HARPER'S BIZARRE - Jun 29 2004


Cockers

Thanks to Bob's Rucksack, I've just received a copy of The Birmingham Post
from Tuesday 29 June, which features an article about Roy (in the Culture
Section, fantastic).

Thanks Bob.

It really is an amusing and interesting article, when I get a moment to
spare in my leisurely day, I'll transcribe and post it. I've tried an OCR
scan and ended up with garbage, hey ho, so much for technology. If I'd got
some dosh, I'd get the whole page scanned at the local printing shop, but I
ain't, so regrettably I won't. The article's page has a reproduction of the
pic from the front of 'The Passions of Great Fortune', which must have got
the grannies of Birmingham twittering 8-).

Nick


HARPER'S BIZARRE - Jun 29 2004

By Sid Langley, The Birmingham Post

Take a good look at that headline. Yup, looks like another cheap media shot.
Just there for eyecatching effect. In fact, it's just that - a fact.

It encapsulates the essence of a multi-faceted English singer, songwriter
and quirkily gifted guitar player - a man who has been featured in the pages
of Farmers Weekly as well as the NME.

Roy Harper is the eternal hippie, but a hippie with attitude. He's a New
Ager with a tongue as sharp and deadly as a switchblade.

The man was a punk before the term was invented, he's a raver, a lunatic, a
jailbird, a charmer, a poet, a polemicist, a joker, a man who was born with
anarchy (and too much haemoglobin) in his blood, a man who loves folk music,
but plays rock 'n' roll with a Jungian backbeat, a cricket fanatic who goes
off on birdwatching holidays, a sheep farmer, a man in love with the myth of
an elegiac England of the mind who has lived in Ireland since the 80s.

A man who is magical, mystical, maddening and a monolithic maker of mayhem.

Ladies and gentlemen I give you (be-cause sure as hell no one can sell him)
Mr Roy Harper.

He flared up in the Sixties. Had he made an early exit like Jimi Hendrix,
Brian Jones or Nick Drake, he would by now be a legend. Ironically, an
inherited illness made him a natural candidate for early doors but, through
sheer cussedness, he has survived. This month saw his 63rd birthday.

Several times he's been within a few microns of being a contender. No, he
was never going to be a champ, but he came (hold up your nearly-touching
finger and thumb) that close to getting real chances. But no corrupt Rod
Steiger of a big brother was there to rain on his Brandoesque parade. No. Mr
Harper is quite capable of splitting open any number of thunder-clouds all
by himself.

This is a man who gets out of his pram because he wants to feel his feet on
the ground again.

One of his famous early albums had a title that was acid-fuelled word-play
on the old blues tune Flat Broke and Busted. In Harper-speak it became Flat,
Baroque and Berserk. That's him in a nutshell.

Another, one of his best, was called Stormcock. Ditto.

For stormcock is the folk name for the missel or mistle thrush. It's a large
member of the thrush family that feeds on mistletoe berries (think of all
the mythical connotations there, man) and one of its key behaviour patterns
(hence the folk name) is that whenever a winter gale is blowing, it doesn't
turn its back like every other sensible bird in the world, it faces into the
wind. To sing.

Or how about another title, Bullinamingvase . . .

So, are we getting somewhere here? Let's back off (because Roy won't) and
take the Harper lite trip. Let's leave him there strung up between the twin
poles of anxiety and anger. He'll still be there when we get back . . .

Born during the Second World War in the Rusholme area of Manchester, his
mother died within a month of his arrival. His early home life seems to have
been lived against a background of family religious fervour that he hated.
Some of his most scathing lyrics deal with organised religion.

He'd begun playing guitar in his early teens, joining his brothers in what
in those days was called a "beat group". When he ran away from home at 15 he
had the musical heroes of the day rattling around his head - Leadbelly, Big
Bill Broonzy, Woody Guthrie.

One of the early Harper ironies (there are lots more) is that in escaping
from the brainwashing of religion he ran straight into more of the same when
he joined the Royal Air Force.

Within a very short time it led to a collapse. He was later to characterise
it as a "self-induced nervous breakdown to escape the RAF". It led to a stay
in a mental hospital and the electric shock treatment described on his debut
album, Sophisticated Beggar.

He fled again, this time through a bedroom window in his pyjamas. But his
pregnant girlfriend (they had plans to elope) had been, in his words,
"spirited away to deepest Britain" by her family.

He headed for London and shortly after ended up in prison for (his words
again) "various acts of youthful rebellion including trying to climb the
clock tower at St Pancras Station."

So here is our clearly disturbed youngster under another authoritarian
regime that turned out to be the making of him. For in the nick he was put
in charge of the prison library and, clearly desperately seeking something,
began to devour literature. In interviews he has namechecked Steinbeck,
Nietzsche and Kerouac from this period. But then he would, wouldn't he?

This was the early Sixties, remember, when any and everything was beginning
to seem possible for the new generation to a soundtrack of music by The
Beatles, Dylan etc. So when Harper hit the streets again in 1964 it was to a
world where the skiffle of his boyhood had mutated into the sonic
kaleidoscope of the rock revolution.

So, naturally, he jumped ship again, heading for North Africa and busking
around Europe before picking up spots in folk clubs around the country, but
mostly London. These clubs were the breeding ground of a whole generation of
later-legendary figures.

When Harper blagged a residency at the club run by Les Cousins in Soho other
youngsters getting spots included Paul Simon, Bert Jansch, Joni Mitchell,
Nick Drake, Al Stewart, Cat Stevens, Donovan John Martyn, Ralph McTell and
The Incredible String Band. A pretty good nursery experience.

His first record came out on an indie in

1966. By 1968 he was signed to CBS and playing regularly at the free
concerts in Hyde Park. He was on his way. He recorded ten albums at Abbey
Road, built up numerous friends and contacts from all corners of the music
world. He has sung on a Pink Floyd track, formed a duo with long-term buddy
Jimmy Page, had Kate Bush on a track as well as Paul and Linda McCartney and
starred in a film as a mixed-up rock star which was the British entry for
the 1972 Venice Film Festival alongside Clockwork Orange.

By 1971, after Led Zeppelin had waxed Hats Off to Harper on their third
album, our hero was missing in inaction in the US, writing in a log cabin
instead of touring. In 1974 there was a legendary gig (with Jimmy Page,
Keith Moon and Ronnie Lane in his band). In 1975 with a rock outfit called
Trigger including Bill Bru-ford and Chris Spedding (one of the Wombles and
one of the most under-rated guitarists of the era) he recorded HQ, another
cult album that included When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease, with the
Grimethorpe Colliery Band.

Things were headed up and up. So naturally he collapsed on stage during a
tour with HQ. His excesses had aggravated his medical condition - a problem
with over-production of blood and joined blood vessels in his lungs.

It is typical of the myths that surround the man that the story went round
that he had contracted some rare ailment while giving mouth to mouth
resuscitation to one of the sheep on his Herefordshire farm!

He was back in 1977 with Bullinamingvase (and a threatened libel action over
a track about a motorway service station). The follow-up album was put on
hold while he argued with the record company. For three years.

By 1982 he was setting up his own company, Public Records, and returned to
solo gigging. He joined Awareness Records in 1985 and over the next seven
years much of his back catalogue was reissued. In 1993 Harper secured the
rights to all his back albums and set up the Science Friction label.

By 1997 his health was bad again, but now new treatment was available and
fresh surgery on his lungs was hugely successful and he was able to tour
America in 1998 and by the following year was appearing often with his son
Nick, a performer in his own right by now.

Gigging (with a voice that now has a Willie Nelson vibrato to it) continues
at a sensible pace from his base in Ireland and by last year he had
completed The Passions of Great Fortune, a complete collection of lyrics and
commentaries on all the songs, plus archive photographs with captions which
add to the discussion of the meaning of many of the pieces.

Time to stop before this turns into a piece of Harperesque proportions - he
has been known to write album notes running to 10,000 words.

I am not saying he is the greatest singer around, or the best songwriter,
although he is arguably one of the most interesting guitar players coming
out of the whole Sixties folk-into-rock-into-jazz thing (Pentangle and so
on).

But in an age when we take the Amy Winehouses of this world seriously,
anyone with half a brain should at least be aware of the man's work with its
bizarre contrasting muses - fiery anger and whimsy, rage and romanticism.

In the comparisons so loved of modern bookshops and record stores, let's
just say if you like Neil Young, you should listen to Harper.

You have nothing to lose but your preconceptions.

All his recordings and his concert details are available via his website.
You can even find out why he wants the return of the king - George Vl that
is. And the addled old romantic is not joking.

......................................................

So there you have it...

Nick

Posted: Thu - July 15, 2004 at 01:58 PM          

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