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Bert Jansch "Young Man Blues: Live
In Glasgow 1962-1964"
(**,
Recorded 1962-1964, Released December 1998)
Something's
Coming/Careless Love/Veronica/When Do I Get To Be Called A Man?/Courting
Blues/Medley: Angi-Work Song/Tic-Tocative/Alice's Wonderland/Meanest Man In The
Town/Joint Control/Bottle It Up And Go/Untitled Instrumental #1/Train
Song/Stagolee/Rocking Chair Blues/Me and My Baby Never Used To Have A
Fight/Finches/Blues Run The Game/Pretty Polly/Come Back Baby/Untitled
Instrumental #2/I Am Lonely, I Am Lost/Freedom/One Day Old/Train On The
River/Hallelujah I Love Her So/Strolling Down The Highway/Gallows Tree/Betty
and Dupree/Dry Land Blues
"Train's a gathering
speed..."
Baby
Bert is still jaw-droppingly impressive on the earliest recordings any of
Pentangle seem to have made, finally given a release some thirty-five years
later. Even as early as this the people who saw Bert in clubs knew he was
someone special and a fan with a tape recorder was determined to capture this
new talent in sound, recording Bert delivering three very different concerts at
Glasgow folk clubs across a space of three years. Though Bert is just eighteen
on the earliest recordings here, he already sounds like one of the best folk
guitarists around, with a style all of his own and while this set is dominated
by traditional folk songs six of his earliest songs are some of the greatest
things here including three future standouts already intact: 'Strolling Down
The Highway' has a swagger later versions won't and 'Veronica' sounds more like
rock and than folk with Bert tearing into his guitar strings at a hundred miles
an hour and 'I Am Lonely' is already the sweetest song in the set by a mile;
only 'Finches' is clearly still a work in progress. The biggest surprise though
is an incredibly different blues-funk version of 'Train Song' - though this
version sounds more like a train wreck it's clearly the song that will appear
on Pentangle's 'Basket Of Light' already, just a bit manically. There are also
three songs Bert will never return to again, of which 'One Day Old' is perhaps
the most revealing - an extraordinarily out of character song about a crying
baby driving daddy Jansch to breaking point as he curses being a father (later
songs about family life will all be much sweeter than this 'imaginary' song ,
which might explain why Bert never became a father! 'Meanest Man In The Town'
is on similar lines, this time angry at a girlfriend with Bert singing in a
very unusual high pitched sweet tone, while 'Joint Control' is a bluesy
instrumental like many from his future first album.
Bert is
also a great and quirky interpreter, which is great practice for his Pentangle
days: 'Something's Coming' from 'West Side Story' gets turned into a latino
instrumental, Big Bill Broonzy's 'When Do I get To Be Called A Man?' gets
turned into pure folk, Ray Charles' 'Hallelujah I Love Her So' sounds like a
rootsy ballad rather than a triumphant R and B song and the cover of Davy
Graham's 'Angie' is already a showstopper. Interestingly all of his
performances are aggressive and confident, the single biggest change between
the sweet and shy performer of later years, suggesting either that Bert feels
far more at home playing to 'his' crowd in the folk clubs than he ever did on
Top Of The Pops - or that his new friend with the tape recorder had got him
roaring drunk for the recording! Though Bert hasn't yet quite grasped his
future skill of understanding and juggling several styles at once (his blues
and jazz covers don't yet have the same heart or feeling as the folk), his
playing is already as great as in future years and at 74 minutes this is as
long and strong a set of pre-fame recordings as you can find, in impressive
sound too considering it's scarcity and vintage.
"Bert Jansch"
(Transatlantic,
April 1965)
Strolling
Down The Highway/Smoky River/Oh How Your Love Is Strong/I Have No
Time/Finches/Rambling's Gonna Be The Death Of Me/Veronica/Needle Of Death/Do
You Hear Me Now?/Alice's Wonderland/Running From Home/Courting
Blues/Casbah/Dreams Of Love/Angie
"Your cause is true - do you hear
me now?"
The
first official release by any of Pentangle is, typically, as low a budget
record as you can imagine: it was made using a portable borrowed cassette
player positioned in the kitchen of engineer and pal Bill Leader, while Bert
also borrowed the guitar he used for the sessions because his own one was a bit
too bashed and bruised. Bert was paid a grand total of £100 including expenses
by record label Transatlantic Records in one of the greatest deals of the music
business, although Bert was loyal enough to the first label to actually say
'yes' to him that he'll stay with the label for most of the next decade. In common with many things Pentangle, though,
the more rootsy the music the more epic it sounds, with some truly sublime solo
performances that will remain some of Bert's most impressive and best loved
recordings up until his death. There's a kind of breezy innocence and hope about
the performances which also make this album quite different to the usual
melancholy of Pentangle's work, without sacrificing any of the directness or
intensity of the music. This also allows Bert to develop his own style away
from the other folk artists of the time - Bob Dylan, for instance, would never
have made an album quite as 'in tune' as this, in all senses of the word (in
another era and with another band many of Bert's songs about brotherly love
could have been accompanied by psychedelic effects and feedback). Though the
album sold about as badly as you'd expect from a low key, unpublicised record
by a complete unknown (around 150,000 copies total), the record really mattered
to the people lucky enough to hear it and after its release Bert was already
being talked about in folk circles as the 'next new thing': Jimmy Page and Neil
Young, for instance, both heard this record when it was new.
Though
Bert has rightly been praised for his excellent acoustic picking across this
album, what impresses most are the sons. A fifteen track debut album was
impressive enough itself in this era, but the fact that fourteen of them were
new originals (along with a single cover of good friend Davy Graham's
instrumental 'Angie/Anji' - the spelling changes depending on whose covering
the song) which is generally regarded as the definitive performance of the
song. The extraordinary 'Needle Of Death' has rightly become hailed as the
album's classic (an astonishing anti-drug song from someone who so fully
empathises with the lure and power of excess), an impressively mature and
sympathetic piece by someone still just twenty-one, but the rest of the album
contains a large number of songs that deserve to be as widely known: the
churning 'Smokey River' hints at the rock and roll strand in Bert's music to
come, 'Oh How Your Love Is Strong' is a candidate for the best of the small
handful of love songs Bert will write over the coming years, 'Courting Blues'
is a clever, thoughtful piece about having second thoughts on tying the knot
with someone who perhaps loves him too much and the beautiful 'Running From
Home' is one of the all-time unsung greats in the Jansch canon. The most
immediately successful song, though, was 'Do You Hear Me Now?', picked out by
Donovan for his EP 'Universal Soldier' where many fans rated it despite the
awful insincere mangling Donovan gave it. Sadly not everything is quite up to
the high standards of the core half of the album, with a few too many 'Angie'
style instrumentals and unusually for Bert a sense of repetition without the
eclecticism that will become his trademark in years to come. Still, for a debut
record made with so little help it's an impressively daring album which has a
lot of important things to say already, sung by Bert when his voice was at its
purest and sweetest (and it's most Scottish, although Bert already has more of
a London twang than his childhood natural Glasgow burr). Tough to my ears Bert
sounded better yet with the rest of Pentangle to tease out and embellish his
ideas, this debut album proves that he didn't actually need them: he could
still create great art with nothing more than a cheap borrowed guitar and a
£100 tape machine.
The
album starts innocuously enough with the jolly folk of 'Strolling Down The Highway', the one track here
which could just about sound like somebody else. Bert is walking down a long
road with a guitar on his back, keen to take his time and do things 'his' way
and singing about how better life is out doors ('The sun shines all day long,
the garlic is too strong') which suggests he's not singing about the city of
his birth but some more imagined American utopian setting! He's worried about
the suspicion he sees while walking, though, with people assuming he's an FBI
spy when he really is just so keen on playing the guitar there's nothing else
he'd rather do.
'Smokey River' is the best of the album's original instrumentals, with some
impressively complex guitar picking and a fascinating guitar riff that sounds
not unlike 'Jack Orion' with Bert apparently de-tuning and then re-turning his
guitar across the course of the song.
'Oh How Your Love Is Strong' is an early love song, perhaps written for first wife Lynda who
Bert met when she was sixteen although there's was more a relationship of
companionship, allowing her as a minor to travel out of Scotland. Certainly
Bert's lyrics sound a bit too hopeful for the romance to be 'real' as he
imagines a girl tough but loving enough to 'wave a tumble and tearless song' .
As so often happens with Bert, his imagination grows out of control after
imagining such a happy beginning and he worries about not being 'man' enough to
raise a child and pay the bills, fearing the youngster will take on the pair's
'wild' side and sighing 'would be a crime to leave at such a time when you've
many claims to make on me?'
'I Have No Time' is another fascinating song. Bert, struggling to make ends meet,
writes a rare social protest song about those who 'live like kings' in
ignorance even though 'the famine can cross the waters and get to you' and
ending with the furious couplet 'A man can die from lack of food, but you don't
give a damn - there's no reason why you should'. Alas the melody sounds like a
slightly happier 'Needle Of Death' recycled.
'Finches' is
perhaps the least interesting song on the album, a slightly atonal instrumental
that lacks the melody of the other guitar pieces on this album but does do a
pretty god job of mimicking the cry of tiny birds calling for food.
'Veronica'
is the biggest sign on the album that Bert has been listening to something
other than folk, with a very Beatley pop melody and a sense of the sighing
blues in there too. A sad song about feeling lonely, Bert compares the mental
impact with the physical 'hollow' feeling in his bones.
The
extraordinary 'Needle Of
Death' is clearly the most 'adult' song on the album, inspired by the
sudden death of Bert's friend Buck Polly. One of Bert's earliest friends in the
music world, Buck was rich enough to own a car and drove a small pool of fellow
songwriters around it's clubs in between his day job as a gardener. Slightly
older than the others, he had a family and his marriage was hitting the rocks
when he first met Bert. After a blistering row and an uncomfortable drive Buck
dropped Bert off declaring he was going to get 'out of it' and knew a good
heroin dealer - against Bert's protests. When Buck didn't turn up for the next
lift his friends feared the worst and it turns out he'd died in the night. It
was an event that apparently put Bert off drugs for life, even the softer ones,
despite the quantity of them around rock stars back then. However Bert's song
isn't preachy or full of I-told-you-sos; instead he understands exactly what
his friend was going through; He too has felt the gnawing sadness when life goes
wrong and when after months and years of difficulties you can't take anymore.
He even sings in the first person to make it sound as if he is the drug addict
falling into the clutches, recording how his friends are now withdrawn and
saddened, wishing to intervene but unsure what to say. Though the drug taker is
numbed by the 'grains of the purest snow' spreading through his veins, it's
everyone else who suffers. By the end the user is a victim of mankind's nature,
the need to 'free your mind and release your soul' whatever cost that comes
with. A famous song for a reason, delivered with just the right mixture of
detachment and sadness in Bert's muted voice.
'Do You Hear Me Now?' has rather slipped from its status as the song everyone once
knew, perhaps because it's thes song here most like everyone else's in the folk
world in 1966. Bert even sings in a Bob Dylan accent on this rambuctious tale
of a 'world divided' where nobody cares about each other, each lengthy verse of
spewing venom ending with the phrase 'do you hear me now?' Bert laments the
idea that the bomb 'might drop in summertime' when the natural world is at its
prettiest and wonders why he should be more concerned about that than the loss
of life. It's an unusual piece for Bert, who won't sound this emotional or
excited again for the rest of the book.
'Rambling's Gonna Be The Death Of Me' is the rueful title of an 'Angie' style instrumental that has a
pretty tune and is well played but does in fact have a tendency to ramble.
'Alice's Wonderland' is another slightly rushed sounding instrumental that lacks the
sophistication of most of the album but does show off what a fine guitarist
Bert was.
'Running From Home' is perhaps the loveliest song on the album that only true Bert
fans really know. Clearly inspired by Bert's move to London, it's a song of
excitement and fright mingled together, excited at new discoveries but scared
by the new intensity and loneliness of life in a new place. Bert thinks he's
caught a glimpse of an old love in the crowds but finds out he's hallucinating,
so desperate is he to see a friendly face. He's still hoping to 'catch dreams
in the clouds', though, and that belief is enough to keep him from running back
home again.
'Courting Blues' sounds like an old fashioned sort of courtshop, more like an
inter-war blues song, with it's pompous exaggerated guitar rolls and repetitive
square shape. However the words are very 60s, Bert encouraging his loved one to
elope with him because 'your father will not know'. However it's just a means
of forcing her to marry him as it turns out, with a clever switch where the
hook line 'do not be afraid to lie...beside me' becomes the more deceitful 'do
not be afraid to lie'. Bert sounds very uncomfortable on this song, as well he
might.
'Casbah' is a busy
instrumental with some of the fastest finger flying of Bert's career, although
it never quite settles down into the lovely tune that's at the album's core.
'Dreams Of Love' again repeats the tune that's been heard a few times already on this
album - especially 'Running From Home' - with an extra rock kick in the song. These
don't sound like dreams, though, but nightmares with Bert again fearing that
love won't live up to what he expects from it and the song is full of dark
imagery from the fish crying at the young men committing suicide by leaping
into the river's depths to blacken out their lives to the visions of what his
absent wife is up to 'twisting my mind into knots of lace'.
The
album ends with 'Angie',
the piece Bert learnt from Davy Graham and which Paul Simon will later learn
from this LP in time for second Simon and Garfunkel album 'Sounds Of Silence'.
A fun instrumental with a catchy hook, it's a really tricky piece to pull off
and a real showcase for acoustic guitarists, but Bert doesn't sound as if he's
even broken sweat during his impressive performance.
Overall
then, one hell of a debut which tries it's hand at everything from light pop
songs and trippy instrumentals to dark songs about betrayal and death. This
twenty-one-year old sounds like one to watch, especially when he meets a whole
new group of folkie friends after releasing this album...
Bert Jansch "It Don't Bother
Me"
(Transatlantic,
December 1965)
Oh
My Babe/Ring-A-Ding Bird/Tinker's Blues/Anti-Apartheid/The Wheel/A Man I'd
Rather Be/My Lover/It Don't Bother Me/Harvest Your Thoughts Of Love/Lucky
Thirteen/As The Days Grow Longer Now/So Long (Been On The Road So Long)/Want My
Daddy Now/900 Miles
"You are dancing with my
dreams"
Despite
the surly title and the classic cover shot of Bert peering back and glowering
at the camera, apparently in the living room of the flat he was sharing with
John at this time (that's fellow folksinger Beverley Martin sitting on his
floor - did he only have the one chair?!), 'It Don't Bother Me' is a prettier
album than the debut with a few sillier songs amongst the philosophy and a much
more contemporary 'Beatlesy' sound. As a result it's often dismissed as being
inferior to the first album and certainly there's nothing as striking or
heartfelt here as either 'Blackwaterside' or 'Needle Of Death'. Like many a
second album, you can tell that Bert has been planning his first album for
years - the way it sounds, what it says, where all the tracks go and the
overall feel - whereas this follow up from just six months later feels exactly
like a follow up made six months later. It is, though, very under-rated and
probably more consistent than its predecessor with a number of 'firsts' - the
first time Bert played the banjo and the first time Bert played with another
musician on record. Inevitably, his partner is flatmate John Renbourn and
'Lucky Thirteen' is one of the highlights of the disc as the pair take it in
turns to show off and support the other - very much what they'll be doing throughout
their careers.
The
songs are still the strongest part though and in between the novelty songs
about ring-a-ding birds and silly blues songs are two of Bert's deepest and
most revealing songs. 'Anti Apartheid' is one of Bert's angriest and most
damning tracks where he turns on all the prejudices 'whispered in my ear' which
drown out the cries for freedom and tolerance as Bert pleads 'I can't bear to
think of any cast of people thrown aside'. 'Want My Daddy Now' is even more
extraordinary, a blues song that tries hard to be a comedy but is really just a
howl of pain over the father who walked out when Bert was small. Neither song
has ever appeared on a future Bert best of (and goodness know there'll be a lot
of those) but both are amongst his greatest works and make this record worth
buying for those alone - though that said even the throwaway songs on this
album are fun and probably easier on the ears than the repetitive guitar
instrumentals. In short, it really does bother me that 'It Don't Bother Me' doesn't
get the respect it deserves as another major entry into the Bert Jansch canon
and an incredible album for a writer still only 22 (but going on 72 judging by
the sound and themes of most of this album).
'Oh My Babe'
sports a great tune which makes you wonder if Bert has been listening to
Beatles album 'A Hard Day's Night' - the two share a similar breathless energy
just about concealing a sense of depression and despondency. The lyrics though
leave a lot to be desired and are amongst Bert's simplest and silliest, barely
getting beyond the title.
'Ring-A-Ding-Bird' is even sillier, an early sign of Bird's childhood interest in
birdwatching as he tries to work out what bird it is he hears who makes such a
distinctive song and after deciding to follow it meets a crying girl he tries
to comfort (there'll be a whole album of this stuff on 1979's 'Avocet'). The
clever fast-flowing guitar lick and a pretty melody makes this song better than
the lyrics suggest though.
'Tinker's Blues' is a down-home guitar instrumental like many on the first LP,
but rather better: Bert has found a really juicy sound from his guitar and
plays in a softer, muted style that's very pretty and conjures up well the
image of a man in poverty bustling away trying to make ends meet.
As seen,
'Anti Apartheid' is
stunning and very unusual for the generally anti-political Jansch, sounding
much more like a Dylan song. Bert 'fails to see' why so many artists go along
with racism ('they paint a crooked mile'), why 'of colour you must hide' and why
singing a song 'of freedom' is always seen as pointless and irresponsible: what
better thing can there be for a musician to bring the world than hope? Bert
then goes on to compare out technological advances with backward ways of
thinking about people and that if humans everywhere had one colour, as so many
seem to want, life would become 'boring and regimented - a factory' where each
man is the same. Bert wants to celebrate differences, not hide them. Powerful
stuff for 1965, in between Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' speech and his
assassination. If only Bert had written more protest songs like this - though
many reviewers called it 'naive' that's part of it's charm.
'The Wheel'
is a fast-paced instrumental Bert loved to play as a finger-warming exercise
and another version will appear as an outtake from the first album sessions.
The playful riff is a good one and really catches the ear.
Bert
sounds as if he's openly aping Bob on 'A Man I'd Rather Be' where he drops his usual Scots burr and
tries to sing with an American twang. On this jokey song Bert contemplates
being any animal, admiring their freedom and lack of responsibility before
moving on to inanimate objects, but realises only human beings can shape their
own future. Not as original as some others perhaps, but this is one of Bert's
funniest songs and even its creator gets the giggles before the end!
'My Lover'
is an interesting piece that's impressively psychedelic for 1965 (if you know
The Byrds' 'Mind Gardens' it sounds like that - lots of guitars playing at
different speeds and different tunings as Bert emotes and narrates over the
top). As far as we know Bert was between partners at the time - is this a song
about missing his first wife from years before? Imagination? Or a mysterious
figure who crops up in several later songs too?
Title
track 'It Don't Bother Me'
is one of the best known songs on the album, a rather uncharacteristic angry
song from Bert as he tries to pretend that he isn't hurt by the things his
loved ones say to him - but sounds so hurt we know not to believe him. The
guitar riff sounds like a fast-paced 'Blues Run The Game'.
'Harvest Your Thoughts Of Love' is perhaps the least successful song on the album, despite being
another favourite of Bert best-ofs. It's not bad, just bland, with a slightly
over-written lyric that tries too hard to be poetic and a melody that sounds
like lots of earlier Jansch songs stuck in a blender.
'Lucky Thirteen' is the long awaited debut of Bert and John and they cook up a
noisy storm in a jazzy song that features both men playing in their own
distinctive styles and taking it in turns to 'show off!' That's John in the left
speaker and Bert in the right, though Renbourn isn't actually credited on the
sleeve. This led to a famous review of the time that spoke in awe of this
track: 'You could almost imagine Bert growing two pairs of hands to play this!'
'As The Days Grow Longer Now' is the Bert equivalent of Paul Simon (a pal)'s 'The Leaves That
Are Green'. Despite being ridiculously young (both men were '22' at the time of
writing theirs) they already feel time passing too quick and want to make the
most of life before they grow old. Though both songs are good and heartfelt,
Paul's is the most powerful and memorable.
'So Long'
isn't so much a song as Bert de-turning his guitar before randomly singing in
his best blues voice. He sounds like he's been on the road for one date too
many on his last tour and has forgotten how to function normally in society -
his voice coming in at a different 'speed' to the guitar.
The
howled 'Want My Daddy Now'
may only be 98 seconds long and may change the details (the narrator's dad is a
soldier lost in the war) but the grief and sense of loss is all too real. Bert
rarely spoke about anything anyway but certainly never about his childhood -
sometimes, though, a song says more than words ever can and though it's partly
intended as a comedy this is too powerful to laugh at.
The
album ends with the only traditional folk song, '900 Miles', which features the banjo for the first
time. It's a good choice, reflecting the album's half theme of the weary life
of the musician as Bert finds himself a long long way from home and lost in
more senses than just the geographic. The original is thought to have been sung
by the railway workers who laid the rails for the first American routes, but
works just as well for folk guitarists!
Overall,
then, 'It Don't Bother Me' is an impressive statement for someone so young and
still not exactly given state of the art equipment (this album was also
recorded in Bill Leader's house, without any overdubs!) It's not the first
album, but then many sequel aren't - Bert is already keen to move on and
demonstrate other aspects of his 'sound', which show off even more of the
future 'Pentangle' style hybrids between folk, blues, jazz and pop. Another
clear classic.
Dorris Henderson and John Renbourn
"There You Go"
(Transatlantic,
'1965')
Sally
Free and Easy/Single Girl/Ribbon Bow/Cotton Eye Joe/Mr Tambourine Man/Mist On
The Mountain/The Lag's Song/American Jail Song/The Water Is Wide/Something Is
Lonesome/Song/Winter Is Gone/Strange Lullaby/You're Gonna Need Somebody On Your
Bond/One Morning In May/A Banjo Tune/Going To Memphis
"Give me a boat that can carry two
and both shall row"
Much
like Pentangle, folk singer Dorris Henderson should have been bigger than she
was. An American singer born to a mixed race family back when that was
something unusual and striking, Dorris possessed a powerful set of lungs and
was pretty uniquely placed to do the one thing that Pentangle couldn't: mix and
match from the white and black songbooks. The one thing she didn't have, though,
was a sympathetic accompanist - cue John
Renbourn, who first came across her in the same folk clubs he played in where
she caught his attention by singing an early song of mutual friend Paul
Simon's, 'The Leaves That Are Green' (which appears at the end of the CD as a
'bonus track along with B-side 'Hangman'). The pair were good foils for each
other - louder and more energetic than Jacqui, Dorris brought out John's
softer, more lyrical side as instead of matching her he provides a comfortable
nest for her vocals to fall back on, rather than amplifying Jacqui to make her
sound big.. Though most of the songs are traditional folk tunes, it's fun to
hear John tackling the rare style of gospel on a few of the songs and it's a
shame Pentangle didn't do more in this vein if 'American Jail Song' and 'The
Water Is Wide' are anything to go by. John also contributes a handful of
originals - the pair duet on the simple but dignified 'The Mist On The
Mountain' and sound rather good together, 'Something Lonesome' is a clever
folk-blues more like Bert's usual work well suited to Dorris' vocals, 'Falling
Star' is a sensitive song clearly inspired by 'Needle Of Death' full of worries
about adult responsibilities and 'Strange Lullaby' is an eerie song full of ill
omens waiting to catch the narrator out. The highlights though are the one and
only time a member of Pentangle covers a Bob Dylan song (the, at the time, inevitable choice 'Mr
Tambourine Man' which is more like Bob's original than The Byrds' better known
cover) and the song 'Sally Free and Easy' which Pentangle will cover themselves
in another seven years' time.
Technically
the pair recorded two albums together, although only this first one gives John
co-billing'; the sequel 'Watch The Stars' from 1967 is much the same and
includes a similar mix of folk, gospel and blues covers alongside just the one
Renbourn original - the rather ponderous spoken-word-with-guitar piece 'Poems
Of Solitude', which is one of the most dated and embarrassing moments in the
Pentangle discography (John must be glad not to have got the co-billing for
this one!) There are many highlights though including a very early cover of an
Arthur Lee/Love song to match what may well be the world's earliest Paul Simon
cover on the first album ('Message To Pretty') and no less than three songs
Pentangle will all go on to cover: a far more gospelly 'No More My Lord', a
sweet 'Watch The Stars' which feature John and Dorris singing together and
sounding rather good and Ann Briggs' 'The Time Has Come', all of which are key
stepping stones to the Pentangle sound. Dorris even knew Danny Thompson, who'd
worked with her on a Tv show and guest appears on one of the album tracks Dorris'
vocals are an acquired taste which seem to split the Pentangle community right
down the middle, but while she couldn't be more different to Jacqui's pure
folk, her soulful tones always serve the material well and go nicely together
with John's more reserved character. She ended up joining the folk band
'Eclection' after this and actually beat Pentangle to a spot on the isle of
Wight Festival by a year. Sadly, though, the music dried up and Dorris retired
from active music making to bring up a family, though she continued to do
jingle and advertising work up until her far too premature death from cancer in
2005. Both of these albums (Dorris only ever made a third, 2003's 'Here I Go
Again', which again features John on one song, the philosophical 'Heart Over
Mind') are overlooked items in the Pentangle discography, not the brightest stars
in the Pentangle sky perhaps but important and revealing stars all the same.
"John Renbourn"
(Transatlantic,
Recorded 1965, Released 'Early' 1966)
Judy/Beth's
Blues/Song/Down On The Barge/John Henry/Plainsong/Louisiana Blues/Blue
Bones/Train Tune/Candy Man/The Wildest Pig In Captivity/National
Seven/Motherless Children/Winter Is Gone/Noah and Rabbit
"Man ain't nothing but a man"
The first 'real' Renbourn solo LP came from the
same 'folk boom guitarists recorded in their bedrooms' as Jansch's early
records but already the pair have subtlety different sounds. Renbourn was as
influenced by blues as he was folk and his material is a hybrid between the
two. Though this bluesy style will carry on to parts of the Pentangle sound and
many of the Renbourn albums to come, it's exceptionally strong here with John's
unusual Dylanesque vocals finding their true home on this earthy, rootsy
material. Though it won't mean a lot to those of you who haven't read our AAA
book on Jefferson Airplane yet, this record is a dead ringer for Jorma
Kaukanen's acoustic blues albums with Hot Tuna, with the same 'modern' take on
old style songs (it's a real shame the two guitarists never made a record
together). John 'looks' more like a folkie than a blues singer though, as seen
on the gloriously mid-60s black-and-white cover that features a 'cool' looking
Renbourn with guitar waiting outside a club with a look at the camera caught
somewhere between suave and anxious (John said later 'this was back in the day
when the record company was under the impression that a picture of me might be
good for sales' and spoke of holding it in his hand as his proudest moment, 'a
big smudgy brown LP with my picture on the front, sporting
cornflake-packets-in-shoes, with a five quid guitar that had a lollypop stick
holding the neck up and my name in large letter actually spelt right!' even if,
at the time, the album brought him the financial return of 'about two cents'.
Recorded in a small studio in London's Soho
Square 'as quickly as possible' and was taped as is live, with as few
re-recordings or outtakes as possible. Used to thinking on his feet in folk
clubs anyway, John is right at home and on good form across the set, the
low-key intimacy of the settings bringing out the best in him. Just like
Pentangle, the record is a mixture of originals (six) that sound very like the
traditional folk songs on this album and two of them ('Blue Bones' and the
closing 'Noah and Rabbit') even feature an early 'Bert 'n' John' collaboration
recorded at the same time Renbourn was helping out on Jansch's 'Jack Orion'. Many
of the songs will become standards in his catalogue and tracks the guitarist
will return to often - the Davey Graham style guitar workout 'Judy', the Muddy
Waters cover 'Louisiana Blues' (surely the 'missing link' between folk and
blues where the two 'branched' in their evolution!) and traditional folk song
'John Henry'. Most of the record sounds like every other folk wannabe with a
healthy blues record collection, but there are already signs of the eclecticism
to come, such as the highly original 'Song', an adaptation of a John Donne poem
with Big Bill Broonzy overtones, quite unlike anything else around at the time.
Despite the speed of the recording session there were time for outtakes, with
three additional songs added to the CD re-issue of this album in the 2015. Overall,
this is a great debut with signs of a real talent in the making, even if the
album as a whole has clearly spent less time in the oven that later Renbourn
LPs.
'Judy' is a sturdy guitar
picking piece often selected to start Renbourn compilations down the years
because it sums up so much of his signature 'sound' - fast flying chords that
are impressive at the start but really make the jaw drop as the song gets going
and everything keeps getting faster.
'Beth's
Blues', like so many Pentangle
songs to come, goes so far back in the mists of time that no one can remember
who wrote it. Unlike many Pentangle songs, it's firmly from the blues side of
the stage with a lyric that in other cases would be happy-go-lucky ('Oh my
woman so sweet!') sounding sad and deflated here as the narrator buy his
faithful girl the gifts she deserves.
John Donne's poem 'Song' was clearly crying out for a proper musician
to interpret it, from the title on down though as far as I know Renbourn was
the first. You can see why this fifteenth century poem would have caught the
guitarist's eye: a hopeful song about how humanity can catch the stars, with a
warning about the 'mandrake root' of evil ready to carry mankind down to hell,
it 'fits' with many of his own later songs. The guitar part is simple and
direct, the link back to the 'real' world across the poem's warnings of the
strange and peculiar things in life bigger than man's own understanding.
Renbourn will perform this piece as part of a solo spot at the Royal Albert
Hall in 1968, collected as one of the bonus tracks on 'Sweet Child'.
'Down On The
Barge' is an original guitar
instrumental that's bordering on rock with its fast pace and unusual
fast-flowing chord structure. In another world you could imagine this piece
with vocals appearing on Beatles album 'A Hard Day's Night' for instance, with
the same inherent 'joy'.
'John Henry' and his hammer are a key
part of American folklore and sounds a little strange sung with a London accent
to be honest. Given the task of blasting rock to make room for a railroad
tunnel, in the song Henry becomes the manifestation of humanity's attempts to
conquer nature; his speed is so famous he even takes part in a 'race' against a
newfangled steam-powered hammer and wins, until the effort causes him to
collapse while the townsfolk celebrate with him. Renbourn's take on this much
covered song is strangely well behaved, although the unusual atonal guitar
tunings are ear-catching.
'Plainsong' is another instrumental,
played a little slower than some others with shades of Davy Graham's towering
'Anji'. It's not as memorable as some others but Renbourn is already an
impressive guitarist.
Muddy Waters' 'Louisiana Blues' is the album's most daring moment,
swampy and bluesy and probably as close to the mud of Louisiana as any white
guitarist from London could come. The guitar is more authentic than Renbourn's
growled vocal though.
'Blue Bones' is a slow-burning
collaboration between Bert and John that despite it's historical significance
never quite gets going. The track sounds more like those 'boring bits' between
Pentangle instrumentals that really fly rather than the 'good bits'.
Both Bert and John wrote several songs about
locomotives, with their romantic sense of being taken on a journey, the
implications of man-made power and the fact that their shared love of staccato
rhythms sounded not unlike a train running down the tracks.
'Train Tune' is an
instrumental that sounds a little like all these points with a little bit of
the later 'Train Song' thrown in too, though of all the instrumentals on the
album this is the one that most calls out for some words.
'Candy Man' is an old blues standard
first recorded by the Rev Gary Davis and Mississippi John Hurt. A short simple
piece about a 'salty dog, fattening hog' who brings misery wherever he goes,
there's the hint that the 'candy' he's delivering is drugs.
This first album highlight is surely the
fast-flowing 'Wildest Pig In
Captivity', a Renbourn original instrumental that must have sounded
revolutionary back in 1966. John seems to de-tune and re-tune his guitar during
the bursts of slashing chords which get more and more outrageous with every
turn, nicely summing up the feeling of being 'trapped' and trying to find a way
out. Perhaps the pig has just seen David Cameron in the distance? (Squeal!)
'National
Seven' is another strong original
with a slightly slower and more 'upright' feel than many other period Renbourn
songs. In another world this could have been performed by a marching band.
The traditional song 'Motherless Children' is a Blind Willie Johnson
song that dates back to the 1920s and is a powerful piece on mourning that has
come to be associated with deaths from natural disaster, war or genocide
(though Johnson wrote the piece after his mother died in childbirth). The song
cleverly mimics horror and desperation with a guitar part that's deeply
eccentric and Renbourn plays the complex song just about as well as anyone -
certainly up to the more famous Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan covers of the song.
Traditional song 'Winter Is Gone' is best known nowadays from Nick
Drake's cover nearly ten years later and like most covers Renbourn's is sad and
regretful even though it 'reads' like a celebration with the cold harsh snow
being replaced by lush green leaves. Though John's vocal isn't as warm as some
others, on this song particularly his ragged vocals really get to the heart of
this song.
The album ends with another highlight as Bert
and John continue their friendship with the most Pentangle moment on the album 'Noah and Rabbit'. Bert's
angry off-beat staccato rhythm is joined by Renbourn's guitar flying all round
the song. Though you can't tell the story from this instrumental, this is the
old folk tale the cartoon 'The Last Mimzy' was based on, with creatures from
the future sent back to 'our' time disguised as toys in order to avert
ecological disaster.
Overall, then, 'John Renbourn' is an impressive
record that runs from the distant past to far-flung science-fiction played with
panache by a guitarist whose clearly chosen his material well. Though it's
lower budget than the albums to come this debut has become one of Renbourn's
most celebrated records for good reason, with some tasteful performances and
less filler than most period folk records. This album has been released twice
on CD by the way - the 1998 version is a generous 'two-fer-one' set with John's
second album 'Another Monday' on the back and a 2015 version features three
bonus tracks: a fiery alternate take of 'The Wildest Pig In Captivity', a
finger-picking take on old folk song 'I Can't Keep From Crying' that really should
have made the album and a fairly pedestrian take on Jackson C Frank's famous
folk standard 'Blues Run The Game'.
Bert Jansch "Jack Orion"
(Transatlantic,
September 1966)
The
Waggoner's Lad/The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face/Jack Orion/The Gardener/Nottamun
Town/Henry Martin/Blackwaterside/Pretty Polly
(The
American edition includes '900 Miles' missing from initial copies of 'It Don't
Bother Me' and switches the song order around. It's this version that's been
replicated for the CD!)
"I bought me a quart to drive
gladness away"
Released
the same month as Bert and John's 'official' first collaboration, this album
too features an awful lot of John alongside the lashings of Bert. The two
friends are clearly having fun as they temporarily switch from recording their
own material to the traditional folk songs that inspired them both to pick up
guitars from opposite ends of the country. Though perhaps not quite as
thrilling as the pair's own material, this is another strong set that really
points the way towards the Pentangle sound with Bert and John already sharing a
special kind of telepathic link that enables them to turn simple folk
instrumentals into glorious extended jamming sessions where both push each
other on to new heights. Several of these songs will go on to be popular moments
of Bert's live sets, with Jansch's solo arrangement of the churning
'Blackwaterside' deservedly one of his most famous pre-Pentangle moments, while
many music fans learnt 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face' not from the Ewan
MacColl original or Roberta Flack but from Bert's inventive re-arrangement
here. Pentangle fans will also recognise the ten minute opus title track, which
will become even more daring when re-recorded by the band across twenty epic
minutes on their fourth album 'Cruel Sister'. Not quite everything works - this
is as ugly a 'Pretty Polly' as you'll find while I personally never shared most
fans' wonder at the shouty 'Nottamun Town', which never struck me as a very
Jansch-like track. However the vast majority of recordings here are first class
and represent another valuable piece of the Pentangle jigsaw falling into
place, with both Bert and John on top form.
'The Waggoner's Lad' is a folk cover that's particularly special for showing off the
first real time Bert and John played together. That's Bert's speedy banjo
playing that start the song before John's slightly more laidback acoustic
guitar comes in to dance around his companion. Though the song might have been
better still with a vocal attached, for fans of guitarist skill this song is
hard to beat, with the pair already remarkably in tune with each other,
anticipating how to 'reply' to each other while keeping the song's insistent
urgent riffing up.
'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face' may not be quite as idyllic or romantic as many other versions
around (Johnny Cash's devastatingly slow cover is still the best to my
ears), but Bert can play a mean guitar
and the melody of the original is strong enough to survive the treatment.
'Jack Orion'
sounds a little posher and slower than he will on the epic Pentangle
arrangement from four years later, though it's still an impressive two-hander
between Bert and John who keep the momentum up to the end. One of the earliest
folk songs any of Pentangle recorded, it's listed with the low number of #67'
in the 'Childe Ballad' collection that aimed to write down folk songs passed
down by word of mouth. It concerns Glasgerion, a prince who tries to elope with
another princess from another kingdom. However
his servant Jack wants the princess for herself so, as he doesn't know
what the prince looks likes, he steals into her bedroom and sleeps with her
instead. Cue 'Game Of Thrones' style havoc and revenge, with Glasgerion going
mad in this original version (some interpretations have him blood-thirstily
killing his servant; Pentangle tend to follow the line of beauty rather than
violence when given the choice).
Two
minute folk instrumental 'The
Gardener' sounds like a 90 second introduction to something else,
similar in feel to 'The Waggoner's Lad' while Bert dispenses with the
original's lyrics (again first recorded by Ewan MacColl) about a Lady
Chatterly's Lover style affair between a rich lady and a gardener in favour of
some tuneless 'la la'ing.
'Nottamun Town' is another very early song that dates back to the Middle Ages
and features Bert as his most intense as he goes all Liam Gallagher on this
aggressive piece. In this song Bert's narrator is a traveller heading to a new
town and after directions, but none of the zombie-like inhabitants even look at
him. Though no one is quite sure what the song is all about, it seems likely
the song is a Civil War track where natives are suspicious of strangers who
could be spies finding out their allegiance to the king. There is, though, no
such place as Nottamun Town in the British Isles, which suggests either that
the writers didn't want to upset an actual town or that they also intended it
to be a ghostly 'Brigadoon' type world that didn't really exist. Bert beat Fairport
Convention to their own more famous recording of the song by a full three
years, not the last time Pentangle would get the jump on their closest rivals!
'Henry Martin' is one of the few Scottish folk songs Bert ever played and one
he may have learnt as a boy in Glasgow. It concerns a sailor who has great
family troubles and turns pirate to support his family, trapped in a dual world
where he hides his evil deeds from his brethren and his kind ways from his
crew. However Bert's interpretation is another instrumental, which is as usual
well played but this song lacks the strong melodies of the best of Bert's
extended guitar solos.
'Blackwaterside' is easily the album's highlight, an urgent restless version of
an Irish folk tale about the complex love life of a maiden who is fooled into
having sex with a villain she thinks really fancies her but abandons her,
leaving her to sheepishly go home to tell her parents of her shame. At the time
of release this would have been the 'rarest' folk song here, with folksinger
Anne Briggs having discovered the piece a mere year or so before teaching it to
Bert. The pair would become close collaborators across the next few years and
Pentangle would even record some of her songs, although sadly they rarely
recorded together. Bert's inventive use of eccentric chords add a real modern
element to the shock of what must have been quite a daring Medieval piece and
which adds a layer of fear and fright to the piece that other cover versions
treat as more of a period piece. Briggs, for instance, recording a much simpler
version for her 1971 album 'Ann Briggs', while Bert's cover is thought to have
been the first recording of this long forgotten gem. Unlike 'Nottamun Town',
Blackwaterside' is a real place, in the countryside near Ulster.
The
album ends with a rather un-tuneful version of 'Pretty Polly' with Bert and John switching over so
he gets the guitar and John the 'weird' sound of a guitar that's been heavily
de-tuned. Rather than play with each other, this song has the pair competing
with Renbourn there for colour and Jansch for muscle and the effect isn't quite
so strong. The Byrds may well have learnt the song from this record, though
recording their own version of this
American outlaw ballad for the 'Sweetheart Of The Rodeo' sessions in 1968.
Overall,
then, 'Jack Orion' is caught somewhere between prince and servant, with several
of Bert (and John's) best recordings, but also many of their worst. Recorded in
a hurry, before Jansch had the chance to build up his usual strong collection
of songs, the quickness and cheapness of the recording sessions occasionally
shows through, with a couple of pieces deserving at least an extra take if not
being replaced by a whole other song. However the best of it, such as
'Blackwaterside' and 'The Waggoner's Lad', makes the setting and budget
irrelevent: you could hire the best guitarists to play for a year with a
million pounds to spend (in 1966 currency too) and I doubt they'd ever capture
the spirit and brilliance of this pair of performers. A useful means of
attempting the impossible on a smaller scale than the Pentangle records to
come, it's another valuable stepping stone in Bert's understanding of how to
take folk songs to the next level and another must-have for curious Pentangle
fans.
Bert Jansch and John Renbourn
"Bert and John"
(Transatlantic,
September 1966)
East
Wind/Piano Tune/Goodbye Pork Pie Hat/Soho/Tic-Tocative/Orlando/Red's
Favourite/No Exit/Along The Way/The Time Has Come/Stepping Stones/After The
Dance
The
American edition included two additional tracks 'My Lover' and 'It Don't Bother
Me'
"Step inside where men before have
drunk to fill to senseless till the dreams fade and die"
So,
after five albums between them featuring lots of cross-pollination between the
pair of flatmates, friends and folk rivals, Bert and John finally bow to the
inevitable and make their next album as 'Bert and John'. At the time it wasn't
meant to be a career move, just a couple of friends doing songs together they
quite wanted to do and couldn't do apart, and both guitarists will go their own
separate ways again in the two years before the Pentangle star starts twinkling
in the sky. In the year's since this fairly rare album's release its reputation
has grown to the stage where it can solve world hunger and annihilate the Spice
Girls in one fell swoop, none of which it quite deserves - in fact this low key
and humble record (made in the pair's own kitchen!) of mainly instrumentals
isn't quite as daring or original as anything either man was doing apart in his
solo career. However, even before Pentangle there was a buzz around this album,
over whether two first-class guitarists with such different styles could
possibly find common ground and be ego-less enough to let the other shine on
passages best suited to them. They could and they did - 'Bert and John' might
not be the best album in the Pentangle canon, but it's arguably the best
'guitar' album with both men on top form and you can just hear the respect and
admiration as both spur each other on to give their best. Not since Lennon and
McCartney had two such different yet equal talents pooled their resources to
make an album together - it's a surprise, actually, that this record didn't
kick-start the pair's fame then and there after being on the fringes of success
for so long. The informal setting is
even summed up in the delightful sleeve where Bert and John are playing each
other at backgammon in return for cigarettes! (The look of pure joy on an
impossibly young looking Bert's face suggests he's winning!)
The Davy
Graham influence, already strong in both men apart, is very loud here with
several - shall we say - competitively fast instrumentals that demand total and
utter telepathy. The jazz influence is quite pronounced too, the pair even covering
a future Pentangle live favourite in Charlie Mingus' 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat',
alongside the pure folk of 'The Time Has Come' sung here by a very Scottish
Bert in a manner quite different to Jacqui's future purist folk version. You
can already hear little cues towards the future Pentangle sound and this
album's slight bending of the genres at the corners must have been highly
daring for the times, if not quite as explosive as what Pentangle will do with
a bigger budget come 1968. There are, however, frustratingly few actual 'songs'
on this album compared to improvised instrumentals, which become repetitive
after a bit. Well to some extent they do anyway, because at 28 minutes this album
is also ridiculously brief, the second shortest in the Pentangle canon in fact,
and many of the tracks seem over before they've really begun. Even so, this is
the best two-way largely-instrumental folk-blues-jazz-pop guitar album of the
1960s and if that's only because it's the only two-way blah blah blah then
that's no bearing on this lovely little album - 'Bert and John' should have
started a trend for a whole load more sound-a-likes for this album.
As a
side note, for reasons best known to themselves, the American branch of
Transatlantic decided to release this as a 'Bert Jansch' solo LP with John down
simply as a 'guest' - a bit rude given that this is a real 50:50 collaboration
between them. They also muddled around with the contents, getting a longer
album by adding two of Bert's 'real' solo tracks 'My Lover' and 'It Don't
Bother Me' to the others. Bizarrely it was this version of the album which
first appeared on CD (curiously titled 'Bert and John by Bert Jansch'),
although the original UK edition has since appeared in 2008.As a second side
note, the track 'Lucky Thirteen' was also recorded for this album (initially
untitled, it got christened after being taped in the thirteenth take) but for
unknown reasons ended up on Bert's solo album 'It Don't Bother Me' instead!
'East Wind'
is a pretty little scene setter, with Bert getting jazzy and John getting
folky, while the pair pass the pretty oriental style riff around like a baton.
Like many a song it could - and should - have gone on twice as long.
'Piano Tune'
weirdly enough doesn't feature a piano at all and just sounds like one of
Pentangle's more atonal jazzy jams with both men overlapping each other on an
instrumental that's as close to 'Anji' as the pair can legally get away with!
At
nearly four minutes, the cover of 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' feels epic compared to the rest and is
clearly John's baby as he takes lead with Bert improvising some jazzy licks
behind him. This cover doesn't work quite as well as the originals - you can
feel the pair are following each other rather than playing their socks off and
seeing what happens - and it's almost unrecognisable compared to the live
re-make on 'Sweet Child', but it's good and nicely ambitious all the same.
Bert's
song 'Soho' is the
first actual 'song' on the album, a love-hate song to the pair's home in one of
the less salubrious spots of London. Though 'streets of crime' full of dark
shadows, the night-life 'dazzles' with 'bright colours' and Bert is at his
poetic best as he imagines the market traders with their 'wares displayed in
the open window of your soul', while the expense makes the red wine 'flow
directly from your veins'. However despite one of Bert's greatest lyrics this
album highlight is most notable for the fierce guitar duel burning bright over
a quick-paced introduction before Bert even sings a note.
Two
minute blues jam 'Tic-Tocative'
often appears on Pentangle best-ofs, although it's not that special - more like
a sampler for the rest of the album's jaw-dropping synchronicity than a great
track in and of itself. The song is presumed named for its tight pendulum-paced
metre.
'Orlando' is
a hundred-second long instrumental that's slower and more thoughtful than most
on the album. Though credited to both men, I'm willing to bet it's
predominantly a 'John' song as it shares so many similarities with his beloved
Baroque period and feels as if it should be played on a harpsichord. Of course,
'Orlando' wasn't even discovered until the Middle Ages!
The
ninety second 'Red's
Favourite' is less serious than most guitar workouts on the album and
may have been named for the slight 'Russian' feel about the main riff. The
poppiest thing on the album, the playing is mightily impressive.
Another
ninety second piece, 'No Exit',
is another compilation regular, perhaps because of all the instrumentals on the
record it's the one you could most readily imagine becoming an actual song -
one with Jacqui protesting her innocence over some latest romance gone wrong,
with Danny and Bert whalloping the son g's irregular rhythms.
'Along The Way' is, by comparison, a slightly forgettable blues workout that
suggests that the pair had been having an afternoon of playing Big Bill Broonzy
records and fancied having a go themselves. This is the one time on the album
their inexperience shows, though, with the song sounding too breezy to be
'proper' blues.
It's no
surprise that the other album highlight is an actual 'song' and Bert's take on
Ann Briggs' delightful 'The
Time Has Come' (re-recorded by Pentangle for 'Sweet Child' with Jacqui
on lead) already sounds mighty fine in 'unplugged' form. Whereas Jacqui will
sound ice-calm and cool, while the band play manically around her, Bert sounds
weary and resigned, taking the song to quiet a different emotional place.
'Stepping Stones' is a clever folk original that sounds like Bert playing the
overflowing waterfall and John the dancing child merrily working his own way
across. It's another instrumental that could have become the basis for a great
song.
The
album ends with a final slab of the blues with 'After The Dance', a track that has John in tune and
Bert playing around with his beloved unusual tunings. It's an ambitious attempt
to try something different that doesn't quite work, although even more than the
other songs here it points the way ahead to the mammoth Pentangle band jams.
Overall,
then, 'Bert and John' might be short but it still breaks more ground than most
folk albums around in 1965. An essential purchase for anyone who wants to hear
where the 'roots' of Pentangle came from, it's a major 'stepping stone' towards
the sort of thing the band will pull off to great accliam in later years being
done for fun and in the safe knowledge that the album probably wouldn't sell
too well outside the pair's immediate circles.
A charming, though not faultless record - would that other AAA band's'
early recordings were this complete and revealing...
Bert Jansch "Nicola"
(Transatlantic,
July 1967)
Go
Your Way My Love/Woe Is Love My Dear/Nicola/Come Back Baby/A Little Sweet
Sunshine/Love Is Teasing/Rabbit Run/Life Depends On Love/Weeping Willow
Blues/Box Of Love/Wish My Baby Was Here/If The World Isn't There
CD
Bonus Tracks: In This Game/Dissatisfied Blues
"A little sweet sunshine's what I
want from you, to hold my head up high as I'm wont to do, can't you see that
I'm in love with you?"
Bert's
third and final pre-Pentangle album has a noticeably lighter feel than either
of his first two. While you'd hardly put it in the same bracket as Herman's
Hermits, The Dave Clark Five or (shock horror) The Spice Girls, 'Nicola' is
easily Bert's poppiest album, which is a surprise not just because the
allegedly-dour-but-actually-sweet Bert seems like the last member of Pentangle
to make a pop album, but because of the timing. Jansch had already won over the
folk community with his first two challenging albums and even the more
accessible Pentangle won't ever make an album quite this, full of strings and
cutesy pie melodies. Bert even sings with something that's at least on the way
to sounding pretty. One has to scratch their head a little and ask why: while
the first two albums had never sold that well, Bert really wasn't in it for the
money and was doing more than ok really for a folk act; Transatlantic were only
too pleased to have sold as many copies of his early albums as they had -
though their handling of business affairs sometimes left a lot to be desired
they were a very supportive company when it came to letting the writers do what
they needed to do. 'Nicola', it seems, just turned out that way out of the same
sort of musical curiosity that will lead Bert to putting Pentangle together -
with perhaps a little inspiration from his new girlfriend - no not named Nicola
but Heather, whose made Bert sound unusually happy and dizzily in love. Just
look at how many of the song titles mention 'love' - there won't be this many
again across the entire length of Bert's career! Though by now I'm used to
hearing love do strange things to AAA acts, Bert seems the last person you'd
expect to suddenly become a romantic singer - in the context of the times it's
the equivalent of Bob Dylan suddenly deciding to do a record of love songs - or
sillier yet a Christmas album. Ha ha ha ha - hang on, what, he actually made
one of those?!
As a
result, 'Nicola' tends to get short shrift from reviewers who think Bert's lost
his marbles, sniffing at the idea of a folk talent trying to sound like The
Beatles, with the exception of a couple of fan favourites that are more in the sadder, acoustic style
of albums past. Actually, though, 'Nicola' is a lot more interesting than fans give
it credit for and is worth hearing by Pentangle fans at least once, if only to
go 'gosh - so this is what a happy Bert sounds like, I always wondered!' It's
rare too to hear Bert play so much electric guitar and he's already remarkably
good considering that he's been more or less a pure acoustic guitar up to this
point, while Bert has already mastered the simpler writing style of rock and
roll (at least as it's written here). I'd never claim that 'Nicola' is as
worthy as the first two albums - but they aren't the sort of records that
should ever be compared anyway being so different (it's like asking if 'Please
Please Me' is a better album than 'Abbey Road' - everything's shifted by so
many degrees there's nothing direct to compare, not that this sort of thing has
ever stopped me in the past mind...) It is, though, a sweeter more accessible
record that palls only when the strings get a little bit too cloying and when
you go too long without a harder-edged gloomier Jansch song in between all the
sugar. Bert admitted later that he was a little embarrassed by this record and
got a little carried away in making it, but in context it's exactly what he
needed to do: break the mould of the first two records entirely and prove what
else he could do; second album 'It Don't Bother Me' had after all slightly
dipped in quality already (though admittedly from somewhere near perfection) -
a third album in the same vein might have seen even more diminished returns.
'Nicola' might be shallow by Jansch standards, but she's no mug either and
features several career highlights.
One of
these is the charming opening number 'Go Your Way My Love', written by Anne Briggs who was at one stage
Bert's room-mate and so similar to him in complexion, hair and demeanour that
several of their friends genuinely mistook them for brother and sister. She'll
play a major part in the Pentangle story (in fact it seems odd she wasn't asked
to join over Jacqui, although her fame would have eclipsed them all back in
1968) and as well as teaching Bert 'Blackwaterside' will inspire the band to cut their own versions of Ann's tracks: 'Let
No Man Steal Your Thyme' for their debut, 'The Cuckoo' for 'Basket Of Light'
and 'Willie O'Winsbury' on 'Solomon's Seal'. An unusual, almost psychedelic
guitar riff suits Bert's gruff vocal as he sings atonally of his loneliness and
desperation, sadly bidding the love of his life goodbye.
Given
that the song is followed by a traditional folk song titled 'Woe Is Love My Dear' you
might be wondering if this really is a 'happy' album. However this is a
romantic song from the 'I'm Not In Love' school of deception: though the lyrics
are sad, the symphonic backing turns love into the most glorious thing in the
worlds and even Bert gets swept away in the pure joy of it all and almost -
almost, mind - sounds happy.
Guitar
instrumental 'Nicola'
is a typical Bert guitar instrumental with a moody string part tacked on. It
sounds much more like one of Renbourn's pieces and could easily be mistaken for
a piece from the Middle Ages (until Bert suddenly hits a bluesy 'Anji' style
chord near the end anyway). You can almost hear the Pentangle sound arrive in
Bert's imagination as a straight folk song then veers from blues into jazz with
a noisy bass and drums part (the first Bert recording ever to feature drumming!
It's clearly not Terry but the sleeve doesn't say who). 'Nicola' was a friend
of John Renbourn's wife 'Judy', who'd just seen her best pal immortalised on
one of his solo albums and was friends enough with Bert to ask him to write her
into a song some time!
'Come Back Baby' is the album's bluesy song and rather a good one, a Walter Davis
tune about pleading for a second chance as Bert sounds to all intents and
purposes as if he comes from the swamps of Louisiana rather than the flats of
Glasgow.
'A Little Sweet Sunshine' is one of the biggest experiments on the album, which could
easily have passed for a bit of earthy psychedelia with horns. Based arounds a
hot electric guitar riff, Bert sounds oddly at home as a preening rock star
wishing his girl was at home instead of running over town, but the backing
musicians playing along with him are awful and almost ruin the song with their
sloppy performance.
'Love Is Teasing' is the album's first horror, with a drunken sounding Bert
growling over a guitar riff in the wrong key! Bert is trying to sound cute as
he sings about wanting to be young again 'but that will never happen unless
oranges hang from an apple tree'. Funnily enough Bert has never sounded more
juvenile.
'Rabbit Run'
is rather better, with three Berts singing in counterpart over an original
folky song that seems to take the side of the escaping rabbit over the hunter.
However, while many fans rate this song highly (it appears on a lot of
compilations) by Bert's standards there's not a lot going on here and the tune
just repeats itself over and over without even a chorus to break up the
monotony.
'Love is
easy - if you try' sings Bert at the start of 'Life Depends On Love', a song so uncharacteristic
I've just had to triple check that he isn't singing some obscure Burt Bacharach
track instead. It's rather good, once you've got over the shock, with a lovely
riff passed like a tennis ball between the piano and brass, while Bert sounds
deeply natural in the part. An unexpected highlight.
'Weeping Willow Blues' is a really jarring shift of gears back to blues. A
fingerpicking good traditional song, it's been recorded by several famous blues
figures including Bessie Smith and Blind Boy Fuller.
'Box Of Love'
is freakishly like Donovan - and believe me that's not a compliment. A list of
icky trite lines that sound like hippie nonsense, this is one of Bert's worst
songs: 'Come gather raindrops in a box made of crystal made of glass, then hide
the wind in a box made of wood' I'd take
a basket of light over a box of love any day.
'Wish My Baby Was Here' is back to Bert the crooner and again he's oddly great given how
many million miles outside his comfort zone he is - it's everyone else in the
band who deserved to be taken out and shot for their sloppy playing. The main
riff is sweet the first time you hear it, slightly less pleasant by the second
time and makes you feel like you're about to go mad by the end of the song.
'If The World Isn't There' is more like it - another prototype for Pentangle that bends
several styles at once. You could imagine this song being done by blues, folk,
jazz and pop singers with a little bit of all four on this clever bit of cod
philosophy about half the world being in love and the other half not at any one
time.
Overall,
then, there are less individual moments on 'Nicola' to praise than on 'Bert
Jansch' and 'It Don't Bother Me', with most of them heard right at the start,
but that's not to say this is necessarily an inferior album. Bert's taken a
gamble - sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't - but actually this
poppier pretty album was as radical a departure for him to make as all those
poppier pretty hippy bands suddenly getting radical and deep. Jansch doesn't
sound as hopelessly adrift as you might expect and it's great to hear him
clearly enjoying himself across this album. It's just a shame he doesn't enjoy
himself a little more by hiring a better rhythm section and skipping a couple
of the solo blues pieces. Three more songs were recorded at the sessions -
sadly an early version of Pentangle's future fan favourite 'Train Song' is
still sitting in the vaults somewhere but the CD re-issue of 1993 added the
other two long lost originals: 'In This Game' is an atmospheric song reflecting
on how Bert feels 'bored with my life' that would have fitted on the debut
album well, whilst 'Dissatisfied Blues' is a rather generic 'woe is me' blues
song.
John Renbourn "Another
Monday"
(Transatlantic
Records, 'Late' 1967)
Another Monday/Ladye Nothing's Toye Puffe/I
Know My Babe/Waltz/Lost Lover Blues/One For William/Buffalo/Sugar Babe/Debbie
Anne/Can't Keep From Crying/Day At The Seaside/Nobody's Fault But Mine
"The best of friends sometimes
must part"
John's
second fully solo album is, like Bert's, a little more hi-tech than his first,
with the front cover now including John sitting on some steps outside a folk
club (going up in the world?) John's memories of this record in fact centre
more around his pride at Transatlantic buying him his first brand new guitar
than the music he made with it, although he found that the recording conditions
only improved a little bit - he was now recording in Bill Leader's kitchen not
his living room! Transatlantic certainly got their money's worth, with John
turning in another impressive string of performances on an arguably even better
mixture of songs and instrumentals, several of which will become widely known
in the Pentangle days and beyond. Take 'Waltz', which in a year or so's time
will be one of the centre-point jamming sessions of the first album, here
reduced to the bare bones as a two minute guitar instrumental. Or 'Lady
Nothynge's Toye Puffe', a Medieval dance that will become one of John's most
legendary solo recordings and a regular on best ofs (there will even be a
sequel in a few decades' time!) Or one of the few covers on the album, a bluesy
take on Blind Willie Johnson's 'Nobody's Fault But Mine', which will also
appear lots of Renbourn compilations to come.
This is
then another strong album, although to my ears it's ever so slightly less
impressive than the debut or the recent 'Bert and John' LP. It's not that
Renbourn doesn't still play great and his material is still strong, but there's
slightly less sense of wild adventure here or material that no other folkie
would think of touching. The one true clear direction ahead as heard on this
album are the delightful guest appearances by future bandmate Jacqui McShee,
who enhances 'Lost Lover Blues' and 'Can't Keep From Crying' no end despite having never made a
professional recording before (and sounds a little different here, without the
purity of later recordings). Just as with 'Bert and John' you can almost feel
the Pentangle pieces sliding into place here as the duo realise just how much
better they sound together than apart. That song is the highlight, closely
followed by 'One For William', an early example of Renbourn's love for Medieval
sounds that points the way to his future sound, with the melancholy of the oboe
working well against the rush of his guitar. At a mere 28 minutes, though, this
is the shortest album in the Pentangle canon and feels as if it could have done
with at least a couple more recordings to round the album out.
Title
track 'Another Monday'
was written about a visit John took to a market that used to be his local and
is meant to reflect the hustle and bustle of crowds yelling and shouting all at
once. His playing is as impressive as ever on this fast-paced song but it lacks
a really distinctive melody.
The
ninety second 'Lady Nothynge's
Toye Puffe' was a landmark recording at the time - the first time a folk
guitarist had sought to combine the 1460s and the 1960s in sound. It remains
perhaps John's greatest instrumental as his flying hands play the part of
several instruments all at once. Before you ask, no I don't know why John gave
this piece such an oddball title, although it does sound like the sort of name
a real piece from the middle ages would use!
'I Know My Babe' is the famous folk song better known as 'I Know My Rider' and
it's a good reading, warm and fast flowing as John's guitar creates a 'ripple'
effect. A popular song in the rock world (the Grateful Dead and The Byrds both
did it too, making it one of the most covered songs amongst AAA bands). Legend
has it that the song was written about a black girl wrongfully imprisoned for
killing her white boyfriend, although the piece is so old and dates so far back
in the mists of time nobody is really sure.
The
early version of 'Waltz'
is the fastest Renbourn piece yet and the guitarist sounds in a right old
hurry. In truth, there's not much that links this piece to the later Pentangle
one except the speed and the 'waltz' triple time beat which will have calmed
down a lot once the rest of Pentangle gets involved.
The
lovely 'Lost Lover Blues'
features John and Jacqui trading lines about partying lovers getting back
together. Though neither sound much like their future selves, they still sound
awfully good together on this Blind Boy Fuller song that's treated more like
folk than blues.
'One For William' is another strong album track, with the sad flow of the oboe and
the fast runs of Renbourn's guitar making for an exciting combination. Sadly no
one seems to remember who 'William' is, although I'd like to think that John
wrote this as a eulogy for 'Willie O'Winsbury' an old folk song he was already
obsessed with and which he'll record twice - the melodies of the two are fairly
close as well.
'Buffalo' is a
return to the jazzier instruments of the first album which is just as
impressive but somehow slightly more forgettable, with a country and western
style that never quite settles down into a memorable melody.
The
Wonderfully named Dock Boggs, an African American slave turned farmer, wrote 'Sugar Babe' as a blues song
back in the 1920s where it became an American standard - the first of many
Stateside songs John will cover on his musical travels. John's unusual voice
works well on this song as his fast fingers fly over another of the album's
better tracks.
The
pretty 'Debbi Anne'
just can't keep pace and is one of John's more throwaway guitar instrumentals.
Sadly nobody seems to know who this was written for either, although both Bert
and John had a habit of using their girlfriend's names in their instrumentals
so perhaps it's a long lost love?
'Can't From Crying' may well be the album highlight, a fast paced cover of a
traditional song that was probably first a spiritual played on slave
plantations and again a regular in the rock and blues worlds. John and Jacqui
sounds great together on this distinctly folk cover as they mutual support for
each other after some great hardship takes the song in a whole different place
to most cover versions.
'Day At The Seaside' is another oddball Renbourn guitar instrumental, one which
rambles rather a lot for John. I'm not sure it sounds like a trip to the sea
either, unless it's the sort of day where there's a howling gale!
The
album closes with the bluesy strut of 'Nobody's Fault But Mine' which has John
sounding like an old blues singer, with Jacqui popping up on backing vocals
partway through the song. It seems strange that a song about taking all the
blame should be a duet, but there you go. Blues always seems to go well with
folk and this is no exception, faster than the original and with less of a sigh
but still with the same sense of regret and loss.
Overall,
then, 'Another Monday' is another step towards Pentangle and as such is
automatically a great and important album even if in truth only half of it is
actually that great or important. The 'John Renbourn' debut was more
adventurous, the 'Bert and John' album more exciting and most of what Pentangle
will do stays longer in the memory. However 'Another Monday' has its moments of
spirit and sunshine and discovery and is a major part of the Pentangle story,
too often overlooked. This album has also been out on CD twice, once in 1998 on
the end of the 'John Renbourn' album and again in 2008, sadly without bonus
tracks this time.
John Renbourn
"Sire John Alot Of Merrie Englande
Musyuk Thyng and Ye Grene Knyghte"
(Transatlantic,
'1968')
The
Earle Of Salisbury/The Trees They Do Grow High/Lady Goes To Church/Morgana/
Transfusion/Forty-Eight/My Dear Boy/White Fishes/Sweet Potato/Seven-Up
"Sire John Alot has topped the
lot, though he daest not sing on this musik thynge"
Baroque
and roll! The last record released by one of Pentangle before the band was
close enough by Pentangle anyway, containing as it did Medieval folk songs John
had already rehearsed and played with Bert and Jacqui and featuring guest
appearances by Terry. Sir John The Bold really goes for it this time, with a
record that offers no nod to contemporary folk or Dylanesque protest but
instead features four genuine traditional pieces from the Middle Ages and six
more originals that sound like they may as well have been. Though neither this
album not it's even more full-on sequel 'The Lady and The Unicorn' were ever
going to have the mass appeal of Pentangle, they remain important landmarks in
the Renbourn catalogue and point to just how much of Pentangle's old timey
worlde but in a cutting edge style sound came from John. All the songs are
instrumentals and many of them just feature Renbourn and his trusty guitar,
although the best songs are duets for guitar and flute with Ray Warleigh
guesting (the pair should have worked together more often, judging by these
recordings as they have a real telepathy with each other). One of these is 'The
Trees They Do Grow High', a song that will appear with words less than a year
later on Pentangle's second album 'Sweet Child'. Pentangle will also perform
'Forty-Eight' , a song co-written with Terry, in their live performances a few
times too (the same studio take appears on the 'Time Has Come' box set the band
released in 2007).
This is,
however, very much Renbourn's LP and the sort of thing no one else - not even
Bert - would have even though of trying. So unfashionable in musical terms it
became fashionable in the anything-goes world of early 1968, it's a very
important album too that showed a rare respect for heritage and tradition back
in the days when it was doing things new and exciting that were making all the
noise. Like The Kinks' 'Village Green Preservation Society' released the same
year, however, there's a sense of a writer paying back his dues to the music
that first inspired him and tacitly agreeing to keep that bond alive by passing
the music on to another generation in a
slightly different form. The fact that this uncompromising, peculiar mix
of five hundred year old songs and five hundred year old sounding originals
also happened to end up a big hit was just a happy bonus. The highlights are
many: seven minute epic 'Morgana' goes through more changes of pace, tone and
style than most albums, the two minute instrumental 'Transfusion' is Pentangle
in miniature with Terry hitting a heavy beat behind John's jazzy improv riffs
and 'Sweet Potato' is a fascinating attempt to combine a Medieval song with an
obscure contemporary song by Otis Redding's backing band Booker T and the MGs
with a new guitar riff 'inspired' by The Rolling Stones' 'Satisfaction' thrown
in too. Unlike some Renbourn albums to
come the performances are lively and varied, with every track going somewhere
different. The only downsides are that Renbourn keeps quiet throughout, with no
vocals anywhere on the record and that, at barely half an hour, a Medieval
banquet wouldn't even have had time to move on from the starters. Still, from
the clever painting (John's head in a visor surrounded by other knights -
funnily enough there's five suggesting this might be a pre-Pentangle
reference!) to the track selection this is one of Renbourn's more carefully
selected albums that has less padding than usual behind the armour too.
Abstract
painter Willem De Kooning reportedly loved this album so much he drove his
assistants mad by playing it every chance he could (leading to John later
modestly claiming to have helped change the Western art movement at the same
time as the musical one!) Though I can't paint to save my life, this sounds
like a good album to create art too: it has so many of the 'building blocks' of
music in place with just enough invention and improvisation to get the creative
juices flowing, without so much going on that it distracts you. It's also
played with a love for the genre that makes Sting's 'mock tudor' album of lute
music seem as wrong as The Spice Girls doing an album of Madrigals. The CD
version, released in 2008, includes three extra tracks: alternate versions of
'Transfusion' 'Forty-Eight' and 'The Earl Of Salisbury' of which none are all
that different but the first is particularly good.
Bert Jansch "Birthday Blues"
(Transatlantic,
January 1969)
Come
Sing Me A Happy Song To Prove We Can All Get Along The Lumpy Bumpy Long and
Dusty Road/The Bright New Year/Tree Song/Poison/Miss Heather Rosemary
Sewell/I've Got A Woman/A Woman Like You/I Am Lonely/Promised Land/Birthday
Blues/Wishing Well/Blues
Released
hot on the heels of 'Sweet Child', the first
solo-Pentangle-album-while-Pentangle-are-still-a-band award is Bert belatedly
celebrating his twenty-sixth birthday. Judging by the album cover, his main
birthday present this year seems to be a puppy - though going by Bert's
characteristic expression (halfway between a scowl and a look of love) he's not
quite sure whether it's a blessing or a curse. The same is true about his
'other' blessing in this year: the muse that inspires his songwriting is especially
strong, with this Bert's third major release of four within the space of just
sixteen months. For the most part, the muses that call to him are because of
all the good things happening in his life - not only has Bert's dreams of a
genre-bending band who can play anything he can throw at them coming true, so
is his long-held dreams of being in love, with second wife Heather entering
into his life and getting name-checked under her maiden name on one of the
instrumentals on this album. For a good two-thirds of the album, this is the
happier side of Bert coming through, with a delightfully joyous and sometimes
downright dotty album building nicely on the happy go lucky vibe of 'Nicola'
and a world away from the tougher, tenser Pentangle albums. You only need to
take one look at the title of the opening track which parodies the usual Bert
Jansch sort of song ('Come Sing Me A Happy Song To Prove We Can All Get Along
The Lumpy Bumpy Long and Dusty Road') to know that Bert is in a gloriously
humorous mood. However the other third of the album already points at trouble
in the garden of paradise: 'Poison' is one of Bert's most terrifying and
self-inflicted songs that casts the darkest of shadows across this album, while
'The Bright New Year' is despite the title a sad song about the death of a
loved one and 'I Am Lonely' points to
how isolated Bert feels even after scoring highly on two of his biggest dreams.
The result is an album that keeps tripping you up just when you think you've
worked out it's mood: eight songs of warm-hearted sighing 'awww, you shouldn't
have!' combined with four tracks of ice-cold glares going 'no really - you
shouldn't have'.
Once
again, Bert writes everything here rather than going back to old folk songs,
the exception being a fascinating collaboration with old friend Ann Briggs on
the track 'Wishing Well', which doesn't sound like either writer's 'normal'
styles. Pentangle fans will have already heard 'A Woman Like You' on 'Sweet
Child' a few months earlier - however because that take only appeared on the
'live' version of that record, this re-make is a valuable addition to Jansch's
canon and one of the greatest highlights here. Bert's also joined by Terry once
again, hinting at how the song might have sounded as a full-blown Pentangle recording.
Danny appears on certain tracks too and the album is produced by Pentangle's
regular producer in this period Shel Talmy, which gives 'Birthday Blues' a
fuller and more eclectic sound than usual for Bert's solo LPs. Jansch is still
very much the star though, with many of the best tracks performed with nothing
more than that voice and that guitar. Which is still about the best birthday
present anyone could ever wish for. Though there are many great Bert solo LPs,
this one is at least a candidate for being the best of all and a recommended
starting point for fans who only know the full Pentangle albums.
'Come Sing Me A Happy Song...' (I'm not writing all that out again!) is more than just a
clever title, it's a clever song too with Bert in a very jolly mood 'where
nothing can go wrong' although he's already wondering 'how long it will be'
before the mood collapses again. Danny and Terry make excellent contributions
too.
'The Bright New Year' is a poignant song about Bert's mum who'd died in this period
and Bert's dreams that one day he'll not only see her again but 'see you
happy'. It's a lovely song, but at only 90 seconds is more of a fragment than a
major entry to Bert's canon.
'Tree Song'
is one of the album highlights, a pretty love song that compares his lover's
warming smile with 'my foolish heart' as this great wordsmith worries about
what to say to her ('I hope this song is pleasing to your ear' he shyly
whispers instead). Bailing out, Bert switches to his favourite metaphors and
compares himself to oak trees, corn seeds, silken threads and 'a glass of
wine'. The lovely backing features flutes and a much better, sparser use of
orchestra than anything on 'Nicola'.
Another
highlight is 'Poison',
a 'Woman Like You' style blues full of ragged, relentless guitar, gorgeous
harmonica puffing by guest Duffy Power and a terrific Terry Cox drum part
that's manic and Keith Moon-like, battering Bert's ideals as he cowers under
all the blows. Bert feels the new 'poison' in the air, 'hanging there, invisible'
and ruining his new sense of optimism. It sounds like the outer world that's
chilling Bert, as he urged everyone listening to 'be kind to your neighbour' as
our creator is 'running out of ideas' to intervene and save humanity from
himself - we will soon have nowhere left to turn other than ourselves. Similar
in style to but better than most of the tracks from the pre-Pentangle albums,
it's a chilling song and one of the best of Bert's career.
The
charming 'Miss Heather
Rosemary Sewell' suggests again that Bert's courtship of his second wife
was a very polite and gentlemanly affair. This song sounds as if ought to be
played on lute rather than guitar and is closer in style to John's typical work
than Bert's. A live Pentangle version appears on the occasional compilation,
starting with 'At Their Best'.
Alas 'I've Got A Woman' is the
album's biggest mistake, which like 'Nicola' tries to turn Bert into the big
band frontman he plainly isn't. This time Bert is at the head of a jazz band on
an ugly and slightly misogynistic song which would have already sounded
slightly dated in 1969.
Thankfully
the solo (well, Bert Danny and Terry) version of 'A Woman Like You' is thrilling. The 'Sweet Child'
version is already very good but this version is great, with Terry especially
pushing this song on to new places as Bert finds himself challenged and pushed
out of his comfort zone by his new love. He tries to weave a 'magic spell' to
make the girl he fancies fall in love with him - but finds too late that she's
stolen his heart instead, which shocks his usually 'lonely soul'.
The
delightful 'I Am Lonely'
is a more complex song than it sounds. The lyrics are Bert's most dejected -
he's not just lonely but spiritually lost and aware that he's growing older and
feebler with each passing year. However the pretty tune and the lovely backing
(again starring flute) suggest that unlike some earlier Jansch songs, salvation
is at hand out there somewhere. Another Pentangle live favourite, this crops up
on a lot of Pentangle BBC sessions as Bert's favoured 'solo turn' that year.
The
noisy 'Promised Land'
is a rare bit of Biblical storytelling from Bert as he dreams that he sees
Jesus who refuses to 'shake his hand' and seems distant and cold, while an
angel drowns out St Peter's calls and invited Bert downwards not upwards. No
one can do guilt like Bert and he's clearly shaken on a song where he calls
himself 'a drunken fool whose broken every rule' - though most sources don't
have Bert's alcoholism down as a problem until the 1980s he's clearly already fearing
that's he's fallen too far into the evil clutches of drink.
The 75
second and rather archaic sounding instrumental 'Birthday Blues' is sweet but not really up to the
album standard, sounding like the opening to the TV series 'Bagpuss'.
The
unusual 'Wishing Well'
is a bluesy collaboration with Ann Briggs and her brother David which uses a
poetic form more like a haiku, full of clipped phrases without the usual detail
that all three writers use. Though the song is ambiguous enough to mean all
sorts, it sounds to me like Bert promising to treat the inspiration he draws
from life's well with care, planting 'red flowers' as a token of his appreciation
and trying to do 'right' by what he's 'gifted'.
The
happiest album in Bert's discography - give or take the odd song - then ends on
the happiest 'Blues'
you've ever heard. The song really benefits from the contributions of Danny and
Terry once more while Bert cooks up a great funky guitar part, but it's a
slightly overwhelming and rather 'safe' end to such an exploratory album.
Overall,
though, 'Birthday Blues' is a treat. It's great for longterm fans who care
about him to hear Bert so at peace with himself, without sacrificing the darker
or edgier aspects of his writing on the few tracks that don't go to this happy
place and which sound all the darker for appearing without warning on this
sunniest of LPs. Bert is in great voice too, without any of the gruffness of
even the recent Pentangle albums and his guitar playing is as superb as usual.
Well worth a listen, even with the odd filler track included too and about as
close as Bert got to perfection in his solo career.
"Christian The Lion"
(Soundtrack)
(Released
as part of 'The Time Had Come' Box Set, Recorded 1970, Released 2007)
Christian
The Lion (Medley)/The Furniture Store
"The journey is beginning, bound
for the country and a new place to stay"
The first of two obscure Pentangle film
soundtracks, 'Christian The Lion' was a late addition to an obscure Bible
re-telling movie that until late in the day was set to include a score by
classical composer Ray Beaver. Pentangle were an interesting choice of
replacement for what is effectively a nature documentary, a sort of 'Tarka The
Otter' involving a lion bought at auction at Harrods and whose life story goes
from over-large house pet to being released back into the wild. Like a bull in
a china shop, Christian made a right mess of his owner's furniture store and
could clearly not stay at home anymore - after pleas in the papers for help
Christian's owners were visited by the stars of the film 'Born Free' Bill
Travers and Virginia McKenna who helped raise publicity and funds. This
documentary film was part of the fundraising effort to get the wittily named
Christian back to the wild and has since gone on to become a key movie for
wildlife enthusiasts, revealing more about lions and their interaction with
humans than any project really had hitherto. The star of the film is clearly
Christian, who appears to have more nobility and grace than any of the humans
bartering over his existence and whose civilised demeanour helped change the
media's depiction of lions as unthinking barbaric creatures. The film remains a
key text even today: the 1971 book based on the film (though released first) was
re-issued in 2008 and an extract from the film suddenly went viral in 2009,
shared by millions of Youtube users around the world. The love shown for the
lion and vice versa makes a mockery of
certain misguided hunter-dentists after trophies.
The time had come, then, for Pentangle to
release their hard-to-find and largely improvised soundtrack recording on their
box set which just happened to be in preparation back then, even though in
truth it's a curio rather than a major missing element of their heritage. Like
'Tam Lin' to come, Pentangle's music is rather 'dropped' into the recording a
few seconds at a time, so only really exists as fragments rather than as a full
song. However the box set's decisions to stick as much music as they could together
as a medley works very well indeed, giving the song a certain flair and epic
status as the track builds layer by layer. 'Christian The Lion' itself starts
off as an instrumental version of something similar to 'Sally Free And Easy'
dominated by piano, before ending up in an early instrumental preview of Bert's
latest song 'People On The Highway' with some pretty 'la la'ing from Jacqui
over the top; from there the song turns half a circle into a more 'Pentangle'
song about the lion himself being sold at auction ('Someone will surely take
you and make you their own'); then it's into a funky blues instrumental with
Danny's double bass and Terry's xylophone chasing each other round a moody
riff; next it's a reprise of Jacqui's pop chant telling us that Christian is
'part of a pride in a small family - but the trials are not over, only
beginning in an attempt for him to find his liberty'; next is Bert with a
cheery la-lahed instrumental piece that's very Jansch without actually sounding
directly like any of his other songs; next a scary instrumental featuring the
whole band that matches the lion's roar with some fierce drumming and an
insistent bass riff; finally Jacquie bids goodbye with a celebrator third verse
of the main song theme, celebrating Christian's 'new freedom in his native
land'. For a piece cobbled together at the last minute it's rather good: as a
six minute medley on a box set it's harder going, switching gears just as the
piece is getting interesting: still that's film scores for you. Just as
throwaway is a second piece titled 'Furniture Store' after the early scene in
which it appears as Christian is taken 'home'. A minute long sitar burst from
Bert playing something not unlike his part on 'Once I Had A Sweetheart', this
too switches gears into a hummed moody instrumental where Bert's sitar and
Danny's bass meet Jacqui's gorgeous 'oohs' head on for a piece of music that
represents travelling and movement. Alas this is also too short to really get
going though it works nicely in the film. Two fascinating pieces for collectors
then, though you might need to have done quite a bit of 'Pentangling' to reach
point where these ten second fragment make you go 'oh wow' rather than simply
'oh no!'
John Renbourn "The Lady And The
Unicorn"
(Transatlantic,
'1970')
Trotto/Saltarrello/Lamento
De Tristan/La Rotta/Veri Floris/Triple Ballade/Bransle Gay/Bransl De
Bourgogne//Alman/Melancholy Gilliard/Sarabande/The Lady and the Unicorn/My
Johnny Was A Shoemaker/Westron Wynde/Scarborough Fair
"The loveliest of all was the
unicorn"
The
first of two solo albums released while John was still in Pentangle, 'Unicorn'
is one of Renbourn's most fulfilling LPs. Like 'John A Lot' but even more so,
it's an album that tries hard to come to Medieval songs with the same skill and
passion as contemporary rock 'n' folk, with pieces from five hundred years or
more made to sound as if they could have been written that same day. Of all the
AAA musicians, Renbourn realised perhaps more than anyone that music crossed boundaries
of time and location and that modern composers use exactly the same notes the
Madrigal, Baroque and Renaissance era composers used with just a few man-made
rules to tweak them. Many of these tracks come straight from the Fitzwilliam
Book, a famous Medieval guitar book that aimed to teach aspiring players how to
play the songs of the day, with more 'obvious' choices than usual here perhaps
(though I still defy anyone to know more than half of these tunes played by
anybody else!) The rest - the opening four songs - come straight from the
snappily titled 'MS29987', one of the earliest surviving copies of sheet music
which dates back to around the fifteenth century and was in the Medici family
collection for years before making its way to the British library. For a folk
music historian like Renbourn, it must have been an exciting document to behold
and the fact that he could study it actually in his hometown of London must
have been irresistible - it's inevitable he'd try to record as much of it as
possible one day.
Renbourn
commented later that, rather than try to keep things as note-perfect close to
the originals as perhaps other musicians might have done, he preferred to 'use
the existing melodic/rhythmic characteristics as a framework for solos', weaving
in his own style to emphasis sections of notes he particularly enjoyed and
wanted to hear more of like a tapestry of the old and new (as ever, the
restoration is done so well you can't see the joins). Talking of tapestries,
the album name and front cover are both taken from a French series which was
made up of six different pieces of cloth depicting the different senses of
sight, taste, touch, smell and hearing. The front cover is taken from the last
piece which sets out to combine all five titled 'A Mon Seul Desire' (My one
soul desire) surrounded by all the pieces features in the others and in true
ambiguous Pentangle style no one is quite sure what it means. Is this a 'sixth
sense' heightened by the others? Is it the lady seeking to use all of these senses?
Is it the lady ignoring all her senses as she falls madly and passionately in
love? (She's holding a necklace, which is clearly a romantic gift). Or is she
rejecting love based on her understanding of all her senses? The tapestries
were cleaned up in 2014 revealing new details hitherto unseen - which is kind
of what Renbourn did musically back in 1970.
Alas
until they invent a time machine I can't tell you (and if I do I'll be too busy
enjoying myself watching the early Pentangle at the Horseshoe Hotel to get
there anyway). What I can tell you is that 'Lady and the Unicorn' is one of the
funniest and sunniest of Renbourn LPs. While other solo albums can make these
musical history lessons seem like a bit of a drag, Renbourn is eager here to do
everything he can to show the world just why he's so passionate about this
period. Renbourn's own playing is strong and vibrant, breathing new life into
old pieces without any notice of the dust around them. His friends too are good
additions to the material, complementing rather than swamping him, including
Fairport Convention's violinist Dave Swarbrick and Pentangle's own Terry Cox on
glockenspiel. The highlights are many but include especially the charming
Trotto/Salterro opener (written for a full band, which Renbourn clever
replicates on a single guitar!) and the stunning eleven medley of old folk
songs that starts off with 'My Johnny Was A Shoemaker' , takes a left turn
through 'Weston Wynde' and somehow ends up in a very breezy 'Scarborough Fair'
arranged for guitar, flute and violin. The only piece that doesn't quite work
is a track that had already been something of a Pentangle regular: the slightly
solemn rendition of Bach's 'Sarabande' which sounds very out of place here
(this was a piece to play at posh balls - most of the others here were
performed by peasants; it also dates from that tiny bit later). Classy enough
to appeal to upper class ladies, rare enough in folk circles to represent the
unicorn, this solo album had a little something for everybody and is a landmark
album for Medieval musical scholars for several very good reasons. Along with
'Sir John A Lot' easily the best of the Renbourn solo collection.
Bert Jansch "Rosemary Lane"
(Transatlantic,
June 1971)
Tell
Me What Is True Love?/Rosemary Lane/M'Lady Nancy/A Dream A Dream A Dream/Alman/
Wayward Child/Nobody's Bar/Reynardine/Silly Women/Peregrinations/ Sylvie/ Sarabande/Bird
Song
"Rolling in a last veil of
sunshine sheds light upon his dying hours"
By 1971
Pentangle were beginning to wonder if they'd somehow outreached themselves.
While 'Cruel Sister' is in many ways the band's most impressive LP, full of
complex lengthy jams and the most extreme arrangements of traditional folk
numbers yet, it's not exactly made for easy listening and is a long way away
from where the band all started as solo folkies. Bert's re-action was to make
his next solo album much more like the old days, with just him and a guitar and
a pile of songs to play and if you hadn't noticed the year on the back of the
sleeve you'd be hard pressed to guess this album wasn't made at the same time
as 'Bert Jansch' and 'It Don't Bother Me'. It was even 'produced' by Bill
Leader - though like the old days all it really meant was that Bert turned up
at Bill's house while he pressed record on a portable tape player (sadly no one
lists which room of his friend's house Bert used this time around!) The archaic
olde worlde lettering on the front cover also suggests that this is a low
budget release rather than the solo album by the songwriting giant of a band
who were being heralded as the darlings of 1969.
Bert has
learnt a lot from his Pentangle experience though and there are some subtle
differences here. His singing is stronger, his playing more confident and he's
far less restricted by trying to stick to a folk formula: Pentangle have opened
doors in his mind and while they might not be here to hold those doors open you
can tell that Bert has now seen far beyond the limits of folk music. Though
regarded as a bit of a mis-step at the time, perhaps because it did hark back
to earlier records full of simpler songs, 'Rosemary Lane' has rightly been hailed
as something of a classic in our modern day, the closest to a 'classic' Bert LP
in his canon (though all fans have their favourites: 'From The Outside' is mine
by a plectrum). It's certainly among his most consistent with less guitar
instrumental filler and lots of new juicy originals to go alongside the
seemingly never-ending supply of old folk tunes. Bert is often at his best when
thinking deep mystical thoughts and few albums think as deeply as this one:
opener 'Tell Me What Is True Love?' is one of the most devastating songs in his
catalogue, though the tale of recklessness 'Wayward Child' and the first of
Bert's anti-drinking notes to self 'Nobody's Bar' aren't far behind. This is
also a pretty record though with several lovely slow ballads including the
future compilation regular 'Reynardine' and the under-rated 'A Dream, A Dream,
A Dream'. Fans only into the solo albums for the Pentangle links may also
appreciate the guitar duet 'Peregrinations' which features a rare instrumental
credited to Bert and John. There are lot of great Bert records out there - I'm
not sure if this quite stacks up at the top of them (there are an awful lot of
short songs here and a few too many instrumentals) but it's certainly in the
top half.
'Love is
like a little boy' is the striking opening line of opening song 'Tell Me What Is True Love?',
'building castles in the sand - the higher he builds them the longer they
stand'. A sad pitter-patter guitar riff is set against Bert's delightfully deep
croaking which as its most poignant here. One of Bert's most overlooked
originals, even if it could have run a lot longer than the final two minutes.
The
traditional folk song 'Rosemary
Lane' has become seen as a Jansch classic and one that he'll return to
often on concert and even studio album on 2000's 'Dazzling Stranger'. It's a song
the whole Pentangle band would have done well, based around the old English1800
(?) poem 'Bell Bottom Trousers'. Bert, unusually, plays the role of a maid
coerced into sleeping with a rough sailor, her child doomed to a future either
serving the King as a soldier or born to a similar life of drudgery as another
maid. Bert sings poignantly over a slow simple backing that's really powerful.
Alas
after such a promising start 'M'Lady
Nancy' is another of those filler guitar instrumentals and not a
particularly impressive one, given that it doesn't show off Bert's range and
skills. Nancy is no Anji!
We don't
often get to hear much of the 'real' Bert in song - he was a very private
writer who preferred writing about what he observed in the world around him or
from fictional characters. But 'A
Dream A Dream A Dream' sounds like one of his more 'real' songs somehow,
a longing aching memory of a love that once was (maybe even his first wife?)
who now seems a part of times so long ago that she's 'fading like the moon
between the clouds' in his memory. In one of Bert's more elaborate metaphors he
compares their relationship to a 'primrose tempting a Hummingbird'
'Alman' is
another guitar instrumental, a piece that sounds more like a Renbourn style
copy of a Renaissance piece but is actually by blues singer Robert Johnson -
and proof that there's more links between the middle ages and blues records
than people realise! It's slightly more impressive, given that Bert is
effectively playing two counterpoint parts at once, but Alman is no 'Anji'
either.
'Wayward Child' is another song Pentangle would have done well, with a melody
that contains an unusual rocking motion and sounds very much like a traditional
sea shanty. It's a sad tale of a sailor
who gave his all in life and survived the dangers of the seven seas to die on a
beach in front of a group of uncomprehending children who don't understand what
he's been through. Was Bert speaking in metaphors here? By 1971 Pentangle's
brand of folk was being challenged by new bands on the scene but ones who had a
slightly easier and more 'traditional' flavour of folk to play.
'Nobody's Bar' is one of Bert's most revealing songs and points to his drinking
already spiralling out of control. Bert walks into the bar to lose his blues, a
lone drinker who catches everyone's attention. All possible temptations are
before him now and with the liquor loosening his morals ('It was like a vision
of Heaven, without Jesus there') Bert plunges in before coming to his senses
with a hangover and regretting ever going near the 'mean place'. You get the
sense he's been through this cycle rather a lot by 1971.
'Reynardine'
is one of the more 'fantasy' orientated Pentangle folk songs, with the title
character a 'werefox' who lures innocent maidens into his clutches and carries
them away to his castle. Most adaptations have the maidens coming to a sticky
end, but in Bert's take on the late eighteenth century song when the maiden
comes to she seduces him instead, following him to his lair again the next time
she sees him! Bert's ever-busy guitar is excellent on this track and it's easy
to see why it's become so popular with fans.
'Silly Women'
is, despite the title, more about 'Silly Men'. The female character in the song
tries everything she can to make her partner understand her needs and wishes
and thinks that they've transcended the need for words in their relationship,
but every so often his curt dismissal and names upset her. An impressively far
thinking song for 1971 folk, but then Bert was never your token folkie.
'Peregrinations' sounds like an outtake from 'Bert and John', with the pair
trying to play a very complex original that sounds as if it dates from the
middle ages, which relies on real telepathy and completely perfect playing.
Sadly they don't quite get the song right and it all sounds a bit rushed, as if
this is the rehearsal take they're still learning rather than the master take.
Traditional
song 'Sylvie' is
another popular folk song that became a favourite with Bert's fans, although
it's something of a struggle for his voice to be honest and might have been
better kept for Jacqui to sing. It is, after all, the origin of the Pentangle
classic 'Once I Had A Sweetheart', although this version comes with a three
earlier verses which end where the 1969 recording comes in.
'Sarabanda'
isn't the Bach 'Sarabande' Renbourn seems to have constantly been playing
around with during Pentangle concerts and TV shows but a different piece
written for the same dance-steps by Arcangelo Corelli. One of the more boring songs selected from
Bert's potted history lessons, it's forgettable but pleasingly short.
The
album ends with the frenetic pulse of 'Bird Song', in which each species of bird becomes a metaphor for
humanity to young ornithologist philosopher Bert. Every species has something
of a burden to carry: the 'golden bird' is beautiful to look at but too heavy
to fly, the sparrow 'has nothing' but can soar anywhere 'in God's sky' and the
eagle has a 'shriek of war' but cares nothing for his own safety. Only the
humble dragonfly seems to be truly free (the dragonfly will get a whole Bert
Jansch song to itself by the time of reunion album 'Open The Door' in 1985).
Overall,
then, several definite hits and a few misses make 'Rosemary Lane' a welcome
addition to the Bert Jansch canon. The album may not always have the power of
the very earliest of Bert's LPs or the originality, but the songs are handled
with care and his voice especially has rarely sounded better. Not unlike the
period Pentangle album 'Reflection' in fact - not quite up to what came before
it perhaps but still very much under-rated.
"The Ballad Of Tam Lin"
(Soundtrack) aka "The Devil's Widow"
(Released
as part of the box set 'The Time Has Come', Recorded 1971 Released 2007)
Tam
Lin/The Best Part Of You
"Many young lives wasted - if only
they knew - but as long as there's someone to hear then that's ok, forget about
your troubles and leave them for another day!"
'Tam
Lin' is a film project so early 1970s folk-rock it hurts, a re-telling of the
famous folk tale of the Scottish borders where 'Tam Lin' is a man who once was
lured to his death by the Queen of the Fairies and whose spirit still lives on
in the land. Thanks to some strange
curse/fairy magic he owns the part of the land where he died and is 'allowed'
to take what it is 'his; from anyone caught stealing from it. This is bad news
for local good girl Janet who comes to his land picking flowers and finds
herself first visited by Tam Lin and then mysteriously made pregnant by him.
Returning to accuse the spirit, instead she learns his story and feels sorry
for him, especially when he explains why he made her pregnant: the Queen of the
Fairies can take a dead spirit with them on a visit to hell once every seven
Halloweens and the next one is coming soon - afraid of being left with nothing,
he wanted part of him to 'live on'. Brave Janet returns on the night of
Halloween and sees Tam Lin being taken away by goblins whereby she pulls him
from his horse and keeps him safe in the mortal world - the Queen of the
Fairies is impressed with her courage and grants Tam Lin his mortal life back.
It's a once popular story that has rather fallen out of favour in the modern
day world and deserves to be resurrected (it reminds me of my last ATOS medical
re-assessment in fact, with the Government goons from the DWP the goblins and
the ridiculous long list of excuses and traditions ending up in so many
innocent deaths).
The 1971
film was set to be big news, with a major cast including such up and coming
actors as Ava Gardner, Ian McShane, Sinead Cusack and Joanna Lumley, with
direction by Roddy McDowall, then a big star after his role in the early Planet
Of The Apes films and the only film he ever directed (in fact he had to bow out
of the second film after production on this project over-ran). The fact that
the soundtrack included an exclusive score by not just Pentangle but their
biggest folk-rock rivals Fairport Convention should also have secured this set
a sort of immortality. Instead the film died a curiously quiet death, being
perhaps a little too 'traditional' for film audience tastes. A second print of
the film under the more salacious name 'The Devi's Widow' with a poster that
looked like something out of a hammer horror film followed soon after but this
didn't do much better either. Sadly the poor reception to the film meant that we
never got a film soundtrack LP, which would admittedly have been rather short
if solely taken from the music in the film but nevertheless would have been a
valuable record for early 70s folk song collectors.
Though
Fairport Convention were represented simply through a song they'd already
recorded (their take on the folk song 'Tam Lin', as included on their 1969 LP
'Leige and Lief'), the Pentangle recordings were both new. The first was the
band's own take on the traditional folk song, which came with a few word
alterations and a much longer running time of 7:30 thanks to their instrumental
parts. The resulting song sounds not unlike the longer rambling epics on 'Cruel
Sister', with lots of scene setting and a very languid pace, although all the
band are on good form and Jacqui especially sounds powerful and magisterial on
her almost-sneered lead vocals. Their version of the folk song was never heard
complete in the film: instead it would appear at the start of a scene of action
in a 'storytelling' device, explaining what was happening before we 'see' it
happen verse by verse. Thankfully the compilers of the 'Time Has Come' box set
stuck all the relevant bits of music together as one long medley which is much
easier to hear, even if it does all get a bit repetitive before the time is up.
Perhaps even more interesting is the pop song 'The Best Of You' which is from
the more commercial arm of Pentangle's discography with some great rock
drumming from Terry Cox and a much bigger sound than usual for Pentangle complete
with extra backing singers and horns. Credited to the whole band, it could
easily have been a second hit single and like 'Light Flight' manages to get by
with its feel of being a 'sell out' thanks to a catchy riff and all the usual
Pentangle trademarks back in the right places, with a sturdy Bert Jansch guitar
part and a forceful lead from Jacqui propping the whole part up. A warning to
an innocent girl to 'take care' of a big bad world, it's a funkier 'Let No Man
Steal Your Thyme' that also has the jazzy touches of the debut album and the
very 60s cry that 'it's alright now - and it doesn't matter too much anyhow'.
This song also appears on the 'Time Has Come' box set where it was one of the
real highlights.
"This Is Pentangle"
(Transatlantic,
'1971')
Wedding
Dress/Ornie Wise/Will The Circle Be Unbroken?/Lord Franklin/When I Was In My
Prime/Helping Hand//So Clear/Reflection
"Sad story that you cannot tell,
no one is to blame"
A
curious first Pentangle compilation, clearly released by Transatlantic as a
knee-jerk re-action to the falling sales of their biggest cash cow. None of the
big hits are here (well, big hit: 'Light Flight' is conspicuous by its absence)
while even fan favourites from the early years like 'Pentangling' 'Once I Had A
Sweetheart' and 'Let No Man Steal Your Thyme' are absent. This is, instead,
more of a 'gee look at all this great stuff you missed!' style compilation as
the record company tries to give an extra plug to the band's last two albums
'Cruel Sister' and 'Reflection'. Though songs like 'Lord Franklin' and 'So
Clear' deserve the extra shot at success, this is a curious hodge podge of
songs that doesn't even include the best from these two records (personally I'd
take 'A Maid That's Deep In Love' 'Jack Orion' 'When I Get Home' and 'Cold Rain
And Snow' over everything here. Together with the plain orange cover with it's
very ugly lettering, this is a cash-in and nothing more. Thankfully future
compilations will do Pentangle rather more justice than this.
John Renbourn "Faro Annie"
(Transatlantic,
'1971')
White
House Blues/Buffalo Skinner/Kokomo Blues/Little Sadie/Shake Shake Mama/Willy
O'Winsbury/The Cuckoo/Come On In My Kitchen/Country Blues/Faro Annie/Back On
The Road Again
"Know that I found my own sweet
thing - though I ain't goin' to tell you where or when"
Released
in the gap in between the last Pentangle albums, 'reflection' and 'Solomon's
Seal', 'Faro Annie' is an under-rated album that should appeal to fans of both
as it contains the same slightly melancholic air and continues Renbourn's
growing interest in American folk songs after Pentangle's extended tours there.
In fact, as so often happens on Pentangle albums, one of the band's more beloved
folk covers ('Willy O Winsbury' - in which a man tried to date a Princess but
whose noble demeanour when threatened with execution changes the king's mind,
the twist being he's got lands and money of his own and is actually a good
match - will appear in a slightly different spelling on 'Solomon's Seal').
Terry guests on around half the album too, which marks one of the few times
that John ever used drums on a solo record, while Danny too guests on a couple
of tracks. No sign of Bert or Jacqui for once, though. Renbourn is on top of
his game as a musician and overdubs a lot of the material, combining acoustic
and electric guitars and sitars on backing tracks that resemble Pentangle's
mixture of styles far more than most of his solo albums. Better yet, he
actually sings more or less the way through - something that sadly doesn't
happen on many of his albums - and while Renbourn isn't always a natural
vocalist his voice is at its best here, warm and ragged and soft. That goes for
the record actually - though the usual Pentangle big subject matters of love
and death and deceit are here in abundance
the feel of this record is different, like a sagging favourite sofa (in
comparison to Bert's more upright armchair style).
The one
fairly major fault with this album, though, is how few original compositions
are on it. In fact, if you include arrangements of tradition al material, Bert
gets more credits on the album than John does! That's a shame because John
wasn't exactly written out in this period, with one composition apiece on
'Reflection' and 'Solomon's'. Sadly too there's nothing here quite as
'important' as either 'So Clear' or 'Jump Baby Jump', revealing
autobiographical insights into life in an important band nearing the end of the
road. However in pure 'traditional folk songs given a modern makeover' terms,
'Faro Annie' is hard to beat with several excellent songs well chosen and well
performed. John commented later that in his own head it was an unspoken
'goodbye' to Transatlantic after all his many years with the label (Pentangle
switched over to Warner Brothers in 1972, though John stayed as a solo act for
most of his life) and is an attempt to return to the 60s folk scene for one
last time. Several old friends are invited from the past too: first
collaborator Dorris Hendersen appears, Pete Dyson (an early folkie who sent
food parcels when John nearly starved in London) and new friend Sue Draheim who
plays the 'Jacqui' role for this record and will later appear in the John
Renbourn Group. The band were having so much fun that they continued the
sessions and recorded a full album that was never released at the time - it
will turn up in the 1990s as 'The Lost Sessions' and really were physically
'lost' for a time. Though they're good, this released album still just about
has the nod, being one of the best John Renbourn solo albums nobody seems to
ever talk about.
'White House Blues' is a pretty folk song with a slightly dangerous feel, with two
Johns and one Sue uniting on a tale of the assassination of president McKinley
in 1901. Recorded less than a decade after the eerily similar death of JFK, it
must have been a hard hitting recording at the time with John's voice caught
between horror and weary resignation as he sighs over 'hard times' for the
American public.
'Buffalo Skinners' must be the only Woody Guthrie cover ever played with sitars!
Invited to hunt buffalos for money, Renbourn's employee is warned the work is
hard and if he runs away he'll 'starve to death' with his wages only given out
when the work is done. Of course the crooked swindler won't pay up anyway,
complaining that his worker drank it all away on the job! Huh - I'd get the
buffalo skinners unions on to him!
'Kokomo Blues' is an old blues number by Mississippi Fred McDowell given an
added kick thanks to a rare drum part and some nice wailing harmonica. Named
after the same town in Indiana The Beach Boys will have a hit with in another
fifteen years, it's an odd little song that veers between the narrator denying
he'll ever fall in love and trying to get his baby to go with him for a visit.
'Little Sadie' sounds rather good, an old American folk song treated to some
great fiddle work by Sue that was originally known as 'Bad Lee Brown', a
murderer on the run whose crime wasn't the cold hearted shooting the world seems
to think it is. The sense of claustrophobia in this song is intense.
The fun
and funky 'Shake Shake Mama'
was the highlight of quite a few Pentangle live shows and the arrangement was
cooked up by Bert and John between them, although John plays it alone here. A
simple song about loneliness, with the narrator ogling girls he wants to be
with but is slightly scared of ('Some of you women really know your stuff, but
your clothes are all torn and your language a little too rough') John sings the
piece detached but the desperation behind the words comes through clear enough.
Bob Dylan recorded the track too but never quite like this, with a demented
guitar solo, Pentangle bass and drums heading into jazz and a sense of things
getting further and further out of control.
John's
version of 'Willy O' Winsbury'
is very like the Pentangle version, with a guitar and a fiddle taking the full
weight of this old English song, although John's deeper vocals can't quite
match the purity of Jacqui's re-recording. Both are lovely though and you can
see why this lyrical, pretty song with its twists and turns was so popular with
the band that never did anything that was straightforward.
There
are many old folks songs called 'The Cuckoo' including the one Pentangle performed on 'Basket Of
Light'. This is a different one, a sad and worried song about guilt and
forgiveness with John pleading 'pardon me!' while a rigid riff plays underneath
him, desperate to 'resolve' to a new chord and allow him to move on with his
life. The sitar is nicely used again while the croak ion John's voice really
suits this intense song.
Blues
classic 'Come On In My
Kitchen' as written by Robert Johnson and performed by almost everyone
is perhaps the bluesiest recording any of Pentangle had made yet, with its
simple strummed acoustic chords and a wailing harmonica. The narrator is
regretting losing the love of his life to another man but he can't really
complain - he'd already stolen her from his best friend!
'Country Blues' is an interesting one. Bert gets a co-credit for the arrangement
even though, to the best of my knowledge, Pentangle never played it in public.
Was the song worked up for appearance on a Pentangle album but never used? A
heartbroken mother worries about her son's bad habits getting him into trouble
while Sue's fiddle beats out the trouble he'll be in when he gets home. John's
low key near-whispered vocals add a real tension to the song, as if this is a
'memory' of the wrong-doer and its now too late for redemption.
Title
track 'Faro Annie' is
the biggest production number on the album and sees the return of Danny and
Terry while John plays multiple guitar parts on top of each other. Played with
a similar sort of feel to the low key unsettling jams on 'Reflection', it's the
only original song on the album and is an instrumental that waxes and wanes
across three fascinating minutes. It's a shame the song doesn't last for
longer, though, as it feels as if there was many more places this great jam
could have been taken.
The
album ends with the oft-covered 'Back On The Road Again', the closest thing to a straightforward
rock song on the album. John's electric guitar, sounding as if it's in the
distance and overlaid with wah-wah effects, is especially strong here and John
seems to be mentally gearing himself up for another strenuous tour with
Pentangle in the coming year.
Overall,
then, 'Faro Annie' is a strong album. Though there are perhaps less out and out
classics than previous LPs and only 'Shake Shake Mama; will become a regular on
future live sets and compilations, there are no weak songs across the whole LP
and each track has something of the casual brilliance and genre-combinations of
Pentangle at their peak. More straightforward and easier to love than some of
the harder-going history lessons in John's back catalogue, this is a welcome
place for newcomers to start.
"History Book"
(Transatlantic,
'1972')
Courting
Blues/Lucky Thirteen/Can't Keep From Crying/No Exit/Waltz/Forty-Eight//The Time
Has Come/Train Song/Sally Go Round The Roses/Cruel Sister
"Saddest thing in the whole wide
fable is to see your band with another record label"
'Pentangle
- that was your life! Yes, your career is over now but we'd like to present you
with a plain little red book while we talk all about your achievements and
revisit some old past glories. Only we won't go for the obvious ones - oh no -
we'll throw in half an album of solo recordings as well!' The second Pentangle
compilation has a curious job to do. Released after the band left
Transatlantic, for what was presumed to be a long and happy career at Warner
Brothers, as it turns out the band have called it a day officially by the time
this record is in the shops. Transatlantic had already done a pretty good job
at summing up the band's career on the previous year's 'History Of' anyway to
do the band's first five albums justice - this sequel really is just a cash-in,
from it's boring plain red sleeve to the lack of credits giving the impression
that the opening three songs are rare band performances rather than snipped
from solo records also released on the label. Luckily, Transatlantic have a lot
of songs to choose from so can get away with a third disc of highlights from
the band's career without recycling anything, although any newbie fan who
missed the first album might well wonder where the few songs they know from the
radio have gone, replaced by a fairly conservative set of songs from the band's
first four albums (oddly there's nothing from 'Reflection' here) plus the set's
lone rarity the Renbourn solo song 'Forty-Eight'. Amazingly this compilation
has made its way onto CD, where a small photo of the band has been added to the
bottom right hand corner of the sleeve though no songs have been added, giving
this compact disc an awfully short running time (it wasn't exactly generous on
vinyl).Personally I'd stick with the earlier compilation or the extended sets
from the CD era 'Light Flight' or 'The Time Has Come'.
A Now Complete List Of Pentangle
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