Percussive acoustic virtuoso Jon Gomm has opened up on a recent stage fall that left him with a “smashed elbow”, and very nearly ended his career.
Gomm suffered an intra-articular displaced capitellum during a show at a cinema on February 5, and the incident, the result of a badly lit stage, has potentially cost him his “income, career, life's passion, and expressive voice.”
The dextrous English musician and Ibanez signature artist spends as much time slapping the body of his acoustic guitars as he does tapping the fretboard and twisting tuning pegs mid-song. It’s an eye-catching, boundary-bending playing style that has earned him a cult following, with one of his biggest songs, Passionflower racking up 20 million views on YouTube.
That means having full movement of his ever-flailing arms is paramount to his “superpower.” Now, he’s at a loss.
“I was nearing the end of a lovely concert,” Gomm, posting on his website, says of the show at Cinema Charlot in Setúbal, Portugal. “The stage was the bit in front of the screen.
“I guess it was a strange shape, and the edges weren’t marked. Everything was pitch black, except for two spotlights pointing upwards into my face from the floor. I couldn’t see.”
Gomm says he asked for the lighting arrangement to be changed, but no changes were made, and when he moved to perform one track off-stage, the night came to an abrupt halt.
“I started to edge forwards, feeling for the front of the stage with my bare feet…somehow I missed it and stepped off,” he recalls.
“I can't remember falling, but I must've taken the full weight on my left elbow. I guess it was about a two-metre drop to a concrete floor. I'd learn later that the end of my humerus had snapped almost clean off. My guitar, hanging at my right side, was virtually unharmed.”
Back in Manchester, he showed doctors videos of him playing guitar to underline the importance of a full recovery, undergoing surgery two days after returning to England.
His humerus now has two 28mm titanium screws, and back home the weight of the incident started to weigh heavily.
“I've potentially lost my income, my career, my life's passion, my expressive voice, my connection to the world, my value to the world,” he ponders. “My superpower, my hiding place. My songs.”
He says he's since battled with bouts of depression, while accepting that “it could've been worse, it could've been my neck that broke”.
On the positive side, recovery is going well, with physios optimistic he'll get “nearly everything” back. And though he's set for a shorter UK run than the originally planned 30-date tour this autumn, he's aiming for a return to (hopefully better-lit) stages over the summer. That includes an appearance at Andy McKee’s Musicarium, July 22–26, in Moab, Utah.
Gomm has previously joked that he climbs telegraph poles in the dead of night to steal power cables to aid his wild tuning ideas, and has credited Joni Mitchell for changing the progressive acoustic game forever.
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