Bert Jansch died ten years ago last month, and yesterday was his birthday. I was in Yorkshire at the weekend and had coffee with Henry Parker, a young recording artist known to be a Jansch fan. He mentioned that when he first met his partner Kate they were both reading ‘Dazzling Stranger’, my book on Jansch – and the first of my six books to date. It’s been in print since 2000. Henry said I must be amazed at the current rude health of Jansch appreciation. Thinking about that since, it does seem remarkable.
The Bert Jansch Foundation (a non-profit entity run by Bert’s mother-in-law, the mother of his late third wife Loren, and distinct from the commercial activities of his Estate, run by a sister-in-law and a son from a pre-Loren relationship) has done sterling work in running guitar workshops with devotees like Dariush Kanani and Jon Riley teaching his tunes and fingerings, along with publishing books of finely crafted transcriptions, running a still-going-strong ‘Around the World in 80 Plays’ project (with a guitar being passed around the world for players, pro and amateur, to ply/film a song in hour of Bert), establishing a Jansch-themed room at a venue in Frome and suchlike. But none of this would be any use if there weren’t a genuine grassroots interest among people to learn his music and keep the fire of appreciation burning – as it has done for 10 years, without Bert there to sustain it. The afterlife of a musician can’t be predicted. One might have thought that Bert’s old Pentangle cohort John Renbourn (d. 2015) – a very precise ‘musicianly’ player/composer, who was actively involved (unlike Bert) in the whole ‘fingerstyle guitar’ world of transcriptions, instrumental albums, tuition videos etc. long before he died – would have seen his star rise after death. But no. I was involved in a box set of John’s 60s albums for Cherry Red – beautifully designed and comprehensive, but selling poorly. The feeling is abroad that while Bert’s legend grows, John’s slips away. I make no comment on that – it’s just an observation with a bit of industry insight (and of course John will still have dedicated fans out there).
When Bert died in 2011 I was in a job (albeit at the end stages of getting out of it) that had been dragging me down rather badly for two or three years. I recall being phoned by the BBC – at that workplace – wanting me to come and do a tribute on air. I wasn’t in the right place to do it for various reasons, so I didn’t.
I hadn’t spoken to Bert or Loren for three or four years anyway. There had been a difficult set of circumstances in late 2007 and it was the right thing for me to let that connection go at that time.
But I was very glad in early 2019 when Steve McCann invited me to do something at a small Bert tribute show he was running in Belfast on the back of the ’80 Plays’ thing. Shortly before that, both Jan Leman, director of ‘Acoustic Routes’ (BBC, 1993), Alex at Earth Records and John at Cherry Red had asked me to help with some Bert-related things. There had been a ten-year gap, and I was reluctant, but I delivered what was asked (revisions of old writings for new use mostly).
There’s one more Bert project with which I’ll be significantly involved – a box set of his surviving BBC recordings. My part in it is already done, though I’m unsure when it will see the light of day and in quite what form (complete 8CD or reduced). I’m glad to see that ten years after, interest in Bert’s music has remained, maybe even grown. He never seemed remotely concerned with his public profile in life – but every few years there would be a spike in interest/publicity, it seemed. In 1974 there was an NME piece headlined ‘Bert Jansch – Not Still Going Is He?’ (a mere two years after Pentangle’s split) and then 20-odd years later he’s on ‘Later With Jools’, beginning the long Indian Summer of his years at a living legend. By the 2000s he was hardly out of the BBC (sessions on BBC4, Later, BBC6 etc.); in the 1970s, he was hardly in it. But none of this bothered him. He once said to me ‘If you’re into guitar, eventually you’ll find me’ – not boasting, but a rather Zen observation with a lot of truth in it.
Hearing most of his records for the first time – usually on second-hand vinyl from Smithfield Market in Belfast in the 80s, as a teenager (unaware then, in the pre-internet era, even of how many records he’d made or what they were called) – was a magic part of growing up. Imagine – suddenly discovering a ‘new’ Bert Jansch album from the glory days, on a Saturday morning. I’m sure hearing his music for the first time – however different the medium is now – is still a wonderful experience for many. To a great extent we make our own worlds, and for a while I was lucky enough for mine to share some space with Bert’s.
Colin – so many of us have had our appreciation of Bert’s music immeasurably enhanced by your writings about the great man. Thank you.
I’ll echo this thought too.
I will be setting aside a small number of pennies each pension day in anticipation of the BBC recordings set you mention – please keep us informed of how this unfolds; if insufficient funds have accrued by the day of release I’ll just have to sell a kidney on eBay.
As for the Unpentangled 60s Renbourn album box, it’s a real treasure I am glad to have purchased, even though I already had three of the albums it covers. Anyone reading this who hasn’t already got those LPs should hurry over to the dodgers and grab a copy – it’s still available for less than the price of a broken shoe lace from one of David Gilmour’s smelly trainers.
Thanks for that – purchased…
Cheers John. I am not a guitarist nay I am not a musician but I have always preferred Renbourne over Jansch. His diminished legacy is to be regretted.
By coincidence, I am currently re-reading Dazzling Stranger, for the first time in 20-odd years…
I have re-read “Dazzling Stranger” many times. It is also my go to “dip in at any point” book and for me it’s the best book on the 60’s British folk scene. So glad to hear that it is still in print. I am always recommending it as a must read to people who have dipped their toes into that period. Cant wait for that BBC set Colin.
I saw them at Hitchin Folk Club. Fantastic. I won Wiz’s latest album in the raffle and had a chat with the great man. I think the live recording of the gig is for sale via the club website for the interested.
By chance, Plant & Krauss have released this trailer for their second album today – a cover of Bert’s ‘It Don’t Bother Me’ (1965). They cover his and Anne Briggs’ ‘Go You Way My Love’ on the record too, I believe. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Bert – who had periods of low resources in his life, during the 80s especially – to have lived knowing that an another musical act (with Plant in it) had sold millions of an album with a piece of music on it that was undoubtedly, to the ears of all who could hear, his creation without seeing any income from it.
Ultimately, as the song says, it didn’t bother him. ‘You’re either the sort of person who spends your time suing people or the sort of person who makes music,’ he once told me (a paraphrase – the quote is in the book, I think). I liked the first Plant & Krauss album and I’m sure this one will be to my taste too. But I would have sued.
My favourite Jansch song, that one. That’s a nice cover version.
I like Bert’s attitude actually. I think I would have been the same as him. I can imagine how soul-destroying a court case would have been. And I imagine there is a good chance he would have lost to some technical argument about original folk melodies being in the public domain?
What’s your opinion overall on Led Zep’, Colin? Do you listen to them or does Page’s antics put you off them?
I shall just reiterate my admiration and appreciation of the book, which I bought on the off chance and then made a mainstay of the music collection.
Yes me too…I’m by no means a natural folk fan but buying Colin’s book around 2006 or so opened me up to Jansch, and to some extent Davy Graham. Glad I investigated or I’d have missed out on some spellbinding music. The book painted a wonderfully vivid picture of the whole scene, I thought.
Thank you all for the book comments. I wasn’t thinking that the thread would be about that – I just mentioned it being in print for 20+ years as an example of how solid interest in Bert has been – reflected also in the amount of people posting videos of themselves playing his music, aside from the ongoing reissues and Foundation activities. It’s genuine fan-led interest rather than top-down marketing. I noticed the other day that the book I co-wrote with Andy Powell, published in 2015, is now out of print and commanding £40 second-hand… while the one on Bert, published in 2000, remains available in print.
I either interviewed or asked for a paragraph or two of testimonial from many people for the booklet of the at-some-point-forthcoming BBC set – musical collaborators and BBC presenters and producers – and no one refused: the affection and regard in what they had to say was palpable. He was an unusual man – the exact opposite of a self-promoter. He just ploughed his furrow and once in a while the media would notice again.
When Steve McCann asked me to do something at his 2019 gig, for the ‘Around the World in 80 Plays’ project, I felt moved to put some thoughts about Bert, and about some moments during the writing of the book (being in Edinburgh in 1992 for the filming of the Anne Briggs sequence in ‘Acoustic Routes’), into music. He made his own world – unassuming on the outside but a cauldron of magic in terms of the music that came out.