It was the first of three albums he recorded with Space Oddity producer Gus Dudgeon. A reissue on the label Light in the Attic called Chapman “a true stylist in his own right” and said he “holds a middle line between John Martyn and Bert Jansch with the provocative electric rock of Martyn juxtaposed against the traditional folk so wonderfully espoused by Jansch”.

I’ve been at it ever since.”Ĭhapman released his debut album, Rainmaker, on the famed UK label Harvest in 1969. “I said, tell you what, I don’t want to stay outside in the rain, I’ll play guitar for half an hour.

“I had an art college education and on a rainy night in 1966 I went into a pub in Cornwall but I couldn’t afford to pay to go in,” he once recalled. “But playing the guitar paid for my education,” he told Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore in 2009.Ī trip to Cornwall in the late 1960s started his career in earnest. It led to a falling out with his parents, who wanted him to work in the same steelyard as his father. He studied and later taught photography and life drawing, all the while playing jazz and skiffle, citing Lonnie Donegan, Django Reinhardt and Big Bill Broonzy as influences. Michael Chapman was born in Hunslet, Leeds, on 24 January 1941. Paradise of Bachelors, which released Chapman’s two final studio albums, called him “a hero and friend to so many, including us, moving with unmatched grace, vigour and gruff humour within and beyond his songs and those he inspired from others.” “Please raise a glass or two to a gentleman, a musician, a husband, a force of nature, a legend and the most fully qualified survivor,” his family wrote.īBC Radio 6 Music DJ Marc Riley, guitarists Chris Forsyth and Ryley Walker and broadcaster Danny Baker were among those to pay tribute to Chapman, who moved between folk, roots music, acoustic and noise, and instrumental and sung, throughout his venerable career. In a post to Instagram announcing the news, no cause of death was given, but it was stated that Chapman died at home. The British guitarist Michael Chapman has died at the age of 80.

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