Appreciation: Bert Jansch - Legendary folk musician touched the life of one shy, troubled Scottish teenager

I FIRST came across Bert in Edinburgh folk clubs. It was the early 1960s and us regulars in the Crown Bar took the presence of Bert, Robin Williamson, Davy Graham and Clive Palmer almost for granted. We knew they were great, but they were also ours – they belonged to Edinburgh clubs, pubs and streets.

All the little beatnik girls fell in love with Bert, his growly voice and his black leather jacket – and I was certainly one of them. I’ve still got my diaries from those days, filled with times when I saw Bert, what he was doing and what he said.

One evening I turned up at the squat he shared with Robin Williamson and many others. This dreary little room, furnished with not much more than a few grubby mattresses, was usually filled with people. (Anne Briggs had a disconcerting habit of practising her knife-throwing no matter how many were in the room.) But this time there was only Bert. He’d just hitched back from Glasgow and was shattered, but didn’t seem to mind me being there.

So I sat on the end of his mattress, and he lay wrapped in his brown blanket with his mouth loose and his eyes narrow – a typical Bert expression. He started to ask me about who I was and what I did, and, although I was determined not to talk about all my teenage problems, he drew them out of me. He told me so much, about his life, philosophy, interests and friends – how I wish I could remember all the details now.

His questions opened my floodgates. In no time at all I was telling him about my troubles with my recently-divorced mother and my other teenage doubts and difficulties. He listened with an almost avuncular attention, even though he was only two years older than I was. From the next room we could hear Clive Palmer having a long and loud argument with his current girlfriend, but neither of us mentioned it. Then Bert asked me how old I was and I said: “It’s my birthday today, I’m 17.” That was a brave thing for me to say – I might have been a beatnik, but I was a very shy beatnik.

He said: “Oh,” and then laughed and said, “Happy birthday.” Then he said: “You see that sewing machine over there?” in the sort of voice that meant I should go over to it, so I did. “Then,” he said, “to the left of it, you’ll see a bracelet made of wood and leather.” I picked it up and he said: “Well, there’s a birthday present for you.”

I’d already heard about this bracelet. My friend Liccy (later of the iconic Incredible String Band) had been telling me about it for days – how he’d slowly hand-carved the wooden sections, then stood by the stove, painstakingly heating up a metal spike and boring holes in the wood to take the thongs.

Bert didn’t give me that bracelet because he fancied me, or wanted anything from me. He gave it to me because I was a not-too-happy teenager and he simply wanted to be kind. A couple of minutes later Clive Palmer came into the room, ready to talk about his argument. We all drank some tea, smoked some cigarettes and then I said I had to go.

Bert smiled and said: “Well, there’s the door, so come up whenever you want to, no matter who’s here.”

Thank you, Bert, for the memories, the music and the bracelet. VALE BENSON