Iain David McGeachy OBE (11 September 1948 – 29 January 2009), known professionally as John Martyn, was a British singer-songwriter and guitarist.

The Times described him as "an electrifying guitarist and singer whose music blurred the boundaries between folk, jazz, rock and blues".

By the 1970s he had begun incorporating jazz and rock into his sound on albums such as Solid Air (1973) and One World (1977), as well as experimenting with guitar effects and tape delay machines like the Echoplex.

[3] Domestic and substance abuse problems marked his personal life throughout the 1970s and 1980s, though he continued to release albums while collaborating with figures such as Phil Collins and Maeve Aubele, Carolyn Woolham and Lee "Scratch" Perry.

Martyn was born in Beechcroft Avenue, New Malden, Surrey, to Belgian Jewish mother Beatrice "Betty" Ethel (née Jewitt) and Greenock-born Scottish father Thomas Paterson "Tommy" McGeachy.

By 1970 Martyn had developed a wholly original and idiosyncratic sound: acoustic guitar run through a fuzzbox, phase shifter and Echoplex.

In February 1973, Martyn released the album Solid Air, the title song a tribute to the singer-songwriter Nick Drake, a close friend and label-mate who would die in 1974 from an overdose of antidepressants.

In 2009, a double CD Deluxe edition of Solid Air was released featuring unreleased songs and out-takes, and sleeve notes by Record Collector's Daryl Easlea.

On Bless the Weather and on Solid Air Martyn collaborated with jazz bassist Danny Thompson, with whom he proceeded to have a musical partnership which continued until his death.

Following the commercial success of Solid Air, later on in 1973 Martyn quickly recorded and released the experimental Inside Out, an album with emphasis placed on feel and improvisation rather than song structure.

In 1975, he followed this with Sunday's Child, a more song-based collection that includes "My Baby Girl" and "Spencer the Rover", which are references to his young family.

After releasing Live at Leeds, Martyn took a sabbatical, including a visit to Jamaica, spending time with reggae producer Lee "Scratch" Perry.

Martyn released The Apprentice in 1990 and Cooltide in 1991 for Permanent Records, and reunited with Phil Collins for No Little Boy (1993), which featured rerecorded versions of some of his classic tracks.

The Church with One Bell (1998) is a covers album of blues classics, which draws on songs by other artists, including Portishead and Ben Harper.

[21] The programme documented the period surrounding the operation to amputate Martyn's right leg below the knee (the result of a burst cyst that had led to septicaemia[18]) and the writing and recording of On the Cobbles (2004), an album described by Peter Marsh on the BBC Music website as "the strongest, most consistent set he's come up with in years."

[22] In collaboration with his keyboard player Spenser Cozens, Martyn wrote and performed the score for Strangebrew (Robert Wallace 2007), which won the Fortean Times Award at the London Short Film Festival in the same year.

"[25] To mark Martyn's 60th birthday, Island released a 4 CD boxed set, Ain't No Saint, on 1 September 2008.

[28][29] Martyn died on 29 January 2009, at a hospital in Thomastown, County Kilkenny, Ireland,[30] from acute respiratory distress syndrome.

[35] Curated and hosted by Danny Thompson, artists including Eddi Reader, Eric Bibb and Paul Weller performed "to do full justice to a selection of Martyn's finest songs and channel some of the great man's spirit".