Roy Harper’s acoustic guitar playing is as distinctive as Roger McGuinn’s Rickenbacker sound and his lyrical technique of full frontal assault has earned a sizeable cult audience around the English-speaking world. His fans include Kate Bush. She said: "Roy is one of the greatest English songwriters we’ve had". Following a troubled youth and a spell in prison, in 1964 Harper took to busking around North Africa, Europe and London for a year, then graduated to the folk clubs, earning himself a residency at Les Cousins Folk Club in Greek Street, Soho, London, a place described by Roy as a spawning ground: other young artists who played there included Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake, Al Stewart, Long John Baldry, The Incredible String Band, John Martyn, Bert Jansch, Cat Stevens and Donovan. In 1966 a small indie label called Strike gave him the chance to record The Sophisticated Beggar. The LP was well received, and his confidence grew as the next one came together. That first album drew the attention of Columbia records for whom Roy quickly recorded the album Come Out Fighting Ghengis Smith, including a song which became very popular in England for a while entitled Nobody's Got Any Money In The Summer which was on the very first compilation record put out by CBS, entitled The Rock Machine Turns You On. In 1968 Roy Harper played a series of free concerts in London's Hyde Park, building a dedicated following prior to the release of Folkjokeopus on Liberty records in 1969. McGoohan's Blues appears on this album and was essentially Roy's first major statement, distilled into a super-concentrated assault on authority, religion and thought control, culminating in a vision of the ideal. Many albums later and Roy has remained an iconoclast and a one-off - based in a rural mansion in west Cork for the past number of years, running a veritable cottage industry and turning out albums full of substance and artistic brilliance on his own terms, though mellowing out a little in terms of personality! His life’s work has recently been anthologised in one sumptuous volume of complete lyrics, photos and scattershot autobiographical anecdotage entitled The Passions Of Great Fortune. It was Colin Harper’s idea for Roy to recite Lewis Carroll’s immortal Jabberwocky for The Wildlife Album. It was, he felt, "something that ought to exist in the world". Happily, Roy agreed. |
