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Slouched hidden beside a fire-exit, Antony Hegarty looked neither courageous or a star, clutching his notebook and looking nervous as he waited for his driver to arrive. This was back in 2005, backstage at a festival in Italywhere Antony and the Johnsons were due to headline that night. He averted his gaze from all passers by - particularly those, like me, with press passes dangling. On this chance observation one word springs to mind to sum up this extraordinary singer - shy.

Shy, though, is the last word you’d use to describe this song - given that it confidently stakes out its territory using just Hegarty’s voice to start with. It’s a good minute before any other presence is allowed into this spacious sound, and even then it’s just a hint of feedback and menace from a suspense-laden guitar.

This is a real headturner. It’s got Hegarty’s lilting and lovely voice, but rather than those elegant and beautiful tunes that made up his Mercury Prize winning I am a bird now this is blues all the way.  

There are plenty of taboos that have been broken and flaunted in rock - no-one would blink an eye if you sing fuck, shit, or bastard, but when someone sings

‘that pig took everything I had
that pig made me feel so bad
shake that pig out of the bush
now let’s give that pig a push’  

You know you’re about to enter some dark, and shameful arena where the flesh battles with the spirit and the outcome is far from certain.

Accompanied by a vigilant bass, drums and a saxaphone, the song builds up around Hegarty’s voice. It’s a song you could imagine Tom Waits rasping through with abandon, but he’d never be able to match the effect that Hegarty’s quavering voice conjures up. It’s a voice that suggests fragility and innocence, and yet at the same time is rock solid.

When I think of John Martyn - who sadly passed away on the 29th of January -  I think of friends, spread out across time and space, with whom I’ve listened to his music. It’s natural, because for decades Martyn was an artist to be discovered. He only periodically existed on radio/tv or in the music magazines, but few who heard him could resist introducing him - via a mix tape - to a music-loving friend.

I think of my mate Cathy, who, older than me, took matters into her own hands when seeing my U2 and Black Sabbath dominated tape collection. She introduced me to Martyn’s groundbreaking Solid Air (and, at the same time Van Morrison) with a smile, knowing that it would change things for me for ever.

I think of my friend Ronan, with whom I could never agree over the genius of Doc Watson, but who introduced me to Martyn’s debut London Conversations . A more different record to Solid Air it’s hard to imagine, to the extent that you could never imagine that light folk singer of one was also the gruff, mumbling vocalist with the timbre of a tenor saxophone of the other. Genius either way.

 I think of my friends Brendan and Melissa, who one pleasant afternoon in their small flat near the Guinness brewery ransacked their record collection to find me that spectacular husband/wife album that is Stormbringer. Martyn recorded this gem with his wife Beverley, a formidable talent in her own right. With songs like John the Baptist and the sublime (used advisedly)  Sweet Honesty  the couple managed to capture on vinyl  the joy, excitement, and terrible fear of love.

I think of my mate Mick, with whom I gambled on buying a ticket to see Martyn in Dublin during the mid ’90s. The common wisdom then was that going to see Martyn was a lottery - it could be the greatest or worst gig you’d ever see, depending upon the amount of booze Martyn had consumed.  As it turned out it was a brilliant, funny, warm and inspired performance - the gamble paid off. It was the last gig I ever saw with cheerful and upbeat Mick, who dissapeared shortly after.

There are too many John Martyn songs that have moved me  to list here (though it’s worth giving a special mention to The Man in the Station), but right now I want to go back to the first song of his that I heard - May you Never.

In the context of his career, with it’s constant shifting and searching for new styles - ranging from simple folk through to jazz and blues (with many considering him the pioneering father of trip-hop) - it’s easy to see why Martyn wouldn’t have given this song more consideration. On the complex Solid Air it’s simplicity could fool one into thinking it throw-away, but thankfully it has urgency, momentum, and a hook that is hard to resist.

There are those opening bare-naked lines

May you never lay your head down
without a hand to hold
May you never make your bed
out in the cold

With Martyn’s sweet soulful voice, above a guitar-part that makes you want to learn the instrument properly, these lines manage to be sincere and moving, while in the wrong hands (like, perhaps, those of his sometime colleagues Clapton and Collins) they would risk becoming unbearably sentimental.

And there’s the darkness that was unmistakable in his music, when he moves into his catalogue of wishes

May you never lose your temper
if you get in a bar-room fight
May you never lose your woman
over night

It’s that tension, between light and dark, that makes this so powerful. It looks to the worst, and hopes for the best, all the while taking consolation in rhythm and melody. It’s a beautiful, romantic, pop song that balances on a knife edge.

He’ll be missed.

It could hardly be more rock n’roll - the frontman dies, and the group disbands with one member going off on a crazed visionary tangent. St. John, beloved disciple  - the only one, according to the gospel, to stay awake in Gethsemane while Jesus swept blood - according to tradition ended his days on the Greek Island of Patmos, holed up in a cave writing what would become the New Testament’s White Album, the book of revelations.

In all its blood-soaked ambiguity, John the revelator’s testament has captured artists through the ages, with its symbolism shrugging on and off interpretations as epochs change. His famous beast has been seen as Nero, Napoleon, and - according to my mate Clinton, down the pub - Simon Cowell.  It’s apocalyptic numerology and epic sweep seeled its success.

Let’s skip from early-Christian Greece to 1930’s America, and the bluesey recording of a traditional spiritual, John the Revelator, by  Blind Willie Johnson. There’s something almost comical about the opening verse, with it’s ‘who’s that writing - john the revelator’ call and response culminating with ‘writing the book of the seven seals’, translating a venerable figure into one sitting casually in the corner, writing freaky shit. Almost, though, as nothing could be less comical than Blind Willie Johnson’s gravel-loaded, melodious but tortured vocals.

His voice is agony and ecstasy in equal measure - not  surprisingly, for the man who sought solace in Jesus and the blues after apparently being blinded in his youth during a domestic incident between his Mother and Stepfather (she, it seems, threw some caustic soda at her violent partner during a fierce row, but caught her hapless son instead, blinding him).  Vision, loss, and the seeing of things beyond the veil - these are all of revelations, so little wonder that of all the artists who have sung this spiritual (including Son Ra and Taj Mahal) Blind Willie Johnson seems to be the one to have made it his own (that his is the earliest widely-known recording helps).

There’s an urgency and certainty to the song, precisely because of that haunting call-and-response technique so favoured by teachers and preachers everywhere - throw out a question to which you have the answer, and all the world seems to be certain. The guitar, the voices, the tempo all make it mesmerising and fearful. Listen to it and, just for a moment, you may get a glimpse into what those rapturous headbangers worldwide feel when contemplating the supposedly imminent second coming.

Skip from the depression through to the terror-laden 2000’s and a slick electro packaging of the age-old theme. Depeche Mode’s John the Revelator is like a younger brother to Johnson’s blues - it shares some family traits, like the call and response, and some melody lines, but it’s got a voice of its own. If Johnson’s song was a soulful support, Dave Gahan’s is a nihilistic charge down on the revelator. Johnson’s blues is a submission, while Martin Gore’s lyrics are a denunciation: “Well who’s that shouting? John the Revelator! All he ever gives us is pain”. 

Blind Willie Johnson - John the Revelator

Depeche Mode - John the Revelator