Roy Harper – Desert Island – An apology in a song.

Posted on by Opher

I’m sorry about me!

This is a song that appeared on Descendants of Smith (which later came out as Garden of Uranium). It started off as a section in the epic song Burn The World.

Sometimes we’d all like to shut the door and forget about the mess we humans are making of the planet. It is heartbreaking to see how beautiful this planet was and to witness the destruction and pollution we have wreaked upon it. It was paradise.

Wildlife is on the run. We are destroying it daily. We are driving so many creatures to extinction.

Let’s shut the door and pretend that everything is still OK, that the cruelty and mindless pursuit of money isn’t happening.

I’m sorry planet earth – I’m sorry for what we stupid humans are doing – I’m sorry for me.

I was fortunate enough to be there in the late 80s for the recording of this album. Roy was doing it in Lincolnshire and I went down to stay. It was exciting because Roy was experimenting with different styles, arrangements and instrumentation. He was very influenced by Prince’s Sign Of The Times I remember. He had great hopes for the album. It was a bit of a departure and development. Sadly it didn’t take off like it should have done.

I think that Laughing Inside was the wrong single. Desert Island would have been a better choice. It was more commercial.

EMI rather let Roy down. They were going to do a massive publicity drive. The idea was that they released Laughing Inside under different anagrams of Roy Harper (Rory Phare, Per Yarrow and Harry Rope) (Roy had a bit of a stereotyped image at the time that he wanted to break away from). It fell flat as EMI pulled the publicity and failed to give it the push they’d promised.

That album sounded fabulous through the studio speakers and this track was brilliant.

Desert Island

Gonna paint my room like a desert island
With yellow sand and blue lagoon
Invite you all to come and live there
One afternoon
It’ll be when no-one’s looking
More likely that not
We’ll close the door and turn the sky up
Find a good spot
Air fire water earth you were paradise
I’m sorry about me
I was under impression
That you were free and easy
Gonna paint my room like a desert island
With clear skies and rising swell
Leave the clowns on the jaded horizon
In Wall Streets of Hell
I must say goodbye to the blindfold
And pursue the ideal
The planet becoming the hostess
Instead of the meal
Air fire water earth you were paradise
I’m sorry about me
I was under impression
That you were free and easy
(To plunder)

This is an interesting solo Live version:

The Top Ten Albums of all time! Number 1! Roy Harper – Stormcock!

Posted on by Opher

Ian Cropton nominated me to put forward my top ten albums of all time.

That’s good. I enjoy that.

This is Number 1!!

  1. Roy Harper – Stormcock

 Image result for stormcock roy harper youtube

In my opinion Roy Harper is the greatest British song-writer and poet. There is no one who even gets close. His acerbic lyrics and social commentary are unsurpassed. He rivals Bob Dylan as the greatest songwriter of all time and is greatly undervalued. This is not surprising as he has constantly shot himself in the foot and sabotaged his own career. Even so he remains the foremost British dissident and commentator on the human condition. His epic songs are legendary and the music sublime.

Stormcock is arguably his best album but is strongly pushed by both HQ and Lifemask. I would place at least ten of Roy’s albums in my top 400 albums. He’s that important to me.

The Stormcock album features only 4 tracks but the album is one of his masterpieces. It consists of brilliant songs with poetic imagery and wide canvasses that challenge your imagination. The music and musicianship was innovative and of an excellence that puts this album top of my top ten thousand. It is one of four Harper albums that would make it into my top ten albums of all time. I have a penchant for great meaningful lyrics put to brilliant music and this hits the spot. I never tire of hearing these songs and simply cannot understand why Roy has not been lauded from on high. I love the depth and insight he brings to bear and the risks he takes in developing his ideas through epic songs. Few people can match it. Roy’s shorter songs are great but these four songs show how Roy has matured and taken his art to another level. ‘Me and my woman’ is one of the very best tracks ever recorded. The scope is immense and Roy was at the top of his game. I can see that it is never going to be commercial. Roy’s work is thought-provoking, intelligent and musically intricate. You have to concentrate. It’s not your catchy pop song – fortunately! But it is well worth the effort. For me Roy is the James Joyce of music as opposed to Simon Cowell’s Barbara Cartland.

Ruminating on Roy Harper – the Book – Photos for the cover.

Posted on by Opher

Right – now I’ve almost completed the final edit I am beginning to turn my attention to the cover. Here’s a few photos that I’ve taken over the years. Which one do you think might be a starter – or none of them?

 This one would be great if Roy wasn’t a little blurry.

 

The ones of Roy and Tracy are nice. I’m not sure if they are appropriate. 

These ones are quite good.

There is something about this one that I like.

Or maybe none of them are appropriate.

The New Roy Harper Book – Ruminating on Roy Harper.

Posted on by Opher

I need a little help here. I have been working on a rewrite of my Roy Harper book with a view to publishing it in the next couple of weeks. I am finally approaching the end and it is coming along really well. I’m enjoying doing it.

I should be finished in the next couple of days.

I have just turned my attention to the back cover and started jotting down some thoughts. I would greatly appreciate your thoughts and suggestions. Below are four rough proposals. Do any of them work? What needs doing?

Any ideas welcomed.

Blurb

 

1967 was a momentous year for me. I was eighteen, boiling with hormones, angst, sex and rebellion. In the prefabricated world of the dedicated followers of fashion I was the rank outsider, too extreme to fit into the norms of the ‘in crowd’ with their Carnaby Street flares and neatly trimmed long hair and collections of top ten hits. With my shoulder length hair, Zen and head full of Kerouac’s crazy zest for discovery I was the acid tongued hipster more attuned to the psychedelic jungle of London backstreets, blues clubs and all night adventures than a sixth form common room.

I wanted to let rip. I was young, wild and bursting with idealistic fervour.

The world was my playground, my university, my mystical, infinite source of wonder and awe. Life was there to be burned. I had to grapple with it, wrestle it to submission and screw answers out of it.

That was the year I met and befriended Roy.

 

Blurb 2

 

This is the story of a friendship that has spanned 50 years. I first met Roy Harper in 1967 when he was first starting out. We became friends and I have been present at nearly every important landmark down the years from St Pancras Townhall, Abbey Road Studios, The Royal Albert Hall, The Rainbow, Hyde Park, the Royal Festival Hall and a hundred and fifty gigs thrown in for good measure. I’ve written books with him and travelled the country.

This is the story of that relationship. It throws light on all aspects of Roy’s life and puts it into perspective with my own. Roy’s life is one hell of a story.

 

Blurb 3

 

This is the story of a friendship that has spanned 50 years. It puts Roy’s incredible life and career alongside that of my own. From those first meeting in 1967 through to today I have described his music and life through my eyes and placed it alongside that of my own.

It’s one hell of a story.

 

Blurb 4

 

This is the story of a friendship that has spanned fifty years. It tells the tale of two lives that have connected.

It gives perspective to an incredible life, paints pictures of the times and provides personal insight.

Nobody has lived life more than Roy Harper. This book traces the highs and the lows of a colourful existence – the music, loves, tragedies and successes.

This is me looking back over my life and his and examining them in depth.

Roy Harper – Desert Island – A delightful Song about the Plunder of the Planet

Posted on by Opher
The beauty of the song belies the message. The planet is beautiful and we are plundering it.
The planet becoming the hostess
Instead of the meal
Air fire water earth you were paradise
I’m sorry about me

Desert Island

Roy Harper

1
1

Desert Island

Gonna paint my room like a desert island
With yellow sand and blue lagoon
Invite you all to come and live there
One afternoon
It’ll be when no-one’s looking
More likely that not
We’ll close the door and turn the sky up
Find a good spot
Air fire water earth you were paradise
I’m sorry about me
I was under impression
That you were free and easy
Gonna paint my room like a desert island
With clear skies and rising swell
Leave the clowns on the jaded horizon
In Wall Streets of Hell
I must say goodbye to the blindfold
And pursue the ideal
The planet becoming the hostess
Instead of the meal
Air fire water earth you were paradise
I’m sorry about me
I was under impression
That you were free and easy
(To plunder)

All You Need Is – Roy Harper – A Song About Women’s Lib!

Posted on by Opher
I think this is a song that is a reaction to the Beatles – All You Need is Love. Roy was never going to come out with sentiments like that. It would have been too simplistic and naff.
I first wrote out the lyrics for this song with Roy when we were doing his lyric book. It took a lot of doing. They are not too clear to make out on that 1968 CBS album – a lot clearer on the CD that came out a lot later. It is amazing how you can now just go on line and all the lyrics are there at your finger tips.
I’d always thought the song was about an acid trip he’d taken with Mocy, his first wife (not too much of a leap given the opening lines) but Roy denied that and said that the song was the result of one of those deep, late-night conversations.
Whatever. I still think there are shades of acid about it.
It was a song that I loved. It was a pop at the shallowness of the culture. Everyone dressed up to kill with their latest hairstyle, trendy clothes drunkenly out on the pull.
Every time I see a gaggle of girls out around town wearing next to nothing, with their incredibly short dresses, tottering around on high heels squealing and giggling, clutching at each other drunkenly, I think about this song. Nothing changes.
There’s a made infinite universe out there. There’s a life to be lived. There are a million questions to be answered and a million things to absorb and experience.
All you need is…………..
But then nothing really matters in the everything surrounding us.
All You Need Is

This song is by Roy Harper and appears on the album Come Out Fighting Ghengis Smith (1968).

<div class=’gracenote-header’>You must enable javascript to view this page. This is a requirement of our licensing agreement with music Gracenote.</div><style type=’text/css’>.lyricbox{display:none !important;}</style>

I gave my love a daisy
A third eye in my mind
We turned the crazy day around
To see what we could find
And went onto a journey
Reflecting us so deep and wide
That we could see the other side
Of knowing nothing matters
In the everything surrounding us
Surrounding everything itself
Surrounding

I saw my love gaze into
A swelling sea of life
She turned onto my shoulder
And terribly she cried
Until her eyes were closing
And asked me if she really was
A woman like the rest because
The rest she saw as empty vessels
Looking ripe and dressed to kill
But really very far away from
Freedom

She sobbed and put her head down
And walked into the night
Saying that she was as wrong as any
And that the rest were right
That they were proper women
Existing in a stupid mess of
Vegetable thoughtlessness
Made up as if to please the men
But making life a drag for them
Rejecting all communication
Giggling

I put my arm around her
And told her from my heart
That she was of a new world
Of which they weren’t a part
And told her not to bother
For she was free, as free as me
To do the things she wanted to
With more respectability
Than all the shallow painted faces
Twittering into emptiness
Together

Pretty woman walking down the street how can you
Expect to be loved with so much selfish arrogance?

Pretty woman your nose in the air, how can you
Expect me to love you knowing so much about you?

Why do you always have to receive love first?
Why are you unable to give some without being asked?

All you need is
All you need
Is all
You
Need is all
You need
Is

My Favourite Protest Songs – Short and Sweet – Roy Harper and Dave Gilmour

Posted on by Opher

This is not really a protest song/poem as such. It is a reflection on life; it is a statement of intent; a refusal to be slotted into a hole. The immoral men make their own morality and refuse to be dictated to. They are free to taste life to the full. And love is the essence of life.

We are here in this universe for such a short time. It is our duty to make it sweet; our duty to ensure that it is quality time. Better a short life of passion than a long dreary one. Quality – that is the very least.

You see – that is a protest, isn’t it?

ROY HARPER

Short And Sweet Lyrics

You ask what is the quality of life?
Seeking to justify the part you play
And hide, fearing it incomplete, to try
To make it any more or less than short and sweet

But short, short is from you to me, as close
As we are wont to try to make it be
We’re caught watching the dark in the sky, who knows?
Helpless as time itself to hold the time of day

And you, you are a fantasy, a view
From where you’d like to think the world should see
Be true and you will likely find a few
Building a vision new and justice to our time

And we, we, the immoral men, we dare
Naked and fearless in the elements
And free, carefree of tempting fate, aware
And holding off the moral nightmare at the gates

And sweet, sweet as a mountain stream, we’ll look
Toward a new day breaking in the east
We’ll meet as every future dream unfolds
And surely quality that is the very least

My Favourite Protest Songs – Roy Harper – Unknown Soldier

Posted on by Opher

This is one of Roy’s anti-war songs. Always in war it is the poor civilians and children who suffer most.

Someone has his/her finger on the button that launches the drone strike or sets off the ballistic missile. We harness technology to do our dirty business. We take our stupid belligerence and tribal conflict into space. Is there no hope for the future?

The Unknown Soldier – Roy Harper

I am an old soldier
I’ve been in the wars
Backwards and forwards,
Creeping on all fours

And I travel the pulses
Unseen and alone
Dogfights in the cosmos
Feeling the unknown

And I laugh in my sleep
Sitting in the gutter
Picking dog-ends from the deep

I am an old soldier
I see in your face
Times repeating
Uniforms in space

Looking forward to Doomsday
Telepathy wars
Dogma daydreams
Imaginary doors

And I laugh in my sleep
Sitting in the gutter
Picking dog-ends from the deep

But in the night a little boy is dreaming mysteries
And looking after laughter with his sister climbing trees
And somewhere there’s a button and a silent satellite
And a bastard who would press it and an everlasting night

I’d hunt him like a tiger and I’d tear him to a shred
There’s nowhere you can hide man
Me and the kids we’d feed you to the dead

And I cry in my sleep
For all the hungry children
And the unbelieving sheep.

My Favourite Protest Song – Roy Harper – South Africa.

Posted on by Opher

Roy Harper has produced a wealth of meaningful protest song and songs of social comment. This one was produced in the 1970s when South Africa was practicing the evil abhorrent apartheid.

Roy used to do a great spoken introduction to this song that said it all.

Better to use soft words than a fist.

Fortunately apartheid has gone. The trouble is that in its place we have massive corruption and the people are no better off.

It is great to get a beautiful song full of poetry and meaning.

South Africa – Roy Harper

Once I was another’s lover
Now I am my own
Trying to call myself a brother
Living here alone
Maybe if you came to see me
Wishing I wasn’t so blind
Sitting here thinking to be free
Maybe we’d all change our mind

She is kind and beautiful
I am young and strong
We have never met each other
But it can’t be long
Oft’ I have slept by her window
Often I whisper her name
And wonder that words in the wind blow
Happy that hers are the same

Roy Harper – McGoohan’s Blues – the final part

Posted on by Opher

The final part of the song was different, pacier, less strident.

Leaving behind the nightmare of the society we have created for ourselves, the prison of work and stress there was the beauty of nature.

Under the toadstool lover down by the dream
Everything flowing over rainbows downstream
Silver the turning water flying away
I’ll come to see you sooner I’m on my way

I’m on my way too.


And there’s a mirror that I’m looking straight through
And I get it
And there’s a doorway that I’m ducking into
To forget it
But flashing just beyond the sky the shattering midnight gathers
And reminding me behind my mind the earth quakes the sun flakes flutter

The reality of what we’ve become is frightening. Up ahead forever beckons and we’ll leave this dream behind. That darkness is forever gathering.

 

Over the mountain fairground
Candy flies stay
Under the moonshine fountain
I’m on my way
Lemon tree blossom ladies
Poured my tea
After the blue sky breezes following me
There’s a river that I’m making it with
And I know it
And I’m floating to I don’t care where
I just go it
But flashing just beyond the sky the shattering midnight gathers
And reminding me behind my mind the earth quakes the sun flakes flutter

 

The whole of life is an unreal fairy-tale. Best just to give yourself up to it, immerse yourself in it and go with the flow.

Daffodil April petal hiding the game
Forests of restless chessmen life is the same
Tides in the sand sun lover watching us dream
Covered in stars and clover rainbows downstream

The unpleasant game we have created for ourselves, the cruelty, viciousness and hypocritical stupidity is hidden behind a veneer of civilization. Behind the façade we are directed and moved through our paces.

The world watches us, under the infinite heavens, play our games. Nature has its beauty and further down the line, when mankind is gone, will be living its beautiful life. All will be well again.


And the question in the great big underneath is forever
And the fanfare that I’m forcing through my teeth answers “Never”
But the flashing just beyond the sky the shattering midnight gathers
And reminding me behind my mind the earth quakes the sun flakes flutter

Despite everything, in the face of infinity and all the pointlessness of life, we still look to live, create and seek answers in the mystery. We give it our all. It may be pointless and futile but we still have the moment.

The pumpkin coach and the rags approach and the wind is devouring the ashes

Then we are gone. The Fairy Tale is over. We are gone and our atoms are cast into the wind.

Meaningless meaning for our fruitful futility.

That song was immense for me. It meant a lot. I hope Roy doesn’t mind me pouring out my thoughts all over it.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?source=hp&ei=CkL4WYpVxvhosdCU8A0&q=Youtube+Roy+Harper+McGoohan%27s+Blues&oq=Youtube+Roy+Harper+McGoohan%27s+Blues&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i22i29i30k1l2.1603.640036.0.640446.50.42.6.0.0.0.120.3602.37j5.42.0….0…1.1.64.psy-ab..2.48.3713.0..0j35i39k1j0i131k1j0i131i46k1j46i131k1j0i10k1j0i22i30k1.0.hz7OzTuyuU8