Section A – The Wilderness from My Hilltop.
Over the years I have had numerous conversations with Nick regarding aspects of his ‘career’. As a friend looking in from the outside it always appeared to me that Nick did not so much have a career as such, more a hap-hazard series of loosely connected events in which he wrote incredible music, played that music to people who paid to see him, recorded it when he had accumulated sufficient numbers and only barely made a living out of it.
It seemed unjust.
Nick tells me that he is still amazed and honoured that he has been able to spend the bulk of his adult life doing exactly what he enjoys doing.
I know his claims of indolence are far from the case. Just last week he came to stay for a few days to start work on this book. I had told him that we were going to get down to business and work hard. He agreed. We would make early starts and press on. I suggested we started work promptly at eight thirty.
Of course we stayed up into the early hours gabbing and sharing a glass of wine or two. Nick went to bed and at nine thirty next morning I took him a cup of tea to find a bleary-eyed semi-comatose Harper peering at me with vague disbelief.
It transpired that Nick had hit the sack at 1am. – like me, but had a head that was buzzing. We had been talking about lyrics and words and he had shown me a few things he was working on. He could not sleep. Ideas were popping into his head. The upshot was that he had spent the night working those words.
Morosely, over a third cup of strong coffee, he read me the words, full of alliteration, character and style, carefully honed and sweated over. ‘Not much to show for five hours,’ he remarked morbidly.