Last modified on Tue 23 Mar 2021 14.35 EDT
In 1971 John Russell left the remote Romney Marshes of Kent for London’s booming avant-arts scene as a 17-year-old blues and Frank Zappa fan, and was soon playing the guitar in such unrecognisable ways that even his contrarian Mothers of Invention hero might have raised an eyebrow.
Russell, who has died aged 66 of cancer, was the polar opposite of a guitar star - an obdurate original in the spiky mould of his influential teacher and mentor Derek Bailey, and in later years an energetic promoter of genre-evading free improvisation.
For almost five decades, he performed with prominent players from inside and outside jazz, including the saxophone virtuoso Evan Parker and the drummer John Stevens, the multi-instrumentalist and composer Steve Beresford, the lyrical jazz trumpeter Henry Lowther, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, and jazz and contemporary music edge-cutters from across Europe’s improv scenes, as well as, in his later years, in Japan.