A SEARCH FOR THE KING
Born and brought up in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, John was the son of Jack Gladwin, an insurance agent, and his wife Joan.
John was sent to De Aston School in Market Rasen as a boarder. It was there that he learned to play seven different musical instruments, including the lute, which was his favourite.
Whilst at school, John formed his first band, although they did not last very long.
On leaving school, John formed the band ‘Dimples’, with guitarist Terry Wincott, who was to become a life-long friend and played alongside him in most of his bands.
In 1966, they were signed to the Decca record label and released their first single ‘Love of a Lifetime’. It went absolutely nowhere.
However, the B-side, ‘My Heart is Tied to You’, written by John, went on to be a Northern Soul classic.
When Dimples split up, Terry and John formed a hard rock band called ‘Methusalah’. They were very similar in style to the famous group, Cream.
Methusalah were signed by Elektra and issued an eponymous album. One review described them as, “Very loud.”
However, when they played concerts live, John and Terry performed an acoustic session in the middle of the set, and this always went down better with the crowd than the rock music.
Consequently, John and Terry formed another band whilst Methusalah were still playing, a medieval folk-progressive rock band called ‘The Amazing Blondel’.
They were named after Blondel de Nesle, the court musician of King Richard 1st (a.k.a. Richard the Lionheart).
Legend has it, that when King Richard was captured and held to ransom by Duke Leopold in Durnstein Castle in Austria, on his way home from the Crusades, it was Blondel who went to find him.
Travelling across Central Europe with his lute and not knowing where his king was held captive, Blondel sung songs outside each castle until he heard a voice singing along from within the walls. It was Richard – and Blondel contributed to the monarch’s release.
The name for John and Terry’s new band was suggested to them by a friend, restaurateur Eugene McCoy, who when he first heard them play said, “Oh, very Blondel.”
John said, “Blondel was an attempt to re-create a past-era and fashion a completely English music.
John admitted he had been inspired by the 1950s television series ‘Robin Hood’, starring Richard Greene. “There were little lute-type songs interspersed throughout the programme…I must have been nine or ten years old and the memories left an impression.”
At one of their early gigs in Sunderland, they were watched by an enraptured sixteen-year-old boy. At the end of the show, he stowed away in their van.
When the band eventually found the boy, he asked if he could be taken on as a roadie. They agreed.
Eventually the boy became an occasional guitarist on stage with them. His name was David Stewart – the Dave Stewart who later founded The Tourists and The Eurythmics and who became a notable record producer.
The Amazing Blondel were joined by guitarist Eddie Baird. Like John, Eddie was from Scunthorpe. The music was described as ‘pseudoelizabethan’. John wrote all of the lyrics using Chaucerian language.
During their live shows, the band played over forty instruments. There was a lot of banter with the audience and much bawdy language.
In September 1970,The Amazing Blondel performed at the very first Glastonbury Festival (then called The Pilton Festival). They appeared alongside T-Rex and The Kinks. The crowd numbered fifteen hundred people. Tickets cost £1 and punters were treated to free milk from Worthy Farm
The festival had a subdued atmosphere as it was held the day after legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix had died.
Unfortunately, Blondel’s style of music did not really suit the festival scene. A later Daily Telegraph article (2011) listed the worst ever performances at Glastonbury – and Blondel were top!
They went on to support Procol Harem, Genesis, Steel-Eye Span, Free and appeared with Cliff Richard in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
The bassist of Free, Andy Fraser, recommended The Amazing Blondel to his friend, Chris Blackwell, who ran Island records. Their first album was eponymous.
Shortly afterwards, they played a concert at a Middlesbrough club. John was to call it his worst ever gig.
It was a freezing November evening andupstairs at the club, on the floor above the stage, a disco was playing at full volume. John and Terry couldn’t hear properly to tune their instruments, so they had to do this in their van.
When they came back inside to start the concert, the venue was full, and the heating was turned up to maximum. During the first song, the instruments went out of tune, so needed to be re-tuned. John admitted later, that although they looked good, the instruments were of poor quality.
By the second song, things had got so bad that John lost his temper. He smashed his lute up on stage – and walked off. In later years, he called it his Pete Townshend moment.
The band left the stage and the gig was abandoned.
John’s management called him the following day and asked what had happened. He described the poor quality of their instruments, explained that they couldn’t afford any better, and said all concerts had to be cancelled.
The Amazing Blondel were invited down to London to meet Island Records’ management. They assumed they were about to be sacked.
Instead, they were driven to meet maestro musical instrument maker, luthier David Rubio.
Rubio asked them what instruments they wanted. When John explained his ideal instruments, David said, “They don’t exist – but I can make them.”
It took Rubio eight weeks to make the bespoke instruments. John described it as, “Two months enforced vacation”.
However, the final results were so fantastic that John used the instruments right until his death. He said (re: his previous lute etc.) “It’s like comparing a Mini to a Rolls Royce.”
The Amazing Blondel went on to release three more albums (‘Evensong’, ‘Fantasia Lindum’ and ‘England’).
On one album, Steve Winwood made a guest appearance and Paul Rodgers (of Free and Bad Company) sang backing vocals.
By 1973, John was burned out. Terry Wincott said the stress and drudgery of constant touring got to each of the members. Terry said, “Amazing Blondel was like a balloon deflating.”
John had a big bust up with the management who wanted them to tour even more, whilst he just wanted to make records.
So, John quit the band and returned to his native Lincolnshire where he married Lizzie. They lived in the village of Ranby.
There, he ran a game shoot and gave guitar lessons for the Worker’s Educational Association (WEA).
Amazing Blondel continued without John until 1979, when they folded, admitting they had been defeated by the popularity of disco music.
John kept playing music, forming another group, John David Gladwin’s Englishe Musicke, using two former Blondel session musicians.
In 1995, The Amazing Blondel reformed, with their original line up (including John), to tour and to record once again.
They released an album in 1997, entitled ‘Restoration’, followed by another called, ‘The Amazing Elsie Emerald’. The group toured constantly for three years, right across Europe and released a live LP – ‘Dead – Live from Transylvania’.
It all came to a sudden halt when Terry Wincott needed a heart bypass operation. The Amazing Blondel were finished.
A biography was written about them by Michael Billington, called ‘Celestial Light’.
Reflecting on the group’s career, John said, “We perpetuated Blondel in how we dressed and how we looked – it was a time of magic.”
Fellow band member, Eddie Baird, was a little more prosaic. “People used to ask us, ‘How would you describe your music?’ We’d say, ‘Well, there’s no use asking us, we didn’t have a clue.”
Eddie died suddenly in 2025.
John died just a few months later. His wife, Lizzie, survives him.
One tribute described John as, “One of England’s oddest geniuses.”
RIP – Recreating Idyllic Past
