by Colin Harper
Two months earlier Bert had also failed to appear at the Newport Folk Festival itself. Nat Joseph had flown to the States to negotiate the appearance and a licensing deal with Vanguard for Bert’s recordings. No explanation was given for the Newport deal falling through, but the first of three Jansch albums specially compiled for the US market7 soon appeared on Vanguard. Entitled Lucky Thirteen, it was a twelve-track distillation of his first two albums. Bert’s reputation in the States had already been growing on the basis of import albums and namedrops from Donovan and others. The scene was now set for his first North American tour, and it was reported in MM to be ‘99.9 per cent certain’ that Bert and John would be touring clubs and colleges on the East Coast and in Canada from 16 October to 30 November.
‘It’ll be down to audiences of thousands if I do it,’ says Jansch, speaking generally to Karl Dallas in July 1966 on what were then only rumours of an American tour. ‘It rather frightens me. To do a tour you’ve really got to go through the mill.’8 Bert was taking it easier after the insane pace of the previous year: ‘I was doing five nights a week but that’s too much. It stops me from working on new songs. Now it’s all down to work, shopping, decorating the flat, all sorts of wild things like that.’ Then, with no real explanation, the American tour was cancelled. ‘The arrangements didn’t suit me,’ was all Bert said at the time, ‘and anyway I didn’t figure they’d let me in now that I’ve signed a petition about Vietnam.’9
By the summer of 1966, Bert was the veteran of at least seven concerts, mostly organised by Bruce Dunnet and all of them multi-artist affairs with his name rising gradually up the billing. He had recently endorsed the ‘Folksingers Committee For Peace In Vietnam’, another of Dunnet’s many guises. On 1 August 1966, on a bill topped by the Dubliners, Bert Jansch took the stage directly after Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger in the committee’s first ‘Peace In Vietnam’ concert at London’s Unity Theatre. If nothing else, the concert brought under one roof all sections of the folk community and introduced, in Karl Dallas’s words, ‘an interesting new girl singer called Sandy Denny’. Later that month, with the Beatles’ Revolver topping the mainstream UK album chart, Bert And John and Jack Orion were at Nos 1 and 2 in the Melody Maker folk chart, compiled from sales at the major specialist stores. The time was now right for Bert to try the concert halls on his own.
‘I will never forgive him,’ says Bruce Dunnet. ‘We formed a company, Jansch Enterprises Limited, because it was beginning to look as though he was going to make a lot of money. My wife, who is not a Communist, agreed that she would run the financial side of the business for Bert to protect him from rapacious fuckers, that was my social attitude. My wife registered the company with £100. She had one share, Bert had one share, I had no shares. I wasn’t a money-grubber. We formed a company, he agreed, then he disappeared. I could have sued him, but what’s the point?’ The full story of Bert’s fall-out with Bruce Dunnet, his manager in all but name, may never be known. Although the company registration document of Jansch Enterprises Ltd. (signed by Jansch) survives, it is undated. The timescale of the situation is probably October 1966 to March 1967, the backdrop Bert’s remarkably successful transition from clubs to concerts and the consequent attention of bigger fish in the music management business. Complicating matters further, just as his solo stature had risen to unprecedented heights, Bert was forming a band.
The facts of Bert’s watershed concerts are simple: performing at the 860-seater St Pancras Town Hall on 15 October (a Bruce Dunnet promotion) and two weeks later at the 350-seater Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre (a Nat Joseph promotion), he not only made history as the first British soloist of the folk revival to attempt a solo concert, but sold out both venues. At the end of November he topped the bill on a benefit concert prompted by the Aberfan mining disaster, when a slagheap engulfed a Welsh primary school, and in December he headlined another ‘Peace In Vietnam’ concert. In the first three months of 1967 there were at least seven more concerts including an unprecedented tour, organised by Dunnet, of four major venues: Birmingham Town Hall, Glasgow Concert Hall, Manchester Free Trade Hall and Newcastle City Hall.
Described briefly in the Melody Maker as a ‘triumphal progress’, a few flyers, a couple of photographs from Newcastle, a press release describing Bert as ‘a master of the casual presentation so loved by folk fans’ and a set list from Birmingham are all that remain of this ground-breaking achievement. Dutifully recorded by a fan, Richard Lewis, the set list provides a unique insight into Bert’s repertoire of the period. Never before had he had to assemble such a large body of work for a guaranteed listening, paying audience. Whatever they expected, Bert had a wealth of new material to be heard. In a thirty-two-song performance, in two hour-long sets, Bert featured only ten songs which had thus far appeared on his records. There were a handful of unnamed instrumentals and blues covers dating back to his Edinburgh days, and up to five notated titles which may indeed be otherwise unknown Jansch originals.10 But Bert left the material that can be identified as his work-in-progress for the second set: seven songs that would shortly be recorded for his next LP, Nicola.11
Bruce Dunnet remains justly proud of the tour. Bert had become a national force by word-of-mouth alone: ‘He got over a thousand people at Manchester,’ says Bruce. ‘Bert Jansch, solo and un-fucking-known. Now, pardon me, but who created that audience? And this is what down-hearted me when he said he’d got a manager. It was my time, my effort, my money that went into promoting him. Booking those halls was a commitment financially, and he turned his back on me.’
The ‘manager’ that Dunnet refers to was Gerry Bron, a member of the family that owned Bron Orchestral Music Services in Oxford Street. Here, memories become irreconcilable and the evidence confusing. To Bert’s mind, he had only ever been courted by Gerry Bron: ‘I remember going up there to the Bron agency and chatting to Gerry and his wife Gillian but beyond that it never got anywhere. No contracts were ever signed.’ From 3 December 1966, however, adverts began appearing in the MM declaring Gerry Bron to have ‘Exclusive Representation’ of Bert Jansch. A press release authored by Bruce Dunnet for the Birmingham concert on 18 January 1967 refers to Bron as Bert’s current manager. Bruce himself cannot explain this, recalling his association with Bert ending dramatically on the very day he was told of the supposedly formalised relationship with Bron: ‘They’d had this discussion, and Bert had agreed that Gerry Bron should be his manager. Bert Jansch came to my flat and asked would I be his concert promoter because now he had a manager. He had never wanted a manager before. And I said, “Bert, you can go out the door or out the window. I don’t want to talk to you any more.” And that was the last time I saw him.’
Bert can only recall the managerial machinations of 1967 in a generalised blur, involving not only Dunnet and Bron but also Jo Lustig, a sharp-talking New Yorker who had previously wrested Julie Felix from Dunnet’s management and was to do so again with Bert. It seems clear, however, that this arrangement was only confirmed in the early weeks of 1968. To Bert’s recollection, Bron was even then still an option. As to the confrontation with Dunnet, he simply cannot recall it.
‘I don’t think I would simply up and leave anybody like that,’ he says. ‘I don’t know who approached who with Gerry Bron, but Gerry wasn’t interested in the band. That was the choice: to go with Gerry solo or go with the band. I was in a bit of a dilemma about the whole thing. One thing I would say about Bruce, though: he didn’t lose any money through me. I did the concerts and filled them up with people. We didn’t have a contract that bound me to him. If I wanted to change direction I could, and I did because he wasn’t that interested in the Pentangle which was my main concern at the time. The only point which Bruce could possibly feel aggrieved about is that I went with the band and eventually signed with Jo Lustig. I certainly didn’t turn my back on him, because he was still running the Horseshoe for a period. This company certificate – I don’t remember anything about it. He probably turned up one day and said, “He
re, sign this.” I didn’t know the mechanics or structure of how everything was placed in the music business then – like managers, record companies. To me they were all just one thing. As far as I could see, Bruce was helping. I asked him to run this club at the Horseshoe and he did. He was never out of pocket because of me, that’s for sure.’
In addition to the solo concert tour Bruce had set up a Sunday night club, designed as a regular London platform for Bert Jansch, at the Horseshoe Hotel, opposite Tottenham Court Road tube station. The hotel’s function room was a plush, 400-seater venue which had only rarely been used for folksong events. Bruce believes the journalist Robin Denselow brought Gerry Bron to the Horseshoe, but Denselow recalls nothing of the matter. In any event, the ‘Exclusive Representation’ ads had been appearing for some weeks before the club opened. Dunnet has perhaps a tendency to believe in conspiracies, but all that can be said for certain is that around March 1967 his professional association with Bert Jansch came to an end. By the time they parted company, and due at least partly to Dunnet’s promotional work, Bert had increased his profile and commercial standing substantially and was in possession of a thriving Sunday night club in the centre of London. He was also in possession, against the better judgement of Gerry Bron, Nat Joseph and any number of sceptical fans, of a five-piece band.
Back in March 1966, Dorris Henderson had returned to the States for a while. Possibly John would have asked Dorris to help out on Another Monday had she been around, but instead he had asked Jacqui McShee. Jacqui had been active on the folk scene since 1960. Performing initially at the Olive Tree in Croydon, and later on advertised dates and floor spots in the London clubs, Jacqui had been part of a duo with guitarist Chris Ayliffe. ‘Chris worked in a music shop in Balham, and he knew Bert and John,’ says Jacqui. ‘It took me years to realise it but he introduced me to Bert and then John. I think he did it on purpose.’12 By the end of 1965, Jacqui was running a club at the Red Lion in Sutton with her sister Pam: Bert and John were both booked, for a top-whack £8 each, and the friendship established.
After recording Another Monday, John wondered if Jacqui might fancy doing some gigs together. ‘At that time he and Bert were at St Edmund’s Terrace,’ she recalls. ‘It was a great flat, always lots of people there. I started going there quite a lot, working on stuff with John. He and Bert were playing together anyway, and they decided they wanted to start up a club and we would play there every week and have other people along to play.’13 John & Jacqui’s first advertised gig as a duo was at the Cousins in August 1966. They performed together thereafter, although Jacqui continued to run the club in Sutton and hang on to her day job. Renbourn, similarly, was still performing as a duo with Bert and as a soloist and was also following Bert as a solo concert artist. With the popularity of both players now confirmed as beyond the capacities of any folk club, it was inevitable that the musical explorations begun on Bert And John, Jack Orion and Another Monday would be taken further. Jazz, blues, traditional songs, original material, medieval influences, unusual time signatures and potentially three vocalists – all the ingredients necessary to create, in theory, the front line of a truly unique and outstanding group. But where could they find a rhythm section? The answer was: ‘straight out of somebody else’s band’. And that somebody was Duffy Power.
On 5 November 1966 the Marquee played host to the first and last public appearance of Duffy Power’s Nucleus. The band comprised Duffy on vocals and harmonica, John McLaughlin on electric guitar, Danny Thompson on string bass and Terry Cox on drums. Thompson and Cox had worked with numerous names on the London jazz scene but had most recently been part of Alexis Korner’s circle, working with him as a trio on Five O’Clock Club and in his residency at the Cousins. But they had also been involved in an extraordinary series of demo recordings with Duffy Power and his song-writing partner John McLaughlin. A guitar prodigy from Yorkshire, McLaughlin had known Duffy since 1963 when both were doing package tours of Gaumont cinemas – Duffy as pop star and McLaughlin as sideman to Jet Harris & Tony Meehan. For all his virtuosity, McLaughlin admired Duffy’s raw talent and by 1966 they went back a fair way. ‘I took him down the Cousins once,’ says Duffy. ‘One guy said we sounded like Junior Wells and Buddy Guy! It was just me and him. But he didn’t want to know about that scene.’
Only four of the remarkable R&B/jazz fusion recordings that Duffy and McLaughlin recorded, with various rhythm players including Thompson and Cox, surfaced at the time: a Duffy’s Nucleus single in Britain and an EP in France. It was a pioneering sound on fragile foundations: ‘Duffy’s Nucleus wound up because I was totally freaked out and paranoid,’ says Duffy. ‘Exposed to the possibility of fame at an early age, I became disconnected from reality. I was very insecure, and drug-taking didn’t help.14 I wasn’t looking for the gigs, and when I turned round and had a chance to book some gigs and start something they were all gone. I brought them together, but they were running around picking up jazz gigs for themselves. It was as simple as that.’
During the period of his illness, Duffy found solace in the unconditional camaraderie of the Cousins. ‘Duffy should have been one of the greatest heroes this country has had in the blues game,’ said Thompson years later. ‘A lot of people, phenomenal musicians, don’t get the credit they deserve.’15 McLaughlin and Thompson recruited sax/flute/clarinet player Tony Roberts and simply carried on as the Danny Thompson Trio, specialising in modern jazz standards and holding together, in tandem with its members’ other projects, well into 1968.16. Danny, meanwhile, had been asked along to the Horseshoe by John Renbourn, whom he knew from working on TV shows together and from the Cousins scene. He jammed a few tunes with Bert, John and Jacqui, enjoyed himself and came along the next week with his favourite rhythm partner, Terry Cox. And now they were five.
Beyond the conclusion of five individuals ‘drifting together’, the beginnings of the group that would come to call itself the Pentangle are obscure. Rehearsals took place at the end of 1966 with a bass player and drummer whose names are not recalled, while Renbourn believes that drummer John Marshall played some of the early Horseshoe gigs before moving on to Soft Machine. But by the Horseshoe’s fifth week, 5 March 1967, press ads that had initially named only Bert, John and Jacqui were now including Danny and Terry. Bruce Dunnet, still on the scene, was advertising the Sunday sessions in Melody Maker, the Morning Star, Tribune and the Observer.
John Renbourn was the visionary behind the new band: ‘I guess I was the catalyst in getting all these people together,’ he concedes. ‘But there wasn’t one mind dictating. It was Bert’s idea to get the band to play in a regular place, to knock it into shape.’ There was very quickly a shared feeling of excitement about what their union could achieve. ‘It was very much John’s thing,’ says Wizz Jones, a regular guest at the Horseshoe. ‘If you spoke to Bert about it he’d always shrug it off and say, “Oh, I’m only in it for the beer.” But in fact he was equally excited about the whole thing.’ No one had anything to prove and nothing was in the balance. This was purely a Sunday night get-together: if the group failed or fell apart, everyone had their ‘day job’ to go back to and nobody could possibly hold the experiment against them. Which was just as well, as the first night of the club had been a disaster.
‘I went there with my wife,’ says Pete Frame. ‘I thought it was a bloody shambles. There was absolutely no cohesion between any of the instruments or any of the voices and they obviously had no idea how to play electric guitars. The drums were (a) too loud and (b) not in sympathy with the music at all. Bruce Dunnet was there, and whatever gig you went to where he was the promoter he always put a downer on the atmosphere by being officious. This time he was making a scene with some poor innocent guy who happened to be sitting a seat reserved for John Renbourn’s wife. He was always complaining about something.’
Before long, however, the magic that was to create a wholly new and intoxicating sound, and which would eventually provide the group with its ticket to critical and commerc
ial success, clicked into place: ‘We started off with traditional songs that John or I knew, Bert’s songs, just anything,’ says Jacqui. ‘We would play or sing something, and if it was liked we’d decide to do it. There was no big deal about it – it was basically music we all liked and nobody was told how or what to play. Those Sunday nights at the Horseshoe were actually more like rehearsals Sometimes we’d rehearse a song in the afternoon and not have it quite ready but do it anyway, just to see how it would work out.’17
Danny had considerable recording, performing and broadcasting experience with an array of blues, jazz and folk people. He had played on Davy Graham’s Folk, Blues & Beyond, and the Horseshoe group was effectively building on that kind of fusion. ‘We’d play these folk tunes,’ says Danny. ‘I’d always add my improvised bits and I’d say to Bert, “Instead of playing the regular pattern why don’t you repeat this little section while John does a solo?” That’s how those improvised bits came in, which was pretty new. That became the Pentangle sound. Then we’d have extended sections of solos and whoever was soloing would give a little lick that we all knew and that would be the cue for everyone to come back in. It worked really well. I’m amazed that [later on] we used to do three hours at the Albert Hall, sold out a month before-hand – every gig was the Horseshoe really.’18
Bert and John’s domestic arrangements had developed in tandem with their new group and club. In November 1966 John had married his long-term girlfriend Judy Hill, whom he had met at Kingston Art School. Judy had a friend called Judy Nicola Cross (for clarity, referred to here as Nicola) who had attended the same college: ‘John and Bert were both living at St Edmund’s Terrace and then John moved Judy in,’ says Nicola, ‘and I met Bert through them. The first time I realised that Bert was interested in me was at John and Judy’s wedding, at the party after, where I was actually with a long-term boyfriend. Bert wasn’t at all outgoing but when he made a play for a woman he did it very nicely and it was very attractive. I fell deeply in love – and dumped my long-term boyfriend rather hastily!’
