Interspersed with the half-dozen albums recorded in the first incarnation of Pentangle (1968's The Pentangle and Sweet Child, 1969's Basket of Light, with Cruel Sister, Reflection and Solomon's Seal following each year until 1972) Jansch recorded another three solo albums (Nicola, Birthday Blues and Rosemary Lane) before the pressures of five world tours, recording and excessive alcohol consumption got too much for him in 1973, when he retreated to a farm in Wales.
There were occasional reunions through the eighties and nineties and into the twenty-first century, though from that point on Jansch remained essentially a solo artist who was, by all accounts, an introverted yet riveting performer, finger-picking in a style based around improvisation.
The albums, sixteen of them, followed at increasingly sporadic intervals through to 2006's The Black Swan, and along the way alcohol-related pancreatic illness prompted him to give up the drink ion 1987. International touring, Pentangle reunions, and the reappearance of his back catalogue on CD ensured a continuing though largely under the radar presence, as did TV appearances and Colin Harper's biography, Dazzling Stranger.
Heart surgery in 2005 was followed by surgery for lung cancer in 2009, a circumstance that forced him out of some opening spots on that year's Neil Young tour, though he was able to rejoin Young on the 2010 leg of the tour, but the disease returned, leaving that situation where the examination of an extensive body of work is going to need to be done posthumously.
The examination, by the way, is about to start with an $11.99 download of his fifteen track eponymous debut from 1965 (padded out with a brace of bonus tracks).
Links:
Death reported on the BBC, in The Guardian (full obituary here), in The Mirror, in The New York Times
Tributes from Roy Harper, The Guardian, in The Scotsman and one on NPR
French Purple Words On A Grey Background blog tribute