John Martyn - London Conversation

Released - October 1967

Genre - Folk

Producer - Theo Johnson

Selected Personnel - John Martyn (Vocals/Guitar/Harmonica/Keyboards)

Standout Track - Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

When I first started getting into John Martyn and Nick Drake a couple of years ago, I found the tendency for the two of them to be compared and discussed together rather odd. They were contemporaries of the London folk scene in the late 60s and Martyn became a key figure in trying to support Drake through his depression and emotional problems in the early 70s, but as far as I could tell they were very different musicians, with Drake's work very much focused on pastoral, conventional acoustic folk. By contrast, I had started my forays into Martyn's work with his landmark 1973 record Solid Air, which marked the point at which he wholeheartedly left traditional folk music behind and started to incorporate blues and jazz styles into his music, while also experimenting with the sound of his voice and his guitar. Even Bless The Weather, the album that preceded Solid Air, while more obviously indebted to rustic folk music, still felt more musically diverse than records like Nick Drake's Pink Moon. Experimental tracks like "Glistening Glyndebourne" showed that Martyn was already stretching beyond folk music even on that more traditional-sounding album.

Then, about a month ago, I finally listened to Martyn's first two albums, London Conversation and The Tumbler and the comparisons suddenly made sense. Here we get to hear John Martyn the folk singer, just a man with an acoustic guitar strumming his way through pretty acoustic, pastoral folk tunes, some covers, some traditionals, a bunch of originals, all of them imbued with the same sense of rustic peace and heartwarming nostalgia as any of Drake's records. Quite simply, it's wonderful - the breadth of the man's musical ambitions has yet to really take hold - there's little sense that this guy would go on to experiment with Echoplexes and distortion on his guitar sound to try and innovate within the framework of his music, simply that we're listening to a truly great singer-songwriter, although Martyn's obvious talent with the guitar means that even with the simplest acoustic riffs and patterns we're still kept riveted by his sensitivity with the music, never feeling like things are becoming too repetitious or familiar as can sometimes happen with traditional acoustic folk. His voice is also clearer and purer than anywhere else in his record - I'm a big fan of the swirling, bearlike, smokey voice he would adopt on later records, but there's something rather pleasant about hearing him just wrap his voice in its purest form around a bunch of really gorgeous tunes. It's a similar experience to first hearing Tom Waits's actual voice on Closing Time before his growling rasp set in - it may not be as unique as the voice he later adopted, but it's really nice to hear the words for once.

Ultimately, I feel like John Martyn is much more a musician than Nick Drake, and Drake more of a poet. Drake has an incredible gift for melodies and harmonies, of course, and is by no means a weak songwriter, but the fact that in his (admittedly tragically brief) discography he never felt the impulse to innovate musically to the same degree Martyn did suggests that to him the words and ideas in the songs were more important than trying to experiment with the format they were communicated in. Accordingly, the themes and ideas Martyn explores on London Conversation lack the emotional depths of something like Five Leaves Left - there's nothing to come close to "River Man" here in terms of profound emotional impact, but while his themes may feel simpler, he has a real gift for a striking turn of phrase. "You've been drinking all your years like wine" on "Ballad Of An Elder Woman" is a beautifully poignant snapshot of the passing of time.

Elsewhere, Martyn indulges in fantasy on "Fairy Tale Lullaby" to really have some fun with the folk tune. Here, he taps into the same sort of timeless, pastoral folk that Vashti Bunyan so effortlessly expresses on Just Another Diamond Day. The purity of the arrangement with Martyn's voice and guitar is so perfect that we almost feel like this music could have come from some fairytale realm populated by goblins and fairies and the like, and Martyn's entreaty to "bring [your friends] all along" is heart-warmingly innocent and carefree. It's also blessed with one of the prettiest melodies of the album, along with the gorgeously forlorn cover of "Sandy Grey," and the beautiful homecoming ballad of "Back To Stay." Perhaps the finest moment of the album, though, comes with the closing cover of Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right." Amazingly, Martyn manages to turn in a version that feels completely different to Dylan's original without actually doing much to the arrangement of it. It's not sped up or slowed down or rewritten for different instruments, it's still just a man with a guitar singing the song, but Martyn really plays with the melody, taking it off in slightly different directions whenever it feels like it's become familiar and turning in a version that's pleasingly different and new and maybe even more poignantly pretty than the original.

The other song worth marking out is "Rolling Home," a song that proves that even with this very early record, Martyn was already looking to be more than just a traditional folk singer. It's a lengthy song on which Martyn accompanies himself on sitar, tapping into the growing western interest in Indian music that built in the late 60s. He creates a sort of looping, twining soundscape with the instrument over which his voice and an uncredited flautist swoop and dive, anticipating the more self-consciously experimental guitar soundscapes he would build later, from "Glistening Glyndebourne" on Bless The Weather to his career peak, "Small Hours" on One World.

The follow-up to London Conversation, 1968's The Tumbler, sees Martyn replicating the same pastoral folk sound but this time prioritising the growing innovations with his guitar techniques. It has a few beautiful songs but too many that simply involve Martyn's lengthy experimental guitar solos with not quite enough quality songwriting to back it up. The next two records after that would be collaborations with his wife Beverley that further experimented with Echoplex and guitar sounds, before Island records decided he was better marketed as a solo act and he put out Bless The Weather in 1971. This remains a fascinating and beautiful look at the folk singer he started out as, however.

Track Listing:

All songs written by John Martyn except where indicated.

1. Fairy Tale Lullaby

2. Sandy Grey (Robin Frederick)

3. London Conversation (John Martyn & J. Sundell)

4. Ballad Of An Elder Woman

5. Cocaine (Traditional, arranged by John Martyn)

6. Run Honey Run

7. Back To Stay

8. Rolling Home

9. Who's Grown Up Now

10. Golden Girl

11. This Time

12. Don't Think Twice, It's Alright (Bob Dylan)