Watch Pentangle featuring in their original lineup (Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Jacqui McShee, Danny Thompson and Terry Cox) performing ‘People on the Highway‘ live from 1972. This was the same year in which Bert Jansch also recorded his Moonshine album.
The footage is from a Belgian TV recording which, looking through Colin Harper’s extensive notes (more on below), would be June ’72, the same month in which they recorded for Granada TV in the UK and for the BBC (Sounds of the Seventies recording). They also performed at Sheffield University that month.
The track featured on Solomon’s Seal, released in Septemeber 1972 to very little fanfare. It was their final album as this lineup, which seemed to go over the heads of music journalists at the time. In the accompanying notes to the Cherry Red boxset ‘Pentangle The Albums‘ (highly recommended for all the albums and the incredible supporting liner notes from Colin Harper – one of the best out there), there are quotes from Jacqui McShee and Ralph McTell which refer to the heavy drinking that was going on which helped to lead to their demise. There’s a fair bit of conjecture about who it was that actually pulled the plug.
The Melody Maker news headline (in early ’73) was ‘Pentangle dies with a whimper’ and the album had poor sales. Despite this, it’s funny how over the intervening years Solomon’s Seal has become something of a favourite…it was also one of McShee’s. The band apparently had little time to rehearse and Harper suggests that the resulting recording is, therefore, more spontaneous. You only need to watch them play to see how this may have worked to their advantage, there’s some great guitar and double bass interaction going on in this video between Thompson and Jansch and McShee’s vocals are, as ever, exquisite. While I admit I’m very personally biased when it comes to Pentangle, I don’t believe anyone has quite touched them since.