Music Review: Bert Jansch, Heartbreak

By Cait Brennan

Trying to name the greatest guitarist of all time is a fool’s errand. One, because it would be impossible to choose a single player from a slate of candidates as diverse as Django Reinhardt, Andres Segovia, Jimmy Page, Lindsey Buckingham, Prince, Richard Thompson, Mick Ronson, George Harrison, Ron Asheton, Don Rich, Brian May, Frank Zappa, etc, ad infinitum. And two, because the answer is Bert Jansch.

Fine, reasonable souls may disagree, but from his stunning masterpiece of a debut in 1965, Jansch blazed a staggeringly original trail through an eclectic mix of folk, jazz, blues, rock, and even African, medieval, renaissance, and baroque music. Whether solo or with his band Pentangle, his highly distinctive playing and his warm, earthy vocals made him a major influence on everybody from Jimmy Page, Neil Young, Nick Drake, Donovan and Mike Oldfield to Paul Simon, Johnny Marr, Graham Coxon, Bernard Butler, and so many more. Bert died in 2011, doing what he did best till the very end.

Any opportunity to hear any Bert Jansch music is cause for a celebration, and to hear “new” long-lost Jansch music doubly so. So we must yet again give thanks for those hale and hearty souls at Omnivore Recordings, who have reissued Jansch’s rare and long out of print 1982 album Heartbreak, a record whose history (detailed in the liner notes) is as unique as anything in the Jansch catalog.

Brothers John and Richard Chelew were big fans of Jansch, and circa ’81 the pair were in a Santa Monica bar conversing with British folk legend (and Jansch’s close friend) Ralph McTell. The brothers were expounding on how they felt Jansch deserved better support and production values than he was getting, and McTell finally encouraged them to take matters into their own hands. The pair had never produced a record, though they had known Jansch for years, and John had been a volunteer at Santa Monica’s famous McCabe’s Guitar Shop (and, later, one of its most successful and influential bookers). Fueled by passion, inspiration and a healthy dose of idealism, John and Rick borrowed funds from their mother, made a lot of transatlantic telephone calls and set out to make their very own Bert Jansch record.

The shy, taciturn, occasionally tetchy Jansch had always been a heavy drinker, a condition not uncommon in the British folk tradition, and by the early ’80s he was in a most difficult state. McTell gave the brothers pointers on getting the best performance out of Jansch (sessions from noon to six, no guests, no liquor until the end of the day, be prepared for improvisation, etc.), and, with the unflagging support of the Chelews, Bert got down to work.

Recorded in just five days, the Chelew brothers’ labor of love produced one of Jansch’s finest mid-career albums. The record opens with a new version of the traditional “Blackwater Side,” a fresh and lively updating that remains essentially faithful to Jansch’s definitive original version (from his 1966 album Jack Orion, an arrangement so powerful that Jimmy Page was apparently compelled by the faeries to appropriate it almost note for note without giving Jansch any credit whatsoever, on Led Zeppelin II‘s ever-so-slightly-renamed “Black Mountain Side.” Page did, however, remember to give himself credit for “writing” a centuries-old folk song. Classic Zeppelin move there. Did you know they wrote Rebecca Black’s “Friday”? Just give Zep time and a sharpie.).

Rick and John Chelew clearly had a great love and appreciation for Jansch’s unique melodies and progressions and a deft touch as producers. They built an amazingly supportive framework around what Bert did best, embellishing Jansch’s work with an unobtrusive full-band, maintaining the essence of what made Jansch great.

Jansch puts his always-original stamp on the album’s traditional folk classics and contributes gorgeous introspective originals like “Sit Down Beside Me,” “Up To The Stars,” “Give Me The Time,” and “Is It Real?” The jazz-influenced set comes to life with players like Albert Lee (a veteran sideman for Eric Clapton and Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band, here on guitars and mandolin), Randy Tico on bass, and Matt Betton (T-Bone Burnett, Jimmy Buffett) and Jack Kelly on drums. The always-terrific Jennifer Warnes contributes a lovely vocal on the traditional “Wild Mountain Thyme.” There’s even a lively, bluesy, inventive cover of Elvis’s “Heartbreak Hotel.”

During the sessions, Jansch played a number of sets around the southland, including a session at McCabe’s. Rick Chelew did posterity yet another solid by recording that show, and Heartbreak is accompanied by a bonus disc of that never-before-released performance. It’s the perfect companion piece to Heartbreak’s band songs, a beautiful night with Jansch on his own, just his voice and a guitar and the songs. Among the many gems are the traditional Irish folk ballad “Curragh Of Kildare,” Jansch’s classic interpretations of “Blackwater Slide” and Ewan MacColl’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” and a tender performance of Jansch’s own “I Am Lonely.”

By 1987, faced with a serious health crisis, Jansch quit drinking and soon experienced a significant career revival. The ’90s and early 2000s brought him a wave of accolades, a steady stream of concerts and collaboration with a new generation of artists like Bernard Butler, Beth Orton, and Devendra Banhart. John Chelew later went on to become one of McCabe’s most successful and influential bookers, and produced great albums by John Hiatt (1987’s career-defining Bring the Family), Richard Thompson (The Old Kit Bag), Paul Weller (Under The Influence), and three Grammy award-winning albums for The Blind Boys of Alabama, among many others. A musician in his own right, Rick Chelew is a busy sound mixer and recordist, and a member of the Cajun-influenced R&B combo the Cachagua Playboys.

Fueled by the Chelew brothers’ passion, a great band, and his own unparalleled musical brilliance, Heartbreak stands as one of Bert Jansch’s strongest works, and essential listening for his fans. Give it a listen and you’ll soon be one of them.

Heartbreak was reissued by Omnivore Recordings on November 6 and is available to order directly from the label’s website.