Dónal Donohoe

The first time I heard John Martyn I was eighteen years old, I had been playing the guitar from the age of ten and had been greatly influenced by Bert Jansch and Davy Graham. One day a friend of mine told me he had a record that I had to hear, he said it was kind of like Bert Jansch but a bit different. He then proceeded to play ‘Solid Air’ on the turntable and as I listened I was blown away, I already knew Danny Thompson but the guitar playing and singing sounded fresh, funky and like nothing I had ever heard before, still to this day ‘Solid Air’ is one of my favourite albums of all time. About a year later I got to hear John Martyn playing live in Liberty Hall in Dublin and was again deeply moved and uplifted by his music.

Over the years I have heard him play live on many occasions both solo and with his band and have collected his albums from the early releases ‘Bless The Weather’, ‘Sunday’s Child’ through his middle period ‘One World’, ‘Grace And Danger’ to name but a few, right up to the last release before he passed away ‘On The Cobbles’, in many ways his music has been like a soundtrack to my life. I got to meet the man himself once after a concert in Copenhagen, a friend of mine the guitarist Sam Mitchell who knew him from the old days in London and who has sadly since passed on was playing at a blues club nearby and John Martyn came by after his own show. They say that you should never meet your heroes but I’m not so sure, Sammy introduced him saying “I’d like you to meet Donal Donohoe”, John Martyn repeated my name in his rich Scottish accent, then threw his arms around me and gave me a big hug, after which we all withdrew to a back room set aside for the musicians for some refreshments. I got to talk to him and told him how much I had enjoyed his show he said he thought it had “started out well, had slackened just a little in the middle but at the end there was some real stuff happening”. After talking for a while John borrowed Sammy’s Fender Stratocaster and Echoplex tape machine then went out and played a great version of the Skip James song ‘I’d Rather Be The Devil’, much to the surprise and great delight of all those present. I later found out that people who were living nearby had called the police complaining that they had never heard music being played so loud at that club before.

Time went by, I had returned to live in Ireland and though I had managed to catch a gig he did in Dublin, I lost touch for a period, mostly due to circumstances in my own life at the time. When I heard the news that he had to have part of his right leg amputated I was saddened and resolved to make it to his next gig. As it turned out that was a small midsummer festival in the grounds of Kinnity Castle in the very centre of Ireland. Although it was not last time I heard John play live, it is the one that stands out most in those final years, for as I saw him being helped on to the stage, being handed a guitar as he sat there alone, he had no band with him, memories of seeing him play that first time in Liberty Hall all those years ago came flooding back. He launched straight into ‘Jelly Roll Maker’, his acoustic guitar playing was masterful, rhythmical and powerful, having lost none of the energy or magic of those early years. The songs came one after the other ‘Don’t Want To Know’, ‘My Creator’, ‘May You Never’, ‘Sweet Little Mystery’ and on more than one occasion I noticed, but was not surprised that the hairs on my arms were standing to attention. I stood there among the crowd in the dark on that midsummer’s night listening to his music, it sounded so beautiful, so unlike anything or anyone else and knew once again that as musicians go John Martyn was one of a kind.