Born in Co. Durham, United Kingdom in 1953,

the Oxford-based songwriter and publisher John Webster

has been working in the field of music

and independent publishing since 1973, when he worked

for a community magazine in Brixton, London.

In 1975 he began a songwriting and recording partnership

with musician Dave Eastoe - in 1976 they supported John Martyn,

Kevin Coyne and Bridget St John at a concert in Nottingham

for which they were christened Brindaband.

 

Increasingly interested in putting Romantic lyrics

into a contemporary song format, he founded the independent

label Pathfinder Audio in 1987, whose first publication

was the audio cassette ‘Shelley in Italy’. It included 8 ‘Shelley songs’

and an audio biography of the poet described by the

eminent American Shelley scholar Donald Reiman

as the best  short biography of Shelley he had encountered.

 

He organized a series of concerts with Brindaband

during the anniversary of the poet Shelley's birth in 1992

and published the CDs 'The Shelley Story'

and 'Lord Byron and the Greek War' in 2001-2.

Described by The Times as 'attractive and engaging'

and by the Independent on Sunday as 'intelligent and profound'

the CDs included new and augmented song settings

of the Romantic lyrics originally published in ‘Shelley in Italy’

and also narration voiced by Benjamin Zephaniah.

 

Here is Benjamin at Keats House helping to promote it!

 

In 2016 he added images to 'The Shelley Story' to create a video version

(now online and titled ‘The Still Unfolding Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley’),

and since then has been showing it to humanist groups around the country

with an introduction highlighting the poet's relevance

to contemporary humanism.  His contemporary song collection

'Finding a Way Through' can be accessed here.

 

Brindaband grew out of the recording relationship between John

and the musician David Eastoe, which began in the summer of 1975 -

beginning with an Akai 4000DS hooked up to a cassette machine to enable

stereo overdubbing, AND progressing, as Dave built up his studio, 

to a portastudio, then on to an analogue 8-track and a digital system.

 

The name Brindaband was given to us for a concert in 1976

where we supported John Martyn and others.

MEMORIES OF JOHN MARTYN

 As part of the duo Brindaband I had the good fortune to play

on the same bill as John Martyn at a benefit concert in October 1976

in Nottingham. The benefit was to support the local fanzine Liquorice,

and also included Bridget St John and Kevin Coyne. Backstage I remember

the way that music just flowed out of John Martyn and the lack of

contrivance about him and his music. I think part of the fascination with him

as a personality and performer was that he had both sensitive and

shall we say less sensitive sides to his personality; in Nottingham,

supporting Liquorice which had impressed him with its journalistic honesty, 

he was both sensitive and professional, and played a blinder, with ‘Solid Air’

seeming to stop time and transfix everyone at the venue.

He also played ‘One for the Road’, beautifully.

I also sensed then (and on other occasions) that other musicians

were in awe of his gifts – Bridget St John described him as

‘Island’s golden boy’ and Kevin Coyne, perhaps a bit peeved by his ability

to attract a large crowd, perhaps solely for artistic reasons,

challenged him about the lack of a social/political element to his material.

At which point (the story comes from Liquorice editor Malcolm Heyhoe)

he poked Kevin Coyne in the chest and replied:

‘You’re just an old radical, Kevin’. I can still see him standing in the doorway

looking at us as we were playing. ‘I felt very small’ said Dave afterwards,

as did I.  But from that time on John Martyn concerts

always had a special flavour. A favourite moment came at a gig

at the University of East Anglia when he was supported by Deaf School.

When someone loudly heckled he responded

‘Keep it down will you – they’re deaf, not me!’

 

2026

John is living in Oxford and since the pandemic

has published three books, The Rime of the Asian Highway,

The Closest Thing in History,

and The Rough, the Smooth and the Quirky,

which includes the poem John Martyn Encountered.