There were, by common assent, two John Martyns. The first was the tousle-haired troubadour with a voice like a tiger gargling honey – both charmed and charming. Then there was the other incarnation, the one who described himself as a drink- and drug-devouring “nutter”.
A contemporary of the likes of Richard Thompson and Nick Drake, Martyn started out in the London folk scene in the mid-1960s, signing to Island Records in 1967. After a couple of primarily folk-based albums, he began to stretch out, transforming his guitar playing with the visionary Echoplex technique and pushing the capabilities of his voice in emulation of avant-garde jazzers such as Pharoah Sanders.
“At that time there was an ocean of singer-songwriter blokes,” says the jazz bassist Danny Thompson, Martyn’s close friend and collaborator for 40 years. “Then John comes along with those great songs and that innovative guitar technique. Even now no one realises quite how incredible it was.”
A new 18-disc box set covering Martyn’s peak years in exhaustive detail may help bolster his status as a uniquely talented pioneer, while drawing the emphasis away from his reputation as a hellraiser. In contrast to the tenderness of his best known song, May You Never, the Scottish singer-songwriter, who died in 2009 at the age of 60, lived a tough, troubled life.
He was born Iain McGeachy in 1948 to parents who were both light opera singers. “It was all ever-so upmarket and highbrow,” Martyn told me when I met him in 2005 at his home in Ireland. “They rather detested my voice.” His parents divorced when he was 5, after which he was raised in Glasgow by his grandmother. “Any flaws in my character are to do with the divorce of my parents,” he said, “I’m very sure of that.”
Such flaws were copious, exacerbated by alcohol, hard drugs and a propensity for explosive violence.
In 1969 he married the English singer Beverley Martyn, with whom he released two albums, Stormbringer! and The Road to Ruin, in 1970. “It was good, it was bad and sometimes it was magical,” she says of their tempestuous 10-year marriage. “John was wild, he lived on the edge. He had a lot of guts and self-belief, but in the end I wouldn’t stay with a man who was killing himself.”
Their marriage lasted the length of the 1970s, during which time Martyn made the greatest records of his career – Bless the Weather, Solid Air, One World – and expanded his musical frame of reference to encompass jazz, rock, blues and dub. Although he jammed with Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan – “a very quiet little fella” – and worked with Eric Clapton and David Gilmour, Martyn failed to achieve their levels of mainstream success. “It’s a very top-heavy industry,” he said. “I always think the poor musician should be further up the pecking order, but he’s down there with the plankton. In the end, the music is more important. I don’t drive fast cars, I don’t have a swimming pool, but I don’t miss them.”
The end of his first marriage in 1980 seemed to herald a gradual creative decline: he was dropped from Island first in 1981 and again, conclusively, in 1988. Meanwhile, a series of physical and financial setbacks culminated in 2003 with the amputation of his right leg below the knee following a burst cyst. When I met Martyn at his modest home in Thomastown, 160 kilometres south-west of Dublin, he cut a somewhat tragicomic figure. He was on his eighth prosthetic and had gained 40 kilograms in two years. Still, he claimed: “It could have happened when I was 15 and changed my life entirely. I can’t really argue at all.”
Slightly tamed by his disability, towards the end of his life Martyn inched towards respectability as an elder statesman. He received the lifetime achievement award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2008 and was awarded an OBE in the 2009 New Year Honours. Within a month he was dead, stricken by pneumonia. His friend Phil Collins was among the first to pay tribute: “He was uncompromising, which made him infuriating to some people, but he was unique. We’ll never see the likes of him again.”
According to Thompson, he was routinely misunderstood. “When people talk about him they talk about the raucous behaviour and the drinking, but they miss out on the reality. The man who wrote lines like ‘You curl around me like a fern in spring’ – that was the real John Martyn.”
A posthumous album, Heaven And Earth, was released in 2011 but only hinted at the fluid beauty of the best of his music. The new box set, on the other hand, makes a watertight case. It includes the hypnotic title track of what is perhaps Martyn’s greatest album, 1973’s Solid Air, written for his friend Nick Drake. It’s not inconceivable that, like Drake, in death Martyn may yet find the kind of widespread appreciation that eluded him while he was alive.
• John Martyn: The Island Years (Universal Music) is out today
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4-cylturbo
Transmission: seven-speed DSG automatic
Power: 242bhp
Torque: 370Nm
Price: Dh136,814
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
ROUTE%20TO%20TITLE
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The specs: 2018 Peugeot 5008
Price, base / as tested: Dh99,900 / Dh134,900
Engine: 1.6-litre turbocharged four-cylinder
Transmission: Six-speed automatic
Power: 165hp @ 6,000rpm
Torque: 240Nm @ 1,400rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 5.8L / 100km
How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
SPECS
Nissan 370z Nismo
Engine: 3.7-litre V6
Transmission: seven-speed automatic
Power: 363hp
Torque: 560Nm
Price: Dh184,500
ESSENTIALS
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.
The hotels
Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.
The tours
A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages.
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
Our legal consultant
Name: Dr Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
Company Profile
Name: Thndr
Started: 2019
Co-founders: Ahmad Hammouda and Seif Amr
Sector: FinTech
Headquarters: Egypt
UAE base: Hub71, Abu Dhabi
Current number of staff: More than 150
Funds raised: $22 million
HER%20FIRST%20PALESTINIAN
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2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, Leon.
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
RESULTS
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Company profile
Company name: Suraasa
Started: 2018
Founders: Rishabh Khanna, Ankit Khanna and Sahil Makker
Based: India, UAE and the UK
Industry: EdTech
Initial investment: More than $200,000 in seed funding
How to watch Ireland v Pakistan in UAE
When: The one-off Test starts on Friday, May 11
What time: Each day’s play is scheduled to start at 2pm UAE time.
TV: The match will be broadcast on OSN Sports Cricket HD. Subscribers to the channel can also stream the action live on OSN Play.
MATCH INFO
Fixture: Ukraine v Portugal, Monday, 10.45pm (UAE)
TV: BeIN Sports
Dubai works towards better air quality by 2021
Dubai is on a mission to record good air quality for 90 per cent of the year – up from 86 per cent annually today – by 2021.
The municipality plans to have seven mobile air-monitoring stations by 2020 to capture more accurate data in hourly and daily trends of pollution.
These will be on the Palm Jumeirah, Al Qusais, Muhaisnah, Rashidiyah, Al Wasl, Al Quoz and Dubai Investment Park.
“It will allow real-time responding for emergency cases,” said Khaldoon Al Daraji, first environment safety officer at the municipality.
“We’re in a good position except for the cases that are out of our hands, such as sandstorms.
“Sandstorms are our main concern because the UAE is just a receiver.
“The hotspots are Iran, Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq, but we’re working hard with the region to reduce the cycle of sandstorm generation.”
Mr Al Daraji said monitoring as it stood covered 47 per cent of Dubai.
There are 12 fixed stations in the emirate, but Dubai also receives information from monitors belonging to other entities.
“There are 25 stations in total,” Mr Al Daraji said.
“We added new technology and equipment used for the first time for the detection of heavy metals.
“A hundred parameters can be detected but we want to expand it to make sure that the data captured can allow a baseline study in some areas to ensure they are well positioned.”
Test squad: Azhar Ali (captain), Abid Ali, Asad Shafiq, Babar Azam, Haris Sohail, Imam-ul-Haq, Imran Khan, Iftikhar Ahmed, Kashif Bhatti, Mohammad Abbas, Mohammad Rizwan(wicketkeeper), Musa Khan, Naseem Shah, Shaheen Afridi, Shan Masood, Yasir Shah
Twenty20 squad: Babar Azam (captain), Asif Ali, Fakhar Zaman, Haris Sohail, Iftikhar Ahmed, Imad Wasim, Imam-ul-Haq, Khushdil Shah, Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Hasnain, Mohammad Irfan, Mohammad Rizwan (wicketkeeper), Musa Khan, Shadab Khan, Usman Qadir, Wahab Riaz
Mountain%20Boy
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SPEC%20SHEET%3A%20APPLE%20IPHONE%2015%20PRO%20MAX
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Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Ashes 2019 schedule
August 1-5: First Test, Edgbaston
August 14-18: Second Test, Lord's
August 22-26: Third Test, Headingley
September 4-8: Fourth Test, Old Trafford
September 12-16: Fifth Test, Oval
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Greatest of All Time
Starring: Vijay, Sneha, Prashanth, Prabhu Deva, Mohan
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