antONY Green talks to
bert jaNSch
On Oxford’s Cowley Road
we’re used to pretending not to notice popstars,
be they local - i.e. members of Radiohead – or
any of the numerous acts that pass through to play at
either of the strip’s two high profile venues:
the Point and the Zodiac. Ironic then that one of the
most influential musicians of the past thirty years
can stroll around genuinely unnoticed, and
probably unheard of too, by our surveillant clique.
The musician in question is
folk troubadour and innovator Bert Jansch who was in
town recently to do a gig at the Zodiac club, where I
was lucky enough to catch up with him post-soundcheck
(a reassuringly simple affair: guitar level; voice
level; beer) to ask him a few questions, but not
before an extensive name-dropping,
rock’n’roll, Maahn, chat with Bert’s
occasional onstage partner, the aptly named Johnny
Guitar, as we awaited his arrival.
Bert himself seems free of any
such affectations and is so mild that I can hardly
hear what I record of him. His adult life has
consisted of almost continual touring but he admits
to having ‘slowed down quite a bit’ so that
his live career now is ‘more of an ongoing thing
where there’s two gigs a week, and it’s
been like that for the past two years. It’s not
touring, as such.’ Possibly this is down to his
imminent marriage, for as he is keen to point out,
‘in the early days it was like going away for
six months at a time and that’s certainly no
good for any kind of relationship.’
For anyone who’s not
lived their life on the road, two gigs a week still
seems like quite a few so I was curious as to
Bert’s sets: are they tailored to his mood each
night or are they more concrete?
‘I tend to introduce
numbers – new ones – every month or so to
try them out. But there are definite standbys that I
always seem to play: most of the old ones like Davy
Graham’s Anji or Strolling Down the Highway, but
I’ll always put new stuff in.’
An inclination towards
constant reworking and inclusion of new ideas seems
typical of Bert’s career. He started out in
Edinburgh where his first influences were
‘Brownie McGhee, Leadbelly, Big Bill Broonzy, a
little bit of Woody Guthrie’ as well as the now
famous traditional folk scene the city had in the
mid- to late-fifties.He even spent a while living
with a fledgling Incredible String Band, but is
modest about their subsequent (respective)
boundary-stretching careers:
‘I don’t think we
were conscious of it at all. We just wanted to play,
basically. And players we met just sort of guided
what we played. It wasn’t a conscious ‘ah,
we’re going to create this.’’
It was around then that Bert
started to write his own songs, an act he admits was
‘unheard of at the time’ and would later
lead to many comparisons with Dylan when we were in
need of a home-grown equivalent. He is equally humble
regarding this peerless move claiming he ‘just
followed the examples of the folk who I was around at
the time. There was a lot of traditional singing and
we had visiting blues guys [such as] Brownie
McGhee.’
A relocation to London in the
early sixties certainly found him fame, but at what
cost? He famously sold the rights to ‘Bert
Jansch’ his first, and to date his most
enduring, album for £100. Although this must have
been a vital kick-start for his career, does he long
for more control and reward from the record?
‘At the time there was a
lot of players around that couldn’t get deals
and the only deals were what was put on a plate. At
the time you didn’t question or think about it,
y’know, it’s only in hindsight you’d
probably have stuck out for a better deal.’
As for lack of royalties, his
third album, Jack Orion, was exploited in a different
way: as the inspiration and basis for a lot of Led
Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page’s finest work.
Similarly, Neil Young drew heavily on the Bert Jansch
back-catalogue for two of his songs, Ambulance Blues
and The Needle and the Damage Done (both after Needle
of Death). Does Bert mind this kind of homage or
would he prefer people to spend more time listening
to his original recordings?
‘It’s hard to say
because I don’t know how I’d fare with the
type of audiences they have themselves,
actually.’
But given the similarities
between say, your Black Water Side and Led
Zeppelin’s Black Mountain Side..
‘Yeah, but that’s
always been an issue, as it were. It doesn’t
bother me too much at all, it’s not a thing I
dwell on ever, y’know? I mean Jimmy still
comes to the odd gig…can’t say Neil Young
does [laughs].’
I remind him of a Neil Young
quote about being made to feel a ‘dickhead’
for turning up to a Pentangle gig in a limo.
‘Well, he…he’s just American,’
proffers Bert, chuckling. Whilst he seems so keen to
talk freely about these legendary pilferers I suggest
that maybe Page’s plagiaristic approach was not,
as I had suspected a continuation of his yen to
exploit anything out of copyright (Bert didn’t
claim authorship for the traditional tunes that make
up Jack Orion) but more of a friendly thing.
‘Well, I don’t know how friendly that
is’, replies Bert with a slightly knowing
laugh,’it just doesn’t really bother me, it
was so long ago.’
Whether time has really made
Bert so forgiving or whether he has always been so
laid back I can only speculate, but I get the feeling
that he’s not unhappy with his lot, enjoying the
mystique afforded him by his continued
‘cult’ status, and finding reassurance in
the fact that at his gigs, ‘the front rows are
generally guitar players but then again I still have
the old generation that make up the majority of my
audience, and who aren’t necessarily guitar
players. They’ll always come to my gigs. They
bring their children as well.’
Undoubtedly a big part of
Bert’s originality is his repeated inclusion on
albums of instrumental work (indeed Avocet was
entirely non-vocal), with such pieces as the
afore-mentioned Anji and Black Water Side becoming
signature or trademark tunes. Bert admits that they
draw ‘heavily from traditional music,’ but
is cavalier about their significance suggesting that
‘on stage you get a bit bored with singing songs
and I like to give the audience something where they
don’t have to think about words. They can just
listen to the sound of the guitar.’ To add to
the infuriation of any bedroom guitarists who’ve
spent years trying to decipher the tunings, picking
patterns, etc. of those famously challenging pieces,
he is again casual as to the required dexterity,
telling me,’they’re quite easy to do, just
off the cuff things.’
It will be interesting to hear
the outcome of Bert’s recent collaborations with
famously ‘difficult’ virtuoso Bernard
Butler and to see how his cuffs stood up to
his elder’s relaxed noodlings. ‘I
haven’t got time to sit down and listen to
people’s albums but I like to play with other
guitar players,’ says Bert, ‘But I’ve
always got to meet the person first before I take an
interest in them.’ An unlikely partnership
perhaps, but one to look out for – perhaps even
at the Zodiac. In fact it occurred to me that two of
Bert’s most noted collaborators (the
afore-mentioned Incredible String Band’s Robyn
Williamson and ex-Pentangle member John Renbourn)
would, along with Bert, all have played at the same
venue, independently of each other, within a period
of about four weeks. Do him and John ever coincide?
‘No, no, no. He lives way
up in Scotland. I live in London,’ comes the
somewhat cagey reply, and as my head fills with
related questions he reminds me that ‘a little
break before the show,’ is required (the show
itself is not bad, but maybe not as good as last
year’s: Bert does seem tested by the
instrumentals tonight and the necessity of Johnny
Guitar’s soulless soloing is questionable) and I
follow him out through the double doors back on to
the Cowley Road where obscurity welcomes me back to
its fold and is happy to have him as a guest for a
while.