Pentangle: The band that defied description

May 16 2008 by Philip Key, Liverpool Daily Post

SINGER/GUITARIST Bert Jansch is alive and well, it must be stated immediately. After all, this is the man who has received a lifetime achievement award from the BBC – twice.

Such awards, one suspects, are given to performers who are on their last knockings and the very title suggests a life completed.

Jansch, universally considered to be one of this country’s finest guitarists is, at 64, working as hard as ever.

More interestingly, he is returning to where much of his career began, as a member of the band Pentangle.

The folk-rock band broke all conventions in the late 1960s by coming up with a music which was defiantly unclassifiable. Folk-rock, folk-jazz, folk-blues, commentators tried all ways to describe them.

In a music world where it was almost essential to pigeon-hole musicians, Pentangle became a worldwide success.

There were five of them, Bert Jansch and John Renbourne on guitars, Danny Thompson, double bass, Terry Cox, drums and Jacqui McShee, vocals.

Amazingly, it is the same five who are going back on the road for a tour which will bring them to Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall, on July 14.

In the intervening years, the band had broken up, reformed, changed personnel and, in its last incarnation, gone out as Jacqui McShee’s Pentangle, a line-up in which Jacqui was the only original member. Indeed, she still tours with that band.

The return of the original Pentangle, Jansch suggests, was the result of some “light blackmail” from the BBC. “They told us that if we got together and played, they would give us a Lifetime Achievement award in the BBC Folk Awards. Well, we got together and enjoyed it, so we continued.”

That was last year, but he had already picked up a personal Lifetime Award in the same competition back in 2001.

Jansch has always been a solo artist, as well as a member of Pentangle, and his playing has influenced several generations of performers from Donovan to Pete Doherty.

For the Glasgow-born, Edinburgh-reared Jansch, it all began at primary school when he was eight years old. “Our teacher brought in a Spanish guitar for us to look at, and we had never seen anything like it to actually touch. I have been obsessed with it ever since.”

He even tried to make his own guitars, rather unsuccessfully. “I tried to make one version out of my mother’s tabletop which did not go down very well.”

By the age of 15, he was able to buy his own guitar and started teaching himself. He also took lessons from the sister of guitarist Davey Graham, and in a few months was performing in folk clubs around Edinburgh.

“I was pretty fast on the uptake,” he allows.

“When I was 16, I started doing the teaching.”

By 1963, he had moved to London and became a professional, playing around the various clubs. A home recording on a reel-to-reel tape was sold to Transatlantic Records for £100 and they produced his first album in 1965, simply titled Bert Jansch.

Two years later, he helped found Pentangle with John Renbourne. “It was John who came up with the name as there were five people in the band. The pentangle was also a good luck symbol, and in the old days knights would have it inside their shields to protect themselves.”

The band lasted until 1973 and split up. “In 1980, the original band reformed but the band began to disintegrate from that point. John decided – and it was on the cards, anyway – that he was going to leave to study medieval music. The band kept changing until there was only Jacqui and myself left from the original and, when I left, Jacqui continued with four new members as Jacqui McShee’s Pentangle.”

Jansch, as with Renbourne, has had a high-flying career as a soloist but he loves playing with others. As for memories of Liverpool, there was one he did not really want to reveal. Pushed, he reports: “It was in the early days, around 1972. We had our guitars stolen, mine and John’s. They were taken from the back of the van and it was the roadies’ fault, really. But as we did not have any spares at that time, we had to cancel the next show.

“But we have done the Philharmonic Hall a few times and it has always been good there.”

He’s delighted to be back playing with the band. “The tour will be a see-how-it-goes sort of approach and if it goes well, we’ll see. So far it’s going great, everyone’s happy and rehearsals are going well.”

The band intends to play the early repertoire on the tour. But what does Jansch think of the oft-quoted advice about never returning to former triumphs? “Nonsense!” he replied immediately. “That is as long as you are not trying to recreate that whole thing of the past. This IS nostalgia, but done in 2008.”

There seemed no doubt that the band would get back together because they have known each other so long. “We didn't even need to ask,” he says.

Oh, and by the way, he has his own description of the band’s music: “I call it a progressive jazz-folk band.”

* PENTANGLE at the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, on Monday, July 14. Tickets range £25-£33.50. 0151 709 3789.

philkey@dailypost.co.uk