John Martyn dies, age 60
February 1, 2009
John Martyn was a wonderful singer, guitarist and songwriter, and a very big influence on me, musically-speaking. Martyn was a troubadour and a scop, a seer and a mystic, and he sang with a soulful slur that made men want to weep. Of course women, always more at home with their emotions, did weep. I had the good fortune to meet Martyn. When he played Toronto in the late seventies (I’m guessing it was the late seventies),? Joe Hall and the Continental Drift opened for him. We were doing our sound check when the doors at the back of the hall flew open and a fellow with a beard (actually it was more like organized scruff) and the flinty glint of a mad man came stamping down the aisle, yelling “Stop! Stop!” When we did so, he leaned over the apron of the stage and scolded us, “You lads were having too much fun. There’ll be none of that.” John Martyn put on a wonderful show, and I became a fan. “May You Never,” one of his more famous songs, is a kind of a drunkard’s benediction: “May you never lay your head down without a hand to hold./May you never make your bed out in the cold./May you never lose your temper and get hit in a barroom fight./May you never lose your woman overnight.”
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