Whilst trying to pin down the date of the John Martyn gig I went to in the 1970s, I phoned an old friend, J, to see if she had any idea of when it could have been.
The following day, she e-mailed back, to say that after an expedition into the dustier regions of 'diary-space', she still couldn't fix the date I was after, but that she'd definitely seen JM at Lancaster on two other occasions. (18 Jan 1975 and 30 April 1976)
To get to the earlier of these gigs, she'd been hitch-hiking from Malvern to Lancaster with a bloke from New Zealand, who had been sharing a flat with some other mates of ours.
The 1960's and 70s may have been the 'Golden Age of Hitch-hiking', but it was still an extraordinarily hit-and-miss way to travel. Even so, a lift that dropped you off at a motorway service area was almost always worthwhile. There was usually a steady flow of potential lifts, including comparatively slow but reliable trucks, bored but determinedly quick sales reps and everything else in between. If you'd got plenty of time, or it was lashing it down with rain, you could go into the cafe for a cup of tea and a warm-up.
On this particular journey, J and The Antipodean had made it well over half way to the gig, and had been dropped off at Knutsford Services, on the M6. When they went into the cafe, they spotted John Martyn himself.
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained" they thought. As he got up to leave, they went over.
"Er, hello... We're going to see you play at Lancaster tonight."
"Oh. Good. Cheers",
"Um. Any chance that you could give us a lift please?"
Now at this point, it would have been great to have written ' and he said "Yeah, sure. Hop in. Fancy a smoke?", or some such '
Sadly, sometimes life's not like that.
He said "No".
Damn!!
(And yes, I know that the picture is of Forton Services, but it's more interesting than Knutsford)
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