by Colin Harper
24. For all his reservations, Nat had supplied sound equipment for the Horseshoe, arranged the Windsor booking and was arranging a November college tour for the group. He had also allowed Bert to have some of his compositions on Nicola published under ‘The Pentangle Ltd.’ (Strangely, publishing for the group’s early recordings went through Gold Disc/Carlin. Later work was published by the group’s own company Swiggeroux). Recording sessions for the first group album, necessarily for Transatlantic, were announced to the press as beginning in August 1967, but were presumably abortive. The recordings which comprised their eventual debut The Pentangle were made in February 1968.
25. Around May/June 1967 Danish TV had filmed Bert and John in London. The pair are glimpsed at St Edmund’s Terrace writing/rehearsing the Pentangle instrumental ‘Bells’. Bert is later interviewed. The resulting programme Folksangere – i London, also featuring Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick, was broadcast in Denmark on 15/ 7/67. While the Pentangle were in Denmark in August they performed a concert for Danish radio with Carthy & Swarbrick. There is also compelling circumstantial evidence of a Danish TV concert. One fan, Lars Fromholt, even recalls the songs performed, including Bert solo on ‘Nottamun Town’, Bert & John with ‘Orlando’ and a unique occurrence of the group performing Bert’s ‘Poison’. Unfortunately neither of the possible broadcasters, DR and NDR, can trace the programme. The first time the group categorically appeared on TV was in May 1968. Of their many broadcasts thereafter, there are no (further) known occurances of Bert performing solo.
26. Comstock Lode, c.1979.
27. Alexis Korner had brought Hendrix down to the Cousins on 5 October 1966. Bert was elsewhere at the time.
28. Jimi’s soundcheck was being filmed and the one-chord routine was possibly for effect. As Bert noted in Mojo, 10/95: ‘He came on a while after that and did a proper soundcheck. It was dramatic to watch him in an empty hall. I shook his hand and I’m very proud that I did.’ The concert was an awareness-raiser for ‘International Liberal Year’, with British Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe in attendance. Thorpe had photos taken posing with Hendrix. But not with Bert.
29. Neil Young: Guitar Player, 3/92. Jimmy Page: Trouser Press, 9/77.
30. Bert turned up ill at the Manchester show on 9 February 1968. Carthy & Swarbrick, in the audience, deputised on borrowed instruments.
31. Daily Telegraph, 1/7/99.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1. Danny and Terry had got their feet on the property ladder not through the Pentangle but through their involvement, as Alexis Korner’s group, on the lucrative 1965-66 children’s TV show Five O’Clock Club. Terry’s wife opened a restaurant in Minorca. Towards the end of the Pentangle era John split with Judy and moved deep into the Devon undergrowth, with fiddler Sue Draheim, hence the title of his 1973 solo LP, The Hermit.
2. Zigzag, 11/69.
3. Birthday Blues was released on 17/1/69. Bert, with Danny, recorded a BBC Night Ride session on 11/12/68 featuring three Birthday Blues tracks (‘Tree Song’, ‘I Got A Woman’ and ‘Birthday Blues’) alongside an otherwise unrecorded Jansch crack at the traditional song ‘Thames Lighterman’, the rarely performed Sweet Child track ‘I Loved A Lass’ and the Danny Thompson solo ‘Haitian Fight Song’. On 25/1/69 Bert appeared solo on Country Meets Folk, broadcast live from the Playhouse Theatre. He performed two songs from the new album, ‘I Am Lonely’ and ‘Come Sing Me A Happy Song’, along with ‘Come Back Baby’. Additionally, the Pentangle were given their own BBC Radio 1 series of four half-hour shows, first broadcast during December 1969/January 1970. The shows were to feature the group members showcasing their talents in various combinations, doubtless including solo performances. The shows appear not to have survived.
4. As note 2.
5. Disc, 18/4/70.
6. ‘Light Flight’ was a UK No. 43 in February 1970, allowing the Pentangle their one and only appearance on Top Of The Pops. Seemingly released simultaneously to Basket Of Light in October 1969, with Take Three Girls (the BBC series it themed) beginning in November, it is unclear to me why the single took so long to attain a chart placing and why the album did so much better (a UK No. 5 in November 1969) and in less time. One may only conclude that Transatlantic really were appalling, as Nat Joseph suggests, at promoting singles and/or that the Pentangle audience were essentially album buyers.
7. MM, 30/5/70.
8. The Festival Hall concert of 30 July 1971 was Bert’s only real opportunity to perform the Rosemary Lane material at the time. A BBC Radio session recorded two weeks before the concert included three songs from the album: ‘Bird Song’, ‘Nobody’s Bar’ and ‘Tell Me What Is True Love?’ (plus the traditional songs ‘Twa Corbies’ and ‘Omie Wise’). ‘Reynardine’ was seemingly the only album track to have a long stage-life, featuring on the final Pentangle tour in 1972 and on solo gigs in 1973. During the 1990s Bert occasionally performed ‘Rosemary Lane’ and ‘Tell Me What Is True Love?’, and in 1999 ‘Reynardine’ was dusted off for two weddings (one of them mine) and the Channel 4 documentary film Dream Weaver. The wedding? It was legendary.
9. Disc, 18/4/70.
10. Sounds, 16/1/71. Bert was persuaded to return to America for a four week Pentangle tour spanning November – December 1971.
11. As one of the popular highlights of the Pentangle’s career, John’s tale of a doomed sailor has become the perennial harbinger of disappointment to elements of Bert’s concert audience. He didn’t sing it then, he doesn’t do so now.
12. Jo Lustig’s managerial interests expanded markedly in 1971. He had already been handling Ralph McTell since mid-1970. In February 1971, the Pentangle reluctantly re-signed with him. In May 1971, he agreed to manage Gillian McPherson, a young singer/songwriter from Belfast. Danny Thompson would produce her first album. In September 1971, he signed the Dransfields (brothers Robin and Barry) although by the end of the year the brothers had split – publicly denying this was caused by Lustig’s punishing tour schedules. By December, following the departures of Ashley Hutchings and Martin Carthy, Jo had signed up folk-rockers Steeleye Span and would soon be overseeing their most lucrative and successful period. By February 1972 he was also representing former Beatles’ protégée Mary Hopkin.
13. Disc, 24/7/71. As session men, both Danny and Terry enjoyed numerous other outlets during the Pentangle era. In 1971, for example, Terry worked with David Bowie, John Williams and the Stanley Myers Orchestra; while Danny appeared on at least a dozen albums.
14. In 1971 Richard Robinson, MD of CBS, believed folk was the coming thing. Not knowing anything about it, he assumed that Jo Lustig could come up with the names. Jo knew nothing about music but knew some people who did: John Renbourn recommended his old mentor Wizz Jones, Ralph McTell championed Clive Palmer’s new band, while Bert suggested Anne Briggs. An act from Northern Ireland called Therapy were also in the frame. They were all brought under Lustig’s management and all made horrendously unsuccessful records.
15. Anne Briggs would continue performing until spring 1973, a short club tour of Belgium comprising probably her last engagements. A third album was recorded, again for Jo Lustig, though at Anne’s insistence this was not released at the time. Featuring both traditional and original material, it was recorded with an electric band led by Steve Ashley and eventually surfaced, with Anne’s approval, as Sing A Song For You in 1997. But back in ’73, pregnant for the second time and increasingly disillusioned with her own music and the nature of the music business, she moved to Caithness with her new family and slipped quietly away.
16. Unfortunately, Bert’s performance from Once More With Felix is believed lost. I’ve not managed to confirm the date of this appearance although autumn 1971 seems likeliest.
17. ‘I got my cab licence in 1972,’ says Benbow. ‘When I started cabbing I was still doing a few broadcasts – used to park the cab in the rank, go and do the gig then back in the cab and off to work. Terrific!’
18. Comstock Lode, c.1979. When Bert lived in Ticehu
rst it was ‘just up the road’ from Gerry Rafferty, himself a Transatlantic recording artist, whose wife was friendly with Heather. Bert would often end up on the train with Gerry, whose ambition was reminiscent of Paul Simon’s: ‘I have to say,’ says Bert, ‘he’s one of the most boring characters I’ve ever met. Used to drone on and on about how he was going to make it.’ And also like Simon, he did.
19. Milltown Malbay now hosts the annual ‘Willie Clancy week’ – a summer tuition school and jamboree for trad buffs and revellers.
20. Several years earlier Christy Moore had worked in Milltown Malbay for a couple of months and would often go to the same pub, Hennessey’s, to hear Willie Clancy: ‘Money would not have changed hands,’ he recalls. ‘Willie was a carpenter who loved to play music. I don’t know if he ever did any “gigs” in his life.’ The one record that would confirm the existence of a commercial context to allow for this ‘revival’ of Irish music – or, perhaps more accurately, to allow for the development of an Irish folk scene where money would finally start changing hands – was Christy Moore’s Prosperous (1972). Having effectively served his apprenticeship on the English club scene since 1966, Moore had returned to Ireland in 1970 with repertoire and ideas and as a master of the performer’s craft. Accompanied by a band of now legendary musicians, among them Andy Irvine, Moore was recorded for Bill Leader’s own label Trailer. The resulting album, Prosperous, was initially released only in Britain but demand began to grow in Ireland. As Mark Prendergast notes in Irish Rock (O’Brien, 1986), though it was not a fusion of folk and rock as such, it was progressive in spirit: ‘It had a spontaneity, a certain youthful exuberance and enough original ideas on presentation to make people realise that Irish traditional music had to change. The time was right to give the dusty native Irish scene a taste of what was happening in the UK.’ The Pentangle did perform a handful of concerts in Belfast and Dublin, but the influence of Bert, John and/or the group was largely via recordings. They had been heard by many of the people who would go on to play key roles in Irish music’s renaissance: Rory Gallagher; Johnny Fean, guitarist with Horslips (1972+); the future members of Clannad (1970+); and Michael O’Domhnaill of Skara Brae (1970-71), subsequently of the extremely influential Bothy Band (1975-78). Discovering it in 1970 from information on the back of a Bert Jansch record, O’Domhnaill appears to have been the source for the DADGAD tuning entering Irish music, wherein it is now used by virtually all accompanists of the instrumental tradition.
21. Not having seen the contract, I can’t clarify what small print or unfulfilled condition on the part of the Pentangle had allowed Nat to cease royalty payments. Indeed, Nat has told me that his recollection is that Jo’s lawyers may have actually provided the final draft of the document. I don’t doubt that Nat was entirely within his rights.
22. In a nutshell, Transatlantic’s own fortunes declined after 1971. There were still periodic successes but a move from Marylebone Lane to more ostentatious offices in Marylebone High Street around this time drew a symbolic line under the label’s modest but consistent triumphs as a folk-based operation. A series of singularly unsuccessful progressive rock bands were signed while the label endlessly recycled its back catalogue, often on the back of its ex-artists’ subsequent successes, and continued to act as UK/European distributor to fifteen other labels. The distribution aspect was lucrative on balance but engendered short-term cash flow problems. Seeking new capital, Nat sold seventy-five per cent of the label to Granada in 1975 but the deal was not as successful as had been hoped. In 1978 Transatlantic was sold, largely as a catalogue resource, to Logo Records run by Geoff Hannington. Nat became a financier of theatre projects. In the 1990s, Hannington sold Transatlantic to Castle Communications. Castle’s 1998 box set The Transatlantic Story is recommended.
23. Bud Scoppa, Rolling Stone, 18/1/73.
24. ‘The Toe-Rags’ was one alternative name bandied around at the time, undoubtedly by Danny and most likely in jest. One hopes.
CHAPTER NINE
1. Renbourn’s album was delivered to Warners in the midst of an in-house reshuffle. It was never released at the time but surfaced on Demon in 1996 as Lost Sessions.
2. NME, 18/10/75.
3. Dannie Richmond was in Britain to record with Jon Mark. Danny Thompson was also involved in that project and persuaded Richmond, against the drummer’s instinct, to play on Moonshine: ‘He loved it,’ said Thompson. ‘When he finished he said, “Hey man, I knew you was going to lay some heavy shit on me. When I get back to the States I’m going to play this ‘English folk music’ to everybody.”’ [Hokey Pokey, 1/88]
4. MM, 17/1/76.
5. John and Jacqui continued as a duo, recording BBC radio sessions together in May and July 1973. The John Renbourn Group, featuring Jacqui, was formed in 1974 and extended to the Pentangle reunion of 1982. John would also record solo instrumental albums during this period, beginning with The Hermit in 1973. ‘I’d discovered that a whole cult of fingerstyle guitar had grown up in France since I’d been on the road with Pentangle,’ says John. ‘I’d put out a book of instrumental guitar pieces and these tunes were being played all over France, so when I started playing there I was a hero. At least 50 per cent of the stuff in those tunes had been improvised but I felt so pleased that these people were taking so much time to play my stuff note for note that I thought I might as well give them something a little more systemized to play.’ Hence, John’s future as a guitar instrumentalist was secured. Danny would spend the next couple of years touring and recording with John Martyn. Perhaps surpisingly, his session work in the seventies was less prolific than it had been during the Pentangle era. John, Jacqui and Danny would all periodically reappear in live and/or recording contexts within Bert’s career during the ten years between the Pentangle split and reunion.
6. It seems likely that Bert and Danny stayed on for the recordings while the others returned to Britain. George Chatelain, a French singer, was a fan of Bert’s who owned a studio. Bert recalls any recordings as a fun thing rather than an album project as Dallas’s piece suggested. Nevertheless, eight songs and instrumentals intended as Bert’s next album (1974) were recorded in Paris during this trip or very shortly after. Produced by Danny and featuring just himself and Bert, only three of these recordings actually surfaced: two on LA Turnaround (1974) and one on A Rare Conundrum (1977).
7. MM, 31/3/73.
8. Sounds, 21/4/73.
9. The Sequence, BBC Radio 1, broadcast 11/5/73.
10. As note 4.
11. Prior to founding Charisma, Strat had managed Paddy, Klaus and Gibson, Beryl Marsden, the Creation, the Bonzo Dog Band and the Nice.
12. Charisma memoir, Pete Frame, Rosemary Lane No.2, 1993. Most Frame quotes in this chapter are from this source.
13. Sounds, 19/10/74.
14. As Frame also notes: ‘Bert was probably too pissed to notice any ghosts, but the place was said to be haunted. A couple of years earlier, two of Strat’s trusted aides – Glen Colson and producer John Anthony – had been sitting there listening to a Van Der Graaf Generator album, when Glen heard a noise and turned round in time to see this old boy disappear into a painting. I put it down to drugs, myself, but they both swear it’s true. The house had belonged to some old codger called Sir Hugh Beevor, who had actually died in the front room. Strat only paid £20 a week rent for it – and turned down an invitation to buy it for forty grand. It had nine bedrooms and acres of land. It must be worth a fortune now.’
15. Two tracks were recorded in the garden, four indoors.
16. A thirteen-minute promotional film emerged from the Luxford session, including ‘Fresh As A Sweet Sunday Morning’ and three other tracks alongside cinema vérité of Nesmith, Jansch and Rhodes rehearsing, playing some arcane version of billiards, pottering about in the garden and eating lunch. Every so often, in rehearsal, the two Americans would ask was this where the turnaround was – muso vernacular for a verse into chorus chord change. ‘No,’ Bert mumbles, with a hint of exasp
eration, ‘you just keep playing the tune …’ A more elaborate promotional film of Bert ‘tarted up’ had already been shot, with a view to promoting him to college bookers. A preview screening was held around February/March 1974: Strat was delighted but Bruce May felt it was the wrong way to go and the project was shelved. The film-maker was probably one Gordeon Troiler, erstwhile manager of Van Der Graaf Generator, whom Strat often commissioned for such projects, including an early Genesis promo. During 1974 Troiler’s company hit the wall and his assets disappeared. Gail Colson has been unable to trace the Genesis film to this day – what hope, then, for ‘Bert Jansch: The Movie’?
17. As note 13.
18. Even Jansch was reluctant to repeat the track live. It was attempted at least once on his November 1974 UK tour and around the same time he was asked to perform it on a UK TV show, of unremembered title. A pre-recorded show, Bert recalls he took two attempts to get it right. It has yet to reappear in his repertoire. Gordon Giltrap bravely attempted the tune at Bert’s wedding to Loren Auerbach in November 1999, and subsequently recorded it for his May 2000 tribute EP Janschology.
19. MM, 29/6/74.
20. Ralph McTell had convinced Bert the old hymn suited his style, while Bruce had convinced Strat it was going to be a Christmas smash. Featuring vocal group Prelude (fresh from hit single success with ‘After The Goldrush’) and Lindisfarne’s Rod Clements on bass, Bert constructed a beautiful arrangement but sang only two verses – all that Ralph could remember. Pete Frame was at the session: ‘After it was finished, Ralph uncorked a very good bottle of Chambertin (what else?) and we toasted the record’s success. Ha! Optimistic fools! Strat hired this whizz-bang independent plugger to procure airplay – but after we played the record to him once, we never saw him again. I guess he didn’t have too much faith in it.’ During the same session, with the same personnel, Ralph recorded a new version of an old song of his, ‘Streets Of London’, also to release as a single. One of the two was destined for huge success. Ironically, Bert’s recording has earned him the most individual mechanical royalties of his career by stealth: by subsequently appearing on the Best Christmas Album In The World Ever CD.
