See Also FAQ and Martin's Wikipedia entry.

Martin Newell, he's a bit of a Renaissance man you know. I mean how many people do you know who, on a regular basis, write articles for radio, television and the newspapers, poetry for the stage and the page, make music, make beer and then go out and do a gardening round in their home village? 

Martin has been making music for nearly forty years now and while it is fair to say big commercial success has largely eluded him, critical acclaim has been very strong. Those who have been lucky enough to discover him often hold him in lofty esteem along with the likes of Ray Davies and Syd Barrett. Martin's music has a very strong Englishness and perhaps, perversely, it is for that reason that a lot of his fanbase is outside his native land. He has enjoyed a particularly strong following in Germany and was actually mobbed by fans in Japan in the early 90's. Discerning Americans have also taken to him since discovering him through his association with, that other most English of acts, XTC.

In the early 1990's however a rather disillusioned Martin Newell turned  his back on music and endeavoured to make a new career as a pop poet in the style of his heroes John Cooper Clarke and Roger McGough. It was a very difficult time for him until one day he heard one of his poems being read out on air by Radio 1 DJ Mike Read. Then an ex band mate Giles Smith who was working for The Independent a, then new, broadsheet newspaper got one of Martin's poems published in their pop music pages. They asked Martin if he had any more and gradually his presence in the paper grew from occasional to a regular 3 poems a week in their own, themed, columns. This regularity meant Martin could justly call himself the UK's most frequently published living poet. His poems have been anthologised many times, most recentlyand completely in Selected Poems published in 2008. He has also published 3 long form poems and contributed the poetic text to books celebrating the nautical life of his chosen part of the world. It is the Essex and East Anglian theme that is the core of most of Martin's poetry and music. He celebrates this often maligned and sometimes overlooked part of the world and this has lead to collaborations with other East Anglian artists like the wonderful James Dodds and Guy Taplin. This symbiotic work is amongst his very best.

Martin saw a lot of the world in his formative years. The son of an army medic he travelled the globe, often changing schools on a yearly basis. It is possible this had an influence on the young Martin, making him a rather rebellious youngster. He found excitement and release in music and teen culture of the sixties and early seventies. As soon as he possibly could he joined a band. The popular music at the time being glam rock, Martin formed a 'brickies in bacofoil' band called The Mighty Plod and they gigged around the fleshpots and dives of East Anglia and particularly the rather brutal bits of, local garrison town, Colchester, suffering all sorts of indignities which are captured to hilarious effect in Martin's early memoirs 'This Little Ziggy'.

It was with The Cleaners From Venus though that the most celebrated part of Martin's music career began. At the beginning of the 1980's, already disillusioned somewhat with the music establishment he decided to subvert the music industry by making music at home and distributing it himself. He wasn't alone in this idea of course, but didn't actually know anyone else doing it at the time. Martin and his like minded pal, drummer Lol Elliot, called themselves The Cleaners From Venus because it was a funny name and because they worked, to make ends meet, as washer uppers in a Colchester restaurant. On Mondays, their day off, they would record on a little 'hand cranked, mud cooled' mono 4 track. When they had enough songs they would draw a cover for the cassette, photo copy a few up and then  record them up for anyone who wanted one. They advertised themselves in the various fanzines which were very popular back then. The duo even briefly toyed with the idea of swapping their music for things they needed rather than taking money, but reality won out that time. Martin showed a skill for writing sunny little sixties influenced pop masterpieces which were quite different to the output of others working in the same media and The Cleaners began to develop a small but dedicated following. The recordings and playing gradually improving as they went along. 
When Lol decided to move to Bath Martin was joined by a young, piano playing, Cambridge graduate called Giles Smith. Giles was a wannabe pop star and his musicianship and ambition led to The Cleaners getting a recording contract. They recorded 2 albums, the first of which Going To England did quite well and is now regarded as a bit of a lost pop classic, containing many of Martin's most popular songs. Already starting to feel uncomfortable with the more formal pop career, when they were asked to tour Germany, Martin cracked and scurried back to Essex to become a gardener.  Martin came out of musical retirement to form The Brotherhood Of Lizards with his friend Nelson. They made two terrific records in a style which was closer to the early Cleaners tapes than the more polished work of the Giles era records. The Lizards garnered some press attention by touring England by bicycle in what was billed as the first green tour. The Lizards were forced to split when Nelson left to join New Model Army and a rather heartbroken Newell returned to gardening in Wivenhoe and then embarked on his poetry career. 

In the early 90's Martin was lured out of musical retirement by a young man called Kevin Crace who was starting a new record label called Humbug. He arranged for Andy Partridge from XTC to produce Martin's first proper solo album. The Greatest Living Englishman is generally regarded as Martin's  greatest work. A real proper old fashioned album with real songs that you want to play again and again. It sold very well, benefiting from the XTC connection and from extra publicity brought in by Giles Smith's best-selling autobiographical book Lost In Music. Lost In Music in part documents The Cleaners career and is a great book to read if you want an insight into that part of Martin's history.
Martin released a follow up album The Off White Album which is very nearly as good as TGLE but the recording was a lot less fun for Martin and his producer, the wonderful Anglo/French musician Louis Philippe as Humbug was collapsing and money was hard to get hold of. Again a little disillusioned with the whole business Martin concentrated on his poetry career and didn't intend to make music until visitors to this website in 1999 convinced him they were very keen to hear him again. Since then he hasn't looked back. He has released four new critically acclaimed albums and has had his back catalogue anthologised twice by his label Cherry Red . In 2006 actor and singer Richard Shelton recorded 5 jazz tinged songs by Martin at Abbey Road's famous Studio One for his album Top Cat. Martin plays a live music concert at Colchester Arts Centre every year, usually in September, they are not to be missed events with his fans coming from all over the world to attend them. 

Martin is a mercurial, sometimes difficult, but charming individual, humour is at the very centre of everything he does and when things stop being fun that is when Martin is likely to throw it all up in the air and go back to being a gardener. Successive attempts to channel him have met in failure and the exasperation of those who are convinced they could make him rich and famous. 

While it seems unlikely now that Martin will ever be really rich and famous, he is now a regular contributor to national BBC radio arts shows. He is often to be heard on shows such as Off The Page, The Verb and Poetry Please. He appears on local television quite a bit in his native East Anglia. He tours and gigs his poetry around the UK.  Martin is still surprising and delighting his fans into his second half century.