Jon Mark, born Jon Michael Biurchell, had already made his mark in mid-1960s England through his abilities as a guitarist and arranger. He applied those skills to shaping the material of then-newcomer Marianne Faithfull for both studio work and live settings. Although Mike Leander’s dense productions dominated many of her commercial releases, Mark’s restrained touch surfaced more clearly on her folk-leaning songs, where his less-is-more style suited her narrow yet emotionally direct voice. His guitar also featured prominently on her BBC broadcasts, where he frequently served as her chief accompanist, an arrangement that kept his contributions largely confined to U.K. listeners. During the same period he occasionally teamed with schoolmate Alun Davies, a technically gifted guitarist, and the pair recorded the single “Relax Your Mind” for Deram.
Both musicians later joined Sweet Thursday, an ensemble that drew scant notice at the time but was later viewed as a promising supergroup cut short, owing in part to pianist Nicky Hopkins. Near the end of the 1960s, Mark and Davies entered John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers just as Mayall moved toward jazz, and it was there that Mark met saxophonist Johnny Almond. As often happened in Mayall’s bands, the players discovered they preferred working together to working under Mayall, so Mark and Almond formed Mark-Almond while Davies moved to Cat Stevens’ group and soon built an international profile. The resulting blend of jazz, pop, and rock yielded two albums for Blue Thumb and two LPs for Columbia, earning the group a modest yet loyal American following through the first half of the 1970s.
Mark began his solo career in 1975 with Songs for a Friend, though he continued collaborating with Almond into the early 1980s. From that point he gravitated toward Celtic and new age music and relocated his activities to New Zealand. Ironically, the recordings that reached the largest audience during the 1990s remained his early work with Marianne Faithfull, thanks to a series of CD reissues and the commercial release of her BBC sessions.
