On Pentangle: “Odd to think these amiable old-timers, playing music that channeled the renegade spirit of Davy Graham, Charles Mingus, Big Bill Broonzy and Miles Davis were, briefly, pop stars.”

It had been made clear to me on more than one occasion that it would never happen. And yet here was the funny thing — no-one seemed to know why. Or, at least, if they did, no-one was telling me. Not Bert, when I first met him at the Cricklewood garden flat he shared with his wife Loren. Or John, who I first met when putting him and Jacqui McShee on at Cecil Sharp House in 2003. But whoever you spoke to, the answer was always clear. It’s probably too late in the day for a Pentangle reunion to happen. There’s too much water under the bridge. Things have been said that might have been better left unsaid. What things exactly? No-one could remember. Besides Danny is always busy. You’d never get him to agree. What was that? He agreed already? Oh. Well, look. There’s also Terry. You’ve got to understand that Terry runs a restaurant in Minorca. Moved there years ago. Hasn’t played for decades. Basically, it just wasn’t going to happen.

All of which seemed desperately sad to me. Because no-one else sounded like Pentangle. Pentangle was a synergy that could only happen when those five musicians shared a stage together. So why not make the most of that while those five musicians were still with us? For many fans — especially those of us who had yet to be born when Pentangle first stepped into a studio together — this was the reunion of our recurring dreams. We replayed the same YouTube footage: Bert managing to keep a fag on the go while tackling all of his vocal parts in Hunting Song; Jacqui imparting Let No Man Steal Your Thyme with an air of volcanic portent more commonly found on the face of Grace Slick; the note-bending baroque brilliance of John’s bits on Bells; and, of course, the entire ensemble syncopating a gentle storm on Light Flight, a song that no-one my age could hear without feeling like their earliest half-memories had been scraped from the underside of their brain and lovingly presented back to them. Everyone responsible was STILL HERE. Surely there had to be a way?

If there was a way, there had to be a will — and it turns out that there was no more tenacious will than that of Loren Jansch. Perhaps it had to be someone who also didn’t happen to be there the first time around, and also wanted to see with their own eyes what discerning music fans were raving about almost four decades previously. Perhaps it could only have been Loren, irrepressible ex-New Romantic whose ability to talk to anyone about anything at any time meant that, finally, as long as she was there, Bert no longer had to try and think of much to say in the company of others. Nevertheless, even a will as formidable as that of Loren needed a pretext upon which to get cracking. And finally that came in 2006, when John Leonard, from the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards sounded her out about the possibility of getting Pentangle together to receive a Lifetime Achievement gong. What did she reckon? Of course, she told him. No problem.

But, of course, no reunion involving five musicians who have been living separate lives for decades can happen just like that. The release of a box set The Time Has Come, months prior to the Folk Awards, had lubricated the wheels of intra-band communication. There had been facts to corroborate; different versions of the same songs voted upon; liner notes approved. If there were any more sensitive issues to address, it was easier to do it without mediators. “There were myths about the band that even we got caught up in,” Bert told me on the day of the Awards, “But nothing that couldn’t be sorted out with a phone call.”

So it seemed. Spirits were sky-high at the Thistle Hotel, where the band were holding court that day. John and Terry were like excitable kids on a school trip. For Terry, the prospect of playing two songs at that evening’s event was like a bizarre dream, a world away from his present life in the Balearic Islands. “I haven’t touched my kit for a decade,” he told me. “People have been trying to reassure me that it’s like riding a bike. But that’s no good. I’ve never ridden a bike in my life.”

John’s trademark high-pitched giggle punctuated the end of each story — and as the afternoon stretched out, more hitherto lost memories would magically materialise: Terry recalled the moment he knew their best-known song was about to take off. “I saw a cleaner at Waterloo Station singing Light Flight while sweeping the floor in time to it… I thought, ‘How can he do that?’ The time signature veers between 5/8, 7/8 and 6/4.” Then there was the evening Miles Davis personally welcomed them when they visited Harlem’s Club Baron (John: “Sometimes I wonder if our manager didn’t give him ten bucks to stand there and pretend he’d heard of us!”). Finally there was the story concerning the residency they played at the Los Angeles Troubadour, when Charles Manson issued a personal invite for the band to come and hang out at his ranch in Death Valley.” On that occasion, Terry took it upon himself to answer on behalf of whole band. It turns out that Pentangle’s drummer had little time or patience for the dark side. He had grown up just outside West Wycombe, near the Hellfire Caves, which had been once been site of Sir Francis Dashwood’s infamous Satanic “revels” in the 18th Century. “It all sounds a bit dull,” Terry told his band mates. “Let’s give it a miss.’”

How odd to think that these amiable old-timers, playing music that channeled the renegade spirit of records by Davy Graham, Charles Mingus, Big Bill Broonzy and Miles Davis were, for a brief time, pop stars. Not teen-scream huge, but big enough to get onto Top Of The Pops; sufficiently happening to stare out from Jackie centrespreads. And by some miracle, here they were once again, in the ensuing century, ambling on stage to receive their award from Sir David Attenborough, before a room full of contemporaries and musicians who had yet to be born when Pentangle were forging their legacy. They did two songs that night: a version of Bruton Town which would have Charles Mingus and Ewan MacColl rotating in their graves for entirely different reasons to each other; and a version of Light Flight which, to be honest, could have used a little help from that cleaner in Waterloo. But it didn’t matter. This was far too much fun not to do again.

The next time I heard them play Light Flight, they were brilliant, but I was in a right flap. As The Times’ chief music correspondent, Glastonbury was one event I was always expected to cover. However, the problem with Glastonbury in 2008 was that the final day clashed with Pentangle’s first show in 40 years. Months ahead of the weekend in question, I called my editor and told her she’d have to find someone else to cover the final day’s entertainment at Worthy Farm that year. There was no way on earth I was going to miss Pentangle’s big return. And so, as Leonard Cohen walked on stage in the Somerset sunshine, I was flooring it along the A303, trousers still caked in mud. That was me apologetically excuse me-ing other Pentangle fans as I stumbled towards my seat, catching my breath as they opened their account with Light Flight. For those of us who counted this paean to swinging London among our earliest memories, it was as though all our Proustian chickens had come home to roost. And how fitting that it should be in the South Bank’s state-of-the-art auditorium. A venue built in the spirit of post-war optimism and synonymous with the promise of tomorrow; the same venue where when they first performed as Pentangle in 1967.

They looked exactly as you wanted them to: Jacqui dressed in the sort of loose-fitting floral trouser suit favoured by women who were groovy in the 1960s; John, the estranged beatnik twin of Raymond Briggs’ Father Christmas; Bert, emanating the heavy, steady, seen-it-all wisdom of an Easter Island statue; Danny, appearing to conduct the entire operation from a higher plane, simultaneously lost and found in music; and, of course, Terry, detonating tiny explosions of rhythm in places where you least expected to find them. As they readied themselves to play House Carpenter, John lowered himself onto the floor and locked into a hypnotic sitar melody, while Bert used a banjo to rattle all the dormant ghosts from this Appalachian tragedy. When the time came to play A Maid That’s Deep In Love, Jacqui pointed out how unusual it was that “the woman doesn’t [die] in this one.” But, she added, that was “only because she dresses up as a man.”

If folk songs were played with a jazz zip, then jazz tunes were subtly transformed by the twin talents of two guitarists who had long since broken down blues, folk and a love of medieval music into one rich source of fuel. A case in point was I’ve Got A Feeling — a Miles Davis tune with words added by Bert. As Jacqui serenely imparted the words, Danny set about reminding everyone why his is the first name on the list of any musician looking for someone to play upright bass on their records. Here and on the group’s signature wig-out Pentangling, John’s impromptu cheers spoke for everyone in the room as Danny cut loose with a hair-raisingly expressive solo.

It really was one of those evenings you dare not even dream about. I had been asked to play some records at the after-show. I remember it taking place in a long large function room somewhere in the same building. Along the length of one room, were windows which allowed us to see the sun setting on the twinkling lights of the Thames. I played a selection of records that I could imagine the respective members of Pentangle grooving to in the 60s: a bit of Big Bill Broonzy, Miles Davis, Cyril Davies, Julie Driscoll, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. Once every 15 minutes or so, an impeccably-dressed, beautiful woman in her 60s — a different one every time, you understand — would sashay up to me and, with an accent borrowed from Gabrielle Drake, — exclaim, “I do like the music you’re playing! And actual records too! How lovely!” I seemed to have slipped through a portal into a beautiful world that was neither now or 1967, but somehow the best of both. But then, that’s how I always felt when I listened to Pentangle.

After the Royal Festival Hall, Pentangle kept their creative engine running as they embarked on a British tour. I caught them a couple more times on that tour and they just seemed to get better and better. Those of us present at their Lyceum show forgot about everything that night, everything apart from the electrifying synergy being played out in front of us. Sally Free And Easy dispersed itself into the auditorium like smoke rings into candlelight. Most of those present probably weren’t aware of the lengths to which Terry had gone to retain match fitness. So when he concluded his drum solo on In Time, we weren’t applauding his valiant efforts prior to that point. We were applauding the same thing we would have applauded had we seen him play it at Fillmore West in 1969, when Pentangle opened for Grateful Dead — his ability to dismantle a rhythm before our eyes and reassemble it in a totally different order, somehow making it groove twice as sweetly as it had done before.

They knew they’d killed it that night. They even came out after the gig, to the Lyceum bar and happily chatted to the fans who stayed behind hoping to thank them. And then, after a triumphant headline set at The Green Man festival the following month, Pentangle adjourned for a while. Bert had been diagnosed with lung cancer, but a string of US dates with Neil Young suggested that — now half a lung lighter — he was on the mend. Yet, turning up to see Pentangle’s acoustic set at the 2011 Glastonbury Festival, it was still startling to see the Bert who gingerly shuffled on stage to pick up his guitar. His clothes seemed way too big for him, such was his dramatic weight loss. Loren had been ill at the same time as Bert, but the last we had heard, she too was on the mend. After that set, I bumped into her. Though typically upbeat, she mentioned something about her and Bert facing further complications, but it was going to be all right, she assured me. Then she suggested that I come and say hello to the band. “Are you sure?” I asked. Yes, she was sure. So I ambled back and said my thank yous. I hardly ever go backstage. I was so glad I did. Bert’s handshake was firm, and because he suddenly looked so slight, I remember feeling surprised about that.

And so, to the South Bank one last time, a beautiful August evening. Out in the auditorium, we didn’t realise the extent to which Bert’s cancer had spread. But in a second, something changed. A drop in the air pressure, perhaps. A long gaze out beyond the footlights. We sat and watched as — minus the rest of the band — he faced John to sing Soho. We watched two old friends locked into a melody they first played 45 years previously. In that moment, we sensed this might be the last time. Two months later, Bert had gone, soon to be followed by Loren. In 2015, John left us too.

Over 50 years have now elapsed since that first Pentangle concert at the Royal Festival Hall. Five decades is a long time, of course. Fashions come and go and come back again. What once might have sounded bold and innovative can, with the passage of decades, end up sounding quaint and stale. But none of that applied to Pentangle. Back in 1967, there wasn’t a band on the planet that sounded like them. As they walked off that stage for the final time, there still wasn’t a band on the planet that sounded like them. And with the passing of every year, it seems a little more certain that there never will be.