Stormbringer!

Almost two entire years elapsed the recording of John Martyn’s second and third albums. He left Linda Dunning and married Beverley Martyn, previously with Bert Jansch, and even appearing on the It Don’t Bother Me album cover. Entering the relationship, she was the far bigger and hipper artist, and both end up singing with Joe Boyd’s Witchseason management company, then associated with Island, who Martyn was already with. The two move to America, in fact, to Woodstock, right as the festival happens, which they do not attend. They become besotted with The Band, or John does, and this album is the first “funky folk” album, featuring some beautifully soggy drumming and Martyn’s first efforts at sending his acoustic guitar through an echo unit. Issued early in 1970, Stormbringer! works as a flag marking The Beginning of the Seventies. John and Beverley don’t sing together much, but then they do, as on “Traffic-Light Lady,” it’s a fantastic blend of two midrange voices. The title track is deadly heavy and most of this album is a successful blend of about five different things that were happening in the late Sixties. Martyn was a very sick and suffering alcoholic, though, and what serenity he had left was burned off by the couple’s time in America. As quoted in John Neil Munro’s Some People are Crazy, Joe Boyd said that John Martyn was “never top of my hit parade—as a musician or as a person.” “Would You Believe Me?” is like Nick Drake playing with Funkadelic. A vital and rich album.