Beverley Martyn, the beloved British singer, has died at the age of 79 | Country music

British singer Beverley Martyn, best known for her relationships with her ex-husband John Martyn and her fitness routine, has died aged 79.

A statement from the family of the late John Martyn announced the news, saying he died peacefully at home on Monday. “Beverley was an amazing woman of inner strength,” he said. She was beautiful, intelligent, cheerful and kind.

Born Beverley Kutner near Coventry in 1947, he moved to London in the middle of 1947 to attend drama school and joined the city’s music scene, which was flourishing in the early 1960s: he learned to play the guitar from the British legend Bert Jansch, an early boyfriend.

He released one single with his band, Levee Breakers, the stridently jangling Babe I’m Leaving You, and also wrote solo songs including Endure Happy New Year, a fuzz-guitar romp written by Randy Newman and featuring pre-Led Zeppelin Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones among the panelists. Page later said: “It was an amazing part, the moment it was filmed I knew he was a great actor and musician.” Another single, Museum, was written by Donovan.

After dating Paul Simon during his formative years in London – “He had Napoleon’s problems. Very smart. Moody, but smart,” is how he assessed her in a Guardian interview in 2014 – she traveled with him to participate in the Monterey pop festival in 1967 (a culturally changing event in which Jimi Hendrix appeared briefly on his album Simon Hendrix Bookends, US and UK No 1.

She became a single mother with a son, Wesley, from another relationship, then met John Martyn in 1969, and soon married him. Immersed in the folk-rock counterculture in the US, they recorded a double album, Stormbringer!, in 1969 at Woodstock, with the Band’s Levon Helm on drums and Joe Boyd producing. It was released in 1970, and later that year he recorded and released another, The Road to Ruin (his opening track Primrose Hill was later replaced by Fatboy Slim).

Beverley also met a British star named Nick Drake, who would take care of her children; they co-wrote a song, Reckless Jane, which Beverley completed in 2014.

She and John had two children together, but after doing her own work, “my career was over”, she said in 2014. “I had my hands full. I did the odd gig with John, and the odd one myself, but I had no future.”

Their marriage fell apart; John, who struggled with alcohol and drug abuse, became fearful and threatening. “There was love there – it was drinking and drugs, very heavy, that changed his appearance, and made life unbearable for everyone around him,” he said later. “I can’t live with someone who kills himself.”

She ran away from the marriage and moved to Brighton, where she duly performed with Loudon Wainwright III and Wilko Johnson, but it wasn’t until her 2014 album, The Phoenix and the Turtle, that she made a strong comeback. “It was a great relief to finally do something of my own accord.

This would be his last set of new material, although in 2018 he released his 1960s classic, Where the Good Times Are.