Similarly, "Mrs Adlam's Angels" recalls his Sunday school teacher:[12] "I loved the ceremonial and the music," he says, "you can hear the influence of hymn tunes in my song structures.

By the age of 15, McTell was very anxious to leave grammar school and the British Army looked like a way out, so in 1959 he enlisted in the Junior Leaders Battalion of The Queen's Surrey Regiment.

Inspired by musicians such as Jesse Fuller, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, he bought a guitar and practiced assiduously.

He and a group of like-minded friends became habitués of London's Soho jazz clubs and regularly went down to Brighton to "...sit on the beach looking windswept and interesting," as McTell put it.

During his travels, McTell met musicians who were destined to remain lifelong friends, among them Jacqui McShee (later to gain fame in the band Pentangle), Martin Carthy and Wizz Jones.

He was persuaded to join a bluegrass-influenced band called the Hickory Nuts,[20] who performed all over England and, despite playing in some dire places for pin money early on, ended up with decent fees and respectable crowds in venues such as Croydon's Fairfield Halls.

It came to the attention of the BBC and was featured on radio programmes including Country Meets Folk in August and John Peel's Top Gear.

In August, McTell played the huge Isle of Wight Festival alongside Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, and Leonard Cohen.

While in the US, McTell hung out with the British folk-rock band Fairport Convention, establishing a lifelong professional relationship as well as personal friendships.

Paramount put a new recording of "Streets of London" on the US release of You Well-Meaning Brought Me Here,[33] and, in April 1972, issued it as a single in the Netherlands, where it charted, climbing slowly to No.

Despite the civil unrest and violence in Northern Ireland, the tour included concerts in the province[40] – in fact, McTell continued to play there regularly throughout 'the Troubles'.

[citation needed] McTell's eighth album, Right Side Up, was released late in 1976 and the year ended with a packed-out Christmas concert in Belfast where he got standing ovations both before and after the show.

[citation needed] McTell had written a number of new songs and went into the studio with backing musicians including Richard Thompson, Dave Pegg and Simon Nicol.

The first release on Mays Records was the 1981 single "England", a song later adopted as the theme for a television travelogue presented by comedian Billy Connolly, a long-standing friend of McTell.

McTell featured in three series alongside guests including John Wells, Willie Rushton, Kenny Lynch, Penelope Keith[7] and Nerys Hughes.

It included "The Girl from the Hiring Fair" (originally written for Fairport Convention,[65] and in whose core repertoire it remains to this day), and "The Setting", influenced by Seán Ó Faoláin.

McTell completed a major project when in 1992, the BBC commissioned[74] and broadcast The Boy with a Note – 'an evocation of the life of Dylan Thomas in words and music'.

"In The Dreamtime", the song played over the closing credits to Billy Connolly's World Tour of Australia, later featured on McTell's album Red Sky.

Two sell-out concerts in London's Purcell Room were recorded by McTell's tour manager and sound engineer, Donard Duffy, and released on Leola as a two-CD set.

McTell appeared alongside Steve 'Cockney Rebel' Harley, Darren Wharton (Thin Lizzy), Sir Paul McCartney and many others to raise £36,000 for the 3 main cancer charities.

Dedicated "to Woody Guthrie, the man who started it all for me", Time's Poems contains "...all the songs I could find in notebooks, on scraps of paper and old tapes, on records and CDs".

[89] Compiled by David Suff from recordings made between 1965 and 2006, The Journey was promoted with several radio interviews and a major tour that included two 'gala' concerts at London's Union Chapel.

A compilation CD comprising McTell's own selection of songs, including the 'hit' version of "Streets of London", was released in December 2007 on the Highpoint label as The Definitive Collection.

On 9 October 2008, McTell appeared on BBC1 TV's nationally broadcast magazine programme The One Show in a pre-recorded package about the song "Streets of London".

[93][94] Made by Leola Music Ltd and published on YouTube, the videos featured McTell talking about his work and about "Streets of London", with concert footage shot at the Institute of Contemporary Arts.

[95] The concert at Birmingham Town Hall was unusual because McTell, who rarely appears with a supporting act, shared the bill with The Dylan Project.

McTell released his first downloadable album in July 2009, titled Streets of London and Other Story Songs,[96] comprising twelve tracks from his back-catalogue.

[99] In early 2010, McTell's Leola Music record label released Affairs of the Heart, a four-CD box set of love songs in a presentation package.

McTell's 2012 UK tour, branded “An English Heartbeat”, commenced in October, and saw the release of a CD of guitar instrumentals called Sofa Noodling.

[citation needed] In September 2018, McTell made his debut on BBC's music show Later... with Jools Holland, on which he performed two songs, including the Bob Dylan-inspired "West 4th Street and Jones".