ISLAND STUDIOS, a big black warehouse place hard on London’s tourist studded Portobello Road, swarmed with hundreds of unsmiling roadies, tall guys with square chins, faded denims and workshirts, armed with wads of little catch phrases like “nice one” and “oh, that’s cool” and a whole studded repertoire of superstar poses.
They wobbled to and fro in their creaking high heels as Smith Perkins and Smith, a Muscle Shoals outfit, blew some excellent sounds upstairs in one of the studios, and the matchstick profiled switchboard girl danced her fingers over a series of tiny flashing buttons.
“Come on up” called a voice from the top of the winding mosaic staircase. A big low ceilinged office full of equipment, pamphlets posters and the cheru-bic countenance of John Martyn, basked in rays of dusty sunlight.
Two beer cans popped and we took our seats on some kind of opulent leather sofa. “Well?” said he, quizzically.
“Are you tired? I asked, utilising a superb analytical approach.
“Yes,” he replied, with feeling.
Two hours before, he’d been on the plane back from Sweden where he’d played a one-day televised gig in Stockholm.
“It was pretty straight,” he said.. “They seem to take it very much on an audience / singer level; you’re up there singing and they’re down there watching. I suppose I like to play for freaks most,” he added, “because they seem to be more receptive. Scandinavia isn’t the best place to play though I’ve had some of my best gigs in Finland.”
Martyn could be described as England’s only purveyor of acoustic-based funk. Originally a fairly straightforward singer / songwriter accompanying himself on guitar, and often, in the past, joined by his wife, Beverley, he’s spent some years doing the club and concert circuit.
But recently he’s been attracting a lot more attention, not only for his beautiful songwriting, but for his almost unique adaptation of the acoustic guitar theme; he’s taken to using a Fender 30 watt 
amp and an echo unit, along with a wah wah pedal, producing the sounds of a kind of one man ‘Floyd.
“No,” he says, “it’s just amplified slapping and banging.”
“But one thing,” he adds lazily, “is that I’m getting more and more into saying what I want to say through the notes and intonations; there are still a lot of people in the acoustic field who concentrate more on the meanings and poetry of the words than the musical content, and for me, that’s not right. I think it was Chris McGregor who said that too many people are trying to reach their bellies through their heads. That’s so true.”
Martyn’s love for the jazz side of contemporary music has left him in a quandry where he is not able to play with the people he’d most like to. He’s a great admirer of people like John Surman, Miles Davis, Terry Riley and John McLaughlin, and he’d very much like to get a small electric band together, including, perhaps, Alan Spenner, bassist with the current Cocker band. But he acknowledges that it’ll be a while yet before it happens.
“There’s so much music buzzing around in here,” he says, pointing at his head, “but I can’t play it all yet. There’s still so much that I don’t know, and there are a lot of compromises involved in working within a band because, by definition, it has to be a group thing. Maybe in five years time, when I’ve begun to satisfy myself more, then I’ll be able to work with other people; at the moment it’s too one sided.”
“But certainly,” he adds reflectively, “I’m writing less and playing more; the words on the last album, ‘Bless The Weather,’ were as simple as possible.”
We talked about a previous album, recorded with his wife Beverly called “Road To Ruin.” The solo on the title track is a perfect example of inventive single string playing, using wah wrap and sustaining devices to achieve an almost surreal sound.
“I didn’t really like that album a lot,” he said, “because, to me it appeared too scrappy. Joe Boyd, the producer kept going back to the States and reappearing months later, so we used a lot of overdubbing which took away the freshness.”
The conversation drifted away as various people wafted in to check things over with John. He then turns to me and issues forth a stream of soft invective against the monopoly position occupied by the BBC.
“There are so many avant garde jazz musicians I know of who can’t get any work with the BBC,” he says mind drifting off on to other topics, Martyn appears permanently distracted; thoughts entering and leaving his head as if carried on lazy floating air currents.
Talking about interviews and interviewers, he relates something he saw the other day.
“Yeah, it was at London Airport. This black all-girl group, I think it may’ve been The Flirtations, had just landed, and were being interviewed by a couple of real lefties. They asked them if they’d ever consider doing a song for social comment and they came right back and said, ‘Oh no, we’re not big enough yet; you’ve got to be a Dylan or Lennon to be able to do that.’ That’s great, isn’t it? A real Zen trip,” he laughs.
And that leads us back to the BBC: “I don’t hate it, just resent it; they set themselves up to provide music for people, but they only provide the kind of music THEY think the people want to hear. They should give airtime to contemporary jazz, they should give ethnic folk some coverage.
“After all,” he adds, “all kinds of music have their own validity.”
Peter Erskine
Disc
29 July 1972
