We/Or/Me

Bert Jansch: A Tribute

I first heard the music of Bert Jansch on a tape given to me long before we entered the digital age. It was a tape of the much-fabled home recordings of Nick Drake—an artist who died young and performed so few times that his life seems almost completely undocumented apart from the records he made. The home recordings were an exciting find, and I listened to that tape with a reverence and awe that seems to have disappeared with the tide of unlimited access that the internet offers. It was a window into the world of an artist who seemed to come out of nowhere, an ethereal voice in the darkness so far removed from the earthy rumblings of his peers, so delicate, so haunting; too perfect to be real. But here was a map of clues. Half of what you heard on those recordings was the tape hiss—almost as loud as the music itself. The other half was Nick and his guitar alone in his bedroom, playing songs off of the records he had been listening to. There were old blues songs and folk songs, some by well-known artists like Bob Dylan, others assumed to be traditional tunes. There were two songs on there with the name “Jansch” in parentheses. They were beautiful and intricate but so was everything else when in the hands of Nick Drake, so it was hard to know what the originals might sound like. I looked around some record shops and found a few CDs by a “Bert Jansch,” but didn’t have any money and didn’t really want to take a chance on something I wasn’t sure I’d listen to.

            Sometime later I remember reading something about a Bert Jansch who had so inspired the guitar playing of Jimmy Page, that Page was accused of stealing a composition from him and actually lost a court battle with him at the height of Led Zeppelin’s fame. Surely this wasn’t the same guy who wrote the quiet songs that Nick Drake covered. They were so understated and melancholy—the opposite of what I would associate with Page and Led Zeppelin. I assumed I was remembering the name wrong, and forgot about it.

            Many years passed, and the tape collected dust for lack of a cassette player and the onslaught of digital music that was everywhere available. In 2005 I was in a cinema watching a film called The Squid and the Whale, and a familiar song drifted into the room during some poignant scene or other (I remember little else about the film now). My mind immediately started searching for a reference to what I was hearing. The voice sounded familiar but not someone I knew. Then it hit me—it was one of those songs Nick Drake covered on that tape. As soon as I got home I looked into it all on google. Bert Jansch was the guy who wrote those melancholy songs. He was also the guy that sued Led Zeppelin. Further reading indicated that Jansch was one of the most unsung musical heroes of our time. There are various obituaries and tributes floating around now that will explain a bit about how Jansch changed the way people approached the acoustic guitar, how he took the modal tunings invented by his friend Davey Graham after a trip to Morocco and incorporated them into his writing in ways no one had thought of, how he took elements of the American blues finger style players and merged them with elements of the traditional folk ballads of the British Isles, how just about everyone who picks up an acoustic guitar and writes songs is influenced by Bert Jansch whether they are aware of it or not. What is truly incredible is that despite the impact he had, he was playing in small bars and pubs up until his final days.

            I had the extreme pleasure of seeing him last year in Chicago. The thing that shone through even more than his dazzling guitar playing was his total unassuming humility. He was soft spoken, grateful for an audience, and devoted all of his between-song-banter to the praise of other musicians he revered. The audience was small but reverent. I didn’t know he was sick and that this would be his last tour. I don’t understand enough about music to really know how or why Jansch had the influence he had. But one thing that strikes me is that so few virtuoso musicians use their gifts in such an understated, subtle way. Jansch wrote such quiet, unassuming music that he was destined to fly under the radar despite the wealth of talent and innovation. So many so-called “guitar heroes” seem intent on using their powers for evil, slathering songs with over-gratuitous solos that showcase their dexterity and technical prowess. Jansch seemed content to let his fingers dance underneath his weathered, unadorned, Scottish voice, his words often following the melody he was picking out on the guitar. He wasn’t interested in impressing anyone, but simply interested in making something real and sincere.

            He died on Wednesday at the age of sixty-seven, the same day that Steve Jobs died. It seems apt that even his death was overshadowed by that of a far more visible genius. Jobs might have changed the way we listen to and consume music but Jansch forever changed the way we play it. If you ever come across his first record, pick it up. Listen to it. He made it when he was 22 years old with a single microphone in someone else’s kitchen with someone else’s guitar and sold it to a record label for 100 pounds. Jimmy Page would later admit to being obsessed with him, Neil Young would describe him as the Jimmi Hendrix of the acoustic guitar, and hordes of young folkies of another generation would do everything they could to emulate his playing style.

I recorded this very rough, simple version of Jansch’s song “Running from Home” a few years ago for a covers record I made for Yer Bird Record’s now defunct Aviary subscription service. Give it a listen if you’re interested, but more importantly, seek out his music and listen to him.