Dazzling Stranger by Colin Harper

Author:Colin Harper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2000-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

8

Rosemary Lane

‘Pentangle is at a standstill at the moment,’ said Bert, surveying his career at the end of 1970. The interview, conducted during the course of a marathon drinking session around the pubs of Soho with Sounds writer Jerry Gilbert, was the most comprehensive Bert had given to date. Aside from exploring the detail of his long ascendancy, Bert was open in acknowledging that the Pentangle were at last experiencing artistic differences: ‘I think the problem is that the group has been working for such a long time that it finds it hard to get together to produce something that’s of value to everyone in the group,’ he offered. ‘I don’t want Pentangle to split up but it must be a lot free-er in what it does; I’d like the original concept of the band to remain there. In doing the Horseshoe I think we all got the satisfaction we wanted and I think we’re missing that at the moment. We ran the club and we had the freedom of playing together or not at all. I mean, if we just wanted to get drunk and fall about then we could do so. After that came the serious thought that we could maybe take the whole thing a stage further.’

The ‘whole thing’ had in fact been taken almost as far as any pop, jazz, folk or rock group could ever expect to get. With the release of their long-fêted first album and single in May 1968 the Pentangle’s profile had mushroomed virtually overnight. ‘I did like that first album,’ says Pete Townshend. ‘There was something fresh and innovative about it, although the Pentangle never really engaged me as such. But I was amazed with their success, which as far as I could see was instant. They seemed to be playing the Royal Albert Hall almost immediately.’ Certainly, the Pentangle were doing something new and exciting, but equally in Jo Lustig they had a manager who was the best PR operator in the business.

In 1968 alone Lustig secured for his group at least eleven BBC Radio 1 sessions and at least eight television appearances. The potential appeal of an act that was pigeon-holeable nowhere but could squeeze in pretty much anywhere made them at once more saleable and simultaneously more exotic as a ‘product’. They could move seamlessly from college gigs and Edinburgh Fringe residencies to folk festivals, jazz festivals, the biggest and most unforgiving rock festivals of the day, stylised set-ups in country churches, cathedrals and casinos, and major auditoriums such as Carnegie Hall or the Paris Olympia. If coverage on the airwaves was impressive, in print it was relentless: this was a group, like the Beatles, whose members were all distinct individuals and all capable of providing good copy.

But by the summer of 1970 Bert’s life of being endlessly whisked around the world with a bunch of colourful characters had lost its novelty. The boredom of travelling, the arguments, the pressure and the intake of alcohol that had become daily routine were no longer being adequately compensated for by the music.

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