10 Almost Perfect Folk Rock Albums With One Bad Song

2. John Martyn: Glorious Fool (1981)

John Martyn was a member of the British contingent of folk singers, putting their twist on the genre. Martyn was a bear of a man, known for his raucous and at times difficult behaviour. You don't get many folk singers who hit it as hard as he did. His famed consumption of just about anything he could get his hand on, led to his pancreas bursting in 1996. And, a decade later, he had his right leg amputated due to further complication brought on by his drinking habit.

But for all and hard living ways, he created some of the most stirring music in all of folk rock. His unique approach to the acoustic guitar - which included the incorporation of a number of effects pedals - resulted in a sound that was uniquely rich and haunting, exhibited to a devastatingly, beautiful degree on his 1977 track Small Hours.

Martyn, like Nick Drake, never really broke into the mainstream, but he remained a respected figure among other musicians, notability Eric Clapton. His major break almost came, when Phill Collins started working with him in the '80s. Phill Collins both produced and played on Glorious Fool. The more pop-centric sound, was something Martyn had usually showed distain for. Although it worked, for the most part, Martyn's deeply smooth vocals on Hold on My Heart, seem somewhat at odds, with the constant presence of Collins' backing vocals. But the album as a whole, is brilliant.