Salut! Live

Your mother stands a-crying As to the earth your body's slowly cast

Your father stands in silence Caressing every fond dream of the past

Those are the heartbreaking lines from Bert Jansch that should but won't put young people off drugs.

He wasn't much of a drug-taker, Bert. By all accounts I have seen, he might smoke spliffs but his main downfall was alcohol.

I am sure the great bassist Danny Thompson, his fellow Pentangle member, was exaggerating when he described Jansch as a "26 pints a day man" but he obviously drank heavily. He gave up alcohol some years before his untimely death at 67. 

But it is easy to forget that during the late 60s, and into the next decade, there seemed something cool about the drug scene. I have vivid memories of Junkie Jim, the son of an approved school teacher, a super-hip guitarist who would give the impression of being permanently stoned. The jury never came back with a verdict on whether Jim's demeanour was genuinely that of a druggie rather than a good impersonator who cherished his reputation. 

At the time, it all did seem cool even if the phenomenon largely passed me by. I had one dismal experience of smoking pot, having previously been fooled into thinking cinnamon pressed into my hand by a mischievous friend was also weed, but that's as far as it went.

A song such as Needle of Death, with it’s harrowing lyrics set to a haunting melody, was a necessary riposte to that impression of right-on drugs consumption. It reminded us of the drift from fleeting enjoyment to a grim early death. Or if not that, drawn into habit-funding criminality and the likelihood of crushing jail sentences commonplace in the wretched incarceration culture of the US and increasingly Britain.

Together with an expert version of the Davy Graham guitar classic, Angie, Needle of Death is the piece that comes most readily to mind when considering Jansch’s prolific output. Neil Young was engrossed by the song and also became associated with it. 

His was a sensational talent and I have no doubt that Martin Simpson, Jacqui McShee, Robert Plant, Bernard Butler and others performing at the 80th birthday memorial concert on London’s South Bank this Saturday will do his memory proud.

If you can make it to the concert, this is the link: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/gigs/80th-birthday-concert-bert-jansch?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI_YnGodidggMVGuztCh0_2ACeEAAYASAAEgKEfvD_BwE