Pentangle

Pentangle are a British folk rock band, formed in London in 1967. The original band was active in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and a later version has been active since the early 1980s. The original line-up, which was unchanged throughout the band's first incarnation (1967–1973), was Jacqui McShee (vocals); John Renbourn (vocals and guitar); Bert Jansch (vocals and guitar); Danny Thompson (double bass); and Terry Cox (drums).

The name Pentangle was chosen to represent the five members of the band. It was also the device on Sir Gawain's shield in the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which held a fascination for Renbourn.

In 2007, the original members of the band were reunited to receive a Lifetime Achievement award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and to record a short concert that was broadcast on BBC radio. The following June, all five original members began a twelve-date UK tour.

History

Formation

The original group formed in 1967. Renbourn and Jansch, who shared a house in London in St John's Wood, were already musicians on the British folk scene, with several solo albums each and a duet LP, Bert and John.

Jacqui McShee had begun as an unpaid floor singer in several London folk clubs. By 1965 she was running a folk club at the Red Lion in Sutton, Surrey, and established a friendship with Jansch and Renbourn when they played there. She sang on Renbourn's Another Monday album and performed with him as a duo, debuting at Les Cousins club in August 1966.

Thompson and Cox were jazz musicians and had played together in Alexis Korner's band. By 1966, they were both part of Duffy Power's Nucleus, a band which also included John McLaughlin on electric guitar. Thompson was known to Renbourn through appearances at Les Cousins and from having worked with him on a project for television.

In 1967, the Scottish entrepreneur Bruce Dunnet, who had recently organised a tour for Jansch, set up a Sunday night club for Jansch and Renbourn at the now defunct Horseshoe Hotel in Tottenham Court Road, London. McShee began joining them as a vocalist, and by March of that year, Thompson and Cox were being billed as part of the band. Renbourn claims to have been the catalyst that brought the band together, although he credits Jansch with the idea of getting the band to play in a regular place, "to knock it into shape".

While Pentangle was nominally a folk group, the individual members had wide musical tastes and influences. McShee had a grounding in traditional music, Cox and Thompson a love of jazz, Renbourn a growing interest in early music, and Jansch a taste for blues and contemporary performers such as Bob Dylan.

Commercial success

Pentangle's first public concert was a sell-out performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 27 May 1967. Later that year they undertook a short tour of Denmark, in which they were disastrously billed as a rock'n'roll band, and a short UK tour organised by Nathan Joseph of Transatlantic Records. By this stage, their association with Bruce Dunnett had ended, and early in 1968 they acquired a new manager, Jo Lustig. Under his influence, they graduated from performing in clubs to appearing in concert halls, and from then on, as Colin Harper put it, "the ramshackle, happy-go-lucky progress of the Pentangle was going to be a streamlined machine of purpose and efficiency".

Pentangle signed with Transatlantic Records and their self-named debut LP was released in May 1968. This all-acoustic album was produced by Shel Talmy, who claimed to have used an innovative approach to recording acoustic guitars in order to achieve a bright, bell-like sound. On 29 June of that year, the band performed at London's Royal Festival Hall, and recordings from that concert formed part of their second album, Sweet Child (released in November 1968), a double LP comprising live and studio recordings.

Basket of Light, which followed in mid-1969, was their greatest commercial success, thanks to a surprise hit single, "Light Flight", which became popular when it was used as theme music for a television series, Take Three Girls (the BBC's first drama series to be broadcast in colour, for which the band also provided incidental music). The album reached number five in the charts. By 1970, Pentangle were at the peak of their popularity. They recorded a soundtrack for the film Tam Lin, made at least 12 television appearances, and undertook tours of the UK, including the Isle of Wight Festival, and America, including a concert at the Carnegie Hall. Their fourth album, Cruel Sister, released in October 1970, was an album of traditional songs that included a nearly 19-minute-long version of "Jack Orion", a song that Jansch and Renbourn had recorded previously as a duo. Cruel Sister was a commercial disaster and reached only number 51 in the charts.