Jump to content
Gibson Brands Forums

John Renbourn, founder of Pentangle has passed away


jaxson50

Recommended Posts

Ah, that's a shame.

I was fortunate enough to see him performing in concert with Stefan Grossman 30-odd years ago and it was astonishing to see the interaction between the pair. Telepathic.

 

RIP and thanks for the music.

 

P.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

John Renbourn was the real thing.

 

'Folk' guitar in the UK really started in the late 50s and early 60s. Davey Graham - famous for the tune 'Angie' - mixed blues and jazz influences, while John Renbourn and Bert Jansch also found influences and inspiration in medieval, 'folk' and 'early' musics. The album 'Bert and John' is an early collaboration. Arguably these 2 did for acoustic steel-string guitar what Julian Bream and John Williams did for classical guitar.

 

This stuff - complex rearrangements of centuries-old music - had not been done this way before on acoustic guitars. The most well-known London folk club was called 'Les Cousins', probably roughly equivalent to the Gaslight or one of the Greenwich Village places in N.Y. during the early '60s, and it was a springboard for many careers. Jansch and Renbourn both signed to the Transatlantic label, made solo records and eventually formed Pentangle, a folk 'supergroup' in which they were joined by Jacqui McShee (vocals), Danny Thompson (acoustic bass) and Terry Cox (drums). There were no electric guitars and their music did not purport to be 'folk-rock', however it was certainly progressive and used complex and compound time signatures as much as any recording by (for example) King Crimson or Yes. The album 'Basket Of Light' is well-titled and contains the deceptively tricky "Light Flight" which became a TV series theme tune ("Take Three Girls").

 

I was fortunate enough to see Pentangle in 1970, and Renbourn with McShee many years later at a local folk club. He was a hell of a guitar player, who knew his tunings - though he was not a DADGAD guy - and had a deep knowledge of early and Elizabethan music from England, Ireland and Scotland. His albums are mostly straightforward; no-frills recordings, beautiful acoustic guitar music which sounds easy but is not. In later life he studied classical guitar and passed his knowledge, experience and skills on via teaching. The original Pentangle briefly reformed in 2008 and 2011.

 

People like him....we take them far too much for granted as they are part of our lives. I am thinking about when I was 13, 14, 15 with everything ahead of me, when I was beginning to find out about all these different types of music, guitars and live concerts.

A fantastic, fantastic time now long gone.

 

I think too of Danny Thompson, who seems to have lost nearly all of his musical soulmates in the last decade.

 

R.I.P. John Renbourn, guitarist and master musician.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is spot on:" John Renbourn was the real thing. This stuff - complex rearrangements of centuries-old music - had not been done this way before on acoustic guitars." Amazing range when you think about it. American blues, Celtics airs, old ballads, hymns, R&B (sweet potato), originals, and a bit of jazz. Unclassifiable. Unless you have a class for "good music."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...