While we are ever so glad punk happened, the influx of untalented show-offs it has coaxed into the spotlight is less enjoyable. So, what we see in Johnny Flynn — an accomplished musician with a brain and taste in music — is a treat by comparison. Having grown up listening to his parents’ jazz collection and garnering a cluster of classical musical scholarships, Flynn is proficient in everything from the trumpet and violin to the banjo. “It changed when I went to senior school,” he says. “I had been singing alto and knew I would never get any girls like that so I growled my way into being a dubitable tenor and, at the same time, discovered Bob Dylan.”
     After leaving school, Flynn set up a regular night with fellow musicians. “The idea was from New York’s anti-folk movement — the idea being anything goes.” It was fun for a while, playing with a rotating lineup of likeminded friends, but Flynn soon felt that he didn’t have anything worth telling. So he went out in the world, landing a role in a Far East tour of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. “It was eye-opening. I would act in the early evening, then pick up my guitar and find an open-mic night.” Finally he had an epiphany in Hong Kong: “My grandfather was buried there, and I went looking for his grave and suddenly realized how my experiences are just another chapter.” These days, someone like Johnny Flynn is a rarity, disguising wonder, cynicism, and disdain with the most dulcet of tones.