There's no dounting that PB had presence. I remember his performance of the Kipling-inspired cycle "We Have Fed Our Sea For a Thousand Years" at the Norwich Triennial back in the very early Eighties with the also lamented Dolly Collins on cello.
It was clear that the evening was not quite what many in the audience - the county tweed and twinset types - had expected, and as he launched into the first song there was some murmuring and shuffling of prgrammes and one or two walked out in protest at this 'avant garde nonsense'.
PB seemed to see it as a gauntlet flung down and to change up a gear, and the sense of 'sod you lot, I'm going to do this my way' was palpable. Within the space of the next song he had transfixed the hall, and from then on one could have heard a pin drop.
His vocal style was never my favourite - I always found it a little too affected, but there's no doubt that he was an elemental figure. It's only the the past year or so that I've started playing his recordings again, and it saddens me that I didn't make more effort to see him live. The recorded legacy is stunning, and I'm so pleased that Jon Boden is mining it so well for some of his material.