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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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JOHN MARTYN, Shepherd’s Bush Empire,
London, May 10th 2006 |
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To
be honest I’ve lost count of the number of
times I’ve seen John
Martyn. I know I first saw him in the
early 1970s at college (I say ‘know’,
because ‘remember’ is not a word one
would associate with Martyn concerts of that era),
and last saw him at the Jazz Café in London
about five years ago, in between I can’t quite
recall (though I do know there was one wonderful
night under the Edinburgh stars when he played at
the Castle Esplanade). Over the years his gigs have
been increasingly frustrating occasions - always
leaving me with the sense that Martyn is someone
who almost throws his considerable talents away
in favour of ‘banter’ and buffoonery.
Of course the legendary drinking (and the rest)
must have something to do with this, but I can’t
really imagine that he can ever be quite as drunk
as he sometimes likes to appear, given that he always
makes a pretty decent fist of playing his guitar.
And what’s more surprising is that there always
seem to be a fair number in the audience who’ve
only come to see this nonsense - like the sort of
tasteless voyeurs who take pleasure in watching
Shane McGowan down a bottle of vodka and then stumble
blindly around the stage (I saw it and left). You
almost wonder if performers like these are victims
of their audience rather than victims of themselves.
You may know that Martyn recently had his right
leg amputated above the knee, and it’s been
a long time since he lost his svelte youthful good
looks (when we got home I had to dig out the Old
Grey Whistle Test DVDs just to check how youthful
and good looking he was back in the seventies).
To be honest he looks a bit of a mess. He’s
got a good band with him, keyboards, bass (outstanding),
drums, clarinet and saxophone, which is just as
well. His guitar is hidden for a lot of the night,
and when he does break out it’s for the most
part quite conventional stuff, rarely reaching the
heights of which he was nice so capable. |
| And
if you don’t know Martyn’s work then
of course you have to listen to Solid Air to understand
what I’m on about. But don’t get me
wrong - I also thought the relatively recent Church
with no Bell was pretty good too - so I’m
not just living in a rosy and nostalgic past. I
suppose this must be what they call ‘after
dinner jazz’. Every song has a long introduction,
and long middle, and a long ending, and it’s
the band doing most of the work. I really felt that
Martyn was struggling at times with his guitar,
and seemed to have (understandable) difficulty with
his pedals, the key to his wizardry. Of course he
sang - but his increasingly slurred, drawling growly
voice has long since become a grotesque self parody,
no more evident than in the crooned version of ‘Never
let me go’ that he ends the set with. And
of course we get the ‘Cockney John’
and ‘Glasgow John’ stuff in between
songs - with a recurring and tedious joke about
a man who killed his mother. To be frank it’s
almost impossible to decipher his words and affected
or not, he sounds like the sort of drunk that you
hope never gets into your carriage on a train. |
| It’s
a disheartening affair, and I can’t help thinking
that it’s a genius that’s simply wasted
away over the years. The audience seemed to love
it, ‘though I’m not sure if they’re
applauding the John they’ve just seen or the
John they remember. But it’s hard to turn
your back on someone whose work can still give so
much pleasure and inspiration. So I guess that’s
partly why we’ll be seeing him again (under
the stars somewhere in Oxfordshire) later in the
summer. Let’s hope it’s better, much
better. - Nick Morgan (photohraphs by Kate) |
Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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