Roy Harper – McGoohan’s Blues – more revelations from myself

Posted on November 1, 2017 by Opher

Roy had become my Sal Paradise – the frenzied maniac who recklessly spent his life careering through experience after experience. I had got to know him and become friends. The more I found out about the life he had led the more I was impressed. He’d lived the wild free existence of the Kerouac dream.

And I had this dream in here same time as standing awake
These various visions rushed through as I giggled and quaked
The distant guns thunder my end and I duck for a while
Auntie Lily is handing me candy she chuckles I smile
And our village is where I was born and it’s where I will die
And I’ll never be able to leave it whatever I try
The ebb and the flow of the forces of life pass me by
Which is all that I’ll know from my birth to my last gasping sigh

And O how the sea she roars with laughter
And howls with the dancing wind
To see the dying lying there obeying

All we have is this short life. We fill it with what we want and are gone. We see it there before us and we see death looming at the end of the journey.

In the face of that we carry on as if it will last forever and distract ourselves from reality. We play the game of politeness and trivia.

We are all born into this society and there really is no escape whatever we do. We’re in it. It shapes us, controls us and bends us to its purpose. There is no escape. We will die within it. Out protest is pitiful.

The way we live our lives apart from nature, spending so much of our time in work, unable to appreciate the world, the universe, poetry, art, music, is a great shame. Those more primitive people had it right – the community got together and enjoyed themselves, shared and experienced. We’ve lost that connection.

A lifetime in servitude and then we are gone and the wind laughs at us as it scatters our atoms.

My age and my time
The blood fire wine and rhyme
That fills my dream reminds me of an atom in a bubble on a wave
That held its breath for one sweet second then was popped and disappeared
Into fruitful futilities meaningless meaning
Meaningless meaning

All the fury of our lives, everything we do, achieve, experience and feel is a fleeting instant in the eternity of time.

Our life is a fruitful futility full of meaningless meaning. Best get on with it then and make sure we live it to the max and fill it with love, creativity and make our own meaning.

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Roy Harper – McGoohan’s Blues – yet more

Posted on November 1, 2017 by Opher

The song was inspired by the TV series The Prisoner featuring Patrick McGoohan. It was one of few things worth watching at the time (Monty Python and Marty Feldman being another two).

And the bankers and tycoons and hoarders of money and art
Full up with baubles and bibles and full of no heart
Who travel first class on a pleasure excursion to fame
Are the eyes that are guiding society’s ludicrous aim

And those are still the self-obsessed, mindless cretins who are setting the direction. They run the planet for profit. They control the media, buy off the politicians, set the wars, strip the rainforests, and put out the tripe and propaganda – so they can exploit it.

They use religion when they need to, buy their status symbol cars and yachts and do not give a fuck about anybody or anything – just as long as they can have everything they want.

And the village is making its Sunday collection in church
The church wobbles ‘twixt hell and heaven’s crumbling perch
Unnoticed the money box loudly endorses the shame
As the world that Christ fought is supported by using his name

And O how the sea she roars with laughter
And howls with the dancing wind
To see my stupid poetry burbling

Even the idealistic spiritual leaders are hypocritically used and deployed to serve the game. The very things they stood against are put forward in their name as the madmen select the texts.

In the face of the enormity of the collusion every protest ends up burbling in the background.

And the pin-striped sardine-cum-magician is packed in his train
Censoring all of the censorship filling his brain
He glares through his armour-plate vision and says “Hmm, insane”
The prisoner is taking his shoes off to walk in the rain

And we are packed off to work in our conforming uniforms, with our conforming minds, safe within our ruts and disdainful of anyone who doesn’t follow the prescribed pattern that we have been brainwashed into.

And the luminous green prima donna is sniffing the sky
She daren’t tread the earth that she’s smelling her birth was too high
Her bank balance castle is built on opinion and fear
Which is all she allows within three hundred miles of her ear

And the wealthy stick their noses in the air and deplore the stinking masses, foreigners and life in general. Nature appalls them – it is too dirty, vulgar and smelly. They have servants to deal with all that vile business.

And I’ve seen all your pedestal values your good and your bad
If you really believe them your passing is going to be hard
And I’ve thought through our thought and I know that its blind silly season
Occurs when our reasoning is trying to fathom a reason
And if you really know it’s all a joke but you’re just putting me on
Well it’s sure a good act that you’ve got ‘cos you never let on
But if all of that supersale overkill world is for real
Well there’s nowhere to go kid so you might as well start to freewheel

Well I’d looked at the values I was being handed – play the game, get a good job, earn the cash, fit in, shut up, look the part, get as high as you can get, stab, claw, lie and cheat – but get to the top.

It was a charade, a joke and an empty promise. I rejected it completely. As far as I was concerned they could keep their mansions, masons and secret handshakes. I wanted something more exciting and genuine and less mean, nasty and destructive.

I wanted to think for myself and not be part of that capitalist dream of consumption at all costs. In my opinion it was immoral, unethical and unsustainable.

I’d read Kerouac’s alternative and I wanted that bohemian dream.

And O how the sea she roars with laughter
And howls with the dancing wind
To see my two feet standing there burbling

It might be pointless and absurd, the rebellion of youth, but it was what I craved. I wanted to drop out of that overkill world.

Roy Harper – More of my thoughts on McGoohan’s Blues

Posted on October 31, 2017 by Opher

That poem/song was opening empathic pathways in my head and resonating with my neurones. I thought it was the best thing I had ever heard.

Meanwhile the ticket collectors are punching their holes
Into your memories your journeys and into your souls
Your life sentence starts and the judge hands you down a spare wig
Saying: “Get out of that and goodbye old boy have a good gig”
And the town label makers stare down with their gallery eyes
And point with computer stained fingers each time you arise
To the rules and the codes and the system that keeps them in chains
Which is where they belong with no poems no love and no brains

And O how the sea she roars with laughter
And howls with the dancing wind
To see my two feet standing there questioning

Well my journey was really just beginning and I was standing there questioning the tenets of the society I was part of. I was already appalled by the history of its Empire, slavery, war and racism. I was in contempt of its aims – wealth and power at all costs – never mind the means or effects on people or the environment. Money was all that mattered. I was equally appalled by the social structure and the contempt the wealthy ruling class had for everyone below them. I had encountered their snobby attitude at the rugby club and despised them. I really did not want to be part of that corrupt society or spending my life playing that game. I wanted something less hypocritical, more fulfilling, more meaningful and much freer.

If you didn’t fit in to the allotted place the fingers were pointed, the labels attached and you were ganged up on. They wanted to knock you down to size and force you to compromise.

Meanwhile the TV commercials are sweeping the day
Brainwashing innocent kids into thinking their way
The wet politicians and clergymen have much to say
Defending desires of the sheep they are leading astray
And Ma’s favourite pop star is forcing a grin he’s a smash
Obliging the soft-headed viewers to act just as flash
The village TV hooks its victims on give away cash
The addicts are numbers who serve to perpetuate trash

And O how the sea she roars with laughter
And howls with the dancing wind
To see my stupid poetry shuffling

I had already worked out that the whole system was geared to brainwashing you into fitting in. The entertainment industry was pushing product and producing a mind-numbing series of trash to create and fill vacuous minds. But I had discovered something more meaningful. I had already discovered Jack Kerouac and the Beats. Now the sixties was raging and I aimed to drop out of that mess and do something better.

My poetry was about to shuffle into existence.

Roy Harper – McGoohan’s Blues – what it meant to me

Posted on October 31, 2017 by Opher

When I first heard this song I was eighteen and it hit me like a steam train. I was ripe for it. I was leaving home, leaving school and off at college in London for three years of freedom.

These are a few of the bits that hit home.

Nicky my child he stands there with the wind in his hair
Wondering whether the water the wind of the where
I fear that someday he might ask me if mine is the blame
And I’ve got no reply save to tell him it’s all just a game.

Well Nicky is the wondrous Nick Harper who is a musical genius in his own right. The whole charade of this greedy, violent, selfish human culture is the game we are born into. It is the rat-race that stops us from being alive.

The fear of mankind’s untogetherness pounds in my heart
The deceit of my friends the betrayals of which I am part
And O how the sea she roars with laughter
And howls with the dancing wind
To see my two feet standing here questioning

It goes on all around us as we destroy the planet and each other in this endless game of division and vitriol. But when we are long gone the sea and the sky will still be there and it will be mocking our vanity and arrogance.

And I’m just a social experiment tailored to size
I’ve tried out the national machine and the welfare surprise
I’m the rich man the poor man the peace man the war man the beast
The festive consumer who ends up consumed in the feast

That is what I felt like at 18 and still do at 68 – a social experiment tailored to size.

It doesn’t matter who we are – we’re all caught up in this mad machine that is feasting on the planet and destroying it in the process. The greedy and selfish on their crazy spree of growth, possession and power will end up killing us all.

And my fife eyed promoter is clutching two birds in the bush
He’s a thief he’s as bad as the joker they’re both in the rush
He’s telling me Ghandi was handy and Jesus sold his ring
(Dunno who to, God maybe)
“And everyone knows dat dis dough’s gonna make me de king”

And the madmen, like Joe Lustig, Roy’s promoter, really believe that money is all that matters – with money you can do what you like, live like a king and rule the world. They believe that all the idealists and religious leaders are being used in the power game, exploited and trotted out when needed and that everyone sells out. Money is power. Money is all that matters.

Except that I, and Roy, knew that game was empty and hollow. There was much more to life that money and there were much better ways of living than a rat-race to destroy the planet.

It was all heady stuff for an eighteen year old to take in and digest.

Roy Harper was saying things that lit me up. These were no vacuous pop songs or soppy love songs. These were barbed poems with social bite.

Roy Harper – McGoohan’s Blues – the start

Posted on October 31, 2017 by Opher

The song that epitomized those early years for me was McGoohan’s Blues. It wasn’t his first attempt at an epic; he’d tried that on the album Come Out Fighting Ghenghis Smith with the track Circle, but it was the song that distilled all that angst and philosophy into one poetic diatribe.

Weighing in at over twenty minutes it was a tour de force. The strident guitar and biting lyrics drove it into areas nobody, apart maybe for Dylan, had ever ventured. It hit you like an earthquake and beat you round the head like Muhammad Ali. There was so much in it that you couldn’t take it all in.

That young Harper put his whole soul into that song. He felt every word and propelled it at up with velocity like uranium tipped cannon shells. The audiences were transfixed. It was an intensity that you could not get anywhere else. There was nothing like that fiery young Harper.

Sadly I don’t think I have ever heard a recorded version that does justice to those early performances. The one on the album Folkjokeopus wasn’t a patch on the intensity of live performance and incredibly sadly there are no recordings or bootlegs of those sixties concerts when the song first came out. It wasn’t until later that there were live recordings. By then the song, while still great, had lost some of that raw, nascent energy.

I was fortunate to be there in the audience when Roy first tried it out on an unsuspecting small group of us. By then those small groups of aficionados had grown into larger audiences but that had not affected Roy or the way he performed. It was still as if you were in his front room.

That song took Roy to a new level.

Roy Harper – The early years

Posted on October 31, 2017 by Opher

Seeing Roy Harper perform during those early years was not so much a performance as an experience. It was a bumpy ride through a mind. You never quite knew where it would take him or you. Roy sat on stage in front of a small audience and treated it more like a small gathering of friends in his front room rather than a concert. And we were nearly all tuned in to his wavelength and went along for the ride. You never knew where it would lead.

There were the songs – and they were incredible epics of vitriol and observation, amazing musical journeys and poetic imagery – but there were also the words that spilt out in between and often during those songs. As the ideas and thoughts came into his head he turned on the tap and out they spilt. You never knew what was coming. It was not confined to commentary of the songs so much as observations of life. He would stop a song midway to divulge a thought. He would start a song and then stop and go into a story. Sometimes a song would start multiple times. All punctuated with laughter and craziness.

A typical Roy concert would have as much talk as there was music and most of us were glued to it. The talk was as good as the music. You came out of those early concerts with your mind buzzing as the thoughts swirled. On the way home you’d be madly talking and distilling the essence into sense.

Roy Harper – The first encounter

Posted on October 31, 2017 by Opher

I was eighteen years old when I first saw the hurricane that was Roy Harper perform. At that time he was twenty five, full of pent-up angst and fury, laughter and madness and striking out at anything and everything. I was a young kid with a head full of swirling confusion, spinning like droplets of water looking for something to coalesce onto. Those feelings found a kindred spirit. It was like looking into a mirror. He was articulating the thoughts in my head into words. It wasn’t so much poetry, though it was, so much as commentary. My thoughts and feelings crystalized in a multitude of revelations around those Harper words.

Roy was the first person I ever met who was commenting on the mess of a society that we were surrounded with. He was a young man who operated without any personal censorship. There were no filters. The thoughts that came into his head were unleashed through his mouth without restriction. It was raw.

This was not so much a performance as an outpouring of passion and unrefined feelings.

That first encounter was at Les Cousins in Soho. He did a short set in between Bert Jansch and John Renbourn. I love both of those guys but for me they were totally eclipsed. Roy with his three songs and a bit of banter captivated the evening. It was a glimpse. But it was enough.

Anecdote – Roy Harper at St Pancras Town Hall 1969?

Posted on August 2, 2017 by Opher

Anecdote – Roy Harper at St Pancras Town Hall 1969?

Posted on March 10, 2016 by Opher

Roy Harper at St Pancras Town Hall 1969

When I first saw Roy Harper he was at the beginning of his career. The first gig was sandwiched between Bert Jansch and John Renbourn at Les Cousins. Roy was one of those regulars there and not yet one of the headliners.

I was smitten. Not only were the songs extraordinary but the banter was revolutionary. I hadn’t heard anyone talk like this. It seemed to me that I was hearing some young Jack Kerouac on speed, in one long stream of consciousness. You not only received a brilliant musical event but you also were regaled with whatever thoughts were going through that remarkable mind…. And there were no end of thoughts. Roy would say whatever came into his head. His mind was like quicksilver. There were asides, commentary and polemic. It was unfiltered. I had not heard anyone like it. Not only that, but his thoughts were echoing my own. It was as if he was articulating all of the concerns that I was experiencing.

You did not get a concert with Roy. It wasn’t so much of a performance. He treated the audience as if they were friends and the club as if it was his front room. This annoyed a lot of people. They wanted a slick presentation. They wanted to sit and appreciate the guitar playing, melody and songs. For me that was not the crucial element. I was enthralled with the ideas, the exchanges of views, and the unadulterated access to the mind of another human being, someone with the same sensibilities as myself. I was as intrigued by the diatribes and asides as I was by the music. I did not mind if he stopped halfway through a song to inform us of a thought, tale or idea that had just strayed into his head. I found that extraordinary and illuminating. He was opening himself up and revealing his inner thoughts. There was no holding back. I’d never encountered anyone like that before.

It must have appealed to a lot of other people too. When I started following Roy he was playing the small club s and venues to small audiences. That rapidly changed. It happened almost overnight. One minute there were thirty or fifty people and the next there were queues around the block.

Roy was extraordinary

I saw the change.

The St Pancras Town Hall gig felt like the end of an era. It was a farewell to the warm intimate meetings of a small group of friends and the ushering in of a larger arena. For me it was the change from Roy the small-time amateur, free-wheeler, to Roy the performer.

That gig was special – a watershed.

It was as if all the faithful gathered together in one place for one last bash. This was Roy with his friends. After this it would never quite be the same. We would have to share him with both the rest of the music punters and show biz in general.

For this evening we had him to ourselves.

I still remember it. There are concerts when everything comes together to create perfection. The audience and Roy were one. Roy was relaxed. The music and banter flowed and gelled and everything was suffused with warmth.

You do not get too many magical evenings like that. This wasn’t a concert so much as a sharing of spirit.

St Pancras Town Hall was the end of the beginning and a more suitable gig could not have been arranged. We were moving into the next and larger phase and it would be one filled with delights as Roy blossomed musically and his recording career took off, but nothing could ever transcend the intimacy of that evening.

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The ten best Roy Harper Tracks – a fan’s choice

Posted on May 22, 2017 by Opher

Roy is the one person who has consistently recorded epic songs with great poetic lyrics and social content. Nobody else comes near. In my opinion he is the greatest songwriter Britain has produced.

Here are my choice of his ten best songs.

The Lord’s Prayer

An epic poem/song spanning the whole of human history.

Me and My Woman

Another epic tale of the struggle living in a society like this and the healing strength of a relationship.

McGoohan’s Blues

One of my favourites from the very early days when he used to rage this out with passion.

How Does It Feel?

I think I prefer this to Whiteman.

One Of Those Days in England

An epic song about England the like of which only Roy can do.

The Game

A vitriolic diatribe against society and the hypocrisy and the game we live in

Hallucinating Light

The atmosphere on this song is great.

I Hate the Whiteman

A fierce song about the terror of Western society

Another Day

A beautiful love song

When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease

A song about death.

I often like my music strong and deep. Roy hits the mark for me.

Roy Harper book out later this year!

So which is the best Roy Harper track ever recorded?

Posted on January 12, 2017January 12, 2017 by Opher

Worth listening to all these gems!

Roy Harper

Roy Harper – McGoohan’s Blues – more revelations from myself

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Roy Harper – McGoohan’s Blues – yet more

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Roy Harper – More of my thoughts on McGoohan’s Blues

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Roy Harper – McGoohan’s Blues – what it meant to me

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Roy Harper – McGoohan’s Blues – the start

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Roy Harper – The early years

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Roy Harper – The first encounter

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Anecdote – Roy Harper at St Pancras Town Hall 1969?

Anecdote – Roy Harper at St Pancras Town Hall 1969?

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The ten best Roy Harper Tracks – a fan’s choice

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So which is the best Roy Harper track ever recorded?

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Roy Harper

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Anecdote – Roy Harper at St Pancras Town Hall 1969?

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