Bert Jansch

THERE was a time, in the early 1970s during my first years of high school, that the role of the acoustic guitar in all genres of music assumed massive importance.

There had been flashes of acoustic genius among iconic Sixties rock groups like the Beatles, Rolling Stones and The Who. Of more relevance, though, was the acoustic music of folk-based gurus like Bob Dylan and Donovan. But it was probably the groups inspired by English traditional folk music who provided our first real taste of acoustic guitar wizardry. As noted in a previous chapter, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn were the guitarists who shaped the sound of Pentangle. But there was another sort of brilliance lurking within Bert Jansch which we were fortunate to encounter through several solo albums at the time.

Neil Young made a bold and beautiful (pardon me) anti-drugs statement with Needle And The Damage Done, but for us it was Jansch’s Needle Of Death which probably was our first warning signal about the ravages of drug addiction. But, while the lyrics were important, it was Jansch’s unique style of playing the acoustic guitar that set him way, way apart from anything else happening at the time. Never before had we heard someone conjure up such incredible sounds on a humble six-string. And while some would say his voice is not particularly good, it did have a quality that was ideally suited to the sort of blues-folk music he almost certainly pioneered.

On an early album – whose name I hope to rediscover shortly – he produced the instrumental Angie, which for a time became THE piece of acoustic music against which any aspirant guitarist could measure his or her proficiency. There were also other more simple ballads with beautiful, infectious melodies, like the wonderful Strolling Down The Highway.

But let us now try to discover how Jansch became arguably the greatest folk guitarist in the modern era.

The first significant “new” fact I discover from the faithful Wikipedia is that he was in fact Scottish. Herbert Jansch was born in Glasgow on November 3, 1943. Noting his role as a founding member of Pentangle, the website says in the 1960s he was “heavily influenced by the guitarist Davey Graham and folk singers such as Anne Briggs”. It says he is “best known as an innovative and accomplished acoustic guitarist”, although he is also a singer and songwriter. With at least 25 albums under his belt, he “toured extensively” from the 1960s and into the 21^st century. Having influenced the likes of Jimmy Page and Neil Young, he earned a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2001 BBC Folk Awards. I’m just surprised it took them that long to acknowledge his talents.

In its detailed biography, Wikipedia says Jansch was brought up in Edinburgh, not Glasgow. As a teenager he acquired a guitar and visited a local folk club. Among those he met there was Jill Doyle, Davey Graham’s half sister, “who introduced him to the music of Big Bill Broonzy, Pete Seeger, Brownie McGhee and Woody Guthrie.”

He became a full-time musician and spent two years playing one-night stands in British folk clubs, during which he was influenced by the likes of Martin Carthy and Ian Campbell, as well as Anne Briggs, who taught him songs like Blackwaterside and Reynardine, that he would later use in his solo recording career.

This was the early 1960s, and the age of the hip troubadour was being born. Jansch hitchhiked around Europe from 1963 to 1965, surviving on what he earned as a busker and during the odd performance in bars and cafes. He had married Lynda Campbell, then just 16. This was done mainly to enable her to travel with him, as she was too young to own a passport. She split up with him after two months, and he eventually returned to the UK after catching dysentery in Tangiers.

So what does a talented musician in his early twenties do in the mid-1960s after earning his dues on the road? He cuts a record.

With Dylan and Donovan the most popular pioneers, folk music was the rage in the mid-Sixties, and Wikipedia says Jansch’s first solo album, Bert Jansch, sold 150 000 copies. How did this happy state of affairs occur? Having returned to London, Jansch met engineer and producer Bill Leader. At his home they recorded Jansch’s music on a reel tape recorder – and Leader sold the tape for ₤100 to Transatlantic Records. The album, Bert Jansch – surely the one we first got to hear – was produced directly from that reel tape. Wikipedia says the protest song, Do You Hear Me Now, was popularised by Donovan on his EP Universal Soldier. It is a song I recall well. The album also included Needle Of Death. As with Dononvan, Wikipeidia says Jansch was also sometimes seen as a “British Bob Dylan”, but it notes that Jansch’s work has “always been fundamentally instrument-driven, unlike Dylan’s which is primarily lyric-based”. My sentiments entirely.

Two more albums followed in quick succession – It Don’t Bother Me, which I don’t think I encountered, and the very familiar Jack Orion, which contained his first recording of Blackwaterside which, Wikipeida says, became Black Mountain Side under Led Zeppelin’s watch.

Inevitably, Jansch would meet up in London with John Renbourn, with whom he would share a flat in Kilburn, Davey Graham and, of course, Paul Simon, who was in the UK learning about folk from the people at its source.

The English folk scene must have been at its height, with these and other musicians playing at various London clubs. Wikipedia says Jansch and Renbourn often played together, “developing their own intricate interplay between the two guitars, often referred to as Folk Baroque”. In 1966 they recorded an album, Bert and John, but by 1967 had tired of the late-night folk club routine and became resident musicians at the now defunct Horseshoe pub in Tottenham Court Road. Singers Sandy Denny and Jacqui McShee were also part of the scene, with McShee performing with the two guitarists. Throw in string bassist Danny Thompson and Tery Cox and Pentangle was born.

And in 1968 Jansch married Heather Sewell, who became a well-known sculptor, and inspired several songs for his album of that year, Birthday Blues.

I intend to return to these pivotal albums from the Sixties, but let’s first trace Jansch’s flight path through the ensuing decades.

Between 1968 and 1973, Jansch devoted most of his time to touring with Pentangle and writing songs for their albums. However, he still managed to fit the solo album, Rosemary Lane, in in 1971. Again, Bill Leader recorded the tracks on a portable tape recorder at Jansch’s cottage in Ticehurst, Sussex, over several months.

When Pentange split in 1973, says Wikipedia, Jansch and Heather moved to a farm in Wales, with Bert temporarily withdrawing from the concert circuit. And then, sadly, after two years of farming, Wikipedia says Jansch “left his wife and family and returned to music”, which seems to imply that staying them and doing the music scene was impossible. Maybe any bluesman will tell you the two are mutually exclusive. Bizarrely, they only divorced in 1988.

By the late Seventies, of course, Jansch and Pentangle were largely just happy memories for us, as New Wave music and apartheid-induced military conscription intervened. But for Jansch, the musical struggle would have to continue if he was to survive. I have heard from a mate who quit South Africa to avoid military conscription in the late 1970s, and returned during the UDF-led uprising of the late 1980s, that he encountered Jansch at a club in London in the mid-1980s and he seemed somewhat down and out. Certainly he was no longer a major performer though clearly there would have been diehard fans who’d always support him. So what did become of him as he entered his thirties and forties?

It seems, reading the Wikipedia account, that his life did indeed become a struggle. He cut the album, A Rare Conundrum, in 1977 with a new set of musicians, and then formed the band, Conundrum, which spent six months touring Australia, Japan and the US. After the tour, the group split up, and Jansch recorded Heartbreak in the US with Albert Lee. Certainly, these albums must be collectors’ items, but I was oblivious of their existence.

Jansch’s Avocet album, initially released in Denmark, he rates as among his favourites from his own recordings. But clearly the money wasn’t rolling in, and Bert Jansch’s Guitar Shop in Fulham, which specialised in hand-built guitars, “was not a commercial success and closed after two years”.

Inevitably, there were plans to reform Pentangle. This happened in 1980, and they toured Italy and Australia before Renbourn left in 1983. As personnel changed, Jansch and McShee were left as the only original members.

And, you guessed it, the evil force of alcohol was about to exact its pound of flesh. Wikipedia says Jansch “had always been a heavy drinker”, and in 1987 he became so ill he was rushed to hospital, where a doctor told him to either give up booze or give up on life. He opted for life, and in 1988 together with Rod Clements brought out the album Leather Landerette.

And, as the Nineties rolled along, he continued to perform and record, celebrating his sixtieth birthday in 2003 with a concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. In 2005, says Wikipedia, he teamed up with Davey Graham for a small number of concerts in the UK. But the tour was postponed to enable Jansch to undergo major heart surgery in late 2005. He recovered and released the album, The Black Swan, in 2006, with Beth Orton and Bevendra Banhart as guests.

In 2006 he received the Mojo Merit Award, where Elton John, another recipient, said he and songwriter Bernie Taupin used to listen to early Jansch albums.

Before looking at Jansch’s early albums – the ones we grew up with – there is what should be a fascinating section on Wikipedia about the sort of music he played. It says he was influenced, as noted earlier, by folkies Anne Briggs and AL Lloyd, jazz musos Charlie Mingus and John Coltrane, Indian musician Ravi Shankar, and the likes of Renbourn and Julian Bream. From these, he “distilled his own unmistakable guitar style”.

Technically speaking, Wikipedia says “some of his songs feature a basic clawhammer style of right-hand playing but these are often distinguished by unusual chord voicings or by chords with added notes”. It cites Needle Of Death as a case were “a simple picking style” included “several chords … decorated with added ninths”.

Says Wikipedia: “Another characteristic feature is his ability to hold a chord in the lower strings whilst bending an upper string – often bending up from a semitone below a chord note. These can be heard clearly on songs such as Reynardine where the bends are from the diminished fifth to the perfect fifth. Like many guitarists, string bends are a feature of his work and are often used to create notes which are just slightly sharp or slightly flat (by bending a little less than a semitone), creating the impression of a modality that does not belong to a diatonic scale.” It is technical stuff, but it helps one appreciate that this was someone who really knew his stuff.

He often, we discover, introduced “unusual time signatures”, as in Light Flight from the Pentangle album Basket of Light.

Jansch’s acoustic guitar playing has “influenced a range of well-known musicians”, says Wikipedia, with Jimmy Page saying that “at one point I was absolutely obsessed with Bert Jansch. When I first hear that LP (1965), I couldn’t believe it. It was so far ahead of what everyone else was doing. No one in America could touch that.”

Other accolades have come from the likes of Neil Young and Mike Oldfield, with Young saying Jansch did for acoustic guitar music was Jimi Hendrix did for the electric guitar. Oldfield said Jansch’s version of the Graham tune Angie was his favourite.

Interestingly, while Jansch pronounces his surname with the conventional J sound, two of sons, Kieron and Adam, have adopted the Yansh pronunciation.

But what’s in a name? It is the music that’s important, and back then in the late 1960s, and early 1970s, Jansch was one of the key inspirations to our generation. As I battled even to tune my cheapo acoustic guitar at the age of 14 (1970), I could only sit and listen in awe as Bert Jansch, seemingly effortlessly, created whole worlds of sound using just those six strings.

The Best of Bert Jansch (Shanacie)

Though Jansch’s debut solo album, simply titled Bert Jansch, was released in 1965, I think we got into it about the same time as we discovered Pentange – in the late Sixties and early Seventies.

That first album was certainly part of our upbringing. Not only is the cover familiar – it as a blue strip to the left of a black-and-white picture of Jansch with a guitar – but the opening track was a personal favourite: Strolling Down The Highway.

Fortunately, I have acquired a Jansch compilation album which features this uplifting song. Unfortunately, Wikipedia has very little on the album, but obviously the track listing is pivotal. Other songs I recall from those early days are, Oh How Your Love Is Strong, Needle Of Death, Do You Hear Me Now and Angi, although all the others would no doubt come streaming back were I to hear them.

As I mentioned earlier, Jack Orion, from 1966, was also very much part of our upbringing. Recorded in Camden, London, I hope to discover several of these tracks are on that compilation CD, including the epic, 10-minute traditional ballad, Jack Orion, which, says Wikipedia, “tells of a fiddler and his servant’s infidelity”. Among those who accompany him on some of the songs is John Renbourn.

Bert Jansch

Gordon Bennett! I’ve just listened to 25 tracks from The Best of Bert Jansch (Shanacie), and apart from the wonderful memories many of the familiar songs brought back for me, what this experience did was make me realise that that comparison quoted earlier about Jansch being the acoustic guitar equivalent of Jimi Hendrix on electric guitar is not exaggerated. Hendrix seemed able to make any sound he set his mind to using electric guitar wizardry. Jansch, on a totally different, but parallel, aural plane, seems to have absolute control over the acoustic guitar. Just when you expect him to inject certain notes, there they are, but performed beyond your wildest dreams, the embellishments extraordinary in their complexity. How one man on one guitar can create simultaneously those rolling blues-folk bass lines and then integrate the melodies from the upper registers is beyond me.

Despite the many websites around, I have battled to find the full track lists of all his early albums, so am unable to pin down where all these songs fit in. But many are as part of my psyche as my own thoughts, engendering a wonderful sense of a return to the very person I was in my early to mid-teens, when folk music was the apotheosis of the musical experience. I’ll not follow the sequence of the tracks on the album, but rather leap in with the songs off that pivotal first Jansch solo album, Bert Jansch, from way back in 1966. And is any song, whether by Dylan or Donovan or anyone else, more symbolic, or emblematic, of that troubadour spirit which characterised the early hippie era than Jansch’s Strolling Down The Highway? The finger-picking style is bright and breezy, with Jansch somehow integrating great “lead” guitar where the rest of us would battle just to get the chords together. This has to be the classic folk song of the Sixties. It probably borrowed strongly from his experiences hitch-hiking through Europe as a young, free-spirited man, bent on seeking his fortune, guitar in hand. “Strolling down the highway / I’m gonna to get there my way / Dusk ’till dawn I’m walking / Can you hear my guitar rockin’? / While I stroll on down, on down the highway.” This is Jansch at his folksy best, using the guitar more as an accompaniment than as a lead instrument, yet at all times one is aware that the guitar is being played with supreme competence. “People think I’m a crazy / But lord above I ain’t lazy / The sun shines all day long / The garlic’s far too strong / While I stroll on down, on down the highway / While I stroll on down, on down the highway.” The reference to garlic in that verse suggests, does it not, France, or possibly Italy. “The cars won’t stop for no one / They’d all think your just a rollin’ bum / They think you are a spy / Gonna shoot them as a they go by / No, the cars they won’t stop, won’t stop for no one / Strolling down the highway / I’m gonna to get there my way / Dusk ’till dawn I’m walking / Can you hear my guitar rockin’? / While I stroll on down, on down the highway.” I did a little YouTube visit to this song. Sadly, though the song is supposed to be by Jansch, his face is not shown, just the amazing guitarwork, while you can hear an older Jansch voice singing. Still, it gives one some insight into the consummate ease with which he played. Here, interestingly, I noticed he used a capo tasto on I think it was the fourth fret. Despite that he uses the remainder of the fret-board effortlessly, while keeping those bass notes humming along.

The next track from that debut album on the Best of Bert Jansch is the incredible Angi, without an “e”. Written by Davey Graham, this was another of those songs which characterised the folk era of the sSxties. There were myriads who tried to play this complex piece, but only a handful who could do so – and it was Jansch’s version which immortalised it for our generation. A pulsating bass line, some wonderful flourishes where rigid chords are struck, sudden changes of tempo, intricate sets of oh-so-subtle notes, and the whole thing hung together in the hands of a maestro. That is what Jansch offers: a master-class in acoustic guitar playing.

I didn’t immediately register the name Running, Running From Home when perusing the track list of the album, Bert Jansch. But as soon as I heard it on this “best of” album, I knew it so, so well. Like Strolling Down The Highway, it is an iconic Jansch folk song which captures the spirit of the age. Again, Jansch picks a wonderful melody, typically filled with grace notes, but also unobtrusive, enabling one to realise and appreciate that he had a superb folk-singing voice. Remember, the accent was on the second word. “Runnin’ runnin’ from home, / Breakin’ ties that you’d grown / Catchin’ dreams from the clouds.” I trust he wrote the song, which is pure poetry. “The city sounds burn your soul, / Turn your head to the cries / Of loneliness in the night.” How’s this verse? “Just like a fly when it’s caught, / The spider soon takes it’s prey, / Spins a dance round your heart.” I like the three-line stanzas, in each of which a picture is painted, but no finality is really reached. “Give me your beauty and age, / A pleasure pleasing my mind, / Your heart will shatter and fall.” Or the hankerings of young men: “Step on pavements so old, / Cast a glance at the young girls / A-making their way.” And the reflections of a love-lorn lad: “The passing image of you / Reflects a pain in my heart / And disappears in a crowd.” Then that opening stanza, so beautiful it more than bears repeating: “Runnin’ runnin’ from home, / Breakin’ ties that you’d grown / Catchin’ dreams from the clouds.”

One could almost be satisfied with these few Jansch songs. They’re enough to justify any number of awards. But of course they were just the beginning. Reference was made earlier to a protest song, Do You Hear Me Now, popularised by Donvan. It is not on this “best of” album, but it was another classic from the Bert Jansch debut. I remember vividly the anger with which Jansch performed this, his guitar echoing that emotion and in a way doing acoustically what Hendrix would do electronically on Machine Gun and Star-Spangled Banner. This was the height of the cold war, with a nuclear holocaust always imminent. So what did Jansch have to say about it? “Freedom fighters speak with your tongues / Sing with the might of the wind / In your lungs, do you hear me now? / My mama told me, papa said it too / Son, the world’s divided and you know / Your cause is true, do you hear me now?” How I’d love to hear this again: “Can you see those mushrooms seed and burst / Spreading through our valleys breeding hunger / Breeding thirst. Do you hear me now?” I don’t think we, living on the southern tip of Africa, quite comprehended just how immediate the sense of danger was in the UK, Europe, the US and indeed in the then Soviet Union. “Snowing in the winter, blossoms in the spring / If they drop the bomb in the summertime / It don’t mean a dog-gone thing / Do you hear me now? / Do you hear me now?” Then that first verse repeated: “Freedom fighters speak with your tongues / Sing with the might of the wind / In your lungs, do you hear me now? / Do you hear me now?”

Jansch’s sublime finger-picking style is again to the fore on that absolute classic, Needle Of Death, also from this debut solo album. There is a sense of impending doom in the bass notes on this song, where again the guitar works miracles no ordinary folkie could conceivably hope to emulate. But what precisely were the words he sang to a younger generation bent on destroying themselves with drugs? I remember as a young teen listening to this and finding it spoke directly to where I was. I was living a “troubled young life”, but fortunately, beyond marijuana (or dagga), never got into those killer drugs. Imagine that beautiful guitar behind Jansch’s ultimate folk-singer voice: “When sadness fills your heart / And sorrow hides the longing to be free / When things go wrong each day / You fix your mind to ’scape your misery / Your troubled young life / Had made you turn / To a needle of death.” At this age you’re going through a non-stop existential crisis. Who, exactly, are you? Why does your brother/mother/sister/father/aunt/grandmother/grandfather/teacher hate you? “How strange, your happy words / Have ceased to bring a smile from everyone / How tears have filled the eyes / Of friends that you once had walked among / Your troubled young life / Had made you turn / To a needle of death.” Then this poetic description of the self-destructive act: “One grain of pure white snow / Dissolved in blood spread quickly to your brain / In peace your mind withdraws / Your death so near your soul can’t feel no pain / Your troubled young life / Had made you turn / To a needle of death.” And then the aftermath, the recriminations: “Your mother stands a’cryin’ / While to the earth your body’s slowly cast / Your father stands in silence / Caressing every young dream of the past / Your troubled young life / Had made you turn / To a needle of death.” And then these reflections on man’s cravings for something more from this life: “Through ages, man’s desires / To free his mind, to release his very soul / Has proved to all who live / That death itself is freedom for evermore / And your troubled young life / Will make you turn / To a needle of death.” It was a sobering message, majestically delivered.

But this was the popular-music side of Bert Jansch. As with Hendrix, it is among the more esoteric, in Jansch’s case, purely instrumental, work that the true genius emerges. While these folk songs are amazing, beautiful works, Jansch as a guitarist, plain and simple, is on another planet. This “best of” album is replete with examples that will blow your mind. From that debut album is Casbah, which contains delicate flourishes of notes on the upper strings alongside a thumping bass line, as two melodies interrelate. It is uncanny to think this is all done on one guitar. Sure two hands on a piano one can understand, but this…

Also from the Bert Jansch album is the vortex of sound called Alice’s Wonderland, whose chords I recognised instantly once it started playing. It is impossible to describe just what an extraordinary piece of music this is. There is something immensely satisfying about the sound of an acoustic guitar properly played. Jansch plays in such a way the sound goes straight to your soul, striking chords within that one can crave to have struck with a great and real hunger.

Box of Love, The Bert Jansch Samper, Vol II

We also grew up with the album, Box of Love, The Bert Jansch Samper, Vol II, from 1972. It has a lovely cover designed to resemble a match box, in black, red and yellow, with a dark grey strip of “carbon” along the bottom. On this album I first got into Peregrinations, another short instrumental but one which, heard afresh on this CD, I now realise is one of his most sublime efforts. You ears just savour the sound!

Jack Orion

From the album, Jack Orion, and also on Box of Love, is The Gardener, which heard on this CD is yet another superb piece. In this case he hum-sings – dai-do-dai-da-di-daa – alongside some more amazing guitarwork: pure ear candy!

Birthday Blues

My interest was piqued, when I read earlier on, about his tribute to his first wife, the sculptor Heather Sewell, titled Miss Heather Rosemary Sewell, off the Birthday Blues album from 1968. This takes one into an English country garden. Light, chipper, bird-like notes spring to life, charged with springtime energy and summer growth. There is a lovely infusion of a double bass or cello, both plucked and bowed, and a wide range of time adjustments to keep one captivated.

Jansch perfected the plucking of the thinner strings against the fretboard to give pluckier, bolder notes, while also “bending” notes to suit requirements by forcing the string up the fretboard. These devises are most evident on a short track, titled Blues, on which he is accompanied by subtle bass and drums.

I could wax lyrical virtually throughout the Jansch oeuvre, but I think I have covered some of the principal works in his early career, when the world first took notice of this talented, and incredibly unorthodox guitarist, who made an indelible mark on the history of modern music.