JOHN Martyn, the singer-songwriter who died last year, could have been lost to music if if he had succeeded in getting a job on The Herald newspaper, as a journalist.
The disclosure – published in today’s Herald – comes in Scots author, John Neil Munro’s new version of the biography, ‘Some People Are Crazy’.
Munro reveals that Martyn’s real name was Iain McGeachy and he had excelled in English at Shawlands Academy – winning the school’s Jubilee Memorial Prize before representing the Academy on an inter-schools STV quiz programme in 1963.
The book quotes David MacFarlane, described as a classmate and lifelong friend of Martyn, as saying: “My father used to work for William Hill, the bookies, and he had a lot of contact with people in newspapers.
“Iain had expressed this desire to get into journalism and my dad helped him get an interview for a job as a reporter at the Glasgow Herald.
“He didn’t get the job and we later heard that they liked him but they thought that he could have maybe dressed a bit better for the interview – he had turned up dressed in jeans.”
