by Colin Harper
23. Bruce Dunnet: ‘When I came to London in 1945 I worked for Central Books, a communist bookshop, for fifteen months. I then had twenty-six jobs in twelve years because I wouldn’t keep my mouth shut. I was in the Clerical and Administrative Union and I always complained if conditions were bad. And time after time I was sacked. After that I was a book-keeper, office administrator, commercial consultant, managing director in the “Swinging Sixties” of Quorum, with Ossie Clark and Alice Pollock, the way-out designers.’
24. Also on the bill were Jo Ann Kelly and future Groundhog Tony McPhee. Renbourn’s name was misspelt. This deserves attention: Bert’s surname causes very occasional problems – Jantz, Jones, Jansom, etc – for people advertising his presence somewhere. But, inexplicably, Renbourn’s surname routinely turns otherwise literate people into blancmanges. More often than not there is an ‘e’ on the end. Other variations that appeared in print during the sixties include Wrenbourn, Ranbone, Stenbourn, Reinbourn and Rendell. Is it really so difficult?
25. The context may be wrong – Townshend was never involved in running folk clubs – but I don’t doubt the essential elements of the incident occurred. Indeed, it seems to have become something of an urban myth: one correspondant was told by a third party that the tale involved the organiser of the Troubadour waking Bert up somewhere and asking him to do a gig at short notice for a pound. Bert rummaged in his pocket, found a pound note and replied, ‘No thanks, I’ve already got one.’
26. The Swiss Cottage club was to close in a few weeks with memberships transfering to the new club. Unlike his residency at the Scot’s Hoose, Bert’s involvement at the Marquis appears to have been relatively short-term.
27. ‘My Donal’ entered Bert’s repertoire in 1998.
28. The ‘Angi’ composer credit on Jansch reissues changed during the 1990s to reflect this. Bert has always been incredulous that subsequent versions of ‘Angi’, including Paul Simon’s, are based on his arrangement ‘mistakes and all’. Incidentally, that well-known guitar hero Gill Cook recalls teaching Bert’s middle eight to Simon.
29. The MM described the party, on around 18/19 March 1968, as being a ‘six-hour jam’ involving Paul Simon, Jansch, Renbourn, Davy Graham and Roy Harper. ‘Everybody on the folk scene showed up for it,’ says Bert. ‘It was a good party. I think that night we ran ‘em out of champagne, if I remember right – and I had a gig to go to!’
30. Guitarist, 4/99.
31. Quotes sourced from various interviews in MM spanning February 1965 to May 1966.
32. ‘Focus On MacColl’, Karl Dallas, MM, 18/9/65. ‘Bob was being touted as the heir to Woody Guthrie,’ says Martin Carthy, ‘but he didn’t do that thing which Woody did, and which Ewan & Peggy did in their writing, which was name names and point fingers. Ewan had a problem with that.’
33. ‘The Great Dylan Row’, MM, 2/10/65.
34. MM, 19/2/66.
35. As note 13.
36. Les Bridger and Jo Ann Kelly were the featured artists on the Cousins opening night, when it secured eighty memberships, but they were never its residents. Of the established artists who did not perform at the Cousins during its heyday, Martin Carthy is the most notable: ‘I was working round the country,’ he says. ‘And I probably thought of myself as being different from the Cousins people because I was never a blues person. I did love Bert and John, and I loved playing the guitar but I was never terribly interested in that guitar-centric stuff.’ Carthy was never convinced about the artistic rewards of the ‘all-nighter’ although he did play one at the Student Prince. Of those who did perform at the Cousins, many were never advertised or were regulars long before earning the accolade of an ad. Bert first performed there, in an unadvertised floor spot, on 7/5/65. The following chronology of some key artists’ first advertised appearances at the venue may be of interest:
Fri. 16/4/65 club opens
Fri. 14/5/65 Dorris Henderson & John Renbourn
Thur. 10/6/65 Bert Jansch
Sat. 12/6/65 Paul Simon
Sat. 3/7/65 Al Stewart
Sat. 10/7/65 Long John Baldry
Fri. 6/8/65 Young Tradition
Tue. 5/10/65 Roy Harper
Fri. 13/5/66 Sandy Denny
Sun. 22/5/66 Incredible String Band
Sat. 13/8/66 John Renbourn & Jacqui McShee
Fri. 9/9/66 Dave & Toni Arthur
37. ‘Roy Harper: One-man Rock’n’Roll Band’, Karl Dallas, Acoustic Music, 7/80.
38. I am not personally aware of a single photograph of any artist taken at the Cousins during 1965 – 1966. It can be glimpsed in two surviving TV films: Meeting Point, a 1965 BBC documentary on Soho which included brief clips of Al Stewart and, uniquely, of Jackson Frank in performance; and Folksingers In London, a short Danish documentary on the music and lifestyle of the new breed of guitar/vocalists. John Renbourn and the otherwise obscure American Marc Sullivan are filmed at the Cousins. Extracts from the former appear in the 1992 Jansch BBC documentary Acoustic Routes, while part of the latter can be seen (miscredited to 1965) in the 1995 John Renbourn video release Rare Performances.
39. As note 37.
40. Of all the Soho rivals to Cousins only the Scot’s Hoose, a complementary rather than rival establishment, would last the course. A little out of the way, both the Mercury Theatre in Notting Hill Gate and the Centre in Balham opened within weeks either side of the Cousins. Both were booking the very best acts, in contrast to the Cousins’ early weeks which were remarkable in featuring guest artists who were even at the time complete unknowns, with no other claim on posterity. The Mercury Theatre club would continue for several months to run popular, varied midweek sessions featuring the likes of Andy Irvine and Peter Bellamy, but it never attempted to rival the Cousins. The Centre, however, was a licensed premises, and claimed to be open seven nights a week. As early as May 1964, Bill Leader had announced that he was planning an all-week licensed folk ‘night club’. It was an idea he never saw through, but it was still the holy grail of the folk club world. Was it not now, in 1965, within grasp? One cannot be absolute, but it seems the Centre’s claim was disingenuous – probably a public house that dabbled briefly in folk music, but certainly not a venue with a lasting presence. Other venues were similarly rash in their announcements and short-lived in their lifespan. In September 1965, the London Folk Music Centre opened at 38 Goodge Street, in Soho. It announced its hours as 6.30 to midnight, six nights a week, and all day at weekends. Recalling Roy Guest’s short-lived plans for the Howff, it would feature a tape library and coffee shop alongside live performances, but it is not an institution that endured long enough to be ingrained in many memories. Launching in October at 22 D’Arblay Street, Soho, Leduce billed itself as ‘London’s only contemporary folk club’ – dedicated to singer-songwriters. Its opening bill was strong – Paul Simon, Jackson Frank and Sandy Denny – and it would regularly feature Al Stewart thereafter. But, again, this is not a club at all widely remembered. Likewise the Excelsior Club, which opened in Charing Cross Road in March 1966 with a similarly contemporary agenda.
41. When the trad jazz boom took off in the mid-fifties the all-nighter concept was repeated on an annual basis at Alexandra Palace. The only places in London still flying the flag for the all-nighter immediately prior to the folk venues of 1965 were the Flamingo – an intense, amphetamine-fuelled R&B/jazz scene popular with black American servicemen from which Georgie Fame emerged – and the Roaring Twenties, a similiarly appealing mod venue. There were also, at the other extreme, the Irish pubs: ‘It was always a “friends of friends” situation,’ says Bert. ‘You could always go there for a drink at any time of the night.’
42. Zigzag, 9/74 and Comstock Lode c.1979. Quotes combined. On the subject of Andy Matthews, opinions differ as to how important he actually was in the Cousins’ success. To a degree it was ‘right place, right time’. His is the name most associated with running the Cousins although the otherwise little-remembered Phil Phillips was certainly the man in charge up to
at least January 1966. To Duffy Power, Andy was a ‘spoilt brat who smoked too much dope’ and for whom the Cousins was a plaything; to Roy Harper, on the other hand, ‘Andy was pivotal in all of it and nobody has given him enough credit.’ From Bert’s point of view: ‘Andy was the first guy I knew who took notice of the Beatles. He’d say, “You gotta listen to this” and he’d play whatever it was. “Er, right, so who is it then?” To me it was just another pop band, I couldn’t tell any difference. I much preferred the Rolling Stones anyway.’
43. As note 13.
44. The Al Stewart Story, BBC Radio 2, 7/99.
45. ‘Al Stewart: Platinum Bard’, Ian Anderson, Southern Rag No. 22, October/ December 1984.
46. As note 1. Bert has continued to keep ‘Blues Run The Game’ in his own repertoire and added a second, ‘My Name Is Carnival’, just prior to its author’s death in the late nineties.
47. ‘Frank … and the once young king’, an open letter to Karl Dallas/Folk News in 1978. Unless otherwise credited all subsequent Jackson Frank quotes are from this source.
48. NME, 24/8/74.
49. Andy Irvine left Dublin in early ’65, coming to London with some friends and intending to make money and move on to Israel. ‘I got a job in the gasworks at Wandsworth, shift work, which I stuck for about four months. Two of the shifts were useless to my social life. I was waiting with bated breath for the third one, which went from six till two. And the very first day I got off at two o’clock I went to the Troubadour with Annie Briggs [possibly 7 February 1965, when Anne had a gig there] and of course we ended up slaughtered drunk, sleeping on somebody’s floor. I got in four hours late the next day and realised then that there was absolutely no shift that would allow for the kind of lifestyle I wanted.’ Andy soon left the gasworks and touted for BBC radio drama jobs, which, with the support of his girlfriend Muriel, made things a whole lot more convenient. ‘I couldn’t have existed without her. She kept me going for years.’ Eventually, gigs simply took over from the BBC work. On a trip over to Britain the previous year, and through Anne Briggs, Andy had ended up at a Bert Jansch gig in Leicester: ‘The next time I met Bert,’ says Andy, ‘he was introducing me onstage as being from Leicester! I got his first album pretty much as soon as it came out. It wasn’t quite my kind of music but he was one of the good guys.’
50. As note 1.
51. ‘The House Of Jansch’, an encoded résumé of the situation, appeared on Donovan’s Mellow Yellow (1967). An earlier ‘tribute’, ‘Bert’s Blues’, was included on Sunshine Superman (1966). ‘Do You Hear Me Now?’, a first album Jansch composition, appeared as the B-side of Don’s third single ‘Universal Soldier’ in September 1965. In 1968, Don coralled his hero into a studio with producer Mickey Most where he was recording the US-only LP Hurdy Gurdy Man. Bert plays uncredited but highly distinctive guitar on one track, ‘Tangier’. Pop supremo Mickey Most had no idea who Bert was and was apparently baffled by the whole business. Even less known, and no doubt impossible to find, Roy Harper’s ‘Pretty Baby’ (the non-album B-side to his first fingle, released in March 1966) is also a tribute to Bert.
52. The titles of various Duffy Power B-sides from this period seem in retrospect remarkably pertinent: ‘What Now?’, ‘If I Get Lucky Someday’, ‘Woman Made Trouble’, ‘Tired, Broke And Busted’, ‘Where Am I?’ … Duffy is perhaps best remembered from this period as being only the second person, after Kenny Lynch, to cover a Beatles song, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ – purportedly written especially for him.
53. A US single, a UK single, a French EP and two tracks on a compilation were Duffy Power’s only releases between 1965 and 1971. In 1971, Transatlantic issued Innovations, a stunning LP collecting some mid-sixties recordings with Danny Thompson, Terry Cox, John McLaughlin and others. Those recordings and other group work from the same period are now on CD as Little Boy Blue and Just Stay Blue. An acoustic folk/blues album recorded for ex-Donovan manager Peter Eden in 1969, eventually trickling out in 1973, is also available on CD as Blues Power. A hugely under-rated artist.
54. Alexis had recorded Red Hot From Alex for Transatlantic in 1964, the first of what was announced as a four-album deal. Sky High, his 1965 LP with Duffy, came out on the tiny Spot label. I have no idea what happened to the Transatlantic connection. At one point, Alexis asked Roy Harper to form a group with him. Roy declined.
55. Of all the Cousins irregulars, Roy Harper was to prove especially adept at polarising opinion: ‘I remember Roy onstage one night being just awful and so pompous in the way only Roy can be,’ says Ian Anderson. ‘There was a ceiling fan and one night he decided this was interfering with the ambience of his performance and he shouted a command at someone, “Please turn the fan off!” and this voice comes back “I shouldn’t do that if I were you Roy, it’s the only one you’ve got in here.” It could be a cruel place, the Cousins.’
56. Regarding benefit concerts: ‘I did one once I think, for the Labour Party,’ mused Bert, ‘something to do with miners. I didn’t know if it was a good thing or not at the time but Ralph McTell had told me I ought to do it.’
57. Folksingers In London, DR 15/7/67.
58. Finishing his postgrad at the end of 1966, Challis was offered two jobs in the course of the week: one with the Savoy Brown Blues Band, the other in TV animation. ‘I was all of twenty-three but I was beginning to feel a bit burned out so I went for what I thought was the safe option: the animation. And towards the end of that year Yellow Submarine started and I had two years of solid work.’ During the 1970s Savoy Brown became Foghat and blazed a hard-living, stadium-filling trail across America while Challis, never entirely sure he had made the right decision, worked on the children’s TV classic Roobarb. He still sneaks out of an evening to play piano in bars. And am I alone in suggesting that posterity has perhaps been kinder to Roobarb than it has to Foghat?
CHAPTER SEVEN
1. Bert would only perform at Les Cousins on twelve occasions during 1966, a long way short of his presence there the previous year.
2. After a year of litigation, Donovan made a triumphal return to the UK Top 10 with ‘Sunshine Superman’ in December 1966, a song that had been a US hit months before. He subsequently pursued a very successful pop career but retains an affinity with his Cousins peers: ‘Donovan’s a talented guy,’ says Roy Harper. ‘He has his own place among us on merit.’
3. MM, 28/8/65.
4. Isis, 2/2/66.
5. Combined from: Sounds, 21/4/71; NME, 21/4/73; Trouser Press, 9/77.
6. During 1965 there were folk-friendly variety programmes like ITV’s Eamonn Andrews Show and BBC’s Val Doonican Show; there had been the children’s shows Gadzooks! It’s All Happening (BBC), on which Renbourn and Dorris Henderson had featured, and Five O’Clock Club (Rediffusion), putting pounds in the pockets of Wally Whyton and Alexis Korner. Rediffusion had also launched a dedicated folk show for grown-ups, Heartsong, to which the BBC responded with Tonight In Person. Out in the regions George Melly was fronting My Kind Of Folk for Southern TV, Ulster TV had Swinging Folk, TWW had Folk In The West, while Grampian TV had won the Italia Prize with their documentary An Impression Of Love, featuring Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger. In May 1966 there had been a national broadcast for Travelling For A Living: a gritty, incisive documentary on the music and lifestyle of the Watersons, with cameos from Roy Guest, Bill Leader, Lou Killen and Anne Briggs. Briggs was also enjoying a residency on a regional talk show in the West Country, title unknown. Regarding Bert’s appearance on Hallelujah!, it has not survived.
7. The other two US albums were Stepping Stones in 1969 (Bert And John plus two vocal tracks from It Don’t Bother Me) and a similarly enhanced version of Jack Orion in 1970.
8. MM, 16/7/66.
9. MM, 15/10/66.
10. The tracks unknown to me were notated as: ‘Little Maggie’, ‘Ten’, ‘Inside Your Mind’, ‘Neurotic Woman’ and ‘Whisky Man’. It is unlikely that ‘Whisky Man’ is the John Entwistle song of that name.
; 11. The Nicola tracks played at Birmingham were: ‘A Little Sweet Sunshine’, ‘Life Depends On Love’, ‘Weeping Willow’, ‘Woe Is Love My Dear’ and three others that were recorded during the Nicola sessions but not included on that album. Two of the three, ‘In This Game’ and ‘Dissatisfied Blues’, would later surface on the Box Of Love compilation (1972). The third, ‘Train Song’, would be re-recorded for the Pentangle LP Basket Of Light (1969).
12. ‘Thyme Honoured’, John Tobler, Folk Roots 10/95. Chris Ayliffe subsequently cameoed in the Pentangle story with a splendid sleeve design for Solomon’s Seal (1972).
13. ‘The Roots Of Renbourn’, Maggie Holland, Folk Roots, 4/93.
14. Partly from an interview with John Reed, Record Collector, 1/95.
15. Hokey Pokey, 1/88.
16. A stunning radio broadcast by the Danny Thompson Trio was released as Live 1967 in 1999. Although Danny talked about making a record proper as late as November 1968, the Pentangle took off and the Trio was shelved.
17. As note 12.
18. As note 15.
19. Renbourn had included a tune called ‘Judy’, for Judy Hill, on his first album. Hence Bert’s use of Nicola, Judy Cross’s middle name.
20. Sounds, 9/1/71.
21. Inspiration from children’s stories and from children generally would become a regular theme in Bert’s writing: ‘You always find that you can let your imagination really go with kids’ books,’ says Bert. Aside from Kenneth Grahame, Bert had also by this stage absorbed the work of Mervyn Peake and JRR Tolkien: ‘I don’t know if they influenced me. I suppose they must have.’
22. ‘There was a Jewish over-forties club upstairs,’ says Jacqui, ‘and every time I sang an unaccompanied song they’d start into “Hava Nagila” with all the feet-stamping. They’re the sort of memories that stick out.’
23. The one-phrase review, by Chris Welch for MM, was based on a secondhand opinion. Welch had not personally seen the band. Bouchant’s death became the oblique subject of the Pentangle’s first single, ‘Travelling Song’, released in May 1968.
