Beverley Martyn tells Simon Evans why her new album marks a new beginning in an eventful and sometimes troubled life.

AT THE age of 65 Beverley Martyn thought the idea of recording a new album was a pipedream, about as likely, as she puts it, as “receiving a ticket to Never Never Land.”

Of all the Sixties folkies, Beverley was the one artist the music heritage industry appeared to have overlooked. Even when they did reissue expanded versions of perhaps her finest work, the albums Stormbringer and Road To Ruin, recorded with her former husband, the late John Martyn, Beverley didn’t get a penny.

Although she has suffered from depression, kidney disease and diabetes, Beverley is clearly a fighter — she’s had to be. The self-possession that led the then Beverley Kutner to leave her native Coventry for London at the age of 15, immersing herself in the capital’s vibrant early Sixties folk scene, has clearly held her in good stead for the battles that would occasionally follow, not least having to, quite literally, escape from marriage to her “Luciferian” husband.

Beverley married Martyn in 1969, several years after she descended on the capital’s folk clubs and started performing, releasing a couple of singles and striking up a friendship with Paul Simon who, at the time, was living in the East End and performing in the nation’s folk clubs, “I met Paul and Art Garfunkel at the Les Cousins folk club when I was singing, and they come up to me and said, you’ve got an amazing voice’. Then I met Paul again the following afternoon and we went off to his flat, played songs, and struck up a friendship, which was a bit romantic, for the next couple of years.”

“I went all over America with Paul and Artie,” Beverley recalls, “playing college stadiums that were full of young people. They didn’t even have a roadie, they just checked into a hotel, did the gig and then on to the next hotel. It was a great time.”

Beverley was also Paul and Art’s special guest at the 1967 Monterey Festival. “Monterey was fantastic. I remember bumping into people like Otis Redding and Hugh Masekela. We English people stuck together, The Who, Jimi Hendrix (an honorary Brit at the time).”

Beverley even made a guest appearance on Simon and Garfunkel’s Bookends album; that’s her on the track Fakin’ It asking if Mr Leitch (a reference to mutual friend Donovan) has had a busy day.

More serious was the album she started to make with top record producer Joe Boyd, which evolved into the John and Beverley Martyn record Stormbringer. “John signed the contract, so I never really was an Island artist. Over the years, when they have reissued the albums, I didn’t get any royalties.”

After making a second album, Road to Ruin, with her husband, Beverley was led to believe Island were only interested in John as a solo artist; that is until she bumped into Island Records boss Chris Blackwell several years later, who asked when the next John and Beverley Martyn was coming out.

Instead, Beverley devoted herself to bringing up a young family and recorded spasmodically over the years. Her new album, The Phoenix and the Turtle is a reflective record that looks back at different aspects of her life. Opening track Reckless Jane, a song she co-wrote with her friend Nick Drake a year before his death in 1974, is especially poignant. Unrecognised in his lifetime, Drake is now revered by a broad spectrum of contemporary artists.

“Nick would have loved the fact he has got so much acclaim today. He used to get very down about his lack of success, and we used to tell him it was nothing to do with the songs, it was the fact that he couldn’t go on stage and promote them.”

The Phoenix and the Turtle was produced by Mark Pavey and features contributions from, amongst others Matt Malley, formerly of Counting Crows, and ex-Los Lobos drummer Victor Bisetti.

“It’s not bad for an old bird, is it?” she laughs. “That somebody showed an interest after all these years, and wanted to record me, was wonderful. This really feels like a new beginning for me.”

Simon Evans
Choice
1 June 2014