Dazzling Stranger: Bert Jansch and the British Folk and Blues Revival
by Colin Harper
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Book Summary Information
Author: Colin HarperForeword: Johnny Marr
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-04-01
ISBN: 0747587256
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Book Reviews of Dazzling Stranger: Bert Jansch and the British Folk and Blues Revival
Book Review: Good encyclopedia, average book, great Jansch storie
Summary: 3 Stars
Colin Harper is a judgemental librarian and he writes like one. That makes this book very informative but that made it difficult for this reader to read it all the way through. I read it after reading Joe Boyd's White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s, which is less informative but much better to read. Boyd's book is a fast-paced and clearly subjective account of one man's experience as a music businessman.
Harper's book aims to be as comprehensive and "objective" as a history textbook, which means that it values information more than style. Harper writes in a passive, dry manner that, fortunately, fails to dull its colorful characters.
Its interruptions of Bert's life story to provide historical accounts of different folk clubs is sometimes annoying, but I can't really criticize it because, on another hand, if I do want to know about Les Cousins, all I need to do is look it up in the index. It does not make a good novel, but it does make a good encyclopedia, and, when I decided to treat it that way, I really got to like it.
So, it's dry, encyclopedic quality is ultimately not a fault, but it is something that a reader should be prepared for.
There is, however, one true problem with the book, and that is its criminal downplaying of the originality and influence of the late Davy Graham. A reader who is only slightly familiar with Graham would walk away from this book with the impression that he was merely a spark that appeared before Jansch started a revolution, when the truth - as Jansch himself has said in interviews - is that Graham was an enormous influence on his playing and on all music that followed. Harper plays up Jansch's "originality," when the fact is, what is most remarkable about Jansch is not that he sounds like no one else but that he manages to sound so distinct while still sounding so much like Graham. Harper and many of his interviewees don't seem to get it, and, though he goes to great lengths to document the history of the entire folk scene, Harper, like a film critic obsessed by the idea of directors as "auteurs," sometimes seems too fixated on the idea that Jansch was the godlike epicenter of the picture, and relegates Davy Graham to the sidelines.
But, for all its faults, the book is invaluable for its accounts of Jansch himself. For anyone who has heard, seen, or met the man, the book is still a must-read for its accounts of his childhood in an Edinburgh tenement, his couch-surfing teen years, his mysterious way of learning to play the guitar, his antics in California and around the world in the '70s, and the way women were always drawn to his Celt-fro haircut and his awkward personality. To his credit, Harper never tries too hard to explain Jansch's psychology and lets the man's actions speak for themselves. "Dazzling Stranger" lets you know what Jansch would be like to hang out with while keeping him at enough of a distance to remain mysterious.
Until that Danny Thompson autobiography comes out, this one will have to do as the definitive book on the British folk and blues revival.
Summary of Dazzling Stranger: Bert Jansch and the British Folk and Blues Revival
The guitarist's guitarist and the songwriter's songwriter, the legendary Bert Jansch has influenced artists as diverse as Jimi Hendrix, Paul Simon, Jimmy Page, and Neil Young. Born in Edinburgh in 1943, Jansch became a pioneering figure during Britain's 1960s folk revival. In 1967, he formed the folk-jazz fusion band Pentangle with John Renborn; they enjoyed international success until 1973, when Jansch returned to a solo career. Unassuming and enigmatic, Jansch has withstood the vagaries of fashion, being continually rediscovered and revered by new generations of artists. Dazzling Stranger is the story of a true original of British music.
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