Bob-Dubery
Last night I heard somebody playing John Martyn's "May You Never". They didn't do a bad job, but they did leave me with that feeling that I always get when I hear this song being covered, which is that I don't know why anybody bothers because they never get it right somehow.
Consider this
I just love the feel of this. It doesn't hurt that Danny Thompson is on bass here (I'm a big fan of Danny and his playing, and I've heard him on a lot of things with a lot of people, but there was some extra magic with Martyn that he never had with anybody else. Twin sons of different mothers and all that. These two guys played by telepathy). There's a feeling here that Martyn gets in this song and nobody else does - almost an illusion, like everything is running late but magically always gets there in time. I think it's partly to do with his vocals, he seems to delay things a little, not be too concerned with how things start as long as they finish ok.
I may be romanticising a bit here, but watch Kathy Mattea and the way she's watching Martyn so closely, like she's never quite sure about what he's up to. Maybe he doesn't exactly know either. (notice her reaction at the end of the clip)
Such a lovely feel. Aided, as I said, by Danny Thompson who has this lovely kinetic quality in his playing. A clue may lie in that typical percussive adornment in Martyn's playing - he's regular and emphatic on the two and the four, but it seems like sometimes the one and the three aren't quite where you expect them to be or rather that everything's shifted just little bit away from those beats. Kind of like a drummer playing with brushes, shhhhhhhhhhh pop shhhhhhhhhhhh pop.
I hope one day to hear somebody do this song and get the feel of it right, but I don't know.... John Martyn man....
Anyhoo.... any thoughts or observations about this?
Dingwall
Great song and great singer/songwriter and superb guitarist too!
I saw him a few years ago with my brother 'Squonk'. Unfortunatey it was in his 'one leg' state and he didn't die that long after so not sure I saw the best of John. But still glad I saw him none the less.
I love his singing style too in that he doesn't overly pronounce his words but uses the sounds of his words to blend together almost like how an instrument would play a melody line. Particularly in the early years.
But I think his guitar playing was superb and I doubt anyone could cover this 'properly' unless they made it their own which is what I think you would have to do if you were going to cover it.
And it certainly helped having Danny on bass!
Nice version and makes me want to explore slide a lot more too!
