Formation

The original group formed in 1967. Renbourn and Jansch, who shared a house in St John's Wood,^[2] were already popular musicians on the British folk scene, with several solo albums each and a duet LP, Bert and John. Their use of complex, interdependent guitar parts, a style referred to as "folk baroque", became a distinctive characteristic of their music.

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.^[3]

Thompson and Cox were known as 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.^[4]

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.^[5] 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".^[6]

While Pentangle was nominally a folk group, the individual members had wide musical tastes and influences. McShee had 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 in Amsterdam, 1969

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".^[7]

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.^[8] 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).^[9] The album reached number five in the charts.^[10] 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.^[11] 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^[12] and failed to rise higher than number 51 in the charts.^[10]

Later years of original band

The band returned to a mix of traditional and original material on the album Reflection, recorded in March 1971. It was received without enthusiasm by the music press. By this time the strains of touring and of working together as a band were apparent. Bill Leader, who produced the album, said it seemed that each day a different member of the group decided they were leaving.^[13] Pentangle withdrew from Transatlantic in a bitter dispute regarding royalties, Transatlantic having apparently believed that they were within their contractual rights to withhold payments.^[14] Joseph pointed out that his company had covered all the costs entailed in making the albums.^[15] Jo Lustig, their manager, who had agreed to the Transatlantic contract, made it clear that their contract with him included a clause that they could not sue him "for anything under any circumstances."^[16] In order to make some money out of their work, Pentangle established their own music publishing company, Swiggeroux Music, in 1971.

The final album of the original lineup was Solomon's Seal, released by Warner Brothers/Reprise in 1972. Its release was accompanied by a UK tour in which Pentangle were supported by Wizz Jones and Clive Palmer's band COB. The last few dates of the tour had to be cancelled when Thompson became ill. On New Year's Day, 1973, Jansch left the band. "Pentangle Split" was the front-page headline of the first issue of Melody Maker of the year.^[17]

Subsequent incarnations

A reunion of the band was planned In the early 1980s, by which time, Jansch and Renbourn had re-established their solo careers, McShee had a young family, Thompson was mainly doing session work, and Cox was running a restaurant in Minorca. The re-formed Pentangle appeared at the 1982 Cambridge Folk Festival, but without a drummer, as Cox had broken his leg in a road accident. They completed a tour of Italy, Australia and some venues in Germany, with Cox initially performing in a wheelchair.^[18]

Renbourn left the band to pursue an ambition to study classical music and enrolled at Dartington College of Arts. There followed a series of replacement personnel: Mike Piggott replaced Renbourn in 1982, Nigel Portman Smith replaced Thompson in 1986 and Gerry Conway, who had worked with Fotheringay, Cat Stevens, Jethro Tull, Richard Thompson and John Martyn, replaced Cox in 1987. McShee and Jansch were the only members remaining from the original line-up. In 1989, Rod Clements of Lindisfarne briefly replaced Piggott, to be replaced by Peter Kirtley the following year. The line-up of Jansch, McShee, Portman Smith, Kirtley and Conway survived almost as long as the original Pentangle and recorded three albums: Think of Tomorrow, One More Road and Live 1994. They completed a final tour in March–April 1995, after which Jansch left to pursue solo work, including his residency at the 12 Bar Club in London's Denmark Street.^[19]

Jacqui McShee's Pentangle

In 1995 McShee formed a trio, with Conway on percussion and Spencer Cozens on keyboards. Their first album, About Thyme, featured Ralph McTell, Albert Lee, Mike Mainieri and John Martyn as guests. About Thyme was released on the band's own label, GJS (Gerry Jacqui Spencer), and reached the top of fRoots magazine's British folk chart. Saxophonist Jerry Underwood and bassist/guitarist Alan Thomson were added, and the band, with the agreement of the original members, was renamed Jacqui McShee's Pentangle. The first album of the new five-piece band, Passe Avant, was released on the Park Records label in 1998. A concert recorded in April 2000 at Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, was released by Park Records under the title At the Little Theatre.

Saxophonist Jerry Underwood died in 2002 and was replaced in 2004 by flautist/saxophonist Gary Foote.^[20] In 2005, the band released an album, Feoffees' Lands (a feoffee being a medieval term for a trustee), on the GJS label. The 2011 Live In Concert album, released on GJS Records, featured some of the band's best performances in the years between 1997 and 2011. The new 2002 line-up of Jacqui McShee's Pentangle continued to perform regularly in the UK.^[21]

Continued interest in the original band

The new incarnations and personnel changes took the band in various musical directions, but interest in the original Pentangle line-up continued and at least nineteen compilation albums were released between 1972 and 2016, such as The Time Has Come 1967 – 1973, a 4-CD collection of rarities, outtakes and live performances issued in 2007, with liner notes written by Colin Harper and Pete Paphides.

In 2004, the 1968–1972 Lost Broadcasts album was released. Jo Lustig's earlier influence had secured numerous radio appearances for the band, including at least eleven broadcasts by the BBC in 1968,^[22] and the album was a 2-CD compilation of tracks from these sessions, including a recording of "The Name of the Game", which was used by the BBC as a theme song for some of the Pentangle broadcasts but had never appeared before on record.

The original Pentangle line-up reformed in 2008 and appeared on the BBC TV music programme Later... with Jools Holland on 29 April 2008, performing "Let No Man Steal Your Thyme"; and on 2 May 2008, performing "Light Flight" and "I've Got a Feeling". They undertook a UK tour that year which included a performance at the Royal Festival Hall, where they had recorded their Sweet Child album forty years earlier, and headlined at the Green Man Festival in Wales in August. A live double-CD album Finale - An Evening with Pentangle, containing 21 songs recorded during the 2008 tour, was released by Topic Records in October 2016.^[23]

In 2011, the original Pentangle played several concerts, including RFH, Glastonbury and Cambridge. There were delays in performing together again because Jansch had throat cancer, but they were recording new material. Bert Jansch died of cancer on 5 October 2011, aged 67.^[24] John Renbourn was found dead at his home on 26 March 2015 after a suspected heart attack.^[25]

Film director, Ben Wheatley included Pentangle's song "Let No Man Steal Your Thyme" in the Netflix adaptation of Rebecca (2020 film).

Albums

Singles

• "Travellin' Song"/"Mirage" (1968) GB S BigT B1G109
• "Let No Man Steal Your Thyme"/"Way Behind The Sun" (1968) Reprise 0784
• "Once I Had a Sweetheart"/"I Saw an Angel" (1969) Transatlantic BIG124 UK No. 46
• "Light Flight"/"Cold Mountain" (1969) Transatlantic BIG128 UK No. 43 (UK No. 45—re-entry)
• "Play the Game"/"Saturday Movie" (1986) UK Making Waves SURF 107
• "Set Me Free"/"Come to Me Easy" (1986) UK Making Waves SURF 121^[34]

Compilations

• This is Pentangle (1971)
• History Book (1972)
• Pentangling (1973)
• The Pentangle Collection (1975)
• Anthology (1978)
• At Their Best (1983)
• Essential Vol 1 (1987)
• Essential Vol 2 (1987)
• Collection (1988)
• A Maid That's Deep in Love (1989)
• Early Classics (1992)
• Anniversary (1992)
• People on the Highway, 1968–1971 (1992)
• Light Flight (1997)
• The Pentangle Family (2000)
• Light Flight: The Anthology (2001)
• Pentangling: The Collection (2004)
• The Time Has Come (2007)
• The Albums (2017)
• Pentangling (2021) (Renaissance Records) (Vinyl Reissue)
• Basket Of Light (2021) (Renaissance Records) (Vinyl Reissue)

DVDs

• Pentangle: Captured Live (2003)
• Jacqui McShee: Pentangle in Concert (2007)
• Folk Rock Legends (Steeleye Span and Pentangle) (2003)