‘Its good music for when you’re maudlin drunk,’ a pal of the time told me at a party back in 1983,

‘Solid Air’ by John Martyn was the music he was referring to , and he absolutely loved the song ‘May You Never’, which included the lyric ‘may you never lose your temper, if you get hit in a barroom fight‘, I don’t think my pal got into any fights in pubs, or at least not that I was aware of.

Anyhow, that’s how I discovered ‘Solid Air’, basically a recommendation from a friend, by word of mouth, the pre-digital age equivalent to Googling, or asking your Alexa to ‘play John Martyn’.

‘Solid Air’ is my favourite Martyn album, its a great synthesis or folk, blues, jazz, and a dollop of the avant-garde, which comes to the fore with the guitar’s phased spacy effects on ‘I’d Rather Be The Devil’, which almost touches on the avant-garde jazz rock of Miles Davis’ ‘Bitches Brew’ or ‘Agharta’, and contrasts with the late night acoustic balladry of ‘May You Never’, (famously covered by Eric Clapton) or ‘Over the Hill’ with its strummed mandolin courtesy of Richard Thompson, whose music Martyn’s music led me on to discover the delights of folk-rock with Fairport Convention, and other bands of that ilk.

Trivia buffs may be interested to know that ‘I’d Rather Be the Devil’ , an old blues song by Nehemiah ‘Skip’ James, (his version entitled ‘Devil Got My Woman’), also lends the title to one of Ian Rankin’s John Rebus novels, the fictional Edinburgh cop being a Martyn fan, and indeed a music fan as Ian Rankin himself is.

Martyn’s voice sounds husky and drunk sounding one moment, then veers to jazzy phrasing , sounding to these ears like a male equivalent of say, Cassandra Wilson, Sarah-Jane Morris or Joni Mitchell circa ‘Night Ride Home’, his voice as another musical instrument , I would say.

This really works well on the title track of the album which was written about Martyn’s friend , Nick Drake, a melancholic meadering tribute to a fellow singer-songwriter, as Martyn sings in the lyrics.

‘I can be your friend , I can follow you anywhere, even through solid air’

The musicians on ‘Solid Air’, are a solid bunch, some of them folk-rock royalty, ex-Pentangle bassist Danny Thompson, who was at home with folk based music as he was with jazz, which can be heard on his work with Pentangle on their 1968 album ‘Sweet Child (Goodbye Pork Pie Hat/Haitian Fight Song), and his later solo albums ‘Whatever’ and ‘Elemental’, from 1987, and 1990 respectively. There’s also Richard Thompson, Dave Pegg, Sue Draheim, and session keyboard player John ‘Rabbit’ Bundrick, and also saxophonist Tony Coe.

Its great how music can evoke memories, and this album does that for me, I bought my first vinyl copy of it in 1983, when the world was a very different place and the pubs shut earlier, there were often parties that a ‘friend of a friend ‘ was going to, and music like that of John Martyn, Led Zeppelin 3, and Roy Harper would be playing on a cheap stereo, in the background in some house parties I attended back in those days. In the 1990s, I gave that album away , along with Joe Cocker’s ‘Sheffield Steel’, when cds became popular, and years later, bought the heavy duty vinyl version which still gets regular plays, almost 40 years after I first discovered it.

Wow, that’s the power of great music for you!

Martyn died aged 60 in 2009, but his 40 year career including working with such legends as Free’s Paul Kossoff, Eric Clapton and reggae star Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry among others and he also appeared in Series 2 of The Transatlantic Sessions with Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham.

His legacy lives on in the music, which are all worth investigation, and his covers album ‘The Church with One Bell’ from 1998, is a cracker, with versions of songs by Portishead, Billie Holliday, and Randy Newman. His influence is also discernible in the music of more recent songwriters such as Ryley Walker and James Yorkston.