabyFace?" and then another song which seemed to include some chord sounds from a Police number, but it finished on a chord that just took off with such power - "A creature in his natural environment" muttered Gilly astutely - "Rocksalt and Nails" with a great organ sound and then what I now know to have been "Big Muff" - starting a bit funky and leading up to scorching guitar solos over a swirl of hypnotic sound. The comet was approaching! A heckler shouted something and John laughed back, "No, not over the hill, I'm just hard to kill."

The anthemic "May you never" with mostly just John's acoustic guitar over the bass followed, then "Don't want to know" (more great bass!) and the comet arrived - I have just written "OH YES!" across the notebook page - after that its a blank so far as song titles go - there were at least 10 people at the side of the stage by now, all getting their fill from the best vantage point, "I'm going to measure you up" was in there somewhere. The maelstrom took hold, took over and then he was gone - gone! That's it - gone - left us hungry, wretched, delighted, blew all our fuses and left.

Compere Geoff Hughes ("Twiggy","Onslow",Eddie") just couldn't shut up the applause, the cheers and the demands for more went on and on, even when it was clear that we weren't going to get any more. "Always see him at night" I have written down - darkness suits the music well, not that it's dark necessarily, but darkness takes away most of the visual sphere and all you have is the stage lighting with John and band in the centre and the music swirling around you.

That was it then - 10CC who followed had no chance with us - there was no room to take anything else in. The next day was definately overshadowed by what we had just witnessed and music since has had a new standard to match up to. Amazingly, Gilly had managed to have the forethought to order "Live at Leeds and More" on CD a few weeks earlier, so we were able to get JM fixes in the van. So it was that the next day then I heard "Somewhere over the rainbow" for the first time, thankfully we were spared John performing that song on Friday, because I think most of us would have just passed on to another life there and then....

Thanks John and band - I think you can safely say you have us hooked - don't wait too long before giving us another chance - and now over to Amazon for a back catalogue ordering session.......

Postscript: There are, for the time being, some amazing clips of this gig at YouTube!!!