Rock Salt and Nails

Monday 2nd February

I have always been an album person, believing in the integrity of the album, that this was how the Artist wanted you to hear his or her songs.  And so I listen to albums the whole way through.  But occasionally and actually only rarer does one song demand my attention to the point that I have to hear it again and again.  John Martyn, a folk singer from the sixties who moved into blues and rock and played incredible guitar and who died a few years ago recorded many songs in his long career.  And I have heard most of them, even Rock Salt and Nails, before – but something about this version has captivated me.  Maybe, because it is sung live, it sounds different, maybe it is the despair in his voice or the resigned anger, the remembered hurt – but now I keep putting it on repeat.

I, who love words, had never really listened before to the words of betrayal – “Down in the hollow, where the water runs cold, It was there I first listened, To the lies that you told”  and then wow, the denouement, the ending; the last two lines of which he repeats and repeats, each time with more desperation “If you ladies were blackbirds, And you ladies were thrushes, I’d lay there for hours, In them cold chilly marshes.  But if ladies were squirrels, With them high bushy tails, I’d load up my shotgun, With rock salt and nails”   Such a vicious and yet poetic refrain and each line is accompanied by a stab of electric guitar and cuts deep to the bone.  Sheer brilliance and I cannot stop listening to it.