Quote/Unquote
Here are a few words from John.....
"I really don't like being referred to as a folk artist." - Magnet
"Very few people are trying to reach the heart these days...I feel strongly that there's a great dearth of the heart everywhere right now" - NME 7/1973
"I often thought of faking my own death and watching the record companies fucking drum up all the shit they can..."
- Classic Rock 6/00
"I was very shy and retiring until I was 20 and then I just got the heave with Donovan and Cat Stevens and all that terribly nice rolling up joints and sitting on toadstools watching the sunlight dapple its way through the dingly dell of life's rich pattern stuff !" - Q 1990
"I'm an original. I feel good that no-one else ever before had played the guitar like I do. That's important to me. I hope to get a whole lot better, to make a bigger contribution." - Melody Maker, 4/11/78
"There's still nobody who can do what I do. I'm Still unique." - Zig Zag, 3/77
"I like doing as much new stuff as I can...the thing is, there's still a demand for older material. One time, this woman came bursting into my dressing room after a show and screamed,'Seven Pounds Fifty and no fucking Solid Air ? It's a disgrace !" - Magnet
"I love women, I must confess. They are my weakness...but then I'm a romantic. The problem is they're so beautiful aren't they? Children even more so - they genuinely are such an inspiration." - NME 10/10/81
"I try to balance my own favourites, the songs I really like playing, with what the audience wants to hear. It usually works out !" - Melody Maker 4/11/78
"I guess I'm a little arrogant, but then anyone who's played jazz guitar and hasn't got some sort of arrogance in them is obviously a lemon!" - NME 22/12/84
"The cat can play the balls off of almost anybody." John talking about Phil Collins to Magnet
"...there's a split in my audience; there's still a section that wants me to go back to what I was doing 10 years ago. When I first got the band I got terrible letters - the suit was the main culprit!" - Q, 1990
on Nick Drake...
"I don't want to talk about Nick. It's creepy, ghoulish and strange; this lionisation is too late when you're dead. If they'd dug him enough then, he'd still be here now." - Classic Rock 6/00
and about John.....
"Has any album cover had more spliffs rolled on it than Sundays Child?" - Andy Robson
"..an almost unique talent who has spanned the best of rock, folk and jazz for 30 years, yet refuses to be identified with any of these labels, John Martyn has always gone his own way." - Classic Rock 6/00
"Mean, moogy and magnificent, 'One World' is the most mesmerising album I've heard this year. More complete, even, than Bowie's. Just plain better than everything else." - Monty Smith NME 3/12/77
"Martyn's voice is still as good as ever it was. Sensual and totally irrestistible, the perfect vehicle for his simultaneously mellow and muscular material." - Steve Clarke NME
"Woefully underrated, John Martyn ought to have been the kind of singer-guitarist who packs huge venues for weeks at a time. Instead, it's all too often a matter of 'who's he?'" - Vox, Fred Dellar
"You might not be in the market for a new Lamborghini or a flash apartment in Berkeley Square but there's always 'One World'.....A John Martyn Masterpiece." - Island Advertisement
"Quite simply, the best set I've seen so far this year." - Pete Marchetto