Back in the early days I remember the young Roy Harper as a blond haired hipster on speed. The eyes sparkled with inner electricity, the mind sparked and the tongue spewed and endless stream of ideas. The world was too hot. He leapt from one thought to the next to stop from getting burnt.
The guitar in his hands was a weapon and he sprayed it in all directions. The words were missiles that penetrated the bastions of thought. Civilisation was his target and he hit it again and again.
Roy was never an idealist. He was more of an anarchic nihilist who yearned to be living in a different place at a different time. He felt as if he were stranded on the polluted beach of some evil empire that he wanted no part of. He was surrounded with things that he despised and used his words to shoot them down.
In Roy’s mind he was an American Indian, free and untrammelled by the laws of the land, free to wander and experience the majesty of the universe up close.
When I first met him he had returned from his busking days round Europe where he’d hitched his way round. He’d done his time as a Jazz poet in the Beatnik backwater of Britain and was beginning to meld his invective poetry to music.
It did not take long to create a new type of song. This was not a Dylan inspired music of social importance in the Woody Guthrie tradition. Roy’s songs came straight out of the vagaries of his immense intellect, tinged with Kerouac and Jazz. The music was complex and a thousand miles away from the standard Folk of the British Folk Revival, interspersed with chords picked up from Miles and Teagarden with stream of consciousness from Jack. Roy was not singing about social injustice. His rhetoric was vitriolic and aimed at the whole direction our society was heading, the maniacs who were propelling us forward in search of wealth and power, the motives of greed and selfishness and the overarching control.
That wayward hipster was not for controlling. He was out of control. The sky was his limit. His foot was to the floor and it was flat out into space.
Nobody has ever produced songs like the mighty McGoohan’s Blues – a twenty minute epic of venom and fury and hit you between the eyes with the force of a hurricane. Yet the songs weren’t sufficient. Every concert was full of sharp wpords, rambling explanations, furious anecdotes delivered with tinkling laughs, brutal honesty and complete transparency. There were no filters. Roy unfurled the landscapes in his head for all to see. A concert was no show-biz performance; it was a sharing with friends, an event that engaged the cerebral cortex as well as the heart and ears. Roy was after total communication, connection and empathetic response. He shook his audience and treated the stage as his front room. When you went to a Harper gig you had to prepare for the unexpected
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Because of the poetic prowess and fiery personality the musical innovation is sometimes not fully recognised. Roy has a well deserved reputation as a zany lunatic that often masks the seriousness and sophistication of his compositions. They have depth, complexity and originality. The music is extraordinary. The songs developed into a range and profundity that few came close. When Harvest signed him he had the opportunity and musicianship to take it all to another level. He was also attracting in the cream of British Rock talent to grace his grooves. McGoohan’s Blues was followed with I Hate the Whiteman, Tom Tiddler’s Ground, How Does it Feel, Me and My Woman, One Man Rock and Roll Band, Hors D’Oeuvres, The Game, The Lord’s Prayer and One of Those Days in England in rapid succession. These mammoth epics were interspersed with the most glorious love songs that have ever graced an artist’s repertoire. Gems like Another Day, South Africa, Hallucinating Light, When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease and Francesca.
If he hadn’t have been so cantankerous and uncompromising he would have been enormous. But he regarded the music business as an extension of the wider society he despised and hence berated them at every opportunity, including live radio performances.
Roy went his own way. He has always been his own man. Nothing will ever change that. Nailing him down is like trying to catch a tornado in a net.
Out of his mad journey he had strewn a series of musical gems in his wake. We can only put this melodic debris in our music systems and wonder at the genius that is Roy Harper. It is extraordinary. It works on so many levels – from the complexity of the poetry to the majesty of the music, from the beauty of the melody to the snarling fury of the commentary. Roy has provided us with a number of albums that rate up there with the best anyone has ever produced.
Thank you Roy. Your music and poetry have been a great influence and consoling presence through my life. I never tire of thrilling to the soaring heights you have created. You inspired me and amazed me.