Roy Harper

Photo: Murray Sutton

Roy Harper playlist

Contributor: Ian Ashleigh

For the uninitiated, Roy Harper was born in Rusholme, Manchester in 1941 and has performed since his teens and recorded pretty consistently since 1966. I first saw him perform in a small venue near Piccadilly Circus in 1977 or 1978 when he was touring with Andy Roberts. He has also toured with a full rock band. Roy sat on stage and sang his songs interspersed with his customary stories laced with laconic humour and he had the audience spellbound for the entire evening. When he stood to leave the stage, across the back of his shirt was printed ‘Dr Doom the Optimist’ – quite wonderful. An apocryphal story is told that Roy was invited to write a song for the Eurovision Song Contest in this period (how did he get on their radar?). His response was allegedly ‘do you want it 15 or 20 minutes’.

My experience has told me that Roy Harper splits opinion; essentially there are the ‘love him/hate him’ brigades, then there are the debates over individual albums and songs.

The challenge is to distil 28 albums and 320 songs, which represent over 33 hours of music, into a selection of just 10 songs. Do I go for a representative sample or am I informed by the compilation that I made for the car – itself restricted by the 80 minute capacity of a CD. Or do I simply take the four tracks from Stormcock (1971) and let you choose any six from the seven from HQ (1975) and leave it at that, job done.

I guess I need to be more helpful so let’s start with the album Bullinamingvase (1977) and the track that opens side 1 and then fills the whole of side 2 of the original vinyl LP: One Of Those Days In England (parts 1 to 10). Running at 22 minutes 52 seconds this is England in microcosm, a series of vignettes linked by a running theme that returns to the hopeful sounding start of the beginning as it reaches its final section but with starkly different words. The Americans know this album by the name of the central piece and it contains a very unflattering eulogy to UK motorway service stations – Watford Gap – which caused the Blue Boar company to demand its removal but not before I had bought my copy of the LP and it had appeared as the B side of the One Of Those Days In England single.

Where to go from here? Live At Les Cousins recorded on 30th August 1969 and a 10 year old boy recovering from appendicitis in Wembley had no idea who Roy Harper was. Seven years later he first heard I Hate The White Man performed and was struck by the sense of injustice coming out of the song. Roy Harper has always railed against issues that strike him as unjust. Christianity gets the brunt of a lot and in 1990, on the album Once, Islam felt the full force of Harper indignation.

I have Stormcock on vinyl and it always split the opinions of friends and former girlfriends whenever I played it. If I was allowed by our esteemed webmaster, I would make all four tracks one seamless piece of music and then have the whole album but I need one representative track … so which one? Side 1 track 2. The Same Old Rock. I come back to this again and again. The skilled lyrical word patterns of Roy’s vocal, the acoustic guitars sparring, everything about this track tells me to choose it.

My other favourite album is 1975’s HQ. It was released in the USA under the title When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease and so I will take this track. I would point a new listener to The Game (parts 1 to 5) which opens the LP with its blistering guitar provided by Chris Spedding (allegedly in one take!). Oddly, as a Lancastrian, Roy Harper seems to have a love for Yorkshire cricket with references to Geoffrey Boycott, and also John Snow. Pass me a pint of English Ale and a cricket match, and then leave me alone with this song.

Released in 1966, I admit that I am too young to know Roy Harper’s first album, except in retrospect. Sophisticated Beggar contained pointers and portents for the future. Legend is a great song in its own right but the tune was used again for the song Referendum (Legend) on the album HQ. The title track is also a fine song with such a clever lyric.

Roy’s new collection, Man And Myth, was released the week that I compiled this selection and on first listening, it is a triumph. The voice is older, has mellowed, is less violent in many ways, is very accessible to a new ear. Roy loses none of his vitriol in the lyric of Cloud Cuckooland, his critical commentary of the world in its current state.

I keep returning to the 1984 album Born In Captivity and in particular to the opening track Stan and whilst I know nothing of who Stan is or was or why he has had a song written for him, I just really like the song, no more, no less. It also seems to chime with the new song. These two go well with Jack Of Hearts from Work Of Heart recorded at home by Roy Harper for release in 1982. Born In Captivity and Work Of Heart are now collected together on one CD – and good value it is too for the price of a single album.

Lasting fully 22 minutes 55 seconds, my 9th selection is The Lords Prayer: Poem/Modal Song Parts I to IV/Front Song/Middle Song/End Song. This is not easy listening for the uninitiated but good luck if you want to try. Roy Harper has been a lifelong religious sceptic; his stepmother who raised him was a Jehovah’s Witness. It is a theme that he returns to time and again – as noted above.

As an antidote to the foregoing, I’m going to end with a throwaway song (if there can be such a thing from Roy Harper) from Folkjokeopus, a small song to go with the longer ones, Composer Of Life, enjoy!

Roy Harper (2019)

The official Roy Harper website

Roy Harper biography (Apple Music)

Recently, a handful of great early clips of Roy have come to light (like the one above), go to youtube and search for Roy Harper Live Studio Performance 1969/1970 – fantastic rare studio footage of the great man circa Flat Baroque and Berserk.

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