Great things - # 1 John Martyn's 'One World'

The first time I heard One World was late one hot night, Summer 2004, lying down in bed in the attic of the new house my family had moved to on the outskirts of Nottingham. Debris filled the first two floors of the house and hence I was unable to sleep in what was designated as my bedroom, instead retiring to the attic every night... whilst everywhere around there were boxes, sheets and dust!

Daily toils at that time included stripping wallpaper, moving boxes to the right rooms (!), and wondering what was going to become of my life! I’d just quit being an estate agent and I wanted to get into the media, but paid work seemed pretty hard to come by, and indeed would take me another six months to find (although I didn't know this at the time!).

The attic was where I watched late-night TV and listened to mix cassette tapes on my old clock-radio.

One night I saw a BBC4 documentary called Johnny Too Bad which compelled me to buy One World the day after. It was the first time in years I had loved a whole album through. One World was funky, it was mellow, it had jazz, it had folk, it seemed to have everything. It’s mixture of desperation, joy and melancholy was compelling...

"If you ain't got two words to say then I can't talk to you
No use crying, there's been no crime,
I say it's just the way the wind blows
Just the name of the game, the way of the world
Way of the world"

What interested me most was that there seemed to be a brutal honesty to John Martyn's music, despite a madness to his method. He had been an alcoholic most of his life, and had persevered in music through periods of illness and personal crises. The documentary showed him about to undergo an operation to remove his right foot, a side-effect, supposedly, of years of leaning on it as he played guitar...



















His music was full of free, improvised, strange forms that would somehow ultimately come together and make sense. John’s voice was often slurred (perhaps because of his drinking!) and seemed to strain to express some indiscernable, desperate yearning. ..

“Let me in, let me in,
Let me in sweet darling…”

There was nothing John wouldn't cover in song. The eponymous One World was a beautiful essay about the complexities and beauties of life, while others, like Couldn’t Love You More were seemingly simple love songs with an added sense of colossal yearning, of love, even when fulfilled, seemingly not being quite enough..! Smiling Stranger, meanwhile, brought a little fun and randomness to the proceedings, detailing bumping into people while on the road from town to town.
















Best of all was Small Hours. It reminded me of the Cotswolds home that my family had left behind. It's beautifully mellow, ebbs and flows like a tide (seriously), and was recorded by a lake, and I'd later listen to it by a lake in Sweden (see past post!)... sad, eh?! It brought back my youth now past, when my friends and Isaw the countryside by blue moonlight and lay with friends in the middle of the road hearing only the rustle and creak of the trees at either side. It took me back to kissing a girl while standing in a nighttime stream (all very innocent, I'll have you know!) when I was sixteen, and all we listened to was the REM song Nightswimming. For all the eight and a half minutes the song lasted, the lyrics were beautifully brief... and due to John's slurring, meant searching on the internet to work out what he was saying...

“Gonna get on up for another day
Get on out for another way
And a new day’s dawn
Gonna carry on

Keep on loving ‘till your love is gone
Keep on loving ‘till your love is strong
All the way”

Whatever that means.

The album took me back to long-forgotten times in my life, as I gazed out of the attic window at the moonlit blue sky above, dotted with stars. All around me were odd possessions, tennis racquets, books and mess, surrounded by the smell of the people that had lived there before...!

There's that funny thing with music, that when you listen to an album or song again it reminds you of a memorable time in your life when it was all you listened to. I listen to One World all the time, and it still takes me back to the attic, Summer 2004!

I say that like it was a long time ago..!

I remember listening to it and thinking that somehow, this new house was to be our new ‘home,’ and the final chords of Small Hours faded out I somehow felt that 'home' was what this might just be.