At the end of his new album you faintly hear John Martyn declaring, “I’ve fucking dropped my stick,” a sad reminder that last year he suffered a partial leg amputation. Late Night John looks back poignantly at sunnier times on a collection of his most swoony tunes. The quality of Bless The Weather and Solid Air is indisputable. But there are revelations?I’d almost forgotten the laid-back beauty of the two 1970 albums he recorded with his first wife Beverley, and the trippy, dub-influenced brilliance of the tracks from 1977’s One World sound even better today than they did back then.
Time, perhaps, to reconsider his lovely legacy.
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