56. Bert Jansch - Bert Jansch (1965)

1. Strolling Down the Highway

2. Smokey River

3. Oh How Your Love Is Strong

4. I Have No Time*

5. Finches

6. Veronica

7. Needle of Death*

8. Do You Hear Me Now

9. Rambling's Gonna Be the Death of Me

10. Alice's Wonderland

11. Running from Home*

12. Courting Blues

13. Casbah

14. Dreams of Love

15. Angie

A

So I've noticed a pretty big mistake on the part of the editors of the Book. It turns out that for the year 1965, three albums that were released prior to Rubber Soul were listed after it. Now this wouldn't be that big a deal except that the current positioning makes it seem like Rubber Soul predates (and presumably influenced) the Byrds' Mr. Tambourine Man and Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. In fact both came out months before Rubber Soul, and really when you listen to that album with this knowledge in mind, it becomes obvious just how big an influence both works were on the Beatles. It's very frustrating, because exact dates of release aren't included in the Book, and so I have to trust it when I'm trying to contextualise the various albums and the influence they had on each other. In any case, it makes Rubber Soul seem even less impressive knowing that the Beatles were copping from Dylan and the Byrds, and not the other way round.

Anyway, on to Bert Jansch. Is it Yansch or Djansch? Most say the former but Bert himself said the later. So at least that's cleared up.

This is a pretty great album, anyway. Jansch is one of the most astonishing acoustic guitarists I've ever heard. Frequently it sounds like two or three guitars are playing at once. His style is also pretty amazing - a strange mix of British folk, American blues, jazz and classical, all mixed-up with the various influences he picked-up from spending the first half of the Sixties wandering Europe and North Africa. Neil Young, Nick Drake, Jimmy Page and Donovan all acknowledged him as a primary influence. And on top of that, he's also a fine singer and wrote most of the songs here - all very cryptic and impressionistic and mysterious, referencing nature and the affairs of the heart. Above all this is a pretty album - there's a dark beauty to all the songs that makes for a very strange and rewarding listen. 

Really, I'm very fond of this sort of music. During the 2000s, back when I used to listen to new music and was very passionate about the whole subject, there was a not-insignificant revival of interest in this sort of folk. The result is that I ended-up being exposed to wonderful bands like the Pentangle, the Fairport Convention, Anne Briggs and the Incredible String Band. And Bert Jansch (who was friends with Briggs and a member of Pentangle) is a lovely addition to the fold. This is a deceptively simple album - just a man and a guitar. But Jansch's approach to song writing and melody is something new, at least within the albums in the Book. His singing is odd - the melodies are all over the place stylistically, and there's virtually no recourse to standard folk or blues patterns. And his guitar is truly amazing - Neil Young once called him the Hendrix of the accoustic guitar. And covered the utterly heart-breaking "Needle of Death", easily the best song on this album and one of the best anti-heroin songs ever recorded (written about a friend who overdosed). If only all the people who set out to write about drugs did so with a quarter of the intelligence and perception of Bert Jansch in this song. I mean, what do you make of the lines:

"Through ages, man's desires

To free his mind, to release his very soul

Has proved to all who live

That death itself is freedom for evermore"

?

It really hits the nail on the head. True, most people who use heavy drugs will be all "Drugs are fun!" or some other simplistic and equally inadequate rationalisation, but when you get to know them they're usually just trying to kill the rational part of their mind and it rarely ends well. I don't want to drag out my BA, but Freud did highlight the death drive as one of the principal motivators in the human psyche.

Anyway I'm rambling, but then again this is my blog and no-one reads it so I can do what I like. For example:

There once was a man from Nantucket

Whose di- no, never mind

Anyway this is a great album and if you like folk or the acoustic guitar you should definitely buy it. Not that it would help Jansch's estate much - he sold the rights for £100, only for it to go on to sell over 100,000 copies.