John Martyn once dismissed David Bowie as “a poseur”
The late John Martyn was a passionate man. From his delay-drenched guitar sound to his vocal delivery, his music was powered by careful attention to matters of the heart. This tact greatly diverged from the norm of the day. Whilst the most prominent artists like Black Sabbath and David Bowie were attempting to expand the parameters of the mind via drugs, sex and an overall dedication to hedonism, Martyn was trying to reconnect with what he thought society had lost, the soul.
This natural penchant for eschewing convention, and wading into unexplored territories, marked Martyn out as one of his generation’s most influential trailblazers. He would position himself as one of the vanguards of progressive folk. The flair underpinning his performances helped to reinvigorate folk, which had become somewhat sclerotic by the time he broke through in the early 1970s.
Ranking alongside Nick Drake as the era’s finest singer-songwriter and guitarist, without albums such as 1971’s Bless the Weather and 1973’s Solid Air, there might not have been future troubadours such as Badly Drawn Boy.
When sitting down with the NME in 1973 (per the Guardian), Martyn discussed his ethos. He explained that he wanted people to reconnect with their hearts through his music. He then tore into the socio-economic configuration of the world, and the day’s most significant musician, David Bowie.
Martyn said: “The point of my music is to pull people back to this heart thing. So many people have forgotten how important the heart is. Money’s the root of the problem – the whole socio-economic thing. We’ve been conditioned to strive. We came out of school as so much economic cannon fodder. The heart was excluded from the start and we accepted it. We shouldn’t, man, we just shouldn’t take that shit.”
Continuing: “It’s all too easy for sensitive people to prostitute themselves in this society but pandering to the establishment is quite simply an evil choice. It’s not good that someone like me should earn £250 a night when my father has to sweat his guts out for his £30 a week. But I’m not into bloody revolution, I’m interested in watching what’s going on very carefully.”
Saving the best for last, he labelled David Bowie a “poseur”, questioning whether he’d lived even a quarter of the things he sang about on his records. Martyn maintained that “life is real”, which he felt Bowie’s music did not represent.
He opined: “Bowie’s a poseur, too. I don’t think he’s lived a quarter of the things he sings about and, to me, living it is crucial. Life is real. Life’s in earnest. It isn’t a play. People are real and they have hearts, whether they realize or not. It’s no battle to get up there and sing whatever’s in your head at the time, but it’s a whole other scene to lay your heart on people. I want to be able to take my clothes off in front of everybody and say: ‘See? I’m just like you’. That is the happening thing, not whatever bullshit the papers tell us. It’s always been what’s happening and it always will be.”
