Around about 1999/ 2000, Belfast-based film producers Lyn and Eleanor McMullan began to film many feet of footage of the musician John Martyn playing with his band of the time, whose members were: Spencer Cozens, keyboards, Arran Ahmun, drums, John Giblin, bass, and Jim Lampi on that peculiar twelve string guitar-like of his called the Chapman Stick.
"I like the idea of a video that wasn't a concert, and the lads backstage," notes a comfortably overstuffed John Martyn from a similarly overstuffed armchair. "That's Spinal Tap stuff."
Almost 30 years to the day after it was filmed at Hamburg’s Audimax auditorium for the German TV show Rockpalast, this classic performance is only now available on DVD for the first time. The Man Upstairs captures the power of John Martyn’s live show, with Martyn at the height of his powers following the release of his then-current studio album One World.
When he's on form, as in Dealer, One World or the rightly perennial May You Never, there's something irresistible and warm about his craft.
