Firstly: this song is perfect. Every angle, every line and every shape hits the golden ratio, every time. It sets out its intentions and it fulfils them totally. If my attempt to make Music was a pilgrimage then this song would be Jerusalem: the Holy Temple itself: Mount bloody Zion. Hyperbole aside this song has the unique form of being completely untouchable. If you added or subtracted ANY elements Small Hours would be weaker for it. The reason it’s my Jerusalem is because it’s the kind of song you could only write after years and years of hard travel. It’s the kind of Music you could only create after decades of hungrily wandering the Wilderness of Songwriting just in the hope that you’d one day stumble upon the shrine that is your own Small Hours. John Martyn could only write it because he’d earned it. Asides from the pure objective account I’ve just given of its perfection, Small Hours also proves to me that one’s relationship to a song is never finished. It was my Dad that first introduced it to me (along with so much else) and I carried it with me for a few years before playing it to my beautiful girlfriend Gemma. About a year after I first played it to her, she told me that for months she’d been obsessively listening to it on repeat anytime we weren’t together. It’s not that I was that surprised (I mean obviously EVERYONE would react the same way having heard this song), but it was wonderful because suddenly the song has a whole different meaning for me. Now when I hear it, I can only think of her.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 03:23:16 +0000
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