No singer has ever exposed himself so deeply as did Iain McGuechey a.k.a John Martyn (1948-2009): the Patron Saint of the Martynites.
You can find this 12-page article published - in Italian - on BUM, March 2015.
Here are some quotes from the Patron:
If I'd find out I'm really wrong at it (...) coordination is gone, so... I am not feeling cool with it, I would leave quietly... I'd make pop records... I would make bad music for money.
[Danny Thompson and I] once played naked in Bolton. We were always having bets with each other. We bet either one of us wouldn't have the nerve to take off an article of clothing between each song. So we just did and needless to say we ended up naked. The audience loved it, there were about 700 people. It was good because Danny could hide behind his double bass and I could hide behind the guitar.... It was alright!
I have actually been commissioned to write some songs for children, by Blackie Publishing. It's very difficult to do if you're a bit hairy arsed and rough round the edges like I am.
I don't want to be able to control my moods. I probably am a little schizophrenic, exacerbated by all the raving over the years. I'm either John Wayne the bully or John the daddy and lover. But I have enough self-control and if I could control myself more, I think the music would be much less interesting. I'd probably be a great deal richer but I'd have had far less fun and I'd be making really dull music.
There's a place between words and music, and my voice lives right there.
And here's some excerpts from my article:
September 11, 1948: the Englishwoman ("actually a Belgian Jew") Beatrice Jewitt gives birth to Iain David McGeachy.
He will respectfully:
- become the Guv'nor, for disciple Beth Orton;
- become a good friend of Phil Collins;
- be re-interpreted by Eric Clapton, Santana and Dr. John;
- be an inspiration for U2 and The Cure and Paul Weller;
- be re-mixed Talvin Singh.
A prodigious guitarist, man of excess, he will also become the God of disciples gathered under the "Congregation of the Martynites." A congregation of which I am part.
Keep in mind that there is a very intimate Iain, of which perhaps one can more than anything intuit but almost never read. And then there is the one that over the years he himself has created. For example that one prone to full-azimuth psycho-active alteration. The one from 2003 who seriously states "I must sadly refute the rumors that say that I do not smoke weed, because it would be harmful to my fans if I denied it".
Or the one he loves to tell about waking up in a hotel room with a piercing headache and crazily thirsty, after an immersive-drinking night. But not on his bed: no, nailed under a carpet. Courtesy of the solid and - in a way trustworthy - friend (essential bandmate in his acoustic duo) Danny Thompson; who takes care to walk over the nailed Martyn to get to the phone, pick up the receiver, call room service and order, spelling out the syllables, "orange juice and breakfast for one", eventually consumed in front of the carpeted (and swearing) John.
Uh, Danny, a very refined double bass player yet one who, when checking into the hotel, would pay "this for the room and this for the damages". And when the receptionist would reply "but there was no damage" he'd add: "No, but damn if there will be!"
(...)
Mainstream music-press used his separation from Beverley to justify Big John's constantly altered state, giving vent to the cultists of the altered states of Martynian perception. In the '70s in many concerts you may see a curious cigarette rolled in the shape of a trumpet stuck between the strings and keys of Iain's Martin, but in 1989 his "other-ism" was to be heroically defended: "I don't think that - if I hadn't been high or stoned - I would have thought half the things I thought".
Music critic Allan Jones had already poked his nose into the matter in a hasty manner, Melody Maker style, when, witnessing a fight between Martyn and Paul Kossoff in '75 (Koff breaks a bottle on John's shiulder, the latter ends up kicking Koff after downing him on the ground), he described Johnny "Too Bad"'s face as of someone who had been drinking "since the dawn of time". And when Alan Taylor of the Sunday Herald - 30 years later - after an hour of waiting for an interview at the pub smells him arriving, he immediately notes: "If John uses an eau de cologne, it must be Eau de Brewery."
His alcohol addiction is such that even in Scottish pubs eyebrows are raised when a triple vodka watered down in half a pint of beer is gulped in one shot - and it's not yet noontime. In short, a hellish addiction transformed into artistic cliché.
To create his cliché, he'll need, among other things: 46 astonishing years of addiction (assuming the initiation at 14 is true), a final weight of 150 kilos for his tortured body, a leg amputation, two punctured lungs + broken ribs (from an ill-advised jump over a fence), distruction of his pancreas, a kidney failure and numerous side effects deriving from the above. Add a torrent of tears, too.
As some said, not the best endorsement for a distillery.