Sad new from the wire: guitar legend Bert Jansch has passed away (another casualty of The Big C). Story here.
My introduction to his work was, presumably like many punks my age, courtesy of Neil Young. In particular, Neil’s epic album-closing statement from his (greatest?) album On The Beach, entitled “Ambulance Blues” apparently owes more than a slight debt to Jansch’s ’60s tune “The Needle of Death” (interesting in its own right, as Young would of course write the enormously affecting –and popular– anti-heroin anthem “The Needle and The Damage Done”).
Here is Jansch, then Young, and then the two of them together.
