Documentary following English folk-rock pioneers Fairport Convention as they celebrate their 45th anniversary in 2012. Fairport's iconic 1969 album Liege and Lief featured some of folk music's biggest names - including singer Sandy Denny, guitarist Richard Thompson and fiddler Dave Swarbrick - and was voted by Radio 2 listeners as the most influential folk album of all time.
This honest and often blackly hilarious film shows Martyn at home in Ireland, during the lead-up to and aftermath of an operation to have one of his legs amputated below the knee. Contributors include sometime collaborator and buddy Phil Collins, the late Robert Palmer, Ralph McTell, Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, fellow hellraiser bassist Danny Thompson, John's ex-wife Beverley Martyn and younger generation fan Beth Orton. We see a man incapable of compromising his creative vision, from his folk club roots in the Sixties, through a career of continuous musical experimentation. Along the way there is a surreal roll-call of accidents and incidents, including a collision with a cow
The story of seminal guitarist and singer Bert Jansch, from his early days in Edinburgh, Scotland, to becoming the acoustic guitarist that everyone wanted to be. As a teenager, in the early 1960's Bert sat at the feet of Brownie McGhee at the Howff Folk Club in Edinburgh mesmerised by 'Key to the Highway'. Armed with that raw American Blues influence and a bewildering technique, he fashioned sublime interpretations of traditional and blues music on the acoustic guitar. The result was music that had a profound influence on a generation of musicians including Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Neil Young, and it still inspires todays' generation of guitarists and singers.
