John Martyn's long love affair with Ireland - and the demons that followed him here

I first met John Martyn, as many did, in a bar. The beer garden of Carroll's Bar in Thomastown to be exact. I was interviewing him for a British music magazine, and was on the fizzy water. He was on the cider and quadruple vodkas. It was 2005 and Martyn - the once beautiful curly-haired sorcerer who belonged to a folk-jazz-blues genre of one - had seen better days.