Bert Jansch
Bert Jansch

Review in Five Acts – or Five Points

I

On June 29, 2008 (the day of the reviewer's thirteenth birthday), to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of their second LP, "Sweet Child", the Pentangle performed at the Royal Festival Hall, on the south bank of the Thames. The venue, home to several orchestras, among which, above all, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, had over the years hosted artists the likes of Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys), Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, B.B. King, Patti Smith, and John Cale (The Velvet Underground).
The Pentangle were not newcomers to this environment, and the choice was not accidental, in a fortunate conjunction like the reunion of one of the most eclectic projects in the history of late 20th-century music. The band debuted at the Royal Festival Hall in May '67, and the concert represented a launching pad for a career still in its early stages. Still in existence, the quintet was formed, in the incarnation that was, by two guitars, a voice, a drum and a double bass. Each of them represents a point of the same star: the "pentacle" of the name.
The two guitarists – strictly acoustic – already knew each other since 1967, and had released an album together just the year before: a LP, barely twenty-five minutes long, quite short given the standard length of the format, signed simply "Bert and John". On the cover, two boys, just over twenty, engaged in a board game, illuminated by natural light coming only from outside, through the window. What they propose is folk with rustic hues, flavored with blues spices, strongly magnetic and, often, hypnotic, in its crystalline simplicity. They are Bert Jansch and John Renbourn.
Attached to the same record label, the British Transatlantic, founded by business-man, producer and talent scout Nathan Joseph, the two each have behind them "only" their own debut album (although Renbourn recorded and released another record, in collaboration with singer and autoharp player Dorris Henderson, "There You Go", on the Big Beat label). Both virtuosos of the acoustic guitar, on paper very similar – but one of them has an edge. One of them will be destined to influence battalions of musicians across such diverse genres as to disconcert, beyond the "boundaries" of blues and folk. He was cited, over time, not only by Martin Carthy, Donovan, Neil Young, Nick Drake…, but also (and especially!) by Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Pete Townsend (The Who), Johnny Marr (The Smiths), David Roback (Mazzy Star), and Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine). This is Bert Jansch.

II

Scottish from Glasgow, but adopted, de facto, by the capital Edinburgh, where he grew up, Herbert Jansch (surname of German origin) bought his first guitar (a Hofner) in his teenage years, working as a nurseryman; at the same time, he attended the folk club The Howff, where he met Archie Fisher, a singer-songwriter who, many years later, would talk about that period, and the lessons he gave the young promise "It took two lessons to teach Bert everything he knew. One would have been enough, but at the first lesson we went out to get drunk". At just seventeen, in August 1960, Bert left the nursery to fully enter the live circuit and to compose music. His musical references are Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Big Bill Broonzy, and Brownie McGhee. He becomes the unofficial custodian of Howff, where he sleeps after leaving home. For a time, he settles in an illegal house with Robin Williamson, the pivot of the Incredible String Band. Between '60 and '62, he tours the folk clubs of the United Kingdom. He does not have his Hofner with him, as deduced from what he himself told writer Will Hodgkinson in 2010: "I was a gypsy, without home, or belongings – not even a guitar. I would borrow one for each gig".
In 1963, the decisive step: the 19-year-old Scot arrives in London, where he settles, at the Bunjies Coffee House and Folk Cellar, together with Charles Pearce, an art student. He befriends Jill Doyle, half-sister of Davey Graham, who will become one of his greatest influences. The aforementioned Martin Carthy, regarding Bert's arrival in the English capital, where the emerging folk-blues scene is making itself heard, will say that "When he came here, his reputation preceded him. Everyone talked about Bert as a guy who had played for a few months already learning everything his teachers could have taught him". Bert's second show in London takes place at the Troubadour, in January, exactly a week after Bob Dylan played his first and only concert at the same venue, on December 29, 1962. The destinies of the two artists intersect when Dylan decides to return to the UK, in May '64, for a folk club tour: it is precisely to Bert that the task of going to pick up, together with producer Bill Leader, the singer-songwriter from Duluth, Minnesota, at the Hotel Savoy, and accompany him, is entrusted. On this subject, Jansch: "I remember we got kicked out of a club because we were making too much noise while someone was singing … He was a good guy, really nice".
But let's go back to before the meeting with Dylan, thus to January '63: during this period, the young Scottish singer-songwriter, stationed in London, continues to go wandering, beyond the national borders, playing the street musician pretty much everywhere. Before leaving Glasgow, he marries sixteen-year-old Lynda Campbell: it is a marriage of convenience, allowing Bert to bring the girl with him, as she is too young to have a passport. They separate after a few months, and, subsequently, Jansch is repatriated to Great Britain after contracting dysentery in Tangier, Morocco.

III

His reputation – sky-high! – in the London circuit is such that one can say he represents a sort of "poster boy", an emblem. The fingerpicking, his trademark, becomes etched in the minds of the audience, but especially of his colleagues, who try to imitate him. Bert Jansch is no longer a promise, but his songs have yet to enter a recording studio, and the artist to confirm himself with an LP. In '64, a hot year, in which Bert meets both the aforementioned producer Bill Leader and Dylan, the former invites him, in August, to his house to record on an open-reel recorder (reel-to-reel), sells the recording to Transatlantic Records for 100 pounds, and the result is made public the following year, on April 16.
In April 1965, Graham Bond (with his Organisation), the Zombies, and Marianne Faithfull made their discographic debut in the United Kingdom. Despite the undeniable quality of the proposals, and especially the innovative reach, in the field of the blues revival, of the Bond-ian "The Sound of '65", it is Jansch who imposes himself, and quite deservedly steals the scene. Like in the case of fellow Scot Donovan, who enters the market for the first time the following month, Bert is advertised as the "British Bob Dylan". If for Donovan the comparison, albeit superficial, appears at least plausible, in Jansch's case, instead, the label merely serves to sell the LP more easily, as his songwriting is both obviously and profoundly different, and the comparison misleading.
In the United States, on the other hand, March 22, saw the release of the first chapter of Dylan's Electric Trilogy, "Bringing It All Back Home", recorded months after (in January) compared to the Scottish singer-songwriter's eponymous. The credibility of anything that came after "Bringing It All Back Home", within the folk domain, was placed at risk. But it's likely that Jansch is unconcerned with the comparison or the competition. His and Dylan's, much more simply, are two different worlds in the same universe. This is evidenced by the fact that the Glaswegian singer-songwriter will always continue on his own path, offering alchemical solutions related to folk that make him unique (the folk-jazz of the Pentangle), just as unique as Dylan is, in his particular genre.

IV

The first creation, in LP form, by Bert features mainly self-written material, though some loans are not missing, including the exceptional rendition of "Angie" (instrumental performed in fingerpicking on the acoustic, composed and recorded in 1961 by the aforementioned Davey Graham, who originally conceived it under the title of "Anji"), closing the set of songs.
The album, composed of 15 brief compositions, among its key tracks includes the opener "Strolling Down the Highway", "Rambling's Gonna Be the Death of Me", "Courting Blues" (a melody that starts as a simple, sweet, hummed monosyllable, then develops into verses), "Do You Hear Me Now?" (an earnest protest song, brought to attention in the industry through Donovan's version), the instrumental "Alice's Wonderland" (inspired by Charles Mingus), but above all "Needle of Death", a raw and desolate anti-drug lament, written following the overdose death of a friend of the author. Precisely from this piece, years later, Neil Young will draw inspiration for writing "The Needle and the Damage Done", once again on the subject of drugs.
An intense album, with a clean sound, featuring a young guitarist as the sole protagonist, unaccompanied by any other instrumentalist, "Bert Jansch" is, in every respect, a masterpiece of the genre, a milestone of the Sixties, one of the most sincere testimonies of that era.

V

While abundantly praising his guitar style, often many fans and experts have overlooked Bert's compositional side, and most importantly his voice: warm, gentle, almost never aggressive, a prototype without which a Nick Drake or an Elliott Smith wouldn't exist. Neil Young himself, who expressed himself regarding Jansch's acoustic guitar skills, saying they are second to none compared to Jimi Hendrix on the electric, has reiterated, with force, multiple times that alongside such an extraordinary gift, the Scottish artist had another: to Mojo magazine "He's a great guitarist and that's what everyone talks about, but no one really figures the other aspect, which is his songs and his voice".
Jansch's discography is extraordinarily varied, and his creative vein extinguished only with his passing, on October 5, 2011, due to lung cancer. During the years with Transatlantic (1965–1972), quantity and quality went hand in hand: six solo albums, one "collaborative", and another six as a member of the Pentangle. He would release several more after '72 (while living as a victim of alcoholism), but the period with Transatlantic stands out clearly, for originality and the presence of many (too many, and thank goodness it's a good thing!) classics.
Bert Jansch was, in his own way, a rockstar, and he was without ever needing to plug an electric guitar into an amplifier. One of the greatest guitar heroes, Jimmy Page, remembered being "absolutely obsessed with Bert Jansch … he was light years ahead of anything anyone else was doing. No one in America could reach his levels". Page himself pilfered the riff of "Black Waterside" to record the more famous "Black Mountain Side", from the legendary first album, self-titled, by Led Zeppelin.
An additional curiosity, of no small interest, concerning Jansch, involves, once again, Donovan: he – who previously already dedicated two songs to him, "Bert's Blues" and "House of Jansch" –, in 1968, traveled to Rishikesh, teaches the Beatles the fingerpicking techniques perfected while listening to Bert's early albums; this leads to the creation of two immortal classics by the Fab Four, "Blackbird" and "Julia". One of his greatest admirers, Johnny Marr, said of him, a man of few words, "I remember asking Bert 'When you were doing your things, did you know that you were, in your own way … heavy? Heavier than all those bands calling themselves heavy?' He made this very slow nod, agreeing, and passed me a biscuit – as if to say 'Yes, and I'm too heavy to just talk about it'".