Pentangle: A History in Several Parts

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1. Colin H says

   19/12/2017 at 00:39

   THE PENTANGLE: 1967¬–1973

   Beginnings

   On November 5 1966 London’s Marquee club 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 (b. April 4 1939) and Cox (b. March 1936) 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 the children’s TV show ‘Five O’Clock Club’ and in his residency at Les Cousins – the all-nighter Soho folk cellar that had already made legends of hip young guitar slingers Bert Jansch and John Renbourn. Thompson and Cox, yet to work with Jansch or Renbourn, had been involved off and on with Duffy, and with his songwriting partner McLaughlin, since 1965 in an extraordinary series of recordings that went a long way towards the path of ‘fusion’ – in this case a potent brew of folk-blues, jazz and rock.

   Only four of these recordings surfaced at the time: a 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. 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.’

   ‘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.’ McLaughlin and Thompson recruited sax/flute/clarinet player Tony Roberts and simply carried on as the Danny Thompson Trio, specialising in modern jazz standards. The trio held together, in tandem with its members’ other projects, well into 1968 and while it never recorded commercially a stunning live radio broadcast entitled ‘Live 1967’ was released in 1999.

   Another might-have-been character in the Pentangle pre-dawn is Dorris Henderson, a vocally magnificent dark-skinned young woman from Los Angeles with a vague dream of playing folk music for a living. Someone had told her England was the place to do it, and they weren’t wrong. Arriving in London towards the end of 1964, one of the first people Dorris met, at the Roundhouse in Soho, was young guitarist John Renbourn. Within weeks Dorris had a recording contract with Columbia and, in company with Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, a residency on the children’s TV show ‘Gadzooks! It’s All Happening’. Dorris’ accompanist, for TV, record and gigs, was John Renbourn. By the end of ’64 John had moved in with fellow guitarist Bert Jansch, himself a recent arrival from Edinburgh and already taking the rapidly expanding London folk scene by storm with remarkably original songs and instrumental ideas and an inimitable anti-hero charisma.

   Jansch would have his first two albums – ‘Bert Jansch’ and ‘It Don’t Bother Me’ – released, on the pioneering folk label Transatlantic, during 1965. The albums cemented Bert’s reputation as the innovator of a new sound, but the innovations were only just beginning. Renbourn had cameoed on ‘It Don’t Bother Me’, creating a particularly magical interaction with Jansch on the instrumental ‘Lucky Thirteen’. ‘There You Go’, the debut LP from Dorris and Renbourn, jointly credited, duly appeared on Columbia in February 1966, with John’s solo debut, John Renbourn, appearing on Transatlantic the following month. On that album were two further instrumentals with Bert Jansch, ‘Noah And Rabbit’ and ‘Blue Bones’, albeit recordings made a year previously – when ‘Bert And John’ had barely met each other let alone forged any plans for a band or even found their stride as a duo. The tracks were nevertheless quite beyond some people: ‘They seem to have no hat stand upon which to hang themselves,’ declared Folk Scene’s reviewer, Dave Moran. Both Jansch and Renbourn, along with their spiritual mentor Davy Graham – a stunningly accomplished and original guitar stylist, revered by the cognoscenti since the late 50s, but one who would never quite manage to turn his abilities into mainstream popularity – were now perceived as a quite distinctive by-product of the folk revival. A few albums in, their technical accomplishments were taken as read. ‘They’ve proved that they can exist as an independent ‘third stream’, influenced by both folk and jazz,’ wrote Karl Dallas in Melody Maker. ‘They’ve now got to produce some really memorable music that stands up on its own account.’ Given a little time, he was not to be disappointed.

   Aside from their tentative collaborations on each other’s records, by the end of 1965 Bert and John were also performing sporadically together. Their London platform was always Les Cousins, with John joining Bert almost every week in the last three months of Bert’s 1965 Thursday residency at the venue. The collaboration continued well into the following year although opportunities were less regular, partly because each artist now commanded, individually, the highest club fees available. As a duo they were in theory unaffordable, but in practice the partnership was too engrossing to let finance get in the way.

   The strange fusions of styles and influences that marked ‘Bert And John’, their inevitable joint recording, paved the way for a more fully realised exploration of ideas in a full group context, though at the time the record did little to assuage those who felt this was all just virtuous noodling by the technically impressive. ‘On the whole this is a pleasant, unmemorable record,’ concluded Karl Dallas, ‘which will be required listening for everyone interested in well-played guitar. But very little of it sticks very long in the mind.’

   ‘Bert And John’ had been recorded, basically in a single afternoon, by the pair’s favoured engineer Bill Leader in the front room of their current flat at 23 St. Edmund’s Terrace. It was one of three albums involving its namesakes that Leader would record during the summer of 1966. The second album in this restlessly inventive trilogy was ‘Jack Orion’ – credited to Bert Jansch, though featuring Renbourn prominently on four of its eight tracks. Comprising mostly radical arrangements of British and American traditional songs, the ideas had been brewing in Bert’s mind and fermenting in his playing style for the previous year or more, and this was consequently the most focused, taut and energized product of the trilogy. Its impact within the folk community was immense. The third product of that heady summer of ’66 was Renbourn’s second album, ‘Another Monday’ – stronger than his debut and, as with ‘Jack Orion’ and ‘Bert And John’, pushing forward with new ideas. The focus on blues covers that had defined his first album was still in evidence but Renbourn’s interest in Early Music had now risen to the surface with the beautifully crafted Elizabethan pastiche ‘Ladye Nothing’s Toye Puff’ and the inspired combination of guitar and oboe in ‘One For William’, a remarkably original trek along the borders of jazz and baroque. The record also introduced the world to a splendid young singer called Jacqui McShee.

   Back in March ‘66, Dorris Henderson had returned to the States for what was to be a period of several months. On her return she would record a second album with Renbourn, ‘Watch The Stars’ (Fontana, 1967) and form an unrecorded group with the uncannily Pentangle-ish name Tintagel before recording a single with Eclection and disappearing thence into obscurity. 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 from 1960. Performing initially at the Olive Tree in Croydon and later on advertised dates and floor spots in the London clubs, she had worked as 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.’ By the end of 1965, Jacqui was running a club at the Red Lion in Sutton with friends; Bert and John were both booked 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 in the flat in St. Edmund’s Terrace, behind the Zoo. 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.’ John and Jacqui’s first advertised gig as a duo was at the Cousins in August 1966. That same 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, and both Nat Joseph (founder and MD of Transatlantic) and Bruce Dunnet (a committed Communist, folk club organiser and Bert’s manager in all but name) started creating the opportunities. Renbourn, still performing as a duo with Bert and fast becoming a viable solo concert artist himself, was also now performing as a duo with Jacqui.

   ‘I can remember being on a train,’ says Jacqui, ‘and it stopped on a bridge between Charing Cross and Waterloo. John and I were going to a gig down in Crawley – a Town Hall type thing – in the summer of ‘66. We’d stopped and we were looking at the Festival Hall and John said, ‘We’ll be playing there soon’. I looked at him and said ‘Oh yes? Ha ha, very funny…’’

   By the end of the year, with the popularity of both Bert and John 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, mediaeval 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. This was how it seemed to the musicians, but on a business level this was new and seemingly foolhardy territory. There were, as yet, very few bands on the folk scene: the economics were unappealing and, in any case, the use of drums and the consequent need for amplification was against the very ethos of folk music. But the spirit of adventure was irresistible.

   The Horseshoe

   The emergence of the Pentangle as a group went hand in hand with the creation of a new Sunday night club at the Horseshoe Hotel, on London’s Tottenham Court Road. At this remove, the strategy behind the venture is confused. Bert and John felt they were creating a platform for their new group; their club organiser, Bruce Dunnet, maintains the goal was a platform for Bert, with whom he believed he had previously entered into a formal business arrangement. Neither Dunnet nor Nat Joseph at Transatlantic was attracted to the idea of their star solo acts forming a band. The situation is complicated by the blurring of memories and the apparent involvement of impresario Gerry Bron (who had taken out ads proclaiming ‘exclusive representation’ of Bert in the Melody Maker during December ’66), a bigger wheel in the music management world who would court Bert well into 1967, but again only as a soloist. At this stage, no-one believed there was a future in his band. But then no-one had heard it yet.

   While Bert was largely oblivious to the business wrangling and confusion going on around him, the Horseshoe itself was a tangible step up in the traditionally dingy world of folk clubs. The hotel’s function room was a plush, 400-seater venue that had only rarely been used previously for folksong events. The club opened on February 5 1967, with Bert, John and Jacqui advertised. A few days earlier Bert had performed unprecedented, entirely solo concerts at major venues in Birmingham and Glasgow. These would be the first of at least four major concerts – organised by Bruce Dunnet and culminating at Newcastle City Hall on March 18 – that would run in parallel with the formative days of the Pentangle and effectively play out Bert’s (and the band’s) business relationship with Dunnet. With Bert managing to draw a thousand people to the third date, at Manchester Free Trade Hall, they also served to emphasise the nature of the crossroads Bert was now at: was he to embrace the path of solo stardom or throw in his lot with the band – unprecedented, untried and apparently unloved? Having already seen at first hand the screaming-teenager fanaticism surrounding Donovan – a folk-pop sensation and an early champion of Bert’s songs – he was inclined to put his energies into the band. But, as would be the case with all its other members, it was to be a strictly part-time project, refined over the course of a year.

   So who would those other members be? Courtesy of John Renbourn’s connections, they would turn out to be the already hugely experienced blues and jazz players Danny Thompson, on bass, and Terry Cox, on drums. ‘I met Danny and Terry on Gadzooks,’ explains John. ‘Alexis [Korner] had the house band. We all met up at Cousins because Alexis liked to play there with Danny and Terry as a trio. In effect we borrowed them, having jammed there, before moving on to the Horseshoe. I think John Marshall [from Soft Machine] may have depped for Terry once.’

   John Renbourn was certainly 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, one of Britain’s earliest folk troubadours and 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 (in Jacqui’s case, literally) and nobody could possibly hold the experiment against them. This was just as well, as the first night of the club had been a disaster.

   ‘I went there with my wife,’ says Pete Frame, latter-day creator of Rock Family Trees. ‘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 promotor 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 commercial 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.’

   Danny had considerable recording, performing and broadcasting experience with an array of blues, jazz and folk people. He had played on Davy Graham’s monumental Folk, Blues & Beyond (1965) 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.’

   The group’s name had come from John, inspired by the Arthurian tale of ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’. The ‘pentangle’ was the sign on the inside of King Arthur’s shield: ‘So we decided that that would be a good name,’ says John, ‘because it was valuable to protect us from evil as much as anything else! Of course, when we went to play in America later on we hit up against the California culture, which was very much into tarot cards and the occult and all things esoteric, and almost by coincidence our stuff slotted right in with that.’

   The first concert appearance of the Pentangle, and the first appearance of the name, was at the Festival Hall on May 27 1967. For Jacqui, the show remains memorable for one reason alone: ‘I stood up. It was the one and only time I stood up to sing. I was so nervous my knees were shaking and I couldn’t keep my legs still. I was in such a state. ‘Never ever again!’ I thought. So I sat down from then on.’ The rest of the bill featured Irish jazz singer Ottilie Patterson, with Chris Barber’s band, and bluesman ‘Spider’ John Koerner, but it was essentially the Pentangle’s show, and it was sold out. A surviving set list from a concert at Birmingham Town Hall three weeks later – comprising an eight-song John & Jacqui set, a five-song Bert set and an eight-song group set – indicates that the group were still in the process of defining their repertoire. Material from the solo sets would eventually settle into the group’s repertoire while, conversely, the group was still dabbling in arrangements of material from Bert and John’s solo repertoires, with a bluesy emphasis. The instrumentals ‘Waltz’ and ‘Bells’ were the only group originals at this stage.

   As the Pentangle were becoming a formalised unit, so the Horseshoe club was gaining the ring of permanency. From June ’67 to the club’s swansong in March ’68 the Pentangle members would invite their friends each week as guest performers, the likes of Wizz Jones, Anne Briggs, Ralph McTell, Alexis Korner, Dorris Henderson, Alex Campbell, Sandy Denny, Davy Graham and Clive Palmer.

   ‘There was a Jewish over-forties club upstairs,’ says Jacqui, ‘and every time I sang an unaccompanied song they’d start into ‘Hava Nagila’ and all the feet-stamping! The chaps used to laugh at this. ‘How do you do it?’ they’d say. I didn’t do it in the same place every week, and I’m sure they didn’t sing ‘Hava Nagila’ in the same place every week, but it just seemed to happen. Not only that but there’d be ambulances going past, bells ringing somewhere… I mean, they’re the sort of memories that stick out.’

   ‘During late Sunday afternoons,’ says Kieran Bracken, a club regular, ‘the band would set up, and could later be found partaking of their Sunday tea across the road in the Wimpy Bar until about 6.45. In those days, pubs were strictly closed between 2 and 7 on Sundays. They would then make their way back to the Horseshoe and ring the doorbell for admission. Bruce Dunnet had membership cards printed, and memberships were sold for 10 shillings. At one point he even took to selling photos of Bert! He also kept the evening running to schedule, which gave it all a very professional feel. The audience covered a broad spectrum – students like myself, bohemians, young couples and a few older ‘professional’ types. Entry was five shillings [25p] for members, seven and sixpence [38p] for others. Usually this left me nothing for beer. Indeed, many sat through the evening without consuming much at all, band members excepted!

   ‘The music started at 7.30 prompt. The hotel closed sharp at 10.30, so there was no time to waste. After some rapid infusion of refreshment in the bar John would always start off the night, usually joined by Jacqui. John’s cigarette-smoking ability was so fascinating as to be of almost equal interest to the music. This is the only man I have ever seen who could light up before the start of a piece and play it from beginning to end while smoking a cigarette down to the butt without removing it from his mouth. Bert would take the floor at eight and play a solo half-hour. The audiences of the day were very tolerant of the effects of alcohol on performers. Frequently, Bert would appear to be well gone, unable to focus on the proceedings, and yet his charisma alone seemed to carry him through. In retrospect, I suspect the guy was nervous as hell. Looking back now, I can recall a sort of determination on Bert’s part to make the whole thing work.

   ‘After Bert there would be a short break, a long queue at the bar and then the floor-spot, maybe Sandy Denny, Clive Palmer or Les Bridger. But time was short and Pentangle really had to be on by 9.30 to give the audience full measure. My last train home was 11 p.m. If the band was on form and overshot the 10.30 closing time there was a real possibility of an uncomfortable night on a station bench. This did happen to me a few times. To this day I still feel it was worth it.’

   One Sunday in July, Tony Wilson went along to investigate the phenomenon for Melody Maker: ‘It’s some months now since the Pentangle made their debut at the Horseshoe Hotel,’ he wrote. ‘Then they were ragged, uninspired and generally lacking in confidence – now that has all changed. They have become a much tighter unit. Musically the group has widened its horizons and is performing folk songs like ‘She Moved Through The Fair’ and ‘Let No Man Steal Your Thyme’. They appear to be cutting down on the blues stuff, which is an improvement as in the past they were top heavy with blues songs and this created monotony. The real test, however, will be when the group moves out of the sympathetic environment of the Horseshoe and they have to face a cold, un-blues un-folk oriented audience.’

   On August 13 1967 the group had to do just that, appearing as ‘The Pentangle with BERT JANSCH’ alongside Jeff Beck, P. P. Arnold, John Mayall, Fleetwood Mac and Cream at the seventh National Jazz & Blues Festival at Windsor. ‘There was a guy in the audience who had the biggest teeth I’ve ever seen,’ says Jacqui, ‘and he just stood up and pointed at us and laughed and laughed and laughed! It was very disconcerting. He’d obviously never heard anything like us and thought it was funny. We shouldn’t have been sandwiched between all those people. We were definitely on the wrong bill.’

   ‘It was nearly the end of the band,’ says John. ‘A guy that Bert was very close to, Simon Bouchant, had just been killed in a car accident, and his girlfriend was there. Bert was trying to look after her plus think about playing, and I’m afraid it was just a disaster. Nat Joseph had been against the idea of the band doing it, but Bert told Nat that the band must definitely do it, for the publicity. But the publicity was terrible! The review [by Chris Welch in MM] simply said, ‘Bert Jansch was dire’.’

   Nat Joseph, founder of the Transatlantic label, to which Bert and John were already contracted as recording artists, had not been enthusiastic about the group: ‘I had long felt that Bert and John could become the nub of a folk-rock band,’ he says, ‘but the kind of music the Pentangle turned out was just the kind of music I didn’t think they would. It was far too bland. The first thing was that I didn’t like the idea of a girl lead singer and, if the truth be told, I didn’t think Jacqui was the best vocalist they could have got. With Bert and John’s vocals, although they weren’t conventionally great vocalists, they had great character. I’m not denying that it wasn’t successful or good, but I always felt they could have done something much more exciting.’ More worryingly, Jo Lustig, a sharp PR operator from New York who joined the Pentangle team as manager towards the end of their Horseshoe residency, approached Renbourn with the suggestion of replacing Jacqui with Sandy Denny – a more forceful onstage personality and a singer more obviously likely to put her individual stamp on a song. Jacqui’s unique contribution to the group would be, in both a personal and musical sense, to act as the glue between the four straining-at-the-leash personalities around her. Renbourn stood his ground and, wisely, didn’t mention the matter to Jacqui for some time. Jacqui would face an amount of negative comment from commentators during the early months of the group but she soon became as irreplaceable as any of the others.

   Not against new directions per se, Nat Joseph had, in fact, supported and encouraged Bert into pursuing fresh musical territory of a different kind on his 1967 solo album ‘Nicola’ – recorded in April and released in July of that year, at the height of the summer of love. A patchy experiment, featuring double-tracked vocals, orchestrations, 12-string guitar and the only recorded evidence of a custom-made John Bailey electric guitar Bert was experimenting with at the time (seen in early photos of the Pentangle and wryly recalled as bearing some resemblance to a large frying pan), its content nevertheless overlapped a little with the early repertoire of the group. Certainly, both ‘Come Back Baby’ and ‘Dissatisfied Blues’ (recorded for ‘Nicola’ though unreleased until a 1972 Jansch compilation) were performed by the group with Jacqui on lead vocals at their Birmingham concert in June ’67, while ‘Train Song’ (again, recorded for ‘Nicola’ though unused and now lost) would later appear as one of the group’s recorded masterpieces on the 1969 album ‘Basket Of Light’.

   ‘Rather than jumping direct from solo folk artist to pop star with lush backing,’ concluded Karl Dallas in his MM review of ‘Nicola’, ‘it might have been more advisable to have stopped at the transitory stage of the Pentangle.’ In retrospect, he was almost right: ‘Nicola’ was a bold experiment but ultimately a dead end; the Pentangle, however transitory it might have seemed in the summer of ’67, would be the real way forward.

   Immediately after the Windsor debacle the group flew to Denmark for their first-ever tour, organised by Bert’s Danish agent who had inexplicably billed the Pentangle as Britain’s newest rock sensation. It was another disaster: ‘The first night, it was a typical rock club,’ says Bert. ‘The stage was quite high and the audience were ‘down there’. It was full and they were all kids, 15- to 16-year-olds, all expecting rock’n’roll. The Pentangle show at the time was that John would go on first and do a solo set, and then John and I would do one, and then I would do one, and then the whole band would come on. But that night John lasted two or three songs. They were throwing coins. It was really quite dangerous.’ ‘In the end,’ says Jacqui, ‘we all went on, turned everything up as loud as possible and played the normal set, just very loudly. They thought it was great.’

   Shortly before the Danish tour, which included a radio concert with Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick and seemingly also a half-hour television concert (the group’s earliest, and unfortunately now untraceable), Bert had debuted his electric guitar onstage: ‘I could never handle it,’ he later admitted, ‘although John Renbourn was also starting to play electric guitar at that time. We always kept solo spots, partly to appease folk guitarists. We were greeted with shouts of ‘Sell-out!’ because we had bass and drums, even though it was a double bass.’ Bert’s brief use of an electric guitar had been simply a response to the amplification problem. If he had ever harboured any thoughts of exploring the instrument further, these were swiftly forgotten in the wake of a momentous concert on September 25 1967: a ‘Guitar In’ at the Festival Hall with flamenco player Paco Pena, the classical duo Tim Walker & Seb Jorgensen, Bert Jansch and the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

   Bert was already aware of Hendrix by then. His version of ‘Hey Joe’, which Bert had himself performed years earlier, had been a hit at the start of the year. ‘I’d read some poetry he’d written,’ says Bert, ‘and also I’d heard a tape of him playing acoustic guitar and I’ve never heard that since. It was magic. We were onstage when I said hello, at Jimi’s sound check. I did meet him but he didn’t open his mouth once all evening. I enjoyed his sound check more than anything else. It was quite extraordinary. He walked on, plugged into one of his pedals, turned the whole volume up as loud as possible, smashed [a chord on] the guitar once – and that was it. Paco Pena that night was actually in the artists’ bar handing out leaflets for flamenco guitar lessons! But Jimi’s show itself that night was stunning. Unbelievable.’

   Only two papers had sent reporters along: Melody Maker and the Financial Times. Tony Wilson, for MM, marvelled at Hendrix’s full array of performance tricks, clearly redefining the possibilities of the instrument. Bert Jansch ‘ambling on stage with two guitars’, his six- and 12-string acoustics, was in marked contrast. Bert was ‘well on form’ and new material was aired including ‘A Woman Like You’ and ‘Birthday Blues’. ‘I was standing in the wings,’ says Bert’s girlfriend at the time, Judy Nicola Cross (whose name had provided Bert with an album title earlier in the year). ‘It was fabulous. I know afterwards that Bert went out and bought different strings for his guitar – whatever Hendrix used. I remember John rang and I told him Bert was off buying new strings and John said, ‘Oh, he’s not is he? I’ve just done that!’

   In November the Pentangle, mis-billed as ‘Bert Jansch & The Pentangles’, undertook their first British tour, arranged by Nat Joseph and jazz impresario Pete Burman: ‘I only remember bad things about it,’ says Renbourn. ‘Pete Burman would take a long time in the dressing room getting decked out in a dinner jacket, with throat spray and all the rest of it, and then he’d run on stage and give this incredible introduction. And then we came on. It was ridiculous.’
   While the group had performed two or three town hall-type concerts before, this was their first serious venture into the provinces, mostly to university venues. At the Queen’s University Festival in Belfast they represented the world of pop with, incredibly, Les Bridger (Bert and John’s one-time flatmate and a man of infamously limited musical quality), Jimi Hendrix and the Watersons. In February 1968 Bert was featured as a guest artist on two of the Watersons’ farewell concerts: at Manchester Free Trade Hall and Newcastle City Hall. That same month, his own group acquired a manager of formidable reputation, had its first of many sessions broadcast on BBC Radio 1 and began recording its first single and album. The manager’s name was Jo Lustig, and from now on the ramshackle, happy-go-lucky progress of the Pentangle was going to be a streamlined machine of purpose and efficiency.

   The Management

   Jo Lustig was a New Yorker who had first come to Britain in 1960 as Nat ‘King’ Cole’s publicist, settling there and transforming the attractive if modestly talented Julie Felix, whom he had wrested from Bruce Dunnet’s management, into a national television celebrity. Danny Thompson and John Renbourn had both worked with Felix and consequently knew Jo and his abilities. Seemingly, Gerry Bron was still potentially interested in Bert, if not the band, but at some point Bert invited Jo down to the Horseshoe and the matter of the group’s management was swiftly settled: ‘I went to see them and I liked them very much,’ said Jo. ‘My philosophy is simple: if you can apply commercial techniques to crap, it can happen. Why can’t you apply it to fine music? I have a strange way of managing: I like to get a group of musicians who know their way. I let them handle their own way artistically, I handle their business. I’m not out to make friends with my bands. Bert once said to me, ‘Jo, you never hang out’. I don’t like hanging out – that’s not my scene.’

   Lustig’s manner was abrasive and his fee substantial but his instinct was sound, his energy fearsome and his contacts seemingly inexhaustible. One obituary, in the Daily Telegraph, in 1999 characterised him thus: ‘Mention almost any name of significance in the arts, music or post-war Anglo-American culture in general and his response would be the same: ‘He’s a friend of mine’. He had the stocky build of a sawn-off shotgun (and sometimes the temperament to match), his steel grey curls and Roman nose lending him a magnificently leonine appearance. His Brooklyn accent, gravelly laugh and habit of punctuating his conversations with a jabbing finger could sometimes lead people to mistake him for a rough diamond. But he was an immensely cultured man, a canny operator who delighted in being an American at large in the world of British culture.’

   At the time Jo was introduced to the Pentangle the only act he was managing was Roy Harper. In later years Jo would manage a stream of successful acts – Ralph McTell, Steeleye Span, Jethro Tull, the Chieftains – but the Pentangle were the making of his reputation and he, in turn, the making of theirs. Almost overnight, they were transformed from a cult folk-club act to a bona fide concert attraction with an extraordinary appeal across the social spectrum and considerable, sustained media coverage. ‘Most of the band had fairly rough things to say about Jo,’ says Bert. ‘But I quite liked him. He very, very rarely made mistakes.’ Where everyone agrees is that Jo Lustig was the best PR man there was. To build a campaign around his new charges he would need something to sell: exclusivity. The club demand for Bert, John and the band would have to be starved to create the possibility of a concert relaunch. By the end of March 1968, the Pentangle along with Bert and John as solo performers were withdrawn from circulation. Although they would continue to record albums during the Pentangle era, Bert and John’s solo careers were effectively put on hold and would remain so for the next five years. The group’s relaunch was scheduled for June 29 1968 at the Festival Hall. The first album and single would be out by then, and the concert would be recorded for the second.

   The first casualty of the Lustig regime was to be the Horseshoe. The club had, in truth, already served its purpose. The resident group had built up its repertoire and confidence and was itching to move on, increasingly accepting outside bookings. Although it ran on until March 10 1968, the club’s apogee coincided on Christmas Eve 1967 with the ending of Bert’s relationship with Judy Cross. Wizz Jones, Alexis Korner and Sandy Denny were all guests. It was Jacqui’s birthday the next day and she and Sandy, the worse for wear, sang ‘Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor’ – and fell over. By this stage, of course, and no doubt bolstered by the security of having married earlier in the year, in March, Jacqui’s day job was long gone: ‘I used to find it quite difficult getting in on time,’ she recalls. ‘It got to the stage where I was having so much time off work, and getting in so late – getting to bed at three o’clock… I used to crash out on the sofa at John and Bert’s place but I had to give up work ‘cos it was getting silly.’

   ‘The departure from the Horseshoe in early ’68 was rapid and final,’ recalls Kieran Bracken. ‘The announcement went along the lines of ‘due to overexposure this has been the last evening’. The next time I saw the band was at the Festival Hall, after which they departed on a seemingly endless tour. Watching and listening to the Pentangle through that year at the Horseshoe was very, very exciting and one was aware of being part of something the like of which had not been seen before. Many saw their first album as a ‘beginning’, but in reality it was the end of a long process. Folk, jazz and blues all rolled into one! And we had been around to see it come together.’

   The New Beginning

   Taking the band out of circulation for three months and then foisting them on a wider public as a major concert attraction – initially at the Festival Hall and then at a select handful of festivals during the summer – was quite a gamble. Jo backed it up with a minor onslaught of radio and television appearances and an omnipresence of adverts, reminders and ‘news items’ in the music press. ‘A lot of people became managers who were accountants,’ he explained, years later, ‘but that’s not the way to manage – you’ve got to have some promotional instinct to manage, to make decisions that are going to be a step in the right direction for a band. I just tried, you know. I wasn’t afraid of getting ‘No’ as an answer, so I asked everybody, and we got very creative exposure.’

   The Pentangle would certainly enjoy a lengthy ‘honeymoon period’ with the British press and the wider media. Other acts had enjoyed blanket coverage before but only for a limited period. The Pentangle may have been fortunate in the long run not to have had a hugely charismatic front-person but they were featured, reviewed and mentioned in passing consistently for the best part of the next four years, on a scale greater than many of their better-remembered and bigger-selling contemporaries. If Jo was out to convince people by sheer force of will that the Pentangle had suddenly become a major-league attraction, then he certainly found a willing audience in the British media.

   Fellow musicians were also taken aback by the speed of the Pentangle’s progress from cultdom to the upper echelons of celebrity: ‘I did listen to the first Pentangle album and I liked it,’ recalls Pete Townshend, a slight acquaintance of Bert’s from the early 60s and by then a major figure in British pop. ‘Although it never really engaged me there was something new and innovative about. But I was obviously delighted with their success, which as far as I could see was instant – they seemed to be playing the Albert Hall almost immediately.’

   The debut album and single, neither of which would be released until May, were preceded by a session for John Peel’s influential Top Gear show on the relatively new BBC Radio 1. The idea of giving contemporary musicians radio sessions for the BBC had been extrapolated from a policy of allowing the Corporation’s regional dance-band orchestras lucrative airtime on Radio 1’s predecessor, the Light Programme. The Pentangle would feature on Top Gear and on Peel’s Wednesday evening show Night Ride no less than seven times during 1968, and several times thereafter, in addition to live and in-session broadcasts for many other programmes on the station.

   Releasing a single at all was a brave move for Transatlantic, who had failed dismally with a Jansch single, ‘Life Depends On Love’, the previous year: ‘We never regarded ourselves as a singles label,’ admits Nat Joseph, ‘and I have to say we were pretty bloody useless at promoting singles – and that was something that I was always furious about. But, on the other hand, we didn’t have enough singles material to justify what you really had to do, which was to have a whole singles’ promotion team.’

   The label did, nonetheless, enjoy the odd fling with the lower reaches of the Hit Parade. Prior to the Pentangle, the Ian Campbell Group’s ‘Guantanamera’ and the Purple Gang’s ‘Granny Takes A Trip’ had been minor successes, while the Johnstons’ version of ‘Both Sides Now’ would soon be doing battle with the Judy Collins version for chart supremacy. Referred to in the Melody Maker as ‘the best single of the week’, in a week that also saw the release of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Jumping Jack Flash’, it might have appeared that the Pentangle’s ‘Travelling Song’ (their only commercial release to feature orchestration) had a fighting chance. In truth, any such optimism was best summed up by the title of its B-side: ‘Mirage’.

   As with ‘Travelling Song’, ‘Mirage’ was credited solely to Jansch – predating the group’s policy of jointly crediting everything and splitting publishing royalties equally. Clocking in at barely two minutes, it had no hook, no narrative and almost nothing to do with conventional songwriting. Jacqui sang dreamily, on a melody that seemed to float over an accompaniment of starkly minimalist tension. Bert’s guitar snapped its way through a characteristically cyclical pattern which acted as a canvas for the drums and bass to pound against the extremities of the frame, with the wildest and darkest of colours. On the album as a whole the jazz elements in the music were pushing through to breathtaking effect. But while the instrumental work was superb, song-wise the band was only showing glimpses of how things would later develop.

   For all its musical daring, the relatively short length, coming in at 31 minutes, didn’t go unnoticed at the time. One reviewer suggested that ‘there could have been possibly a couple of punchy instrumentals or a Jansch vocal for a more illustrative indication to the group’s range of output’ (and with several instrumental outtakes curiously left in the can he was very close to the mark). Presumably, the group’s own vision for the album was to present only fully-fledged ensemble pieces: too many instrumentals or essentially solo contributions from Jansch or anybody else would, perhaps, have upset the balance.

   ‘Let No Man Steal Your Thyme’, which would eventually become the group’s first single in America, was a traditional English piece from Jacqui’s solo repertoire; ‘Bells’, originally titled ‘Belles of St. Mary’s’, was a Jansch and Renbourn composition. Remaining one of the group’s most distinctive instrumentals, it demonstrated a mastery of light and shade largely absent from the vocal tracks on the album. Bert’s self-repeating guitar figure introduces the other instruments in turn, before everyone descends in a flurry of notes to first one common base and then a second. Like most modern jazz compositions the theme is stated then someone takes a solo – in this case John, followed by Terry, punctuated by restatements of the guitar hook. Hypnotic in its atmosphere, it may have started months before as a jam but it had been honed to perfection.

   The whole album was recorded on 4-track equipment, with the instrumental work mostly recorded live and in a minimum of takes. In almost all cases the first completed take was used. Side one finished with ‘Pentangling’, the group’s first truly co-compositional vocal piece. ‘It’s really fantastic the way we all think together,’ said Bert, at the time. ‘Anything we do is a really co-operative effort. John or I may be playing around with an instrumental figure, and then the others begin to add things, and maybe Jacqui will improvise some words that fit. That’s what happened to ‘Pentangling’.’ Jacqui maintains that the lyrics in question were rather the result of a game of consequences – each member contributing random lines. Either way, like ‘Bruton Town’, ‘Pentangling’ would be a regular in the set list for some years, with Danny’s bass solo never failing to give the act a show-stealing climax. The climax to the album, however, was ‘Waltz’ – a frenzied guitar/bass/drums work-out that powers along through manically shifting tempos and time signatures, incorporating a section of Bert’s ‘Casbah’, ideas from an earlier Renbourn instrumental (also called ‘Waltz’) and adding staccato handclaps off the beat, before Danny goes off on a tangent even wilder than his ‘Pentangling’ solo. It remains the edgiest performance the band ever recorded.

   The Melody Maker, accepting that something unusual was going down, allowed the record not one but two substantial reviews – one from a jazz writer and the other from the folk camp, under the heading ‘Two Sides Of A Pentangle’. It was an enlightened approach, although perhaps inevitably the jazz man, Christopher Bird, ended up sounding a little patronising: ‘Do I like the record?’ he concluded. ‘Of course: I can’t get the insinuating line of ‘Pentangling’ out of my mind for a start. But a jazz record? No, never.’ Taking a sideswipe at John Peel’s admittedly absurd sleeve note, which doffed its cap to the masses ‘squatting swollen-eyed and morning-mouthed outside garish Wilson-Picketted shop windows’ waiting for the record to come out, Bird also complained that the whole thing was in the key of E ‘and that is just a mite monotonous’. Actually, there were four keys used on the album, as producer Shel Talmy forcefully pointed out in the letters page of the following week’s issue. But he was probably right about Peel.

   Even Tony Wilson, the folk world’s representative, wasn’t letting himself get carried away: ‘This album is the culmination of a year’s work,’ he explained. ‘A year spent formulating, experimenting, developing ideas and generally knitting together as a musical unit. Certainly it is a tribute to the perseverance of all involved for there were times in the group’s embryo stages when it seemed they were never going to make it… The music is. It has reached a logical step in progress but where will it go, if anywhere, next? The Pentangle with their first album pose a question. Is this a milestone – or a headstone?’

   Producer Shel Talmy’s involvement in the record, and likewise in the following two, is a dimly-lit corner of the Pentangle story. Previously known for his work with the brasher end of rock music, most notably the Kinks and the Who, Talmy had the reputation of a hit-maker, although his methods – effectively excluding the musicians from the mixing process – were controversial. An American, he was of course an associate of Jo Lustig – although, once again, John Renbourn was a prime mover in his involvement:

   ‘I had met Shel with Dorris [Henderson],’ he recalls. ‘He had a small label called Planet and he got me to play guitar for Marianne Faithfull, who was a support act on a Roy Orbison tour. Terry may have been the drummer in the band that backed Big O.’

   As Nat Joseph recalls: ‘It’s fair to say that whereas I continued to supervise Bert and John’s solo albums, in terms of the Pentangle what was arrived at – or, rather, wasn’t arrived at – was that Jo told me he’d got Shel Talmy, who was going to produce the albums. He always told you things, he never asked. However, in this case I was quite happy with that because Shel had had massive success as a producer and I thought he would really get something out of them. I don’t know whether I would have settled on Shel Talmy particularly but he would certainly have been one of the people whom I would have wanted to consider.’

   Pete Townshend speculates that a shift into folk music may have been Talmy’s equivalent of a rest cure: ‘Larry Page was the first Kinks manager, and he was out to lunch. So was Kit Lambert, our manager. I didn’t take any shit either. On our first recording when it came to the playback Shel said the band couldn’t listen to the playback. I pushed him off the desk. So maybe Pentangle for him was a conscious decision.’

   Roy Harper, another friend of Bert’s from the London folk-club scene, was also under Jo Lustig’s management at that time and had recorded his second album, ‘Come Out Fighting Genghis Smith’ (also notable for its sleeve note by Bert Jansch), the previous year under Talmy’s regime. His memories of the partnership are less than nostalgic: ‘Shel Talmy is a dodgy character who was friendly with another dodgy character and they get another dodgy character, namely me, to go in and make a record. But when you look at what the Pentangle were doing in the late 60s anybody could have recorded them and it would have been wonderful.’

   Bill Leader, who produced the group’s fourth and fifth albums, believes that if Talmy did indeed restrict the group members’ recording and mixing ideas then it was to the detriment of the end result. Nevertheless, the three Pentangle albums overseen by Talmy do have a certain power and rich density of sound that was unachieved on their later albums. ‘He was great actually,’ says Jacqui. ‘I was terrified of him – I’d never met a ‘Big Producer’ before. He had the most amazing ears. I remember we started to do a harmony – it was John, Terry and I think Bert too. In those days you’d do the harmony all together around one microphone and he just came over the intercom and said, ‘You gotta be kidding’. We thought it sounded great, but it obviously didn’t! He was very quiet but what he did say you listened to. I spent most of the time being terrified.’

   With the album ready to go half-page press ads were taken out, replicating the cover’s famous group silhouette and boldly proclaiming, ‘It took a year to create – a generation will treasure it’. Nat Joseph, however, didn’t need quite so long to feel a trifle disappointed: ‘I can’t remember the exact sales figures. I do remember feeling at that point, though, that in comparison with the solo albums it didn’t have the same impact, in terms of sales. In the initial months, as far as I recall, it didn’t justify its cost. The real turning point for the Pentangle was the ‘Take Three Girls’ television show. The absolute key to the Pentangle sales were those two series and at that point, of course, the whole canon started selling.’

   In the meantime, sales were okay, credibility wasn’t in question and inside each album was a chance to win a couple of tickets to the Pentangle’s biggest and boldest live appearance yet: June 29 1968 at the Royal Festival Hall. It would be a night to remember.

   The Summer of ‘68

   The summer of 1968 was a golden opportunity for phase one of the Lustig masterplan. The idea of ‘the rock festival’ was beginning to filter across from America. The Pentangle were scheduled to headline the Saturday afternoon of the Melody Maker’s own venture into the field (literally): Woburn Abbey on July 6-7, followed by appearances at both the Cambridge Jazz and Folk Festivals later in the month, and then a week-long booking at the prestigious Edinburgh Festival Fringe at the end of August. There would be a significant scattering of radio and television appearances in between. The keystone for the whole plan was the Festival Hall show in June. It would be heavily advertised in the press for weeks in advance, during which time there would no other band or solo appearances. By the end of March, Bert and John had wound up their solo commitments. Danny, however, still had one or two outstanding engagements with his trio.

   ‘We’re after a free sounding thing,’ said Danny, in an interview at the time, ‘and I think we achieve it. But there’s a harmonic basis for our work, and the time is always going in there somewhere, even though it’s a lot more flexible than in more conventional approaches to jazz playing.’ As late as November 1968 there was mention in the press of Danny ‘working on material for an album with his own trio’, but nothing was to come of it. Nevertheless, Christopher Bird was prescient in his view of the trio’s constituent parts as ‘saviours of British jazz’:

   ‘Individually these three are all tremendous players,’ he declared, reviewing one of their concert appearances. ‘No matter how many ducks and drakes are played with the time, Danny’s fundamental pulse is rock steady, his sound big and firm. MacLoughlin [sic], I suppose, must now be strongly fancied as ‘the’ jazz guitar in the country. In the ensemble sections the leaping, dancing, interweaving lines of all three often seemed to take on the quality of independent flight. Certainly the feeling of genuinely musical excitement that was generated was very, very strong, and I couldn’t help contrasting their underpublicised achievement with much of the tub-thumping demagogy of some of those on a much more obvious ‘free-jazz’ kick.’

   The connection with the third trio member, Tony Roberts, would prove useful later on. He was the only person anyone could think of, a few years down the line, capable of making reliable transcriptions of the Pentangle’s music. (A song book had been mooted, though it was apparently never published.) For years after the Pentangle had folded, Roberts would be appearing with Zelig-esque ubiquity on albums and in bands run by Renbourn, by Thompson and on records from reformed eighties versions of the Pentangle. John McLaughlin became, of course, as Christopher Bird might have put it, ‘the’ jazz guitar in the world.

   While Danny had his fingers in other pies Renbourn was also keeping the home fires burning, with his most confident and most original solo album yet. Even the title was his most confident and original: ‘Sir John Alot of Merrie Englande’s Musyk Thyng and Ye Greene Knyghte’ (1968). Here was a man who’d been reading up on King Arthur. ‘This is John’s best album to date,’ wrote Tony Wilson, ‘and has all the required ingredients of a good record – variety, entertainment and good musicianship. Folk or not folk? That must be decided by listening.’

   ‘One For William’, the pseudo-medieval guitar/oboe work-out on Renbourn’s previous album ‘Another Monday’ (1966), had proved popular, and was John’s own favourite from the album. The first side of ‘Sir John A lot’ continued in this direction, with sterling assistance from Ray Warleigh on flute and Terry Cox on finger cymbals, African drums and glockenspiel. The second side drew from more funky modern jazz influences. There were no attempts at blues singing, and instrumentally it was a boiling mixture of precision arrangements on the one hand and daring improvisation on the other. It was destined to become an album of lasting influence, particularly amongst those who made their names on the Windham Hill label in America during the 1980s. It was to be the Renbourn record that featured the most concise presentation of all that he did best. Later albums may have refined his techniques or pursued single aspects of his music, but this one had a richly drawn sense of humour and abandonment.

   ‘That one was his peak,’ says Nat Joseph. ‘I loved that album and it sold wonderfully well. We used to play it a lot for personal pleasure, which is a good test, and this medieval influence that he was very keen on – I had a great liking for medieval literature, so we had plenty to talk about. I think back on all my associations with John with pride and pleasure because actually he wasn’t overtly an easy artist to promote. There were plenty of people who would have taken a risk on Bert as a solo artist, but there weren’t that many labels at the beginning who would have taken a risk on John. I mean, who wants to know about a guitarist who starts off singing very derivative blues and then goes on to be what amounts to a classical guitarist? But that was something we were actually able to do very well. And ultimately, when it came to the Pentangle, John was probably the one who flourished in the group context. I always thought Bert was a bit buried in the Pentangle, was somehow never a free soul again.’

   The withdrawal of Pentangle people from public performance during the three months leading up the Festival Hall spectacular was offset with a flurry of promotional appearances on radio and television. The Top Gear session was repeated for a second time in April and followed with a Night Ride session in May and a Country Meets Folk appearance in June. During May they recorded their first UK TV appearance, turning in two songs live on the Corries’ ‘Degrees of Folk’ – a powerful performance that was to be broadcast during the week between the Festival Hall and Woburn Abbey gigs. Between the recording and airing of that show they had flown to Oslo, enjoying a further two songs broadcast on Norwegian TV live from a show at Oslo University.

   The Oslo gig was a curious diversion from the main strategy, but come June 29 nobody in Britain who was in any way interested in what was still being called folk music could have failed to have been aware of what was happening on that date. As well as Lustig’s presentation of the Pentangle at the Festival Hall, Roy Guest was putting on the Incredible String Band at the Albert Hall – on the same night. The pair of them cooked up some phoney rivalry between the bands in a wholly successful effort to get more publicity. Like Roy Guest himself, the ISB’s Robin Williamson was in fact an old friend of Bert’s from Edinburgh. But while there wasn’t any bad feeling between the Pentangle and the ISB there were certainly sour grapes from Roy Harper. ‘I know where I’m going to be,’ said Roy to the Melody Maker, making sure the world understood that his show at Les Cousins, also on June 29, would feature the London debut of ‘McGoohan’s Blues’ – a 30-minute paean to Heather Rosemary Sewell, soon to become Heather Rosemary Jansch.

   For commentators the two concerts became a contest, which the ISB lost. Karl Dallas, in MM, wrote an open letter to the latter telling them where they’d gone wrong, while Alan Stevens proclaimed the Pentangle show a triumph. The group’s members were well enough acquainted with the cut and thrust of their fellow travellers in the music press of the day not to take any of it too seriously:

   ‘We used to drink with some of them at the Capricorn Club in Greek Street,’ says Jacqui, ‘and if we beat them at darts we’d get a terrible review! No, it wasn’t quite that bad, but we used to see them quite a lot. Actually, [at a later date] Karl Dallas did two reviews of two different gigs, and on one he absolutely slated us, said it was dreadful. And somebody told us he’d been in the bar the whole time, and it was a great gig, it really was. And then he did another review of a terrible gig that we did, and we all came off wanting the earth to swallow us up. It was just one of those nights when nothing worked – and he gave us the most glowing review. He was going on about the purple mountains and the mists and the streams… He obviously wasn’t there either!’

   Reviewing the Festival Hall show, Stevens had concluded that it would ‘go down on record as a great success and a highlight in the group’s career’. He was literally correct. Part of the show appeared on record as the live half of the two-disc ‘Sweet Child’ album, released later that year. And it would, indeed, remain a highlight of their career. ‘All the things that didn’t work out on the live recording,’ said Jacqui, ‘we re-recorded in a studio. I think that’s what we planned anyway, but it seemed to make sense.’ In fact, barring the title track of the album, almost everything they wanted to use from the concert recording turned out to be useable.

   Aside from the song ‘Sweet Child’, it seems that of the new material only Danny’s Charles Mingus interpretation ‘Haitian Fight Song’ was also recorded in a studio, although it was the live version that made it on to vinyl. While the original running order remains lost, the 2000 Sanctuary remaster of the album restored every track from the show that remains – the additional performances having been salvaged from a skip in the mid-seventies and delivered to Renbourn for safe-keeping. Performances of ‘Sweet Child’, ‘Pentangling’ and Bert’s solo ‘Blackwater Side’ remain missing and it’s possible there may be further lost performances from the concert that night, Stevens having referred to Jacqui performing ‘duets with Bert Jansch and John Renbourn’. The duets with John are accounted for but there is nothing with just Jacqui and Bert.

   Nevertheless, for the original release in 1968 the right tracks were chosen at the right time. Five group performances – all, excepting ‘Bruton Town’ and ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’, new – plus a selection of duets and Bert’s hitherto unreleased ‘A Woman Like You’ were presented on one disc, with 10 new studio tracks on the other making a double album that definitively represented all aspects of the band’s character. If there had been those who had doubted the Pentangle’s staying power, or believed the first album to have exhausted their potential, then here was something so obviously unique and substantial that nobody could assume, any longer, the right to use metaphors involving ‘milestones or headstones’.

   A Lustig press release beforehand had declared that the concert would be ‘filmed in colour for possible world-wide TV distribution, including BBC2’. The same hand-out mentions 5,000 advance orders for the album, which is unlikely but plausible. Nobody, of course, recalls seeing any cameras in the hall that night. The studio material was apparently recorded during August, with the set due for release on November 1, on the eve of a major British Tour. But the summer wasn’t over yet. On July 6 the band headlined the Saturday afternoon of the Woburn Abbey Festival, which that evening featured Jimi Hendrix’s only UK appearance of the year, on a bill which also included Geno Washington, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Family. Over the next few years the Pentangle would all but corner the market as afternoon headliners at such events. A new live-broadcast BBC Television music programme called How It Is, produced by Tony Palmer, was due to go out on the Saturday, featuring the Pentangle, possibly from Woburn. The show’s first broadcast was, however, postponed to July 19, during which time Danny had caught a serious infection in one hand and injured the other in a ‘shattered windscreen incident’, forcing the group to cancel their appearance at the first Cambridge Jazz Festival (in the event a poorly attended flop) and delay their appearance on How It Is.

   The second How It Is – including a fully fit Pentangle – went out on July 26, as the band played the first of its two concerts at Cambridge. They performed, along with acts such as Roy Harper, Stefan Grossman and the newly-electrified Sweeney’s Men, in front of 3000 people, at that time a record attendance. The first show was an open-air performance, the second (the following day) in a marquee. They were, according to Melody Maker, ‘well received, although they came over more fully in the marquee, where the sound wasn’t lost so easily’. Sweeney’s Men stole the show. Open-air situations were rapidly proving themselves to be far from the Pentangle’s advantage.

   There were further recordings for BBC radio during this period – at least one without Danny, given the circumstances – and on August 17 the band recorded their own half-hour programme for Granada Television in Manchester, with further recording for the station on September 29. The show would be scheduled for screening sometime prior to a forthcoming concert appearance at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall on November 9. In between was a ‘sold out’ week of performances at Edinburgh’s New University Theatre as part of the Edinburgh Festival’s ‘Fringe’ – sold out according to Jo, although others have their doubts. The group would purportedly be premiering three new songs. And then Bert got married.

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2. Colin H says

   19/12/2017 at 00:41

   For playing while reading, ‘The Pentangle’ (1968) in full, plus outtakes:

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3. Colin H says

   19/12/2017 at 00:47

   Or, if you prefer, for watching and listening, 40 minutes from Oslo University, June 1968 (mentioned in the essay). At that time of writing I was aware only of two songs that had been broadcast, ‘Pentangling’ and ‘Travelling Song’, but this other 40-minute selection from the concert was also broadcast, in a separate programme.

   Tracks:

   1:42 The Time Has Come
   5:50 Mirage
   8:46 A Woman Like You
   12:45 Turn Your Money Green
   15:54 Hear My Call
   20:07 Haitian Fight Song
   25:43 Let No Man Steal Your Thyme
   28:59 Bells
   35:35 Bruton Town

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4. Lodestone of Wrongness says

   19/12/2017 at 06:55

   Jings, what a herculean effort Colin!
   Around this period I was a key figure in the London Social Revolution. I stood next to Richard Neville at some demo or another. I nearly joined him in the police van but I needed to see a man about a dog. I sold a copy of IT to either Jimmy Page or Robert Plant. I nearly asked Jimmy/Robert where he got his crushed velvet loons from but he was obviously very busy.
   Me and my ultra hip friends (stoned losers is perhaps a more apt description) went to see Pentangle. We were expecting folkie stuff but got jazz noodling instead.
   “Hardly Jefferson Airplane was it?” said Smelly Pete as we stumbled off in search of the possibly mythical vegetarian kebab. That has remained my opinion of Pentangle ever since.
   Has the time come for a reassessment? Stay tuned….

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   • Baron Harkonnen says

     19/12/2017 at 23:41

     ‘London Social Revolution’, ‘ultra hip friends’, fuckin’ pampered soft hippies more like! ; ))

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     • Lodestone of Wrongness says

       20/12/2017 at 07:53

       All I can say 50 years later is that we really thought we were changing the world , man. Wear a cow bell, smoke dope, make love (fending off all them sex-crazed chicks was, like, difficult – yeah, right) and just watch the walls come tumbling down.
       And Colin, Pentangle still don’t much sound like Jefferson Airplane….

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5. Vulpes Vulpes says

   19/12/2017 at 08:58

   What joy! Can’t wait to read Part 2 now. Having fallen for the band right back at the beginning, and then fallen over myself again with delight when they came storming out of the telly every week (with a different – in fact, completely opposite – lyrical story to the album version of the song), and having more recently forked out for the brilliant little Transatlantic albums boxed set, just for the extra tracks, I am certainly in a Pentangular frame of mind. This has kept me rapt for the last twenty minutes. More power to your elbow Colin, thanks for posting this.

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6. Carl says

   19/12/2017 at 09:44

   Colin, thanks for posting that. I haven’t got the time to read it now (I’m supposed to be working, but have taken 10 minutes away from the day job), but will set aside some time to absorb it at leisure, with, as you sensibly have made available, a Pentangle soundtrack as I read.
   I’m sure it will be an excellent read.

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7. Colin H says

   19/12/2017 at 10:40

   Thank you all – I had a feeling leaving a couple of days till Part 2 might be helpful!

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8. NigelT says

   19/12/2017 at 23:07

   I am lucky enough to have the box set The Time Has Come and enjoyed the notes when I got it. I always really loved Pentangle, but they weren’t always the easy listening experience that some assumed they would be. I saw them a couple of times, and also I’m sure I saw Renbourne, Jansch and McShee as a trio in Ottery St. Mary in the 90s, as well as both guitarists solo a few times – tremendous originality and much missed.

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   • Colin H says

     19/12/2017 at 23:09

     Thanks Nigel. Post a clip relevant to the extract, why don’t you? Something from ‘Nicola’ perhaps, or ‘Sir John Alot…’

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9. Baron Harkonnen says

   19/12/2017 at 23:45

   Thanks Colin, big Pentangle/Renbourne/Jansch fan here.

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10. minibreakfast says

    20/12/2017 at 08:08

    I saw a Pentangle record in a chazza last week. Brown, it was, with a torn cover. Should I go back and get it?

    They want £2, and the record itself looks in fine condition.

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    • Moose the Mooche says

      20/12/2017 at 08:18

      Yes. I discovered the ‘Tangle this year and they can be rather spiffy.

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    • hubert rawlinson says

      20/12/2017 at 09:04

      If you get it and don’t like it you can always return it.
      Consider it a two pound donation.
      A lot of the covers have brown on them so I’m not sure which it is, but you’ll enjoy it.
      Merry Christmas Min.

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      • minibreakfast says

        20/12/2017 at 10:40

        And to you, Hubez. I might be that way later today, in which case I’ll get it and report back. Yes, I looked at their Discogs to try to identify it without remembering the title, and there is a lot of brown.

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        • Colin H says

          20/12/2017 at 10:44

          There was an early vinyl compilation that was mostly brown, with a small 1967 photo in one corner. From memory, it was the first of two vinyl comps (both on Transatlantic) called ‘Pentangling’. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, it includes a selection of solo and duo tracks involving members in various combinatins pre-Pentangle (eg. Bert and John, John and Jacqui, John and Terry) and a group track or two.

          Can’t recall if this is on it, but it’s the earliest pointer to the ‘Pentangle sound’ recorded for Bert’s second solo album ‘It Don’t Bother Me’ in 1965, with Renbourn on second guitar – ‘Lucky Thirteen’. The intro riff was later adapted as the basis for the smouldering middle eight in the Pentangle’s 1970 side-long track ‘Jack Orion’:

          And here’s the instrumental section from ‘Jack Orion’ (1970):

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          • minibreakfast says

            20/12/2017 at 11:34

            Cheers Colin. I think it was this comp, called History Book: https://www.discogs.com/Pentangle-History-Book/master/609188

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            • Colin H says

              20/12/2017 at 12:11

              Yes – I was offline for a while but I remembered the name and was about to correct what I’d said earlier (from fuzzy memory). That was indeed the solo-duo-group tracks comp I was talking about. You’ll not be wasting your £2.

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        • Moose the Mooche says

          20/12/2017 at 21:58

          Everything connected with British folk rock is dominated by brownness.

          Blues music… black music… brown music.

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          • Colin H says

            20/12/2017 at 23:16

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11. deramdaze says

    20/12/2017 at 08:19

    Any talk of Pentangle must inevitably lead to the absolutely brilliant “Take Three Girls” TV series, grainy versions of which I have seen on YouTube over the last few years.

    Apparently, the Beeb contrived to wipe 14 of the 24 episodes made (!!!), which is about the same ratio as the original “Likely Lads” episodes wiped.

    Given that there is a dvd of the “Likely Lads,” it would be great if some enterprising company were to put the 10 episodes (and the four episodes of “Take Three Women”) that do exist on a dvd release.

    I’m sure I read somewhere that the original episodes featured a glut of (still) unreleased incidental music by Pentangle.

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    • Vulpes Vulpes says

      20/12/2017 at 09:34

      It took me ages to track down a CD with the TV theme version of “Light Flight”, which has quite a different lyric (as I mentioned above) to the version on ‘Basket Of Light’, but it can be found on one of the comps – can’t remember which one right this minute, as I have rather a lot of Pentangle stuff.

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      • Colin H says

        20/12/2017 at 09:42

        The only CD it appeared on was a 1990s BBC set ‘On Air’, later reissued as ‘Live at the BBC’, with the TTG version of the song taken from a BBC session (not the actual recording used in the show’s soundtrack).

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        • deramdaze says

          20/12/2017 at 11:09

          A row of shops near where I was brought up in North London that used to consist of newsagents, a book shop, fish and chip shop, grocer’s, butcher’s etc. now consists of tanning shop next to nail shop next to hair salon next to nail shop next to tanning shop next to nail shop next to tanning shop next to hair salon etc.

          The whole row … really, not making it up … and absolutely no one that walks out of any of those premises looks anything like as attractive as the leads in “Take Three Girls.”
          Not even close.

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          • Colin H says

            20/12/2017 at 11:16

            The eyebrow thing with (seemingly all) young women these days is particularly weird, isn’t it? It’s like a paintbrush/marker-pen version of those drawn on eyebrows popular in the 1920s.

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            • davebigpicture says

              20/12/2017 at 11:45

              My wife’s nieces’ social media profile pictures just look grotesque. We’re seeing them at the weekend so I’ll know if they actually look like that or if it’s all done with image filters. The irony is that they’re both pretty girls and don’t need such heavy makeup.
              I’m starting to sound like my father.
              “Shoots self”.

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        • Vulpes Vulpes says

          20/12/2017 at 17:26

          I have the first one, the BBC disc. 50 sovs new on the dodgers now, I see, with a couple of decent second hand copies still going for a fiver. Strewth.

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12. Colin H says

    20/12/2017 at 09:52

    Two tracks from the two guitar players issued on solo albums during the group’s first year and a bit – Renbourn’s ‘Forty-Eight’ (with Terry Cox on glock) and Jansch’s ‘Woe Is Love My Dear’, orchestrated by David Palmer (later a member of Jethro Tull), almost issued as a single and, curiously, covered on a single in Scandinavia by Merseybeat leftovers the Koobas:

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13. Colin H says

    20/12/2017 at 10:06

    Ahead of PART 2 of the tale, here is a chronology of the first two years of the band, 1967-68:

    1967
    January
    Sat 14 London, Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre Bert Jansch
    Wed 18 Birmingham Town Hall Bert Jansch
    Fri 20 Glasgow Concert Hall Bert Jansch
    Sat 21 London, Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre John Renbourn
    Fri 27 Stratford Town Hall Bert Jansch + Champion Jack Dupree, Noel Murphy, Al Stewart, Piccadilly Line
    February
    Sun 5 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert, John, Jacqui
    Sun 12 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert, John, Jacqui
    Mon 13 Manchester, Free Trade Hall Bert Jansch
    Mon 13 BBC Jazz Club recording
    London, Paris Theatre Danny Thompson Trio (Danny, John McLaughlin, Tony Roberts)
    Wed 15 London, Marquee Bert & John
    Sun 19 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert, Jacqui + Hedy West
    Sun 26 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert, John, Jacqui

    March
    Sun 5 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert, John, Jacqui, Danny, Terry
    Sun 12 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert & John + Ralph May
    Wed 15 Sheffield University Bert & John
    Sat 18 Newcastle City Hall Bert Jansch
    Sun 19 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert, John, Jacqui, Danny, Terry
    Sun 26 Jacqui gets married – no Horseshoe gig
    Fri 31 London, St. Pancras Town Hall John Renbourn ‘and accompanying musicians’

    April
    Sun 2 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert, John ‘and friends’
    Sun 9 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert & John
    Thur 13 London, Highgate Hill, Olde Crowne John Renbourn ‘and distinguished guests’
    Sun 16 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert & John
    Sun 23 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert & John [unadvertised]
    Sun 30 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert & John

    May
    Sun 7 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert & John
    Sun 14 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert & John
    Sun 21 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert & John
    Sat 27 London, Royal Festival Hall Pentangle + Ottilie Patterson, Spider John Koerner
    Sun 28 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert & John

    June
    Sun 4 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle + Wizz Jones
    Sun 11 London, Horseshoe Hotel Bert & John
    Thur 15 London, Wandsworth Town Hall John & Jacqui
    Fri 16 Birmingham Town Hall Pentangle
    Sun 18 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle + Ron Geesin
    Sun 25 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle

    July
    Sun 2 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle
    Sun 9 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle
    Sat 15 London, Danish TV tele-recording Bert & John
    Sun 16 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle
    Sun 23 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle

    August
    Sun 6 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle + Stefan Grossman
    Sat 12 Recording session (first studio try-out)
    Sun 13 Windsor, National Jazz Festival Pentangle
    14 – 26 DENMARK (+ TV & radio) Pentangle
    Sun 27 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle

    September
    Sun 17 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle
    Mon 18 BBC Jazz Club recording, London Danny Thompson Trio
    Thur 21 Greenford, Greenford Hall ‘John Renbourn, Bert Jansch & the Pentangle’
    Sun 24 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle
    Mon 25 London, Royal Festival Hall Bert Jansch + Jimi Hendrix Experience, Paco Peña,
    Tim Walker & Seb Jorgansen

    October
    1-7 BELGIUM, Brussels Poetry Week Bert & John + Davy Graham, Pete Brown
    Sun 8 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle
    Sun 22 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle
    Sat 28 Hendon College, Rag Concert John & Jacqui + Dave & Toni Arthur,
    Trevor Lucas, Chapter Three
    Sun 29 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle

    November
    Sun 5 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle + Anne Briggs
    Sat 11 Manchester, Free Trade Hall Bert & John + Incredible String Band,
    Dorris Henderson, Al Stewart
    Sun 12 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle
    Tue 14 Bangor University Pentangle
    Wed 15 Bath University Pentangle
    Sat 18 Liverpool (University?) Pentangle
    Sun 19 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle + Wizz Jones, Stefan Grossman
    Tue 21 Belfast, Queen’s University Pentangle
    Wed 22 Manchester University Pentangle
    Sun 26 Loughborough (University?) Pentangle
    Tue 28 Manchester, De La Salle College Pentangle
    Wed 29 Nottingham (University?) Pentangle

    December
    Fri 1 Bristol, Colston Hall Pentangle
    Sun 10 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle
    Sun 17 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle + Wizz Jones, Sandy Denny,
    Alexis Korner

    1968
    January
    Sun 7 Brentwood Folk Club Pentangle
    Sun 21 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle
    Sun 28 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle
    Mon 29 BBC Top Gear recording Pentangle

    February
    Sun 4 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle
    Fri 9 Manchester, Free Trade Hall The Watersons + Bert, Hedy West,
    Harry Boardman
    Sat 10 Liverpool, Philharmonic Pentangle + Hedy West, Alexis Korner
    Sun 11 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle (without Bert) + Clive Palmer
    Newcastle, City Hall Watersons + Bert, Hedy West, Incredible String Band
    Fri 16 Recording session (‘Travelling Song’)
    Sun 18 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle + Ron Geesin
    c.19 – 23 Recording sessions (The Pentangle LP)
    Sun 25 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle + Ralph McTell

    March
    Sun 3 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle + John Martyn
    Mon 4 Reading, Town Hall John Renbourn + Al Stewart
    Sun 10 London, Horseshoe Hotel Pentangle + Ralph McTell,
    Dorris Henderson, Colin Scott
    Wed 13 London, Camden Arts Festival Danny Thompson Trio + John Dankworth Orchestra with
    Cleo Laine & Annie Ross
    Fri 15 London, East Ham, Central Hotel Bert, John, Danny

    April
    Sun 21 London, Euston Town Hall Danny Thompson Trio + John Dankworth Orchestra,
    Rendell-Carr Quintet, Marion Montgomery

    May
    Thur 9 BBC Night Ride recording
    Tue 14 BBC TV (Manchester), Degrees of Folk tele-recording
    Wed 29 NORWAY, Oslo University, TV tele-recording

    June
    Sat 15 BBC Country Meets Folk – live broadcast
    Sat 29 London, Royal Festival Hall (Sweet Child LP concert recording)

    July
    Tue 2 BBC Top Gear recording
    Sat 6 Woburn Abbey Festival
    Wed 10 BBC My Kind Of Folk – live broadcast
    Sun 21 Cambridge Jazz Festival [cancelled]
    Fri 26 Cambridge Folk Festival
    Sat 27 Cambridge Folk Festival

    August
    ? Recording sessions (Sweet Child LP studio tracks)
    Wed 7 Granada TV recording? (Broadcast unknown)
    Sat 17 BBC Country Meets Folk – live broadcast
    26 – 31 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, New University Theatre

    September
    Mon 23 BBC Top Gear recording
    Sun 29 Granada TV tele-recording? (Broadcast unknown)

    October
    7-31 Dates for US tour – cancelled
    Sat 19 Bert Jansch & Heather Sewell marry at Lewes, Sussex
    Fri 25 BBC TV How It Is – live broadcast

    November
    ? Recording sessions (Birthday Blues LP – Bert, Danny, Terry)
    Tue 5 London, Royal Albert Hall
    Fri 8 Cardiff, Sofia Gardens
    Sat 9 Manchester, Free Trade Hall
    Sun 10 Cambridge
    Fri 15 Croydon, Fairfield Hall
    Sat 16 Birmingham, Town Hall
    Tue 19 Bristol, Colston Hall
    Wed 20 Portsmouth, Guildhall
    Sat 23 Bournemouth, Winter Gardens
    Tue 26 Sheffield, City Hall
    Thur 28 BBC Night Ride recording (John Renbourn & Terry Cox)
    Fri 29 Glasgow, City Hall
    Sat 30 Edinburgh, Usher Hall

    December
    Sun 1 Newcastle, City Hall
    Tue 3 Belfast, Ulster Hall
    Thur 5 Leicester, De Montfort Hall
    Fri 6 Brighton, The Dome
    Sat 7 BBC Country Meets Folk – live broadcast
    Tue 10 BBC Night Ride recording (John Renbourn & Jacqui McShee)
    Wed 11 BBC Night Ride recording (Bert Jansch & Danny Thompson)
    Mon 16 BBC TV Once More With Felix tele-recording
    Fri 20 Tyne Tees TV The World Of Monty Modlin – live?
    Sun 22 Fly to HOLLAND for Dutch TV concert

    Month By Month: Broadcasts, Releases & Tours

    May 1967

    Festival Hall: The first appearance of the name ‘Pentangle’.

    July 1967

    Broadcast: DRTV (Denmark) – Folksangere i London (Bert & John)

    August 1967

    Recording: Demo session/Aborted LP session A press report suggests the group had an LP recording session booked for August 12. ‘Poison’, ‘Market Song’ and ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’ – all remarkable for Bert using his custom-made electric guitar, and all on this box set – derive from this session. The recordings that were used on the debut album were made early in 1968.
    Broadcasts: Danmarks Radio (Denmark) – radio concert, with Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick
    DRTV (Denmark) – TV concert?
    Windsor Festival: Infamous for Chris Welch’s ‘Bert Jansch was dire’ review – although Welch did admit in his Melody Maker piece to having ascertained this view from somebody else who actually saw the performance. While the group were being dire, Davy Graham and Ron Geesin were holding the fort at the band’s Horseshoe Hotel residency.

    Danish tour: Bert Jansch had toured in Denmark before as a solo artist, to great acclaim, more than once before this group visit in which they were billed – to the disappointment of the first-night audience – as Britain’s latest rock’n’roll sensation.

    October 1967
    Brussels Poetry Week: Recalled by Renbourn as a particularly mad trip during which Bert’s passport expired.
    Broadcast: BBC Radio – Wonderful Copenhagen (Bert Jansch, John Renbourn) October 7
    (recorded in Denmark)

    November 1967
    First British Tour (November 14 – December 1): Promoted by jazz impresario Pete Burman, seemingly billed as ‘Bert Jansch and the Pentangles’ and not recalled as a staggering success. The group arrived in Belfast only to find their instruments and amplification fog-bound back in England, with the show proceeding late and only with hastily borrowed gear. Nevertheless, over a thousand turned up at the Whitla Hall for the show within the Belfast Festival.

    February 1968
    Manchester/Newcastle: Though advertised for the Free Trade Hall concert on this, the Watersons’ farewell tour, Bert turned up ill. Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick, happening to be in the audience, deputised with borrowed instruments. On the Newcastle date it was the ISB’s turn to have problems, with the otherwise unknown Tinker’s Rest standing in. Uniquely, for an advertised show, the Pentangle must have performed at the Horseshoe without Bert that same night.
    Recording: The Pentangle LP – probably recorded over a week
    Broadcast: BBC Radio – Top Gear February 18

    March 1968
    Norway/Paul Simon: Though no dates are available, Bert was apparently touring in Norway, and perhaps the other Scandinavian countries, this month – known from an approving letter from a Norwegian fan published in Melody Maker. The paper also reported a ‘six hour jam’ at the London Hilton – in celebration of Paul Simon’s recent success with ‘The Sounds of Silence’ – involving Jansch, Renbourn, Simon, Roy Harper and Davy Graham.

    April 1968
    Broadcast: BBC Radio – Top Gear (repeat) April 28

    May 1968
    Releases: ‘Travelling Song’ single May 13 – 17
    The Pentangle LP May 17
    Broadcasts: BBC Radio – Night Ride May 1
    BBC Radio – Night Ride May 29

    June 1968
    Recording: Festival Hall concert – for inclusion on Sweet Child LP
    Broadcasts: BBC Radio – Country Meets Folk June 15
    Norway – NRK TV – Visefestival i Kroa June 7
    Recorded in concert at Oslo University on May 29, 40 minutes of the show are broadcast on June 7. Available for viewing at NRK’s own site:
    https://tv.nrk.no/serie/visefestival-i-kroa/FBUA07005768/07-06-1968
    (The Time Has Come / Mirage / A Woman Like You (Bert) / Turn Your Money Green (Jacqui &
    John) / Hear My Call / Haitian Fight Song (Danny) / Let No Man Steal Your Thyme / Bells / Bruton Town)

    July 1968
    Broadcasts: BBC TV – Degrees of Folk July 1
    BBC Radio – Top Gear July 7
    BBC Radio – My Kind of Folk July 10
    BBC TV – How It Is July 26
    Norway– NRK – Visefestival I Kroa July 19
    A further two songs from the May 29 Oslo University concert are broadcast in a various-artists compilation programme. Available here:
    https://tv.nrk.no/serie/visefestival-i-kroa/FBUA07005968/19-07-1968
    (Travelling Song / Pentangling)

    August 1968
    Broadcasts: BBC Radio – Top Gear August 4
    BBC Radio – Country Meets Folk August 17

    October 1968
    Broadcast: BBC TV – How It Is October 25

    November 1968
    Release: Sweet Child LP November 1
    Broadcast: BBC Radio – Top Gear November 3
    Second British tour: November 5 – December 6. The MM reported that scenes were to be filmed at the Albert Hall concert for use in the John Cassavetes film The Husbands.

    December 1968
    Broadcasts: BBC Radio – Night Ride (John Renbourn & Terry Cox) December 4
    BBC Radio – Country Meets Folk December 7
    BBC Radio – Night Ride (John Renbourn & Jacqui McShee) December 11
    BBC Radio – Top Gear December 15
    BBC Radio – Night Ride (Bert Jansch & Danny Thompson) December 18
    Tyne Tees TV – The World of Monty Modlin December 20

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    • Lodestone of Wrongness says

      20/12/2017 at 12:07

      I think my one Pentangle concert must have been Fairfield in 1968 although it may well have been The Usher in Edinburgh… I spent a lot of that year hitching up and down the A1. Smelly Pete would know but last I heard he was cattle farming in Patagonia after being thrown out of a Buddhist monastery in Tibet (true that)

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14. Colin H says

    20/12/2017 at 12:48

    For those concerned by any lack of detail so far, here is what I can reconstruct of the Pentangle’s concert repertoire during those first two years, 1967-68:

    January 18 1967 – Birmingham Town Hall (Bert Jansch solo)

    Source: Noted down by a fan, Richard Lewis, who was obviously guessing at certain track titles that can now be identified by subsequent recordings.

    First set: [unknown instrumental] / Watch The Stars / Little Maggie / Key To The Highway / Blues Run The Game / Solid Gone / Tic-Tocative / Oh How Your Love Is Strong / Blackwater Side / Pretty Polly / [unknown instrumental, probably ‘The First Time Ever’] / Harvest Your Thoughts Of Love / Anji / Ten / [unknown instrumental]

    Second set: Soho / Running From Home / Neurotic Woman / Better Git It In Your Soul [i.e. Casbah/Veronica] / Train Song / Betty & Dupree / Whisky Man / In This Game / Woe Is Love My Dear / After The Dance / Sweet Woman Blues [aka Dissatisfied Blues] / Weeping Willow Blues / Rockin’ Chair Blues / [unknown instrumental] / Life Depends On Love / Inside Your Mind / I’m In Love With You [i.e. A Little Sweet Sunshine]

    This was the first of Bruce Dunnet’s remarkable series of Bert Jansch solo concerts at major British venues undertaken during January – March 1967. Other venues were Glasgow City Hall, Manchester Free Trade Hall, Newcastle City Hall and possibly the Ulster Hall in Belfast. Never before had Bert to assemble such a large set list for a guaranteed, listening, paying audience in a formal concert, as opposed to club, situation. Four of the tracks – ‘Little Maggie’, ‘Ten’, ‘Neurotic Woman’ and ‘Inside Your Mind’ – remain obscure although it may be that the latter is ‘In Your Mind’, later recorded by the Pentangle. One or two of the blues covers were featured as group numbers in early Pentangle shows but this is the only known occurrence of Bert performing ‘Watch The Stars’ (gleaned from a Peggy Seeger LP), which would become better known in Pentangle circles as a John Renbourn & Jacqui McShee duet. Leaving speculation about the identity of the unknown or unnamed tracks aside, one can say that out of a 32 song performance Bert featured only 10 songs that had previously been released on Bert Jansch records. He left his newest material for the second set. Seven of the songs in set two would soon be recorded during the sessions for ‘Nicola’ (released in July 1967), including the future Pentangle classic ‘Train Song’.

    June 16 1967 – Birmingham Town Hall (Pentangle + solo)

    Source: Noted down by a fan, Richard Lewis. This was a Pentangle concert with support sets from John Renbourn & Jacqui McShee, Bert Jansch and Roy Harper. With vocalists noted in brackets, the sets were:

    John & Jacqui: Can’t Keep From Crying (both) / The Trees They Do Grow High (Jacqui) / A Poem by E.E. Cummings (John) / John Donne Song (John) / Turn Your Money Green (both) / Let No Man Steal Your Thyme (Jacqui) / Waltz / Wedding Dress (Jacqui)

    Bert: Running From Home / Anji / Go Your Way My Love / Love Is Teasing / Sweet Apples & Oranges [Market Song]

    Pentangle: Sandy [from the stage musical Desert Song] (Bert) / Sweet Woman Blues [aka Dissatisfied Blues] (Jacqui) / No More My Lord [instrumental] / Belles of St. Mary’s [Bells] / Sombrero Sam / Come Back Baby (Jacqui) / Two Nineteen (Jacqui) / Waltz

    John & Jacqui’s set is rich in material destined for future Pentangle albums. John’s setting of the Cummings poem remains the only unknown. Bert’s set features the only documented occurance of ‘Market Song’ in his solo repertoire. It was later recorded live by the Pentangle for the ‘Sweet Child’ LP – and was also tried out in the group’s abortive first studio session in August 1967. ‘Go Your Way’ and ‘Love Is Teasing’ had just been recorded for ‘Nicola’, which was released the following month. Lewis observed that Bert used 12-string guitar on the last three songs. The Pentangle set is most intriguing. Given that John & Jacqui and Bert would perform ‘warm-ups’ to group performances at the Horseshoe, and also feature a guest artist, this concert appearance can be viewed as representative of what one might have heard on a typical night at their club. ‘Two Nineteen’ is a cover of a jazz-tinged lazy blues, in similar territory to the Staple Singers’ ‘Hear My Call’. Jo Ann Kelly, a British folk/blues contemporary of the group’s, recorded the song in a session released posthumously on the Key To The Highway 1968-1974 CD (1999), which also includes ‘Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor’ – another blues favoured by Jacqui during the early Pentangle era. Regarding the otherwise obscure ‘Sandy’, this was not the first time Bert had adapted a song from a musical – he had performed Sondheim’s ‘Something’s Coming’ as an instrumental during the early 60s.

    ‘Bells’ was one of the group’s earliest set pieces: Bert and John had been filmed writing or rehearsing the piece for a Danish TV show broadcast in July 1967. It was also one of only two titles mentioned as highlights in a Melody Maker review of a subsequent Horseshoe performance, in September 1967, the other being a version of Ewan MacColl’s ‘Hole In The Coal’, subsequently recorded for ‘Sweet Child’. A previous Melody Maker review, in July 1967, documented ‘Let No Man Steal Your Thyme’ and ‘She Moved Through The Fair’ as present in the early repertoire. The traditional blues/spiritual ‘No More My Lord’ – performed here in instrumental form – would appear on ‘Sweet Child’ as a vocal number. ‘Waltz’ – which had already appeared in this same concert in its Renbourn solo guise – would make the group’s debut LP. ‘Come Back Baby’ is Jacqui fronting the Snooks Eaglin tune that Bert had already recorded for ‘Nicola’; likewise, on the traditional ‘Dissatisfied Blues’, which Bert had recorded for that album but had left in the can. It is conceivable that he may have been saving the song for the band and for Jacqui’s interpretation. ‘Sombrero Sam’ was introduced as an instrumental tune by jazz flautist Charles Lloyd, a particular favourite of Renbourn’s. Renbourn would cover Lloyd’s composition ‘Transfusion’, as a guitar/tabla duet with Terry Cox, on his ‘Sir John A lot’ LP the following year. With four instrumentals and two blues covers dominating the set, this is clearly a group still in the process of working up its act.

    August 1967 – Danish TV Concert (Pentangle + Solo)

    Source: The memory of a fan, Lars Fromholt

    Bert: ‘Nottamun Town’
    Bert & John: ‘Orlando’
    John & Jacqui: ‘Every Night When The Sun Goes Down’
    Pentangle: ‘Let No Man Steal Your Thyme / Mirage / Poison / I’ve Got A Woman’

    The holy grail of the Pentangle’s TV canon, tantalisingly beyond reach. The Pentangle toured Denmark between August 14-26 1967 and certainly made a live radio broadcast, with Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick (not believed extant). Announcements of the tour in the Melody Maker included mention of both radio and TV appearances. It was relatively easy for any British group to get airtime in Denmark in those days. Bert Jansch was already very well known in Denmark by this stage and had visited the country as a solo artist several times. In a May 1969 interview, Danny Thompson referred to the group’s European TV achievements to date, including a half-hour show in Denmark. The circumstantial evidence is therefore strong. Danish fan Lars Fromholt, who near-perfectly identified the content of the 1967 DR TV ‘Folksangere i London’ programme (in which Bert and John are seen rehearsing/writing ‘Bells’) from memory, also recalls seeing a full Pentangle broadcast on Danish TV close to that time. He has provided the track listing above: ‘I clearly remember both Bert and John playing electric guitar in the broadcast which should be a hint of a ‘67 performance… And I’m sure they had not released their debut album by that time.’ He recalls the first three numbers as acoustic, the Pentangle set as electric. Bert only ever played electric guitar onstage during mid ‘67. The inclusion of Bert‘s 1968 solo LP track ‘Poison’ is intriguing: only in 2005 was a Pentangle studio recording (from the abortive first studio session in August 1967) of the song discovered, it being previously otherwise unknown in their repertoire. ‘Orlando’, ‘Mirage’, ‘Let No Man…’ and the blues cover ‘Every Night…’ were all featured in the group’s earliest BBC radio sessions. Unfortunately, neither DR nor the Danish-broadcasting German station NDR has any trace of such a programme.

    September 25 1967 – London, Royal Festival Hall (Bert Jansch solo)

    Source: Melody Maker review.

    Come Back Baby / The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face / Betty & Dupree / Birthday Blues / A Woman Like You (12 string) + others

    Advertised as a ‘Guitar In’ with Paco Pena, Tim Walker & Seb Jorgenssen, Bert Jansch and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. This is partial set list for a performance featuring six- and 12-string guitars. The reviewer, Tony Wilson, evidently familiar with Jansch’s performances, noted that ‘Birthday Blues’ and ‘A Woman Like You’ were new to his repertoire, although he also, mistakenly, believed the same about ‘Betty & Dupree’ (essentially an alternative version of ‘Dissatisfied Blues’).

    May 29 1968 – Oslo University, Norway

    Source: TV recording

    Group: The Time Has Come / Mirage / Hear My Call / Let No Man Steal Your Thyme / Bells / Bruton Town / Travelling Song / Pentangling
    Bert: A Woman Like You
    John & Jacqui: Turn Your Money Green
    Danny: Haitian Fight Song

    The closest we get to a film version of the Festival Hall concert (below), this was either a 50 minute concert or 50 filmed minutes from a longer concert. Two weeks earlier the group had performed ‘Let No Man Steal Your Thyme’ and ‘Travelling Song’ back home on BBC TV’s ‘Degrees of Folk’.

    June 29 1968 – London, Royal Festival Hall

    Source: Two reviews, one reel of master tape and the ‘Sweet Child’ LP.

    Group: Goodbye Pork Pie Hat / Way Behind The Sun */ Hear My Call */ Let No Man Steal Your Thyme */ Bells */ Travelling Song */ Waltz * / Pentangling * / Bruton Town / Market Song / The Time Has Come / No More My Lord / Sweet Child *
    John & Jacqui: Turn Your Money Green / Watch The Stars
    John & Terry: The Earle Of Salisbury medley
    Bert & John: No Exit
    Bert: A Woman Like You / Black Waterside *
    John: John Donne Song *
    Jacqui: So Early In The Spring
    Danny: Haitian Fight Song

    A watershed performance recorded for and included in part on ‘Sweet Child’, released later that year. This may or may not be a complete listing of the material performed, but it must be close. Solo and duo performances are indicated while those tracks not included on the original LP are indicated with an asterisk.

    The concert was in two sets, the first set beginning with ‘Market Song’ and ‘The Time Has Come’ and ending with ‘Waltz’, while ‘Pentangling’ almost certainly closed the second set. Beyond that, the order could only be guessed at. With the exception of ‘Mirage’ the group’s first LP and its accompanying single ‘Travelling Song’ (both of which had been released only the previous month) were performed in their entirety. The ‘Sweet Child’ double LP, one half being compiled from this concert, was released in November 1968. Understandably, all but one track, ‘Bruton Town’, from that still recent first album were left in the can. There were already four new full-group numbers in the repertoire: ‘Market Song’ and ‘The Time Has Come’, both gleaned from Bert’s solo repertoire, along with his new song ‘Sweet Child’ and the traditional ‘No More My Lord’. It is believed that the group recorded the track ‘Sweet Child’ in IBC Studios during September 1968 because the live performance was unsatisfactory. Curiously, Danny’s solo vehicle ‘Haitian Fight Song’, was also recorded at IBC, although the concert version was ultimately preferred. The 2001 Sanctuary remaster of ‘Sweet Child’ restored all but three of the concert performances to the album – those three being sadly now lost.

    November/December 1968 – The Second British Tour

    Source: Nine published reviews from eight concerts. Appearances of songs mentioned as having been performed in more than one concert are indicated in square brackets.

    Group: Hear My Call / Bruton Town / Travelling Song / Pentangling [2]/ No More My Lord / Three Part Thing / Sovay [2] / Sweet Child / Hunting Song [2]
    Duets: The Earle Of Sailsbury (John & Terry) / Goodbye Pork Pie Hat [2]
    Solos: So Early In The Spring [2] (Jacqui) / Haitian Fight Song [2] (Danny) / Moon Dog (Terry) / Melancholy Galliard (John)

    This was the tour to promote ‘Sweet Child’, issued in November 1968. At least 10 tracks from that album (albeit including ‘Bruton Town’, which was also on the first album) were in the set. In one review, Danny’s solo is credited ‘Going To Fishing’, which I have taken to be an award-winning mishearing of ‘Haitian Fight Song’. Then again, it could be a version – uniquely reported vis a vis the Pentangle repertoire – of Duke Ellington’s ‘I’m Gonna Go Fishing’, which the Danny Thompson Trio (Danny, Tony Roberts, John McLaughlin) had performed on BBC radio’s ‘Jazz Club’ in September 1967. It is notable that ‘Three Part Thing’ and ‘Sovay’ – both studio tracks from Sweet Child – appear in the repertoire during this tour but seemingly not beyond it. The only ‘new’ group song apparent is ‘Hunting Song’ – a complex but popular addition to the repertoire – destined to appear on the next album ‘Basket Of Light’, released in October 1969. ‘Pentangling’, from the first album, is now firmly established as the epic finishing number, a position it retained for the duration of the group’s career.

    All the material from ‘Sweet Child’, with the exception of ‘I Loved A Lass’, is known to have been performed onstage at some point during the group’s original existence. Nevertheless, given that ‘I Loved A Lass’ was performed on a radio session it was probably also in the stage set. The improvisation on the theme of Ewan MacColl’s ‘The Big Hewer’ that eventually became ‘Hole In The Coal’ was being performed as early as September ‘67. There is one mention of a Renbourn solo number, ‘Melancholy Galliard’, later recorded for his solo album ‘The Lady & Unicorn’ (1970), but the reviewer at the Croydon show refers to his disappointment at no solo spots from either Bert or John on that occasion. He did mention an unspecified Bert & John duet, however, which may or may not refer to ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ – strictly speaking, a full-group instrumental by this stage.

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15. Lando Cakes says

    20/12/2017 at 13:40

    Colin, is Danny Thompson the stand up guy (see what I did there) that he always seems? I’m going to be gutted if not.

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    • Lodestone of Wrongness says

      20/12/2017 at 14:48

      I have a mate who for a year or two flirted with fame. His second album was supposed to be the big push so with a reasonably sized budget he looked around for proper session players.
      Danny Thompson’s number was procured, a sizeable fee agreed. Mr Thompson turned up at the correct time, played on his three tracks and went home. My mate, in awe of one of his heroes, described him as “one of the grumpiest fuckers I have ever met and his only word to a plea to play a few tunes at one of my upcoming concerts was “no”” .

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      • Lando Cakes says

        21/12/2017 at 23:21

        Uh oh. This is Cilla from the Singing Kettle all over again.

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        • Colin H says

          22/12/2017 at 00:35

          Have you noticed I’m saying nothing? (Nor will I.)

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          • Lando Cakes says

            22/12/2017 at 10:44

            I had indeed. That book was quite the experience, I’m thinking.

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16. Colin H says

    20/12/2017 at 18:00

    As we’re still looking at the first couple of years of Pentangle activity, here’s most of what they up to on BBC radio in the early days…

    Pentangle: On BBC Radio 1968–69

    Those track titles appended with square brackets reflect songs recorded as solo or duo efforts within otherwise full-band sessions: [B] is Bert Jansch, [JR] John Renbourn, [B&J] is Bert Jansch & John Renbourn, [J&T] is John Renbourn & Terry Cox, and [J&J] is John Renbourn & Jacqui McShee.

    While there were no Pentangle BBC radio appearances per se in 1967, Bert and John did appear on one show, ‘Wonderful Copenhagen’ (Radio 2, 7/10/67) recorded livre in concert in Denmark, along with Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick, the Arne Domnern Orchestra and one Robert Freddy Fraek & His Fraekler Skiffle Group. The Danny Thompson Trio enjoyed two ‘Jazz Club’ concert bookings on the Light Programme in 1967 while, on 26/8/68, listeners to Radio 4’s ‘Morning Melody’ could delight in the Johnny Hawksworth band featuring Terry Cox.

    Any missing information (tracks aired, dates, locations) in the text below could relatively easily be acquired from BBC Written Records, though it would require a little cost and effort.

    Personnel: Jacqui McShee (vocal), Bert Jansch (acoustic guitar, banjo, vocal), John Renbourn (acoustic and electric guitars, sitar, vocal), Terry Cox (drums, percussion, glockenspiel, vocal), Danny Thompson (double bass).

    TOP GEAR
    IN SESSION TONIGHT: PENTANGLE, The BEE GEES, CREAM, AMEN CORNER, HONYBUS
    TX: 18/2/68
    Rec: 29/1/68
    Producer: Bernie Andrew
    Presenter: John Peel
    ‘Travelling Song / Let No Man Steal Your Thyme / Turn Your Money Green [J&J] / Soho [B&J]’

    TOP GEAR
    IN SESSION TONIGHT: PENTANGLE, CRAZY WORLD OF ARTHUR BROWN
    TX: 28/4/68
    Rec: 29/1/68
    (Repeat of 18/2/68 session)

    NIGHT RIDE
    IN SESSION/STUDIO GUESTS: PENTANGLE, MIKE HORVITZ
    TX: 22/5/68
    Rec: 9/5/68
    Prod: Dennis O’Keefe
    Pres: John Peel
    ‘The Time Has Come / Mirage / Hear My Call’
    (Plus repeat of 18/2/68 TOP GEAR tracks: ‘Travelling Song / Let No Man Steal Your Thyme’)

    COUNTRY MEETS FOLK
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE, DAVID McWILLIAMS, THE SIDETRACKERS with TEX
    TX: 15/6/68
    Rec: Live from Playhouse Theatre?
    Prod: Ian Grant
    Pres: Wally Whyton
    (Titles unknown)

    TOP GEAR
    IN SESSION TONIGHT: PENTANGLE, THE KINKS, FLEETWOOD MAC, THE IDLE RACE
    TX: 7/7/68
    Rec: 2/7/68.
    Prod: Bernie Andrews.
    Pres: John Peel
    ‘Every Night When the Sun Goes In [J&J] / I Am Lonely [B] / Forty-Eight [J&T] / Orlando [B&J]’
    (Also recorded 2/7/68 for later broadcast: ‘No More My Lord / Bransle Gay-La Rotta-The Earl of Salisbury [J&T]’)
    Note: This session was interesting for the band being a Rectangle – Danny had injured his hand, hence the other four drew from their duo/solo repertoires.

    MY KIND OF FOLK
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE, ROY HARPER
    TX: 10/7/68
    Prod: Frances Line
    Pres: Alex Campbell, Cyril Tawney, Noel Murphy.
    (Titles unknown)

    TOP GEAR
    IN SESSION TONIGHT: PENTANGLE, THE KINKS, FAMILY, BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST, JETHRO TULL
    TX: 4/8/68
    Rec: 2/7/68
    Prod: Bernie Andrews
    Pres: John Peel.
    ‘No More My Lord / Bransle Gay-La Rotta-The Earl of Salisbury [J&T]’
    (Plus repeat of 7/7/68 tracks: ‘Every Night When the Sun Goes In / I Am Lonely / Forty-Eight / Orlando’)

    COUNTRY MEETS FOLK
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE, THE HILLSIDERS, THE BIG TIMERS
    TX: 17/8/68
    Rec: Live from Playhouse Theatre?
    Prod: Ian Grant
    Pres: Wally Whyton
    ‘The Time Has Come’? (other titles unknown)

    TOP GEAR
    IN SESSION TONIGHT: PENTANGLE, JEFF BECK GROUP, LOVE SCUPTURE, DUSTER BENNETT
    TX: 3/11/68
    Rec: 23/9/68
    Prod: Bernie Andrews
    Pres: John Peel
    ‘Sovay / Sweet Child / I Loved a Lass / In Your Mind’
    (Also recorded 23/9/68 for later broadcast: ‘I’ve Got a Feeling’)

    NIGHT RIDE
    IN SESSION/STUDIO GUESTS: JOHN RENBOURN & TERRY COX, PATRICK DICKINSON, SALLYANGIE
    TX: 4/12/68
    Rec: 28/11/68
    Prod: John Muir
    Pres: Pete Drummond
    ‘Moondog / Sally Free & Easy / Lady Nothing’s Toye Puff / Lamente Di Tristram / La Rotta / Melancholy Galliard / The Earl of Salisbury’

    COUNTRY MEETS FOLK
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE, THE HILLSIDERS, CHERRY POOL
    TX: 7/12/68
    Rec: Live from Playhouse Theatre?
    Prod: Ian Grant
    Pres: Wally Whyton.
    ‘Hear My Call’? (other titles unknown)

    NIGHT RIDE
    IN SESSION/STUDIO GUESTS: JOHN RENBOURN & JACQUI McSHEE, JOHN MARTYN & HAROLD McNAIR, CHRISTOPHER LOGUE, JOHN LENNON & YOKO ONO
    TX: 11/12/68
    Rec: 10/12/68
    Prod: John Muir
    Pres: John Peel
    ‘Watch the Stars / I Can’t Keep from Crying Sometimes / Every Night When the Sun Goes In / My Johnny Was a Shoemaker / The Lags’ Song’

    TOP GEAR
    IN SESSION TONIGHT: PENTANGLE, PINK FLOYD, JETHRO TULL, DUSTER BENNETT
    15/12/68
    Rec: 23/9/68
    Prod: Bernie Andrews
    Pres: John Peel.
    ‘I’ve Got a Feeling’
    (Plus repeat of 3/11/68 tracks: ‘Sovay / Sweet Child / I Loved a Lass / In Your Mind’)

    NIGHT RIDE
    IN SESSION/STUDIO GUESTS: BERT JANSCH & DANNY THOMPSON, HAVEY MATUSOW’S JEWS HARP BAND, ROGER McGOUGH
    18/12/68
    Rec: 11/12/68
    Prod: John Muir
    Pres: John Peel
    ‘Tree Song / I Loved a Lass / I Got a Woman / Thames Lighterman / Haitian Fight Song / Birthday Blues’

    COUNTRY MEETS FOLK
    IN SESSION: BERT JANSCH, GEORGE HAMILTON IV DEREK BRIMSTONE, LORNE GIBSON TRIO
    TX: 25/1/69
    Rec: Live from Playhouse Theatre?
    Prod: Ian Grant
    Pres: Wally Whyton
    ‘Come Sing Me A Happy Song / Come Back Baby / I Am Lonely’

    NIGHT RIDE
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE
    TX: 1/5/69
    Rec: ?/69
    Pres: Jon Curle
    Prod: Pete Ritzema

    RADIO 1 CLUB
    TX: 15/5/69
    Rec: Live from London, probably from the Paris Theatre.
    (Titles unknown)

    TOP GEAR
    IN SESSION TONIGHT: PENTANGLE, JOHN DUMMER’S BLUES BAND, BLODWYN PIG, MANDRAKE PADDLE STEAMER
    TX: 18/5/69
    Rec: 12/5/69
    Prod: John Walters
    Pres: John Peel
    ‘Once I Had a Sweetheart / Hunting Song / Bruton Town / Sally Go Round the Roses’

    COUNTRY MEETS FOLK
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE, THE COUNTRY FEVER, CLIFF AUNGIER
    TX: 7/6/69
    Rec: Live from Playhouse Theatre?
    Prod: Bill Bebb
    Pres: Wally Whyton.
    (Titles unknown)

    RADIO 1 CLUB
    6/69?
    Rec: 19/6/69
    ‘Cold Mountain / I Am Lonely [B]’ (Plus others?)

    MY KIND OF FOLK
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE, ARCHIE FISHER, MARTIN CARTHY & DAVE SWARBRICK
    TX: 2/7/69
    Rec: ?
    Prod: Frances Line
    Pres: The Pentangle
    (Titles unknown)

    PETER SARSTEDT [own show]
    GUESTS: PENTANGLE, BEN STEED, ROGER RETTIC, CLIVE SARSTEDT
    TX: 5/10/69
    Rec: 17/8/69
    Pres: Peter Sarstedt
    Prod: Frances Line
    ‘The Cuckoo / Hunting Song / Light Flight [Take Three Girls version]’

    COUNTRY MEETS FOLK
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE, JACKIE & BRIDIE, THE MUSKRATS
    TX: 6/9/69
    Rec: Mid-August 1969?
    Prod: Bill Bebb
    Pres: Johnny Silvo
    (Titles unknown)

    MY KIND OF FOLK
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE, THE JOHNSTONS. RALPH McTELL, PETER SARSTEDT, THE SPINNERS, THE STRAWBS, REDD SULLIVAN
    TX: 24/9/69
    Rec: Live?
    (Titles unknown)
    Note: An end-of-series budget-blowing line-up of guests. As Radio Times put it, ‘the most star-studded bill of folk artists ever to appear on one radio programme’.

    COUNTRY MEETS FOLK
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE was a ‘surprise guest’ on one episode this month
    TX: ?/12/69
    Rec: Live from Playhouse Theatre?
    Pres: Wally Whyton
    Prod: Bill Bebb
    ‘Market Song / Sovay / In Your Mind’

    THE GEORGIE FAME SHOW
    GUESTS: PENTANGLE, BLOSSOM DEARIE, RAYMOND FROGGATT, THE SCAFFOLD, HARRY SOUTH ORCHESTRA
    TX: 26/12/69
    Rec: ?
    Pres: Georgie Fame
    Prod: John Muir
    (Titles unknown)

    THE PENTANGLE [Self-Titled 4-Part Series]
    TX: 28/12/69 – 18/1/70
    Rec: December 1969?
    Pres: Pentangle
    Prod: Frances Line
    ‘Moondog / House Carpenter / Train Song / The Trees They Do Grow High [J&J] / Cold Mountain / Light Flight / Country Blues [JR] / Hunting Song / Springtime Promises / Lyke Wake Dirge / The Name of The Game / Reynardine [B]’ (plus others?)
    (Repeated in April – May 1970)

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17. Colin H says

    21/12/2017 at 16:50

    PART 2 OF THE TALE: 1968-69

    Sweet Child

    Heather Sewell was an art student from London, strikingly different in background and personality from her new husband. Previously the girlfriend of Roy Harper, Heather had actually met Bert through Roy, probably early in 1968: ‘I was familiar with his music on record,’ says Heather, ‘although I didn’t know of the existence of Pentangle at that time. The first time I heard him perform was when I went with him and Roy down to a gig in Bristol. They were playing on the same bill. It was a classic case of love at first sight.’ Heather’s inevitable ‘defection’ to Bert resulted in what she recalls uncomfortably as ‘a duel of songs’ and an understandable degree of angst from Roy.

    At some point, Roy found himself supporting the Pentangle on some Scandinavian dates and, according to Lustig’s recollection, kept needling Bert throughout the whole trip. Bert, being Bert, didn’t rise to the challenge, but simply told Jo at the end of the tour that he didn’t want to play on the same stage as Roy Harper ever again. Another story, again from Lustig, has Roy being allowed to perform ‘one number’ at a charity concert headlined by the Pentangle. He performed one song of 40 minutes duration, and quite obviously about Heather. Jo pulled him off the stage. ‘I would have loved Heather to the end of the world,’ says Roy, on reflection, ‘but she chose against me. What can I say? I was a bit mad at the time. Then again, in her own way she’s a screwball too – and her match in life was not Bert Jansch.’

    When Heather met Bert it was on the eve of the Pentangle’s most rigorous two years of touring, and they were consequently prompt in marrying, at Lewes, in Sussex, on October 19 1968. The touring lifestyle caused problems for some of the other marriages within the band and it must surely have contributed in some way to the eventual failure of Bert and Heather’s. ‘I’ve always been happy in my own company anyway,’ says Heather, ‘but I think the first time that it was difficult was when they first went to America [January – March 1969]. I was still adjusting to life away from London. But life was very good for me because there was plenty of money. I had a lovely house, a few acres of land, I could paint. But it left me time to myself, without the compromises that are inevitable when you live with someone. What I did object to was things like him not letting me go to the Isle of Wight Festival that year, because I wanted to see Bob Dylan. He was worried I might get molested in the crowd. He was a very jealous man. I’m sure he thought he was being protective. What he said about that particular incident was that it was a big gig – the Pentangle were playing too – there was a lot going on and he didn’t need the tension and anxiety of wondering if I was all right. I felt perfectly able to take care of myself. After all, I’d been a student in London, and I hadn’t exactly led a sheltered life. But he was a very conservative man in many respects.’

    October 1968 had at one stage been pencilled in for an American tour, and ‘The Pentangle’ had already been released in America, on Reprise, to coincide. Instead, it was postponed until February 1969. Meanwhile, a second appearance on How It Is, presumably performing material from the imminent ‘Sweet Child’, was to be followed a week or so later, in November, by its British release. The wheels of Jo Lustig’s publicity machine were fully in motion and the group’s profile was rising all the time. A well-publicised British tour would follow the album’s release and begin with a prestige appearance at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Reviews from the tour would flow thick and fast, and it was clear from all quarters that here was something quite different, worth sitting up and taking notice of. The album would certainly justify £3 9s 6d of your ready cash, housed as it was in a striking sleeve from ‘pop artist’ Peter Blake, the ‘Sgt Pepper man’ as he was already doomed to be known. Undoubtedly another prestige coup for Jo, ‘Sweet Child’ was to prove only one of three record sleeves designed by Blake, before his nineties comeback with Paul Weller’s ‘Stanley Road’. He quite enjoyed the music too:

    ‘It may have been John’s idea,’ says Jacqui, ‘but at the prospect of getting someone like Peter Blake we were all sort of … ‘Wow!’ So Jo approached him and he came along, we met him and he was lovely, really nice and jolly, and he’d heard the music and liked it. We said, obviously, that the ‘pentangle’ had to feature fairly heavily, so he did a Perspex three-dimensional thing and that was photographed.’

    Thus the iconic front cover was secured. Blake also selected a striking series of variously appropriate images to illustrate the titles and notes to individual songs on the album’s back cover, while Melody Maker‘s Tony Wilson supplied the gatefold sleeve hyperbole: ‘Trying to describe the Pentangle’s music,’ he concluded, ‘is like trying to describe a sunset. You can talk of the colours, but the overall effect has to be seen to be appreciated. To appreciate the Pentangle, you have to listen.’ Also inside were a series of individual photographs of the group members, suffixed with dubiously witty quotations. Jacqui emphatically did not say what was attributed to her, and the lines attributed to everybody else are perhaps just too good to be true – but there was no real harm in it. The music was what counted, and it most certainly could not have come from anyone else.

    ‘For those who insist that pop is gaudy, aggressive and vulgar, this record will come as a bit of a surprise,’ declared Tony Palmer, in the Observer. ‘It is relaxed, gentle and poised. For those who insist that pop is just a noisy aberration of the mid-twentieth century, the baroque, ornamental delicacy of the Pentangle will probably neither be heard nor believed. Like the best of pop, the group stands in the mainstream of English music – folk in origin, classical in tone, and popular in emotion. They prefer songs with a beat of seven in the bar. They are cool, elegant, cunning and witty… Not a gimmick in sight; not a multi-track, feed-back, howl-round sound to be heard: and not a whisper of crass publicity or of dubious musicological significance.’

    More than the tightly constructed, speedily executed first album – which represented the culmination of the previous year’s activity – ‘Sweet Child’ was the Pentangle’s definitive statement, a manifesto of breathtaking diversity. Of all the live performances included on the record, only ‘Bruton Town’ had appeared previously in the band context, and stayed true to its original arrangement. ‘If it works, you don’t change it,’ says Jacqui, whose vocal performances in concert would always remain very close to the relevant recordings. ‘Watch The Stars’ had already appeared as the title track of one of John’s two albums with Dorris Henderson, and along with ‘Turn Your Money Green’ was representative of the repertoire John and Jacqui had been performing as a duo during the 1966–1967 period. The unaccompanied ‘So Early In The Spring’ gave Jacqui an opportunity to stand on her own two feet (metaphorically, of course) while John and Terry’s ‘Three Dances’ provided a foretaste of John’s ground-breaking ‘Lady And The Unicorn’ (1970) collection, continuing very much along the road suggested by the ‘medieval’ side of ‘Sir John A lot’. Similarly, Bert’s captivating solo performance of ‘A Woman Like You’ predated its appearance (ironically, in a group arrangement) on his forthcoming solo album. It remains the only professionally recorded glimpse of Bert Jansch onstage, alone, at the height of his powers.

    Danny had recorded a fuller arrangement of ‘Haitian Fight Song’ some years earlier with Alexis Korner’s band, and no less than three of the other tracks had previously appeared on the ‘Bert And John’ album. All of these – ‘No Exit’, ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ and ‘The Time Has Come’ – appeared here in significantly altered forms. ‘No Exit’ was looser, more improvisational and featured John substituting his studio acoustic for the fluid sustain of his Gibson 335; likewise ‘Pork Pie Hat’. ‘The Time Has Come’, like a butterfly from a cocoon, was scarcely recognisable as the rather too free-wheeling jam that had filled out the duo album a couple of years earlier. Anne Briggs, who had written the song, had yet to record it herself. She never cared for the Pentangle version: ‘I’m not sure that I’ve ever listened to it,’ she once told me. ‘I wasn’t particularly interested in what they were doing. That record must have been out for a couple of years, or a year at least, before I was even aware that there was a song of mine on it.’ Alan Price, who recorded the song as a B-side that same year, at least made sure that a copy was sent to her – which, given Anne’s notoriously address-free lifestyle at the time, was a remarkable achievement in itself.

    Within days of the group album hitting the shelves, Bert had completed a solo record, to be entitled ‘Birthday Blues’ and held over for releasing in January 1969. It may have been a contractual obligation for Bert but it marked a definite progression in his music, texturally and materially. Produced by Shel Talmy and featuring Danny Thompson and Terry Cox, along with guests Duffy Power and Ray Warleigh, ‘Birthday Blues’ was sonically close to Pentangle territory but presented sides of Bert’s music that were already becoming submerged within the group and which would never be fully incorporated into their sound or repertoire. For all its poise and majesty, there would be nothing on ‘Sweet Child’ to match the intensity of ‘Wishing Well’, the poignancy of ‘I Am Lonely’ or the blistering immediacy of ‘Poison’. Everyone would have a tendency to hold back within the band context – not to dictate or to swamp everyone else. But Danny and Terry, attacking ‘Poison’ and ‘A Woman Like You’ on ‘Birthday Blues’ or grooving along on the unashamedly funky filler ‘Blues’, sounded (ironically) as if they were thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to stretch out and have fun. Danny’s bass solos would always be popular highlights in the group’s live shows, but Terry was always reluctant to play too loud or too much or even, on occasion, to play anything at all (particularly not ‘that bloody glockenspiel’). Bert was content to melt into the background as much as he could and just be a part of the group. John got to play his electric guitar and to contribute to music he certainly enjoyed playing but wouldn’t necessarily want to pursue on his solo albums, while Jacqui, as singer and lyricist, and with a coincidentally natural non-dominant voice and personality, completed the soft-focus picture of a group whose collective 100% was entirely unique and absorbing, but perhaps only occasionally able to equal the individual 100%’s of its key members at their best. And while everyone would have a hand in the creative process, truly great songs by and large do not emerge from collective gatherings.

    Over the six albums that spanned 1968 – 1972 John and Danny contributed one original each – ‘So Clear’ and ‘No Love Is Sorrow’ respectively – while Terry, perhaps surprisingly, turned out several: ‘Springtime Promises’, ‘Helping Hand’, ‘Moon Dog’ and several commercially unreleased compositions. Original vocal material was, however, only a part of what the Pentangle were about, and the trio of acoustic fusion instrumentals on ‘Sweet Child’s studio disc certainly confirmed the group’s stature in this area, as if anyone was ever in doubt.

    ‘Everyone was more than capable of composing,’ says Renbourn. ‘But rarely would a complete piece be presented with the expectation that the others should be pleased to learn it. Far more often unfinished ideas would be put forward in the hope that their appeal would result in group compositions. Bert was never ‘underused’ [as some have suggested]. He was a great contributer. But what appeared on Pentangle records was never intended to showcase individuals’ ‘originals’.’

    The Second British Tour

    The Pentangle’s British tour of November/December ‘68 confirmed their new standing as a sizeable concert attraction. Notwithstanding the previous year’s modest Pete Burman tour, this was the group’s first major foray into the provinces, following immediately the release of Sweet Child. Beginning as a 12-date tour of major concert halls in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, a further five shows were added along the way. The publicity, particularly for the first show at the Royal Albert Hall, was significant and aside from the music press major newspapers like the Scotsman and the Daily Telegraph carried glowing reviews.

    Getting the use of the Royal Albert Hall was quite a coup. It was not unknown for practitioners of popular music to be granted the honour (Cream, for instance, performed their farewell shows at the venue earlier in the year) but the Hall’s custodians were conservative and after unruly behaviour during a Chuck Berry show the following year arbitrary bans of certain artistes, at the management’s discretion, were commonplace. Frank Zappa, it seems, was later banned on the grounds of musical quality as much as any potential for crowd trouble. Neither of these factors was viewed as a problem with the Pentangle, who were to play the venue no fewer than five times between 1968–1971. In terms of prestige the benefits were enormous and any show there was sure to be reviewed in the columns of significant journals.

    On this first occasion, Lustig was keen to get the most out of the situation and duly notified the press that not only would his protégés be composing and recording the title song and ‘thematic material’ for the forthcoming John Cassavettes film ‘The Husbands’, but also that scenes for the film would be shot during the show. None of these things appear to have happened but films were something Lustig was increasingly, and cannily, keen to involve the band in. Lustig did, in fact, have personal and professional associations with various notables in the film industry and the band actually did attend the premiere of another Cassavettes film, perhaps around this time. But nothing more concrete seems to have come from that particular connection. The group’s name was frequently associated (in press releases) with imminent contracts for major film soundtracks, but often prematurely. Lustig did, in the final analysis, secure soundtrack performances for one potentially major film – Roddy McDowell’s ‘Tam Lin / The Devil’s Widow’ (1971), which unfortunately sank without trace – and an American TV movie ‘The Lion At World’s End’ (1972). The group’s real soundtrack success, however, was to be the theme tune for the 1969 BBC TV drama series ‘Take Three Girls’. It is unfortunate, given the obvious adaptability of the Pentangle’s music to this format, that further cinematic opportunities could not be found.

    As for the Albert Hall concert, it was a roaring success, and provided a prime photo opportunity for the cover of their next album, ‘Basket of Light’. ‘Another concert success for the Pentangle, who won the acoustics battle effectively,’ wrote Tony Wilson in the MM, ‘although in the vastness of this venue their music often took on a more delicate nature than usual. It seems that the Pentangle rise to the occasion and, as at their first major London concert appearance at the Festival Hall, they gave a balanced, highly varied and musical programme.’ Others were in agreement: ‘The Royal Albert Hall was not the perfect setting,’ wrote Peter Cole in the Evening News, ‘the Pentangle are better suited to an intimate club atmosphere than a cavernous barn. But the thousands there obviously loved them.’ His opening observations were more compelling still:

    ‘There’s nothing extrovert about the Pentangle. In an age of aggressive, gaudily dressed pop singers to whom to project is to entertain, the Pentangle waft gently through their music like a breeze through corn. They don’t need to project themselves – their music projects itself. They care nothing for having a leader, for having a polished stage act or for their appearance; they concentrate on singing their songs, very gently, very beautifully.’

    Further concerts on the tour gave further opportunity for purple prose. Neil Tierney, writing in the Daily Telegraph, was giving all comers a run for their money, with talk of ‘improvisatory passages of compelling authority’ and ‘the two guitars creating a prismatic sound-spectrum’. Referring to the fifth show in the tour, at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall, it provided, he concluded ‘a feast of expertly designed music which ranged from conventional styles to ‘free form’ renderings. Nearly all the works chosen by this sophisticated folk group – classical, blues and jazz – display a touch of poetry, a compound of sadness, wit, fantasy and down-to-earth realism… Music-making like this has a universality and professional finish that place it in a category of its own.’

    Douglas Oliver, referring to the fourth show of the tour at Cambridge, for Cambridge News, took the band and its music every bit as seriously as Tierney: ‘Each number from the Pentangle establishes its own territory in a wide landscape which begins in medieval modal music and progresses to some of the forms of modern jazz. This demand for the number to be its own justification is the consequence of courage in welding traditional English forms and jazz idioms… While Renbourn provided much of the dazzle, Jansch’s acoustic guitar, subdued but rich, led firmly, ushering in the next phases of the numbers. As a singer Jansch was pleasantly earthy and relaxed, a tonal contrast to Jacqui McShee. Thompson had many dark and subterranean bass solos, very dark and full of feeling – sometimes witty too. Terry Cox’s drumming was also a sensitive musical contribution, shifting emphasis, thrubbing hard or softening, catching nuances, taking unexpected off-beats. It was a musicianly performance – glockenspiel and all – which, as the large audience showed, could still be very popular.’

    Alaister Clark, reviewing for the Scotsman a later performance at the Glasgow City Hall, confirmed this overwhelming consensus of critical opinion: ‘The Pentangle offered a range of musical accomplishment that no other professional group playing today could have hoped to emulate. It wasn’t diversity for diversity’s sake; at all times the Pentangle handled their material with sensitivity and skill of a high order. It was sheer music – the stuff you can sit back and bask in.’

    John Gibson, covering the following evening’s performance for the Edinburgh Evening News, put it like this: ‘To be really with the folk scene today you don’t cut off your hair and live. You don’t even have to break an old habit and wash. Nothing so drastic. You go Pentangling. It’s the fashionable and intelligent thing to do. There were sufficient Pentanglers in Edinburgh on Saturday night to two-thirds fill the Usher Hall for the group’s return visit, after their highly successful stint on the Festival Fringe this year… The no-frills, no-gimmicks Pentangle, having existed only a year, already are to the folk scene what the Modern Jazz Quartet were to the jazz movement. They treated their rapt audience to a remarkable range of fresh sounds… Everything was pleasantly restrained – if sometimes unkindly treated by the hall’s acoustics – and introduced with minimum fuss. Backstage before the concert started the Pentangle’s manager Jo Lustig asked for a blue light to be played on them. ‘But that’s not a hot light,’ argued a technician. ‘Well it’s not a hot group,’ snapped Lustig. That neatly summed up the group’s admirable control. Mr Lustig told me he is negotiating for the Pentangle to appear in the official Edinburgh Festival programme next year, probably for two weeks. ‘We could have played three weeks here last time. We were the only musical attraction at the festival to sell out’.’

    Jo remembered to put this information in his next press handout, dutifully reproduced in Melody Maker the following week. News items from the Pentangle camp had been flowing thick and fast during the tour period – with reference to additional dates, to the new album, to Bert’s forthcoming Birthday Blues, even to the possibility of a Danny Thompson trio album. Anything for a few column inches. There were also various suggestions of elaborate TV appearances, including talk of negotiations with BBC2 for a 45-minute colour programme on the Pentangle – which may have revolved around Lustig’s soon to be announced plans for the band to appear in yet another prestige coup, this time in Coventry Cathedral at the end of January. It was also at this time that the idea of a show involving the Pentangle and the Brian Auger Trinity featuring Julie Driscoll was mooted, in which the two singers would exchange bands. Erstwhile beat group impressario Giorgio Gomelsky was to be involved in some way, and the show was to be produced ‘early in 1969 and offered to TV companies’. The idea quietly disappeared.

    Transatlantic took out their usual half-page ad in the MM for ‘Sweet Child’, and both it and the first album continued to be steady sellers. Had the album been a (cheaper) single album and had it perhaps yielded a single, if only for radio play, it might well have crept into the charts. Even as a double album, though, it was still a few shillings cheaper than the Beatles’ new ‘White Album’ set, crippled on release by October’s new Extra Purchase Tax. Even so, that one did manage to sell a few copies.

    The tour finished up at the Brighton Dome on December 6 and aside from its communal benefit to the group Jacqui in particular must have felt a lot happier about her position in the scheme of things. She had had no preconceived notions about fame and fortune or how long the group would last, but it was still demeaning and hurtful to have had to put up with questions about her suitability for the band, her musical pedigree and so on. Some girl singers at the time had felt that she had apparently come out of nowhere and landed a prime opportunity with some of the hottest names on the scene, and really it wasn’t very fair. In fact, none of this was true: pedigree aside she had pretty much been told by John that she was joining the band, and there were no two ways about it. Many reviewers on the tour singled out her contribution to the band: ‘warm and clear with impressive poise,’ wrote one; ‘I never thought I would talk of a purer Joan Baez,’ remarked another; ‘her piercing voice never hit a wrong note,’ offered a third; ‘fine control and grace,’ said yet another. Nobody, it seems, had a bad word to say about Jacqui and one or two went to some lengths to emphasise their admiration:

    ‘The tone of many of the numbers,’ wrote Douglas Oliver, ‘is set by the sweet – it’s the only word – voice of Jacqui McShee, as clear as those of maidens that used to sing in valleys. What is extraordinary about it is that its purity does not strain at full loudness. For folk items it is ideal; for bluesy or spiritual numbers like ‘No More My Lord’ it adds a curious Englishness to the number. But, and it is a symbol for what the group are trying to do, the song becomes a new minting and rings true.’

    If Jo Lustig or Nat Joseph still had views on Jacqui’s suitability, from this point on their opinions were irrelevant. Even Jo would probably have conceded that while the group had successfully sold themselves as a leaderless act, Jacqui’s role had been very definitely identified by press and public alike as a key ingredient to the sound. Only a fool would have tried to alter such an obviously successful recipe.

    After the tour, Jo continued to negotiate for that two week slot at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival, and for the BBC to televise the forthcoming Coventry Cathedral show. The Edinburgh gambit does not appear to have come off, although this was no real setback as the relevant August/September period was amply filled with other touring commitments, recording sessions for the third album and two major outdoor festival appearances. The Pentangle would return to Edinburgh’s Festival Fringe again, for three nights, in 1970. The Coventry Cathedral show may or may not have been televised but it certainly went ahead, with Lustig understandably keen to tell anyone who would listen that his group were the only ‘popular jazz’ act to play the place besides the Duke Ellington Orchestra, back in February ‘66. The Duke had, on that occasion, premiered a daring work entitled ‘In The Beginning God’. Any similar austerity on the part of the Pentangle seems to have revolved around the quality of the backstage area: ‘It was all very inhibiting’ said Jacqui, ‘all the ceilings, and the dressing rooms where all the gowns were hanging up. I remember thinking, ‘What wonderful embroidery! Fantastic!’’ The show was on Wednesday January 29 1969, sandwiched between a couple of other stray dates, at Southampton Guildhall and Keele University.

    Jo had filled the Christmas/New Year period with a flurry of useful TV appearances in Britain and a quick trip over to Holland for a TV special. A couple of weeks after Christmas they appeared on BBC’s Julie Felix Show and it was around this time that Bert’s ‘Birthday Blues’ slipped out. The real beneficiary of all this media-blitzing was the ‘Sweet Child’ album; for all Bert’s cult reputation, the Pentangle as a band were clearly, and measurably, at this point ‘bigger than Jansch’. Unlike the first album, ‘Sweet Child’ had been simultaneously released in the States. Reprise were on the ball, the band were happening (at least in Britain), and America was but a plane ride away. The Pentangle were just about ready to start their five-year course on the applications of international airports.

    America

    During November 1968, while Bert was recording his Birthday Blues album, Jo Lustig had struck a deal with Creative Management Associates in New York and shortly after Christmas flew out to finalise details for the Pentangle’s first tour of America. The release of the group’s recordings in America – kicking off with an exclusive single of ‘Let No Man Steal Your Thyme’ – would be on the prestigious Warner’s subsidiary Reprise. ‘Mo Austin, head of Warner Reprise, had been introduced to Bert and myself through his sons, who played guitar,’ explains Renbourn. ‘A talent scout for Warner’s, an Englishman named Andy Wickham who was based in LA and later tried to direct Phil Ochs’ career, came over to check us out. Wickham gave us a favourable report and that was the beginning of the association with Reprise – and also the beginning of the cracks that became noticeable in Jo’s approach to management.’
    If playing a show in Coventry Cathedral had seemed a touch bizarre, it was nothing to the ramshackle converted cinema in New York they called Fillmore East: ‘Playing the gig at the Fillmore,’ says Bert, ‘was unbelievable, particularly if you’d never been to America before. I mean, apart from the culture shock, the actual volume of the American music… You’ve got to remember that we’d been used to little [Vox] AC30s and we’d brought them with us. On the first gig we were sandwiched between Canned Heat and Rhinoceros. We were up in the dressing rooms on the top floor and the walls were actually shaking, physically moving with the volume. You certainly couldn’t tune up – they didn’t have tuners or anything like that in those days!’

    ‘When we first went to America it was in the rather waffley era of ‘underground’,’ says John. ‘It was the buzz word amongst the record companies, just like ‘folk’ had been a buzz word previously. And the band was booked, amazingly enough, as an underground band! We actually shared bills with the Grateful Dead, Canned Heat, Shuggie Otis, Alice Cooper and all those people. So tours like that were pretty much wrong venues, and extended tours had quite a string of these tough ones on them. We did residencies in places like the Troubadour in Los Angeles, which were essentially a type of spring-off from the folk scene but more commercial – the sort of places Joni Mitchell would have played – and that kind of stuff was generally really good, when the band settled into a residency.’

    The Troubadour was one of four venues booked for this first tour of America, lasting just over a month and featuring several shows (or residencies) at each of the venues: the Fillmore East in New York; the Unicorn in Boston; a week at the Troubadour; and four shows at the Fillmore West, San Francisco. ‘They were very prestigious places to play,’ says Jacqui, ‘but I don’t think there were any bands around at that time, in the States, that were like us, so I don’t think they knew quite where to put us.’

    Prior to the tour they’d been generously booked into the Algonquin Hotel for a few days as a base for conducting some ‘promotional activities’. New York was having some interesting weather at the time: ‘We were snowed in there for about a week,’ says Bert. ‘And we blew the promotion money for the whole tour in that one week – ran ‘em dry of champagne!’

    ‘It was absolutely amazing,’ agrees Jacqui, ‘A wonderful hotel, all expenses paid. We were like kids let out of school, you know! I’m afraid we were quite naughty, really. But in that week I saw all my heroes, in little clubs in Greenwich – the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis big band at the Village Vanguard, Miles Davis at the Baron in Harlem. I mean, we were so naïve. We were the only white people there and I couldn’t believe it – I was just awestruck, dumbstruck, everything-struck. Just being there! Terry and I went to see Bill Evans at the Village Gate, and again I just couldn’t speak. I just wanted to shout at all these people who were noshing away at their steak and French fries, and clattering their knives and forks, just to tell them to keep quiet! I also went to see my sister who was living just outside New York at the time and I got stuck almost up to my hips going through this snow, trying to clamber up to the freeway. Even the snowploughs were stuck. We were supposed to go to Boston the next day, but nothing was moving.’

    If the group’s own first impressions of America were defined by incredulity, their own performances at the Fillmore probably had much the same effect on their first-time American audience: ‘I don’t think I’ve seen as much electrical equipment in all my life,’ says Jacqui, ‘as when we walked onstage to set our stuff up.’ Danny agrees: ‘It was quite incredible. We were on with Canned Heat and Rhinoceros, and they had about 32 amplifiers onstage. We were really nervous about how our acoustic thing would go down after all that. Before we went on Bill Graham put on one track of an LP of Bill Evans with a symphony orchestra and then announced us. ‘After 10,000 decibels give your ears a treat,’ he said.’

    And they certainly did. Remarkably, one of the very few amateur sound recordings of a Pentangle concert comes from this very occasion: February 7 1969. If there was any fear, it doesn’t show. The normal two-hour set was down to 40 minutes, but there was no compromise to the music. If anything, it had begun to loosen up, stretch out and take risks. ‘The Time Has Come’ was a fine choice for an opener, but after that there were no concessions to short and sweet accessibility. Setting the template for a multitude of concerts to come, the sprawling, extended ‘Pentangling’ climaxed the show, with that increasingly outrageous bass solo from Danny – generating a spontaneous ovation. There may even have been an encore, but not before the tape runs out. ‘And after that,’ said Danny, ‘we felt we could get through anything.’

    Jacqui suspects in hindsight that audiences in the States at that time were ‘so stoned they would have listened to anything’, but the Pentangle were not entirely unknown in America. Bert and John had a certain cult reputation (indeed, a Jansch tour had been all but arranged by Transatlantic as early as 1966, only to be cancelled at Bert’s request) and, by 1969, both ‘The Pentangle’ and ‘Sweet Child’ were readily available in America on Reprise. The tour, indeed, was supported by a US-only single release of ‘Let No Man Steal Your Thyme’ while the album from which it derived had been glowingly commended a few weeks earlier in Rolling Stone: ‘‘The Pentangle’, like [The Band’s] ‘Music From Big Pink’, is a musical experience which has its own identity, unlike most ‘pop music’ today… One can feel a closeness to the instruments that, heretofore, was a hard task in the pop music field. It is one of the best albums one will ever hear, and as the liner notes say, ‘Play this record to those you love.’’

    The first American tour was a ‘testing the water’ experience for all concerned and was to prove encouraging. Even the road crew were going down well: ‘We used to take this guy with us called Bobby Cadman,’ says Jacqui, ‘more of a minder than a roadie, and a lovely guy, really good for us then. We walked into the Fillmore East on that first afternoon and all the sound guys were there. One of them came up to Bobby and said, ‘What kind of lighting do you want?’, and Bobby just didn’t have a clue: ‘I think what we’d like is a sort of mateus rose,’ he said. And they just thought he was wonderful! We gained respect for that comment, from all the technicians there, because they didn’t know how to take us either.’ Cadman would be a fixture on most of the Pentangle’s subsequent tours, along with Billy Forsythe and a guy called Weasel – the ‘Bermondsey Brotherhood’ being the collective noun. They all added a little light relief to the endless grind of longer and longer tours, and made it all that little bit more bearable.

    The early months of 1969 were actually proving to be something of a second ‘British Invasion’ in America. Aside from the Pentangle, all sorts of soon-to-be major artists from Britain were touring there, most of them also on their first visit – Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, the Jeff Beck Group, Ten Years After and Jethro Tull. ‘We played lots of festivals,’ says Jacqui, referring to the group’s second US tour (four months after the first), ‘and most of the people we met were other British bands! We used to meet Jethro Tull all the time – a few hours at some campus somewhere, and a week later another couple of hours at another campus somewhere else. America was full of the Vietnam War at the time, and that’s all anybody wanted to talk to you about.’

    The first visit to the States finished up at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West, in San Francisco, where they were on a bill with the Grateful Dead: ‘A couple of days beforehand,’ says Jacqui, ‘we did a radio show, and the DJ told us what had happened to him. When they [the Dead] had come in to be interviewed they’d spiked the water. ‘Don’t accept anything from them,’ he’d said. So I didn’t. I didn’t! I remember going to this sleazy bar opposite the stage door to buy myself some beer, ‘cos I wanted to keep it hidden. Everybody else was eating and drinking everything else in sight. I felt really scared – I thought at one point everyone was playing in a different time. Bert swears I was completely stoned, but I mean, how could he tell? It was bizarre, the whole thing. But I wanted to be aware of what was going on. This was a place that we’d heard of – the Fillmore West! – I couldn’t believe I was there!’

    Once I Had A Sweetheart

    Wisely, the two Fillmores were side-lined for more salubrious, and more appropriate, venues on subsequent tours. Having had their weird experience on the west coast everyone was understandably keen to get home. They were therefore not at all happy, as Jacqui recalls, to find that Jo had in fact booked them on a plane to Amsterdam: ‘We did some bizarre things,’ she admits, ‘or rather, Jo roped us into some bizarre things. But I suppose he thought he was furthering our career. I remember the flight though. I think everyone was so fed up that they weren’t going home – so near but yet so far. There was a bit of a fracas caused by Jill, Terry’s wife, which I won’t elaborate on. But it was very funny, and I was in the middle of it trying to… hide! Anyway, we went to Amsterdam to do what was called Le Grand Gala Du Disques. All the record companies got together for this convention, each with their top artists, and there was this huge gala show, and obviously we were Transatlantic’s top artists. Harry Secombe was on it – he was lovely, a really nice bloke – and the Moody Blues were on it. They wanted to put us on this huge trolley and wheel us on with plants all around us, disguising the amps. We said ‘No’. Harry Secombe came up to me and said, ‘Don’t take any notice of them, love, they’re all mad. Just agree to do everything and then do what you like.’ And when it was his turn, to come out and sing something serious, he came on with a cartwheel.’

    After their wearying sojourn with European light entertainment, the band really did come home. Any plans for a meaningful rest were cut short by the need to get some ideas together for the next album, which, unlike the previous two, would have to be recorded sporadically over the next few months, whenever there was any spare time. By the end of April it was time to hit the road again, this time around Britain. John and Jacqui warmed up with a pub gig in Ilford, followed by a band warm-up at Croydon’s Fairfield Halls and a benefit for Shelter at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre. The tour proper wound its way through May, with the venues being nothing if not diverse – from Wolverhampton Technical College to the Royal Festival Hall (in that order). In between was an appearance on the popular BBC TV show Dee Time, probably miming to ‘Once I Had A Sweetheart’.

    This extraordinary single was released a few days after the tour, and was without a doubt the band’s most ambitious recording thus far, with an arrangement involving glockenspiel, sitar and multi-tracked vocals on top of the usual drums, bass and guitars. If it was recorded on eight-track, as seems to be the case, it was a feat of technical wizardry. The sound alone was to be a selling point in itself, with reviewers – and Transatlantic’s advertising – setting much store by the fact that this was a stereo single, a format still unusual in 1969. At over four and a half minutes the length was pretty ambitious too, and wasn’t doing itself any favours in terms of widespread radio play. The Beatles had got away with the seven minutes plus of ‘Hey Jude’, but then they were the Beatles. Nevertheless, it scaled the foothills of the UK Top 40, peaking at 46 in June. Transatlantic were doing their best to get it noticed, with a striking quarter-page ad in the MM featuring a silent-era film still of a couple in coy embrace, capturing well the impressions left by the music: stylishly modern, yet steeped in wistful melancholy.

    The song, a well-known traditional piece, was the first in the Pentangle’s repertoire to feature sitar. Although always played, in concert and on record, by John, the instrument itself was partly owned by Jansch. ‘Alexis Korner phoned up one day when we were living in St. John’s Wood,’ says Renbourn, ‘and said, ‘Would you boys like to buy a sitar?’ And we said, yes, we would. ‘Well, the man’s probably outside the door now!’ This guy knocks on the door with peroxide hair and black sunglasses, with a sitar not even in a case. So, ‘There you are – lovely isn’t it? Ten quid…’ And suddenly we had a sitar!’

    ‘John had been playing around with it for ages and ages,’ says Jacqui, ‘but I don’t think he had the courage to play it on stage until he was fairly competent.’ By the end of the year it was a regular part of the show, particularly in conjunction with Bert’s banjo playing, which was itself previously unheard in the band context: ‘We found by experimentation that sitar and banjo worked very well,’ says John. ‘It’s a nice sound combination.’ ‘House Carpenter’ on the band’s next album, ‘Basket Of Light’, would be the first evidence of this novel coupling although perhaps the definitive example was to be ‘Rain And Snow’, from 1971’s ‘Reflection’ – both Appalachian traditional songs.

    Such was the attention to production values on ‘Once I Had A Sweetheart’, itself an Appalachian version of an English piece, that there appears to be not one but two sitar tracks. Likewise, Jacqui’s vocal has been double-tracked – a technique which was to prove effective both here and, again, on ‘Reflection’. The arrangement was a masterpiece, perhaps the most complex of all their recorded work, and it is hardly surprising that the song appears never to have been performed live on TV, radio or in concert during the lifespan of the original group. The B-side, ‘I Saw An Angel’, was a very different animal but also one of the most striking performances issued under the band’s name. Unmistakably a Jansch song, it juxtaposed one of his most unusual lyrics with the closest the band came to a modern, progressive rock sound. It was in keeping with the kind of sound and direction Bert had taken with the harder-edged tracks on his ‘Birthday Blues’ album – sharp and direct but, with Jacqui and Terry wailing in the distance, successfully mimicking the depth in sound of its A-side companion. John plays superb lead acoustic throughout and, as with ‘Travelling Song’, harmonises on a second track during his solo. The song also marks the first appearance on record of Terry’s fearless falsetto vocals – another distinctive weapon in the band’s armoury of sound. Everyone, it seems, was pulling something new out of the bag for these latest recordings, and it could only be a good sign.

    The Summer of ‘69

    June ‘69 was partly spent in IBC Studios, London, working on the next record. ‘The Pentangle turned down an offer from Mick Jagger to support Marianne Faithfull on an album,’ read one of Jo’s press releases from the period. It may even have been true. They returned to the stage at the end of June with another prestige concert at the Royal Albert Hall, headlining the second night in a series of ‘Pop Proms’, sharing a bill with Duster Bennett and Fleetwood Mac. A few days later it was back to the States – with a vengeance.

    Jo had lined up useful appearances on the David Frost and Today TV shows, and had seemingly tried to do something about the kind of venues he was sending them off to. Although Jo would generally come over with the band he wouldn’t necessarily have followed the tour but would always be a phone call away in a crisis: ‘He’d be staying in New York for several weeks, then LA for several weeks,’ recalls Jacqui, ‘working on other deals and stuff. We’d call him if there were problems – like you’re not booked into this hotel and you’re stuck there thinking, ‘Damn! We’ve got a gig to do, and a sound check to make and these people won’t let us into the hotel…’ It was things like that, and it happened… frequently!’

    By now, in America, the band’s records and live appearances were beginning to make some kind of impression. ‘Once I Had A Sweetheart’ had been issued on Reprise just prior to the tour, which opened in Detroit on July 4. Doing something less American than going to a Pentangle concert on Independence Day is hard to imagine, but then much of the Pentangle’s appeal in America was down to their very Englishness – a perception that, from interviews given at the time, appears to have had some influence on the sound, if not the content, of the band’s next album. ‘Interviewers are always asking us if we’re pop or folk or jazz,’ said Danny, in a May ‘69 interview with MM, ‘We say, ‘Well look, it’s music – it’s whatever you think it is. In America it didn’t bother them. They didn’t look upon us as anything, just as British music. Surprisingly, even the folk purists over there went wild about it all – and they seemed particularly pleased about the acoustic idea. They seem to think we’re bringing it back from the 14th Century.’

    Speaking in August, after this second visit to the homeland of rock’n’roll, and in an article appropriately headed ‘Pentangle – an English music band’, Jacqui was very much in agreement: ‘In England,’ she explained, ‘people come to hear a particular group or type of music. If you have a concert then everyone on the bill is playing roughly the same sort of thing. In America you can have a concert with a jazz group, a soul band, an underground group and us. And the audience really wants to hear all the different things. When we first went to the States we tried not to do the more traditional songs, but we found that was what they wanted to hear. Actually, we find that the stuff we’ve been doing recently has been much more in a folk thing, right back to the roots again.’

    The schedule for this second tour underwent a number of last minute changes. Variously mentioned gigs in New York, San Francisco, Toronto and Montreal don’t appear to have happened, but three nights apiece in Detroit and Chicago were certainly followed by significant performances on each of the last three days of the famous five-day Newport Folk Festival, Rhode Island. This was more like it:

    ‘We did get a number of gigs eventually,’ says John, ‘like Newport, that really were the right format for the type of music we were playing – a fairly quiet, amplified but nevertheless integrated kind of counterpoint. We were with people who were listening, and it was good, you know. But night after night we were on the so-called ‘underground’ circuit, and we used to have to follow different bands – all of whom were, like, really heavy and very loud. There was one particular band that was great called Spirit, a power trio, and the old fellow who was the drummer, Ed Cassidy, he used to finish the act by playing an absolute monster drum solo, with mallets and a couple of military bass drums on both sides of the stage. And he would be dressed in chains and there were strobe lights and all that kind of stuff, and he’d really go to town – and that was the end of their act. The first song that we used to do was ‘No More My Lord’, with a very quiet opening played by Terry, so it was a sort of absurd contrast really. But then our band always was an absurd contrast.’

    One of the Pentangle’s Newport performances coincided with the Apollo Moon landing, and at the precise moment Neil Armstrong was flunking his grammar and taking those giant steps for mankind, the Pentangle were in the middle of ‘Bruton Town’ – a moment duly broadcast on a national news programme, to remind Americans of what they might have been doing during the great event (other than watching it on television). Even Jo Lustig couldn’t have planned that one. He did, nevertheless, make the most of the occasion, letting the British music press know that 14,500 fans had given his protégés a standing ovation, with promotor George Weinn delighted to have them back the following year. Poor George had been having a bit of a bad time with the English ‘underground’ recently – his previous week’s Newport Jazz Festival having been a public relations disaster of the highest order. Various blues/rock acts had been invited for the first time, and while the musicians got on fine, the (seriously underestimated) crowds didn’t. There was no such trouble at a Pentangle show: ‘No trouble at all,’ said Danny, whose turn it was to be quoted in a press release. Straight after Newport the band settled into a pleasant return engagement at the LA Troubadour followed by a festival in Ipswich, Massachusetts. As before, the tour had lasted about a month and as before, they weren’t getting home that easily. Jo had organised another bizarre celluloid episode in continental Europe, this time at a casino in Belgium:

    ‘I’ve always said,’ says Jacqui, ‘that you cannot fault Jo’s PR. He was the best in PR, but I don’t think he was good as a manager. A manager is supposed to have the artists’ interests at heart, not just to push their careers.’ By 1973, when the band had finally run out steam, almost everyone in it would be preoccupied with various personal issues, aggravated or precipitated in some way by the endless rounds of touring.

    ‘Bert always found it hard,’ says Heather Jansch. ‘He didn’t like touring, didn’t like hotels, didn’t particularly like travelling. It’s hard to be on the road with five people for weeks on end. There are bound to be conflicts. But it’s something he learned to do and I should think there were times when the only way he could get through it was through booze. But then that wasn’t confined to just Bert. They were all very heavy drinkers. Towards the end it was a big problem for all of them.’

    ‘The pressure of playing America,’ says John, ‘was quite different from the pressure of playing in the back room of the Horseshoe, or the low-key English gigs, where there was practically no pressure whatsoever. And the physical thing of having to play in front of very large audiences, especially in some of these fabled dives like the Fillmore and big, internationally attended festivals like Newport, and even gigs like the Troubadour – which were low-key but still there was a different feeling about it, that you really have to do it – I think that kicked the band into another gear, really. It was a very good thing too. I think it just gave it another edge in performance. It didn’t last, but for a time it did.’

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18. Colin H says

    21/12/2017 at 17:12

    Bert and Jacqui just about managing to keep a straight face on a French TV show with gogo dancers in March 1969, promoting the group’s year-old-by-then debut single:

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19. Colin H says

    22/12/2017 at 13:29

    PENTANGLE ON BBC RADIO: PART2 – 1970-73

    THE SUNDAY SHOW
    TX: c.25/1/70 – 22/2/70
    Rec: Live from Paris Theatre?
    Pres: John Peel
    Prod: Jeff Griffin
    (Repeated on Sounds of The Seventies in April or May 1970.)
    (Titles unknown)

    Network session?
    TX: 2/70?
    Rec: 2/70?
    ‘Light Flight’

    FOLK ON FRIDAY?
    TX: 25/9/70
    Rec: ?
    (Titles unknown)

    [PROGRAMME UNKNOWN]
    TX: 1/10/70
    Rec: ?
    (Titles unknown)

    FOLK ON ONE
    TX: 3/10/70
    Rec: ?
    Prod: Francis Line
    ‘Rain and Snow / Lord Franklin / A Maid That’s Deep in Love / Helping Hand / Speak of the Devil / Will the Circle be Unbroken?’

    SOUNDS OF THE SEVENTIES
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE, QUARTET
    TX: 12/11/70
    Rec: 5/11/70.
    Prod: Malcolm Brown
    Pres: Stuart Henry
    ‘Wedding Dress / A Maid That’s Deep in Love / Lord Franklin [JR] / Sally Free & Easy’

    SOUNDS OF THE SEVENTIES
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE, FAMOUS JUG BAND
    TX: 17/12/70
    Rec: ?
    Prod: Malcolm Brown
    Pres: Stuart Henry
    (titles unknown)
    Note: Probably a repeat of SOTS 12/1270.

    NIGHT RIDE
    IN SESSION: JOHN RENBOURN
    TX: 31/1/71
    Rec: ?
    Prod: Derek Drescher
    Pres: Peter Latham
    (titles unknown)

    NIGHT RIDE
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE
    TX: 21/2/71
    Rec: 8/2/71
    Prod: Derek Drescher
    Pres: Peter Latham
    ‘Train Song / Helping Hand / Way Behind the Sun / Hunting Song / Sally Free & Easy / Will the Circle Be Unbroken?’

    SOUNDS OF THE SEVENTIES
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE, ANDY ROBERTS
    TX: 19/4/71
    Rec: 6/4/71
    Prod: John Muir
    Pres: Bob Harris.
    ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken / When I Get Home / Helping Hand / Wedding Dress’

    SOUNDS OF THE SEVENTIES
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE, CAT STEVENS
    TX: 17/5/71
    Rec: ?
    Prod: John Muir
    Pres: Bob Harris.
    Note: Probably a repeat of SOTS 19/4/71

    SOUNDS OF THE SEVENTIES
    IN SESSION: BERT JANSCH, LINDISFARNE
    TX: 2/8/71
    Rec: 15/7/71
    Prod: John Muir
    Pres: Bob Harris
    ‘Twa Corbies / Nobody’s Bar / Bird Song’
    (Also recorded 15/7/71 for later broadcast: ‘Omie Wise / Tell Me What Is True Love’)

    SOUNDS OF THE SEVENTIES
    IN SESSION: BERT JANSCH, T. REX
    TX: 23/8/71
    Rec: 15/7/71
    Prod: John Muir
    Pres: Bob Harris
    ‘Omie Wise / Tell Me What Is True Love’
    (Plus repeat of 2/8/71 tracks: ‘Twa Corbies / Nobody’s Bar / Bird Song’)

    NIGHT RIDE
    IN SESSION: JOHN RENBOURN, STORYTELLER
    TX: 25/9/71
    Rec: ?
    Prod: Dennis O’Keefe
    Pres: Keith Skues
    (titles unknown)

    NIGHT RIDE
    TX: 30/9/71
    Rec: ?
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE
    Prod: Dennis O’Keefe
    Pres: Jon Curle
    (titles unknown)

    SOUNDS OF THE SEVENTIES
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE, FIELDS, JAMES TAYLOR, STONE THE CROWS
    TX: 29/11/71
    Rec: 9/11/71
    Prod: John Muir
    Pres: Bob Harris
    ‘Lord Franklin [JR] / Willy O’ Winsbury / Lady of Carlisle / Will the Circle Be Unbroken’

    SOUNDS OF THE SEVENTIES
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE, JONI MITCHELL, B.B. BLUNDER JOHN MARTYN
    TX: 27/12/71
    Rec: ?
    Prod: John Muir
    Pres: Bob Harris
    Note: Probably a repeat of SOTS 27/12/71.

    SOUNDS OF THE SEVENTIES
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE, BEDFINGER
    TX: 17/7/72
    Rec: 19/6/72
    Prod: Jeff Griffin & Pete Dauncey
    Pres: Bob Harris.
    ‘Cherry Tree Carol / Jump Baby Jump / Lady of Carlisle’
    (Also recorded 19/6/72 for later broadcast: ‘People on The Highway / No Love Is Sorrow’)

    SOUNDS OF THE SEVENTIES
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE, BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST, GALLAGHER AND LYLE, HERON
    TX: 9/10/72
    Rec: 19/6/72
    Prod: Jeff Griffin & Pete Dauncey
    Pres: Bob Harris.
    ‘People on The Highway / No Love Is Sorrow’
    (Plus repeat of 17/7/72 tracks: ‘Cherry Tree Carol / Jump Baby Jump / Lady of Carlisle’)

    SOUNDS ON SUNDAY
    IN SESSION: PENTANGLE
    TX: 29/10/72
    Rec: ?
    Prod: Francis Line
    (Titles unknown)

    Immediate Post-Split BBC Sessions:

    THE SEQUENCE
    IN SESSION: JOHN RENBOURN & JACQUI MCSHEE, GEORDIE
    TX: 27/4//73
    Rec: 5/4/73
    Prod: John Muir
    Pres: Pete Drummond
    ‘Wedding Dress / Melancholy Galliard – Der Judens Tanz / Lord Franklin / Flower of Northumberland’

    THE SEQUENCE
    IN SESSION: BERT JANSCH, MEDICINE HEAD
    TX: 11/5/73
    Rec: 19/4/73.
    Prod: John Muir
    Pres: Pete Drummond
    ‘Oh, My Father / The Wheel / Running from Home / Soho’
    Note: Possibly a repeat of 27/4/73

    THE SEQUENCE
    IN SESSION: JOHN RENBOURN & JACQUI MCSHEE, HEMLOCK
    TX: 20/7/73
    Rec: 5/4/73
    Prod: John Muir
    Pres: Vincent Price
    ‘Portland Town / Reynardine / The Silkie / Willy O’ Winsbury’

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20. Colin H says

    22/12/2017 at 15:05

    Continuing our chronological history tour, ‘In Time’ from the ‘Sweet Child’ (1968) LP, performed for BBC TV in summer 1970, broadcast early 1971:

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21. Colin H says

    22/12/2017 at 16:27

    CHRONOLOGY PART 2: 1969-70

    1969
    January
    Thur 23 Southampton, Guildhall
    Wed 29 Coventry Cathedral – BBC TV tele-recording?
    Thur 30 Keele University
    Fri 31 London, Royal Festival Hall – Donovan with Danny Thompson

    February
    Sat 1 Fly to USA for pre-tour promotion
    Fri 7 New York, Fillmore East + Canned Heat, Rhinoceros
    Sat 8 New York, Fillmore East + Canned Heat, Rhinoceros?
    Tue 11 Boston, The Unicorn
    Wed 12 Boston, The Unicorn
    Thur 13 Boston, The Unicorn
    Fri 14 Boston, The Unicorn
    Sat 15 Boston, The Unicorn
    Wed 19 Los Angeles, The Troubadour
    Thur 20 Los Angeles, The Troubadour
    Fri 21 Los Angeles, The Troubadour
    Sat 22 Los Angeles, The Troubadour
    Sun 23 Los Angeles, The Troubadour
    Thur 27 San Francisco, Fillmore West + Grateful Dead?
    Fri 28 San Francisco, Fillmore West + Grateful Dead, Sir Douglas Quintet

    March
    Sat 1 San Francisco, Fillmore West + Grateful Dead?
    Sun 2 San Francisco, Fillmore West + Grateful Dead?
    Thur 6 HOLLAND Dutch TV
    Grande Gala Du Disques tele-recording
    ? BBC TV Once More With Felix tele-recording (John & Danny)

    April
    Fri 18 Ilford, The General Havelock (John & Jacqui)
    Fri 25 Croydon, Fairfield Hall
    Sun 27 London, Sadlers Wells Theatre + East of Eden (Benefit for Shelter)

    May
    Thur 8 Wolverhampton Technical College
    Sun 11 Stoke-On-Trent Arts Festival
    Fri 16 Liverpool, Philharmonic Hall
    Sat 17 BBC TV Dee Time – live
    Mon 26 Brighton, The Dome

    June
    ? Recording sessions (Basket Of Light LP)

    Mon 30 London, Royal Albert Hall ‘Pop Proms’ + Fleetwood Mac, Duster Bennett

    July
    ? US TV – Today + David Frost?
    Fri 4 Detroit
    Sat 5 Detroit
    Sun 6 Detroit
    Fri 11 Chicago, Kinetic Playground + Spirit, Alice Cooper
    Sat 12 Chicago
    Sun 13 Chicago
    Wed 16 Rhode Island, Newport Folk Festival
    Thur 17 Rhode Island, Newport Folk Festival
    Fri 18 Rhode Island, Newport Folk Festival
    Sat 19 Rhode Island, Newport Folk Festival
    Sun 20 Rhode Island, Newport Folk Festival
    Tue 22 Los Angeles, The Troubadour
    Wed 23 Los Angeles, The Troubadour
    Thur 24 Los Angeles, The Troubadour
    Fri 25 Los Angeles, The Troubadour
    Sat 26 Los Angeles, The Troubadour
    Sun 27 Los Angeles, The Troubadour

    August
    Fri 1 Ipswich, Massachusetts, Castle Hill Festival
    Sat 2 Ipswich, Massachusetts, Castle Hill Festival
    Sun 3 Fly to BELGIUM
    4 – 5 Knokke-Le-Zout Casino, Belgian TV tele-recording
    Wed 6 Return to Britain
    Sun 10 Plumpton Racecourse, 9th National Jazz, Pop, Ballads & Blues Festival
    ? BBC Radio Country Meets Folk recording
    23 – 30 Recording sessions (to complete Basket Of Light LP)
    Sun 31 Isle of Wight Festival

    September
    Mon 1 Oslo University, NORWAY
    Tue 2 Trondheim University, NORWAY
    Fri 5 Copenhagen, Falkoner Auditorium DENMARK
    Sat 6 Stockholm, SWEDEN
    Tue 9 BBC Radio Peter Sarstedt Show recording
    Wed 24 BBC Radio Country Meets Folk – live broadcast

    October
    ? BBC TV Monster Music Mash tele-recording
    Sat 4 London, Royal Albert Hall
    Fri 10 Glasgow Concert Hall
    Sat 11 Edinburgh, Usher Hall
    Tue 14 Leeds Town Hall
    Fri 17 Brighton, The Dome
    Sat 18 Manchester, Free Trade Hall
    Sun 19 Bristol, Colston Hall
    Fri 24 Leicester, De Montfort Hall
    Sat 25 Harrogate, Royal Hall
    Sun 26 Portsmouth, Guildhall
    Wed 29 Birmingham Town Hall

    November
    Sat 1 Newcastle City Hall

    December
    ? Bridgend, Key Club
    Fri 5 London, Royal College Of Art + Strawbs, Graham Bond
    Sat 6 Port Talbot, Afan Festival Of Progressive Music + Pink Floyd, others
    ? Recording sessions (Tam Lin film soundtrack)
    ? BBC recording sessions (for four-part own series on Radio 1)
    Sat 20 Basildon Arts Centre
    Fri 26 BBC Radio The Georgie Fame Show – live broadcast

    1970

    January
    ? Recording sessions (Tam Lin film soundtrack)
    Sun 18 London, Lyceum + Magna Carta
    Sun 25? BBC Radio Peel On Sunday – live broadcast?
    Fri 30 BBC TV Disco 2 – tele-recording
    Sat 31 Dagenham, Round House

    February
    Sun 1 LWT TV The Simon Dee Show – live broadcast
    Thur 5 TV rehearsal – Young Generation
    Fri 6 Liverpool, Philharmonic Hall
    Sat 7 Birmingham, Mothers + Trader Horne
    Sun 8 BBC TV Young Generation – tele-recording
    Sat 14 Cardiff, Sofia Gardens
    Sun 15 Croydon, Fairfield Hall
    Wed 18 Tunbridge Wells, Assembly Hall
    Sat 21 Manchester University
    Mon 23 Oxford Town Hall
    Thur 26 Bradford, St George’s Hall
    Fri 27 Sheffield
    Sat 28 Stoke, North Staffordshire Polytechnic, Queen’s Hall

    March
    Sun 1 Newcastle
    Mon 2 Leeds
    Tue 3 Coventry, Lanchester University
    Sat 7 Sunderland, Empire Theatre
    Sun 8 Edinburgh
    Mon 9 Watford / BBC Radio Folk On One recording
    11 – 12 Paris, FRANCE – French TV tele-recording
    Tue 17 London, Royal Albert Hall (WWF Benefit)
    Sun 22 Redcar
    Mon 23 Wolverhampton Civic Hall
    Wed 25 Barnstaple, Queen’s Hall
    Thur 26 Guildford Civic Hall
    ? Salford, The Two Brewers
    Granada TV From The Two Brewers tele-recording

    April
    Wed 1 BELGIUM – BRT TV – live?
    Fri 3 Glasgow
    Sat 4 Aberdeen
    Sun 5 Dundee
    Mon 6 Dublin, IRELAND
    Tue 7 Belfast
    Wed 8 ? Manchester, Granada TV – live?
    Thur 9 Fly to USA
    Fri 10 New York, Carnegie Hall
    ? CBS TV (US) David Frost – live?
    ? ? TV (US) Mama Cass – live?
    ? Boston
    ? Detroit
    ? Chicago
    ? Washington
    ? Rhode Island
    ? Toronto
    ? Carolina
    ? Pittsburgh
    ? New York, The Village Gate

    May
    Sat 9 Albany, NY, Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute [cancelled]
    ? Williamstown, MA – college
    ? Illinois – college
    ? Colorado – college
    ? Washington State – college
    Mon 18 Los Angeles, The Troubadour
    Tue 19 Los Angeles, The Troubadour
    Wed 20 Los Angeles, The Troubadour
    Thur 21 Los Angeles, The Troubadour
    Fri 22 Los Angeles, The Troubadour
    Sat 23 Los Angeles, The Troubadour
    ? San Diego
    ? Seattle
    ? Vancouver
    Fri 29 Berkeley Community Theatre + James Taylor

    June
    Week 1 or 2 Return to Britain
    15 – 26 Recording sessions (Cruel Sister LP)
    Sat 20 Oxford Town Hall / BBC TV In Concert tele-recording
    Mon 22 Aberdeen, Grampian TV – tele-recording?
    Sat 27 HOLLAND – NOS TV – live?
    Mon 29 Birmingham Town Hall
    ? Tunbridge Wells, Assembly Hall [June or July]

    July
    Thur 2 BBC Radio My Kind Of Folk – live?
    Sun 26 Chichester, Festival Theatre

    August
    Sat 1 Cambridge Folk Festival (group performance)
    Sun 2 Cambridge Folk Festival (solo performances)
    ? Trumpington, BBC TV Songs From A Country Church tele-recording
    Sat 8 Harrogate, Royal Theatre
    Sat 15 Krumlin, Yorkshire Folk, Blues & Jazz Festival
    Sun 30 Isle of Wight Festival, Murray Lerner concert filming

    September
    Fri 4 Edinburgh Festival, Caley Cinema
    Sat 5 Edinburgh Festival, Caley Cinema
    Sun 6 Edinburgh Festival, Caley Cinema
    10 – 11 Recording session (Cruel Sister LP? Lady & The Unicorn LP?)
    ? BBC (regional) Show Of The North tele-recording
    21 – 25 Recording session (Cruel Sister LP? Lady & The Unicorn LP?)
    Fri 25 BBC Radio Folk On Friday – live broadcast?
    Sat 26 London, Royal Albert Hall

    October
    Thur 1 BBC Radio [title unknown] – live
    Fri 2 Stoke-On-Trent
    Sat 3 Birmingham Town Hall / BBC Radio Folk On One – live?
    Mon 5 Bradford, St George’s Hall
    Tue 6 Leeds Town Hall
    Fri 9 Manchester, Free Trade Hall
    Sun 11 Tunbridge Wells, Assembly Hall
    Mon 12 Nottingham, Albert Hall
    Wed 14 Portsmouth, Guildhall
    Fri 16 Liverpool, Philharmonic Hall
    Sat 17 Bristol, Colston Hall [cancelled]
    Sun 18 Leicester, De Montfort Hall
    Mon 19 Newcastle City Hall
    Tue 20 Oxford Town Hall
    Thur 22 Chatham Town Hall
    Fri 23 Brighton, The Dome
    Mon 26 Caerphilly Festival
    Sat 31 Sunderland Empire
    ? ATV Music Room tele-recording (Danny Thompson & Ray Warleigh)
    ? ATV Music Room tele-recording (John Renbourn & Terry Cox)

    November
    Sun 1 Croydon, Fairfield Hall
    2 – 4 Paris, FRANCE French TV – live?
    Thur 5 BBC Radio Sounds of the Seventies recording
    Fri 6 Meeting with Mike Mays, producer of BBC TV’s Take Three Girls
    Tue 10 Dublin, IRELAND
    Wed 11 Belfast
    Fri 13 Lancaster
    Sat 14 Exeter
    Sun 15 Stoke, Victoria Hall
    Mon 16 Guildford Civic Hall
    Sun 22 Bristol, Colston Hall
    Mon 23 Dunstable
    Sat 28 Watford Town Hall [or possibly Sheffield]
    Mon 30 Wolverhampton Civic Hall

    December
    No commitments

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    • Colin H says

      22/12/2017 at 18:06

      MONTH BY MONTH RELEASES & BROADCASTS 1969-70
      (almost forgot this bit…)

      January 1969
      Release: Bert Jansch LP Birthday Blues January 17
      Broadcasts: BBC TV – Once More With Felix January 11
      BBC Radio – Country Meets Folk (Bert Jansch) January 25
      First American tour: February 7 – March 2. Chicago was pencilled in for this tour but apparently not visited.

      March 1969
      Broadcasts: NOS TV (Holland) – Le Grande Gala Du Disques March 6
      BBC TV – Once More With Felix (John & Danny) March 22

      April 1969
      Ilford: This advertised Renbourn & McShee gig at a pub in Ilford is a curio. Manager Jo Lustig had effectively banned small-time gigs, and particularly solo gigs, from March 1968.

      May 1969
      Release: ‘Once I Had A Sweetheart’ single May 23
      Broadcasts: BBC Radio – Radio 1 Club May 15
      BBC TV – Dee Time May 17
      BBC Radio – Top Gear May 18
      Third British tour: May 5 – May 26? There were most likely further dates during this little-publicised tour.

      June 1969
      Broadcasts: BBC Radio – Country Meets Folk June 7
      BBC Radio – Radio 1 Club June 19
      BBC TV – The Peter Sarstedt Show [date unknown]

      July 1969
      Broadcasts: NBC TV (USA) – Today [date unknown]?
      CBS TV (USA) – David Frost [date unknown]?
      ? TV (USA) – [unknown news programme] July 20
      BBC Radio – My Kind of Folk July 2
      Second US tour: July 4 – August 2. There are almost certainly dates missing from the listing given here. While one or two announced dates were dropped or moved close to commencement or even during the tour – such as a booking to headline the Expo Montreal Festival on July 12 – it was suggested prior to the tour that the group would perform in New York, San Francisco and Toronto (in addition to the dates and cities listed), which they probably did. Regarding the five-day Newport Folk Festival, the group were apparently booked to play the final three days although the Moon landing – during which the group were certainly onstage performing – occurred on the first day, July 18.

      August 1969
      Broadcasts: BBC Radio – Top Gear [date unknown]

      September 1969
      Broadcasts: BBC Radio – Country Meets Folk September 6
      BBC Radio – My Kind of Folk September 24?
      Scandinavian tour: September 1 – September 6?

      October 1969
      Releases: ‘Light Flight’ single October 13?
      Basket Of Light LP October 13
      Broadcasts: BBC TV – Monster Music Mash October 14
      BBC Radio – Peter Sarstedt Show October 5
      Fourth British tour: October 4 – November 1. Further dates in early November were fill-ins for the temporarily split Fairport Convention.

      November 1969
      Broadcasts: BBC TV – Take Three Girls series begins (Pentangle soundtrack)
      Cancelled US tour: A US/Canadian tour had been arranged for November/December 1969 but cancelled at the group’s request. The free time allowed the group to cover a few dates in early December for Fairport Convention, the latter having recently lost two key members. They played London’s College of Art on a day when they should have been playing New York’s Carnegie Hall.

      December 1969
      Broadcasts: BBC Radio – Country Meets Folk December 5
      BBC Radio – The Georgie Fame Show December 26
      BBC Radio – The Pentangle (own series part one) December 28

      January 1970
      Broadcasts: BBC Radio – The Pentangle (own series part two) January 4
      BBC Radio – The Pentangle (own series part three) January 11
      BBC Radio – The Pentangle (own series part four) January 18
      BBC TV – Disco 2 January 31

      February 1970
      Broadcasts: LWT TV – The Simon Dee Show February 1
      BBC TV – Top of the Pops [date unknown]
      BBC Radio – Peel On Sunday either January 25 or February 8, 15, 22
      BBC Radio – Network session? [date unknown]
      Fifth British tour: February 6 – April 7. This tour was originally scheduled to conclude with the World Wildlife Fund benefit at the Albert Hall on March 17. Beyond this date there were possibly further shows added to those listed.

      March 1970

      Broadcasts: TVF1? (France) – [title unknown] – live? March 11 or 12
      BBC Radio – Folk On One [date unknown]

      April 1970
      Broadcasts: BRT TV (Belgium) – [title unknown] – live? April 1?
      Granada TV – [title unknown] – live? April 8
      BBC TV – The Young Generation April 11
      CBS TV (USA) – David Frost – live? [date unknown, April or May]
      ? TV (USA) – Mama Cass – live? [date unknown, April or May]
      BBC Radio – The Pentangle (own series part one) (Repeat) April 12
      BBC Radio – The Pentangle (own series part two) (Repeat) April 19
      BBC Radio – The Pentangle (own series part three) (Repeat) April 26
      Third American tour: April 10 – early June. Though many of the dates are not listed, the group were certainly scheduled to play all of the cities listed and in roughly the order given. There were almost certainly further dates filling out the eight- or nine-week schedule. Some shows were double bills with James Taylor, Tom Paxton and John Sebastian but, at the very least, the Carnegie Hall and LA Troubadour engagements were Pentangle ‘solo’ shows. The Renssalaer Polytechnic show was cancelled due to a wave of student unrest across the country.

      May 1970
      Broadcasts: BBC Radio – The Pentangle (own series part four) (Repeat) May 3
      Granada TV – From The Two Brewers May 8
      BBC Radio – Sounds of the Seventies (Repeat of Peel On Sunday concert)
      [date unknown, late April or May]

      June 1970
      Broadcasts: Grampian TV – [title unknown] June 22?
      NOS TV (Holland) – [title unknown] June 27?

      July 1970
      Broadcast: BBC Radio – My Kind of Folk July 2
      False billings: Curiously, there were two concerts this month with advertised, but spurious, Pentangle involvement: a ‘Folk Song Prom’ in Glasgow on July 1 (billed as a Jacqui McShee solo performance) and a group appearance at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall on July 27, on a various artists bill to be filmed by LWT TV for a show eventually screened as South Bank Summer. Julie Driscoll was also falsely billed for this date, with attracted furious denials from the various managers involved. Deep Purple subsequently filled the gaps.

      August 1970
      Festivals: Following the financial and organisational debacle of the Krumlin Festival in Yorkshire – which at one stage the Pentangle were co-headlining with the Who – manager Jo Lustig put out a statement declaring that (Isle of Wight aside) the group would not be taking any more festival bookings. By 1972 this position had been relaxed.

      September 1970
      Broadcasts: BBC Radio – Folk On Friday September 25
      BBC TV (regional) – Show Of The North September 26
      Recording sessions: It’s unclear precisely what was being recorded during the dates given this month. John Renbourn was certainly mentioned in the press as working on his next solo album (The Lady & The Unicorn) this month, but there is a suggestion the Tam Lin soundtrack recordings were being mixed. Certainly, that project was still being viewed as a going concern – although talk of a soundtrack album by summer 1970 had led to nothing the group were supposedly going to debut both ‘Tam Lin’ and the similarly epic ‘Jack Orion’ at their Albert Hall concert on September 26. Meanwhile, Bert Jansch was working sporadically during the latter half of this year at his home in Sussex on what would eventually become his Rosemary Lane LP.
      Sixth British tour: September 26 – November 30.

      October 1970
      Broadcasts: BBC Radio – [title unknown] October 1
      BBC Radio – Folk On One October 3
      Cancelled show: Some of the group’s gear, including Renbourn’s prized Gibson 335, was stolen from their van outside Bristol’s Colston Hall. The show was cancelled and rescheduled for November 11.

      November 1970
      Releases: Cruel Sister LP November 27
      John Renbourn LP The Lady & The Unicorn [date unknown]
      Broadcasts: Anglia TV – Music Room (Danny Thompson & Ray Warleigh) November 8
      BBC Radio – Sounds of the Seventies November 12
      Anglia TV – Music Room (John Renbourn & Terry Cox) November 15
      BBC TV – Take Three Girls (repeat of series one) November 18+

      December 1970
      Broadcasts: BBC Radio – Sounds of the Seventies December 17
      BBC TV – Songs From A Country Church December 25

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22. Colin H says

    22/12/2017 at 17:13

    CONCERT REPERTOIRE PART 2: 1969-70

    February 7 1969 – New York, Fillmore East (First American Tour)

    Source: A rough audience recording.

    The Time Has Come / No More My Lord / Sweet Child / Bruton Town / Hunting Song / Pentangling

    The first show of the first US tour. Canned Heat and Rhinoceros were also on the bill. Perhaps nobody had bothered informing the group, but Reprise had issued ‘Let No Man Steal Your Thyme’ as a single only weeks earlier in December 1968, simultaneous with the US releases of both ‘The Pentangle’ and ‘Sweet Child’. Its absence is surprising.

    April/May 1969 – Third British Tour

    Source: One review, from the Croydon Advertiser, of a show at Fairfield Halls.

    Group: Let No Man Steal Your Thyme / Bruton Town / In Your Mind / Sally Go Round The Roses / Hunting Song / She Moved Through The Fair / Scarborough Fair

    This is apparently the least documented of the Pentangle’s British tours, with only a handful of the dates having been advertised nationally. This was the period between the energy of the 1968 re-launch and the explosion of success that came with ‘Basket Of Light’ later in 1969. The tour coincided with the release of the single ‘Once I Had A Sweetheart’ which was advertised heavily and promoted on TV, possibly mimed, and on one pre-recorded radio session. Possibly too complex to reproduce live (and there is no reference to its appearance in any Pentangle concert) it is notable here for its absence. The repertoire is nevertheless extraordinary: this is the only mention of ‘In Your Mind’ being performed onstage and the only mention of group versions of ‘She Moved Through The Fair’ and ‘Scarborough Fair’ – neither of which were recorded during the original Pentangle era. Both songs were in the souvenir programmes as short-list possibilities for performance during the tour, although ‘She Moved Through The Fair’ was flagged as a Jacqui McShee solo number. The review very strongly suggests a group arrangement. Danny Thompson performed a solo bass improvisation on ‘Scarborough Fair’ on TV the following year, although the souvenir programme gives the number as a Terry/John/Jacqui arrangement. Group versions of both songs were eventually recorded by the latter-day Pentangle on ‘In The Round’ (1986) and ‘One More Road’ (1993), respectively. ‘Pentangling’ was highlighted a couple of months later in a review of the group’s appearance at the Albert Hall ‘Pop Proms’ on June 30 1969, just prior to their second American tour (for which I have no information regarding repertoire). We can assume it was also part of the set here, most likely its climax.

    October/November 1969 – Fourth British Tour

    Source: Three reviews of two concerts.

    Group: Bruton Town [2] / Pentangling / I’ve Got A Feeling / House Carpenter / Lyke Wake Dirge [2] / Hunting Song [2] / Cold Mountain
    Duets: Sweet Potato (John & Terry)

    This was the tour to promote ‘Basket of Light’, released mid-tour in October 1969. ‘Light Flight’ was also released on single around this time. The BBC series it themed, ‘Take Three Girls’, began in November. Sparse though the information is, the reviews confirm ‘Bruton Town’ and ‘Pentangling’ as the great survivors from the first album. The other three group numbers are all from ‘Basket of Light’. Also mentioned, at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall, was ‘an edgy, poppish Jansch solo song, as yet untitled’. Your guess is as good as mine.

    February/March 1970 – Fifth British Tour

    Source: Seven reviews of five concerts, including one pre-tour showcase at the Lyceum, London, on January 18 1970, and a partial recording of the Aberdeen concert by soundman Bob Woolford.

    Group: Belles of St Mary’s [i.e. Bells] / Bruton Town / Pentangling [3] / Sweet Child / I’ve Got A Feeling / Goodbye Pork Pie Hat / Lyke Wake Dirge [2] / Light Flight [4] / Cold Mountain [3] / Hunting Song / House Carpenter [2] / Train Song / Rain & Snow / The Name of the Game
    Solos: Blue Monk [3] (Danny)

    There was no new album to promote during this tour but it was a lengthier re-promotion of ‘Basket of Light’ on the back of Take Three Girls’ success, ‘Light Flight’ grazing the British singles chart and substantial exposure from their own series of four half-hour BBC Radio 1 shows and a succession of TV appearances. The standard show during this tour was around the two-hour mark. ‘Bells’ from the first album makes a reappearance alongside the regulars ‘Bruton Town’ and ‘Pentangling’ – by now stretched to an amazing 20 minutes, significantly revamped from its original arrangement. (Bob Woolford’s recording captures the last three numbers of the Aberdeen gig as: ‘House Carpenter’, ‘Light Flight’ and ‘Pentangling’.) There are four tracks from ‘Basket of Light’ mentioned plus the popular B-side to the ‘Light Flight’ single, the traditional Appalachian song ‘Cold Mountain’. It was dropped after this tour. There is also the first appearance of what would become an extremely popular and enduring stage number, the traditional ‘Rain & Snow’, with Renbourn on sitar. It was eventually released on ‘Reflection’ (1971). ‘Blue Monk’ appears for the first time too, replacing ‘Haitian Fight Song’ as Danny’s solo spot. Essentially a stage number – a rare moment of comedy amidst the group’s apparent solemnity, and popular for that reason – it was a Thelonious Monk song with self-deprecating lyrics concerning the tribulations of a monk who is unable to chant along with his cohorts. It was performed on TV but wisely never released on record. ‘The Name of the Game’, recently recorded for the doomed ‘Tam Lin’ film and also for BBC radio, was performed at Croydon and described as a Terry Cox composition ‘firmly rooted in the country blues tradition, into which the group launched with obvious enjoyment, with John Renbourn on wailing harmonica’. Also mentioned, at Tunbridge Wells, was ‘an exciting number’ with Bert on banjo, John on sitar and Terry on tambourine – not ‘Rain & Snow’, which had already been mentioned (and rather curiously described as ‘sad and quiet’). This may be no more than a writer or editor getting things mixed up.

    Early 1970 – ‘From The Two Brewers’, Manchester, Granada TV

    Group: Sally Go Round The Roses / House Carpenter / Sally Free And Easy / Light Flight [ + fragments of Pentangling / Hunting Song]
    Solo: Sarabande (John), Blue Monk (Danny)

    Recorded by the Manchester based station at The Two Brewers pub in Salford, this is a fine record of the Pentangle in a live situation, albeit purposely staged – in a venue of the size they had otherwise long outgrown – for television. The group were on tour in America when this was broadcast (May 18 1970), and it was almost certainly recorded in or around the 5th British tour of February-March-April. Presented by South African folk comedian Jeremy Taylor from a vantage point at the bar a few yards in front of the group, the programme as broadcast opens in the middle of the set, the group having just finished ‘Pentangling’. Taylor introduces the individual members to viewers, cramped together on a small stage wearing the fashions of the day: John in a turquoise polo neck, Danny in a flowery shirt with medallion and beard, both wearing dark velvet jackets. Bert and Terry sport beige waistcoats and sideburns, Bert with a white shirt of the wide-lapelled variety. Jacqui favours an embroidered white kaftan with gold ballet shoes. Sound is a little thin, with John’s sitar a tinkling whisper. But at least four cameras are in action and the editing is good. Highlights include Terry’s bare-hands drumming on ‘House Carpenter’, John’s solo on ‘Sally Go Round The Roses’ (he plays Gibson electric throughout) and a more sparkly version of ‘Light Flight’ than on their BBC In Concert, filmed roughly three months later. Jeremy interjects to introduce ‘Sally Free And Easy’ – the first time the group are known to have performed the song and a good two years before they put it on record. Terry drums with one hand (and feet) and taps out a melody on glockenspiel with the other. On both this and the following track – a rare outing of Bach’s ‘Sarabande’ from John’s then-forthcoming ‘The Lady and the Unicorn’ album – John uses his amp’s delightful vibrato effect. ‘Blue Monk’ was Danny’s party piece, never released on vinyl: a solo bass/vocal comedy routine based on a Thelonious Monk tune of that name. Danny throws in a wry aside about Lee Marvin, then in the charts with the notoriously dreadful ‘Wandering Star’; the camera pans to Jeremy, still at the bar, grimacing with distress. We catch him at the end of the tune, visibly relieved. There is an obvious edit at this point and the broadcast ends with ‘Light Flight’. A few seconds of ‘Hunting Song’ follow the credits.

    April 10 1970 – New York, Carnegie Hall (Third American Tour)

    Source: Barbara Bell’s essay on the Carnegie Hall show used in the Pentangle’s souvenir programme for their sixth British tour later that year along with six glowing, if frustratingly impressionistic, reviews from those estimable Stateside publications Billboard, Variety, Cash Box, The New York Times (a review and subsequent feature) and Women’s Wear Daily.

    Group: Let No Man Steal Your Thyme / Bruton Town / Pentangling / Lyke Wake Dirge / House Carpenter / Hunting Song / Sally Go Round The Roses / Light Flight / Rain & Snow + others
    Duet: The Earle Of Salisbury (John & Terry)
    Solo: Blue Monk (Danny)

    This was the group’s debut at the prestigious concert hall and the start of an arduous two month tour. One may conjecture that the additional numbers known to have been performed at the San Francisco concert six weeks later (see below) may also have been performed at Carnegie Hall. The group’s first three albums had all been released Stateside by this stage although, curiously, ‘Light Flight’ was never released as a US single.

    May 29 1970 – San Francisco, Berkeley Community Centre

    Source: A San Francisco Examiner review, a local radio broadcast of part of the show and an incomplete recording at ConcertVault.com (which has everything listed below save ‘Will the Circle…’)

    Group: Will The Circle Be Unbroken? / Bruton Town / Sally Free & Easy / Hunting Song / In Time / Lyke Wake Dirge / Light Flight / Goodbye Pork Pie Hat / Train Song / House Carpenter / Pentangling
    Solo: Sarabande (John), Speak of the Devil (Bert)

    This show was headlined by James Taylor, at Berkeley Community Theater the night before the legendary filmed performance by Jimi Hendrix in the same venue. It was towards the end of the third US tour. The San Francisco Examiner review refers to ‘Lyke Wake Dirge’ and ‘Pentangling’ (both performed at Carnegie Hall) but adds ‘Train Song’, ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken?’ and ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ to the repertoire. With a few additions, notably ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’ and ‘In Time’ from Sweet Child, the repertoire from this tour was broadly reflected in two half-hour British TV concerts of the period: Granada’s ‘From The Two Brewers’ (probably recorded in March 1970) and BBC2’s ‘In Concert’ (recorded in June 1970).

    June 20 1970 – ‘In Concert’, London, BBC2 concert

    Group: ‘Train Song / Hunting Song / Light Flight / In Time / House Carpenter / I’ve Got A Feeling / Blues’

    Apparently recorded on this date, a Saturday, when the group were not only supposed to be in the middle of a two month break between their gruelling 3rd American tour and the summer festivals, but had also been advertised to appear in concert at Oxford Town Hall. This was nevertheless part of the BBC’s first series of half-hour TV concerts with serious contemporary writers of note. Directed by Stanley Dorfman, 12 or 13 other artists including Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Neil Young were filmed for the series. In fact, Young, already a fan of Bert’s, recalls meeting the group on his trip over. The Pentangle’s In Concert remains perhaps their classic surviving TV performance, with a warm, full sound, sympathetic lighting, an effortless, airy feel to the music itself and a spacious, split-level stage arrangement. No doubt well-rehearsed in terms of direction, it was a four- or five-camera situation with imaginative camera work and vision-mixing. Stills from the show, or its rehearsal, appear on a number of compilation sleeves, where the entire group, with the exception of Jacqui (an embroidered kaftan, purple this time), can be seen to have ditched the trendy gear and moved on to a selection of jeans and T-shirts instead. John smokes cigarettes and doesn’t cross his legs; Bert has a bash at whispering the introductions. As the credits roll the band busk their way through 40 seconds of ‘Blues’ from Bert’s 1969 ‘Birthday Blues’ LP. The entire performance was included on ‘Pentangle Live At The BBC’ (1995) subsequently reissued as ‘Pentangle On Air’.

    August 30 1970 – Isle Of Wight Festival

    Source: Complete recording of the 55 minute performance, currently owned by Sony (US).

    Train Song / Sally Free & Easy / Bruton Town / Light Flight / Hunting Song / Will The Circle Be Unbroken? / Rain & Snow / House Carpenter / Pentangling

    Given a fraught set of circumstances (fire engines, stage invader, low-flying aircraft) and what the MM described as ‘a seemingly interminable wait, while John Renbourne [sic] tuned his sitar and Bert Jansch did the same to his banjo’, this was not a bravura performance, but the recording reveals a band who got through a difficult gig and didn’t let themselves down.

    October 9 1970 – Manchester Free Trade Hall (Sixth British Tour)

    Source: The complete set noted by a fan, Dave Burrows.

    Group: Pentangling / House Carpenter / Hunting Song / Sally Go Round The Roses / Light Flight / Train Song / Jack Orion / A Maid That’s Deep In Love / Rain & Snow / Wedding Dress / Sally Free & Easy
    Duet: Sweet Potato (John & Terry)
    Solos: Blue Monk (Danny) / Lord Franklin (John) / When I Was In My Prime (Jacqui)

    Though not keeping a note of the running order, Burrows did mark ‘Light Flight’ as having been the encore, as was the case throughout the tour – for a full discussion of which, see below.

    September/November 1970 – Sixth British Tour

    Source: Eight reviews of six concerts. Numbers in square brackets refer, of course, to the number of concerts in which the given song was played, as opposed to the number of reviews in which the song was mentioned.

    Group: Belles of St. Mary’s [i.e. Bells] / Way Behind The Sun / Pentangling / Sally Go Round The Roses [2] / Light Flight [3] / Train Song / Jack Orion [3] / A Maid That’s Deep In Love / Rain & Snow [3] / Helping Hand / Will The Circle Be Unbroken? / Wedding Dress / Sally Free & Easy [2]
    Solo: Blue Monk [5] (Danny) / Lord Franklin (John) / When I Was In My Prime [2] (Jacqui)

    This was the tour to promote ‘Cruel Sister’, released towards the end of November. As far as can be determined, ‘Sally Go Round The Roses’ opened the shows while the lengthy ‘Jack Orion’ closed the first set. ‘Pentangling was, as ever, the climax to the second set, with the minor hit single ‘Light Flight’ the regular encore. Perhaps uniquely, ‘Way Behind The Sun’ from the first LP was resurrected as a second encore at Brighton. Including the two new Renbourn and McShee solo vehicles and the lengthy arrangement of ‘Jack Orion’ (the traditional song previously recorded on the Jansch solo album of that name) four of ‘Cruel Sister’s five tracks were featured in the set. The exception was the ponderous title track which may only have been introduced into the set in 1972. ‘Rain & Snow’ – still unavailable on record at this stage – was, as ever, a rejuvenating up-tempo item in a two-hour programme that was increasingly being viewed as soporific. Even the once amusing ‘Blue Monk’ was described by one reviewer as ‘the obligatory monk song’. Alongside ‘Rain & Snow’, three other tracks that would also appear on the next album, ‘Reflection’, made their debuts in the live set: ‘Helping Hand’, ‘Will The Circle Be Unbroken?’ and ‘Wedding Dress’. So also did Bert’s cover of Cyril Tawney’s ‘Sally Free & Easy’, which the Pentangle would eventually record on ‘Solomon’s Seal’ (1972). The group had previously featured the song in a concert for Granada TV in May 1970. The tour was notable for the lack of any solo spot from Bert unless one cares to count ‘Sally Free & Easy’, which, although it became a staple of his solo act in subsequent years, would always be performed as a group number with the Pentangle. The souvenir programme for the tour gave ‘Reynardine’ and ‘I Don’t Know What My Baby’s Gonna Say When I Get Home’ [sic] as the only two ‘shortlisted’ numbers attributed to Bert as possible solo numbers. Both were performed during the group’s final British tour, in 1972. Also, pre-tour publicity stated that the group would not only debut ‘Jack Orion’ but also ‘Tam Lin’, from the ultimately doomed film of that name. There is, however, no reference to it being played.

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23. Colin H says

    23/12/2017 at 16:08

    A final installment for this thread covering the band’s history from 1967-69 (and into 1970 in some of the supplementary bits):

    A FEW CONCERT REVIEW QUOTES 1967-70

    ‘[Once] they were ragged, uninspired and generally lacking in confidence – now that has all changed.’
    Melody Maker, 29/7/67 (Horseshoe Hotel)

    ‘When the group moves out from the blues it begins to get interesting. This is something else, promising great things.’
    Melody Maker, 23/9/67 (Horseshoe Hotel)

    ‘The Pentangle’s group sound is now really fully integrated.’
    Melody Maker, 6/7/68 (Festival Hall, London)

    ‘An evening of highly original music [that] may, in the very near future, make an impression on the pop world.’
    NME, 6/7/68 (Festival Hall, London)

    ‘There’s nothing extrovert about the Pentangle. In an age of aggressive, gaudily dressed pop singers to whom to project is to entertain, the Pentangle waft gently through their music like a breeze through corn.’
    Evening News, 6/11/68 (London, Albert Hall)

    ‘A musicianly performance – glockenspiel and all – which, as the large audience showed, could still be very popular.’
    Cambridge News, 11/11/68 (Cambridge)

    ‘Nearly all [their] works display a touch of poetry, a compound of sadness, wit, fantasy and down-to-earth realism… Music-making like this has a universality and professional finish that place it in a category of its own.’
    Daily Telegraph, 14/11/68 (Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool)

    ‘It seems that the Pentangle rise to the occasion and, as at their first major London appearance at the Festival Hall, they gave a balanced, highly varied and musical programme.’
    Melody Maker, 16/11/68 (Albert Hall, London)

    ‘A relaxed, inspired concert.’
    Evening Post, 20/11/68 (Colston Hall, Bristol)

    ‘[Their] musical mixture is balanced and cool: it has rhythm and lyricism, but the heights of passion are carefully controlled. Not all the problems of balance and discipline have been solved… but the group are very aware that they are still at an experimental stage.’
    Croydon Advertiser, 22/11/68 (Fairfield Hall, Croydon)

    ‘The Pentangle last night offered a range of musical accomplishment that no other professional group playing today could have hoped to emulate.’
    The Scotsman, 30/11/68 (Glasgow, City Hall)

    ‘The no-frills, no-gimmicks Pentangle, having existed only a year, already are to the folk scene what the Modern Jazz Quartet were to the jazz movement.’
    Edinburgh Evening News, 2/12/68 (Edinburgh, Usher Hall)

    ‘If form were as accurate a guide to folk singers as it is to racehorses, the Pentangle would be at the front of the musical field all the time… but whenever I hear them I wonder if they gain anything from having a drummer and a bass player.’
    Croydon Advertiser, 2/5/69 (Fairfield Hall, Croydon)

    ‘The big danger in supergroups is that they tend to devour their individual members. It can’t have been an accident that the hugest applause was for Bert Jansch’s one solo number. [But] this is a group where every single member is equally important…’
    Melody Maker, 11/10/69 (Albert Hall, London)

    ‘At times their almost puritanical modesty came perilously close to producing an impression of creative inertia. And their music is still surprisingly humourless. That particular side of the Pentangle remains, regrettably, unexplored and undefined.’
    The Scotsman, 10/69 (Edinburgh, Usher Hall)

    ‘Critics have accused them of being too intellectual, cold with their audience and lacking in variety during concerts. But none of these criticisms applied to Wednesday’s one-night stand. In two hours that seemed like five minutes the group gave the cold space of the Assembly Hall a variety of beautiful echoes broken only by the loud applause and the sound of the takings being counted by one persistent usherette.’
    Kent & Sussex Courier, 20/3/70 (Tunbridge Wells)

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