Introduction
Roy Harper is a unique individual and an innovative songwriter who took his first uncharacteristically tentative steps into the London folk scene during the mid-1960s. He was born on 12 June 1941 into the middle of World War II, his mother sadly dying a few days later from mastitis: a common breast infection, nowadays easily treatable. The loss of his mother, naturally, had a lifelong impact on Roy’s personality. His father married again, but his stepmother was a strict, religious woman, and Roy’s life of rebellion began.
His first memory is of being held in someone’s arms, looking towards a red glow on the horizon, and being told, ‘Manchester’s really copping it tonight’. As a wayward child, his younger years were marked by constant trouble, both at home and school. On one occasion, he was found many miles from home, pedalling his trike towards Liverpool. His dislike of the religion his stepmother imposed, led to him performing pagan ceremonies and burying effigies in his back garden.
As a child, Harper lived in the genteel town of Lytham St Annes: a place he once described as a cemetery with a bus stop. The tedium of life in the drowsy town portrayed a conservative ethos he fought against. Moving into his teenage years, minor incidents progressed into more serious crimes. He and a small group of friends alternated between running free in the countryside and conducting shoplifting and vandalism sprees. These activities ranged from stealing chocolates in Woolworths to breaking into Lytham’s cricket pavilion. They drank the booze they found inside, then burnt the building to the ground.
On one occasion, Roy and a friend rampaged through the town, pulling up freshly planted roadside saplings, then hoisting a weighing machine through the public toilets’ window. Exhausted, they searched for somewhere to put their heads down and broke into a garage. Falling asleep in a car, they were discovered the following morning: by the owner, who, unfortunately, happened to be a policeman.
Continued rebellion and a string of minor offences culminated in Roy’s arrest. He was found guilty of daubing swastikas and a hammer and sickle on the town hall – the act ostensibly a protest aimed at the councillors (who he considered to be a bunch of Nazis) and against the Russian invasion of Hungary. It was sufficient to produce a double-spread article with photos in the Daily Mirror.
This was just the beginning.
At fifteen – in order to escape from his stepmother and the mayhem he had created – Roy signed up to the Royal Air Force for five years, with dreams of becoming a pilot. But life in the RAF was not how he imagined. He tried boxing, which provided some respite, but the unremitting discipline and tedium of life as a serviceman became unbearable. After two years, he knew he had to get out. Without the cash to buy his discharge, Roy decided to feign madness – not too difficult a task in his case. He successfully convinced the military doctors, and the RAF discharged him, but only as far as RAF Princess Mary’s mental institution, where he was assessed and treated. There being sectioned, he was forcibly medicated with lithium and largactyl, and even subjected to electric shock therapy. Eventually transferred to Lancaster Moor Hospital, Roy decided that in order to keep his ‘insanity’, he had to escape. Being of slight build, he was able to squeeze through a fanlight window and flee. I have a mental image of him, wearing one of those gowns that tie at the back, racing across the grass and scaling the wall – although I’m sure it probably wasn’t quite like that.
Now on the run, Roy headed for Blackpool, where he became immersed in the bohemian subculture. As a self-proclaimed hashish-smoking beatnik, he discovered the world of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs and began to write poetry.
However, he continued with his reckless ways. Undeterred by the risk of being caught and sent back to the institution, Roy resumed his rampage through life. On one evening – at a party that was running out of booze – he climbed onto shop roofs, intending to break into an off-licence. Crashing through a skylight, he found himself miraculously unscathed but on the floor of a chemist. Unable to open the dangerous drugs cupboard, he settled for a bottle of amphetamines and a jar of pennies, proceeding to sit on the seashore, swallowing a handful of the pills and throwing pennies into the water.