Herbert Jansch (3 November 1943 – 5 October 2011) was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s as an acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter. He recorded more than 28 albums and toured extensively from the 1960s to the 21st century.
Jansch was a leading figure in the 1960s British folk revival, touring folk clubs and recording several solo albums, as well as collaborating with other musicians such as John Renbourn and Anne Briggs. In 1968, he co-founded the band Pentangle, touring and recording with them until their break-up in 1972. He then took a few years' break from music, returning in the late 1970s to work on a series of projects with other musicians. He joined a reformed Pentangle in the early 1980s and remained with them as they evolved through various changes of personnel until 1995. Until his death, Jansch continued to work as a solo artist.
Jansch's work influenced a number of artists, especially Jimmy Page, Mike Oldfield, Paul Simon, Pete Hawkes, Nick Drake, Donovan, Neil Young, and Johnny Marr. He received two Lifetime Achievement Awards at the BBC Folk Awards: one, in 2001, for his solo achievements and the other, in 2007, as a member of Pentangle.
Herbert Jansch was born at Stobhill Hospital in the Springburn district of Glasgow, on 3 November 1943, the descendant of a family originally from Hamburg, Germany, who settled in Scotland during the Victorian era. The family name is pronounced yansh in German, although Jansch himself, like several other members of his family, pronounced it jansh.
Jansch was brought up in the residential area of Edinburgh known as West Pilton, where he attended Pennywell Primary School and Ainslie Park Secondary School. As a teenager, he acquired a guitar and started visiting a local folk club ("The Howff") run by Roy Guest. There, he met Archie Fisher and Jill Doyle (Davey Graham's half-sister), who introduced him to the music of Big Bill Broonzy, Pete Seeger, Brownie McGhee and Woody Guthrie. He also met and shared a flat with Robin Williamson, who remained a friend when Jansch later moved to London.
After leaving school, Jansch took a job as a nurseryman then, in August 1960, he gave this up, intending to become a full-time musician. He appointed himself as an unofficial caretaker at The Howff and, as well as sleeping there, he may have received some pay to supplement his income as a novice performer who did not own his own guitar. He spent the next two years playing one-night stands in British folk clubs. This was a musical apprenticeship that exposed him to a range of influences, including Martin Carthy and Ian Campbell, but especially Anne Briggs, from whom he learned some of the songs (such as "Blackwaterside" and "Reynardine") that would later feature strongly in his recording career.
Jansch travelled around Europe and beyond between 1963 and 1965, hitch-hiking from place to place, living on earnings from busking and casual musical performances in bars and cafes. In Scotland he became involved with Licorice McKechnie, who was a teenager at the time. A marriage was planned and the banns were published, but the wedding never took place. Jansch left her behind to travel to Morocco in 1963, and she took up with Robin Williamson of the Incredible String Band. Before leaving Glasgow, Jansch married a 16-year-old girl, Lynda Campbell. It was a marriage of convenience which allowed her to travel with him, as she was too young to have her own passport. They split up after a few months, and Jansch was eventually repatriated to Britain after catching dysentery in Tangiers.
Jansch moved to London. There, in 1963, at the invitation of Bob Wilson – a Staffordshire folksinger who was also an art student at St Martin's School of Art – he was asked to take over as resident singer at Bunjies on Litchfield Street with Charles Pearce, another art student. They remained in that situation for a year before Pearce moved to South London to run several clubs south of the Thames. There was a burgeoning interest in folk music throughout London by then. There, he met the engineer and producer Bill Leader, at whose home they made a recording of Jansch's music on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Leader sold the tape for £100 to Transatlantic Records, who produced an album directly from it. The album Bert Jansch was released in 1965, and went on to sell 150,000 copies. It included Jansch's protest song "Do You Hear Me Now", which was brought to the attention of the pop music mainstream later that year by the singer Donovan, who covered it on his The Universal Soldier EP, which reached No. 1 in the UK EP chart and No. 27 in the singles chart. Pearce disappeared from Jansch's life after arranging for him to be one of the artists in the Liberal International concert, "Master of the Guitar" at the Royal Festival Hall in 1968. Also included on Jansch's first album was his song "Needle of Death", a stark anti-drugs lament written after a friend died of a heroin overdose.
In his early career, Jansch was sometimes characterized as a British Bob Dylan. During this period, Jansch stated that his musical influences were few: "the only three people that I've ever copied were Big Bill Broonzy, Davy Graham and Archie Fisher." Jansch followed his first album with two more, produced in quick succession: It Don't Bother Me and Jack Orion, which contained his first recording of "Blackwaterside", later to be taken up by Jimmy Page and recorded by Led Zeppelin as "Black Mountain Side". Jansch said, "The accompaniment was nicked by a well-known member of one of the most famous rock bands, who used it, unchanged, on one of their records." Transatlantic took legal advice about the alleged copyright infringement, and was advised that there was "a distinct possibility that Bert might win an action against Page." Ultimately, Transatlantic was dubious about the costs involved in taking on Led Zeppelin in the courts, and half the costs would have had to be paid by Jansch personally, which he simply could not afford, so the case was never pursued. The arrangement and recording of Jack Orion was greatly influenced by Jansch's friend, singer Anne Briggs.
In London, Jansch met other innovative acoustic guitar players, including John Renbourn, with whom he shared a flat in Kilburn, Davy Graham, Wizz Jones, Roy Harper and Paul Simon. They would all meet and play in various London music clubs, including the Troubadour in Old Brompton Road, and Les Cousins club in Greek Street, Soho. Renbourn and Jansch frequently played together, developing their own intricate interplay between the two guitars, often referred to as "Folk baroque".
In 1966, they recorded the Bert and John album together, featuring much of this material. Late in 1967, they tired of the all-nighters at Les Cousins and became the resident musicians at a music venue set up by Bruce Dunnet, a Scottish entrepreneur, at the Horseshoe pub (now defunct), at 264–267 Tottenham Court Road. This became the haunt of a number of musicians, including the singer Sandy Denny. Another singer, Jacqui McShee, began performing with the two guitarists and, with the addition of Danny Thompson (string bass) and Terry Cox (drums), they formed the group Pentangle. The venue evolved into a jazz club, but by then the group had moved on.
On 19 October 1968, Jansch married Heather Sewell. At the time, she was an art student and had been the girlfriend of Roy Harper. She inspired several of Jansch's songs and instrumentals, the most obvious being "Miss Heather Rosemary Sewell" from his 1968 album Birthday Blues, but Jansch says that, despite the name, "M'Lady Nancy" from the 1971 Rosemary Lane album was also written for her. As Heather Jansch, she became known for her sculptures.
Pentangle's first major concert was at the Royal Festival Hall in 1967, and their first album, The Pentangle, was released in the following year. Pentangle embarked on a demanding schedule of touring the world and recording and, during this period, Jansch largely gave up solo performances. He did, however, continue to record, releasing Rosemary Lane in 1971. The tracks for this album were recorded on a portable tape recorder by Bill Leader at Jansch's cottage in Ticehurst, Sussex—a process which took several months, with Jansch only working when he was in the right mood.