Roy Harper in Brixton – Waiting For My Man.
Back in the 1980s, I was writing a book with Roy. It had started out as a biography but rapidly progressed, for a number of reasons, to become a book of lyrics, anecdotes and asides.
It took a lot of work. Organising Roy was not the easiest of jobs.
Few of Roy’s lyrics had been written down. We spent many an hour playing the vinyl records and writing down the lyrics. On some of the early ones from Come Out Fighting Ghenghis Smith Roy had forgotten the words and even Roy had trouble deciphering them from the songs. Occasionally we’d get it wrong which resulted in much hilarity. Working with Roy is punctuated with much riotous laughter augmented by chemical intake.
Pinning Roy down to put in time on the book proved difficult. We had to find space between gigs and recording. I also had to try to avoid periods when there were test matches or football. I soon learnt that if there was sport on the TV it was almost impossible to gain Roy’s attention.
Sometimes Roy would call in at my place in Hull, more often than not I would go for a few days to stay at his place. At the time, early on in the project, he was living in a big old house in Brixton. Our ‘work’ meetings usually turned into more of a party than anything else, but we did get some work done in between. I’d turn up with a string of questions and we’d record our sessions on C90 tapes on a grotty old portable tape recorder from which I would try to produce transcripts. They were often so poorly recorded that it was hard to make it out. Took me hours. Back then there were no computers so, when I was back home, I typed it all out on an old manual typewriter. Often I’d return with almost as many questions as I’d started out with.
Anyone who knows Roy will know that he runs on a different time scale to the rest of us. It didn’t make life easy. But it was interesting.
Getting to Brixton was a problem. I had no car back then, and was no longer as partial to hitch-hiking as I once had been; I thought that train was the best solution. I was teaching back then but as it was half-term I had some time to spare. I arranged with Roy the time of my arrival and set off. He assured me that he would pick me up from the station.
This was Brixton a short while after the notorious riots. Watching the news back then all one saw was rampaging black youths, overturned cars, petrol bombs and houses on fire. Brixton looked like a war zone. Colleagues in Hull, which, at the time was not the world’s most cosmopolitan city, thought I was going into some cauldron of race rioting. I was doomed. They assumed that as soon as the denizens of Brixton set eyes on a white face they would tear me limb from limb. I laughed. I’d lived in London. I knew it wasn’t like that.
Now I hadn’t quite expected Roy to be standing there when I arrived; I knew him better than that.
Clutching my bag I made my way out of the station and sat myself down on a bench in a prominent place to wait. The concourse was busy. Everyone was black and a few gave me funny looks, wondering what this long-haired white guy was doing there.
The minutes dragged into an hour. A lady from one of the shops had noticed me sitting there patiently waiting and brought me a cup of coffee. She asked if I wanted to use her phone to contact someone (this was before the age of mobiles). I thanked her profusely but hadn’t brought Roy’s number with me so that wasn’t even an option.
The hour became two hours and I was joined by a very drunk old man with long grey dreads who offered me drinks out of his bottle of whisky, poorly wrapped in a ragged brown paper bag, put his arm around me, and engaged me in conversation in broad patois, only half of which I understood. He was very jovial and friendly but eventually moved on to search for better entertainment.
After two and a half hours a taxi driver offered me a free lift to wherever I was going.
Perhaps they wanted rid of me? I was making the place untidy.
Eventually Roy appeared in his huge car, a big old beat-up Citroen large enough to get all his gear in, and drove me off to his house for a few days of ‘work’.
I could not help wondering if a black guy sitting outside Hull train station would have received as friendly a reception as I’d been offered by the black community in Brixton?
Islam needs to address its misogyny. The roots lie in tribal Arab societies and, just as with fundamentalist Judaism and Christianity, carry the prejudices of that woman-hating culture. It’s time that religion moved into the 21st century.
Roy’s song is not available on Youtube but here is a good cover of the controversial song. This is not a song of hate. It’s a wake-up call!! Oppressed women need supporting.
I wrote this a while back for Roy’s 80th birthday!
Roy Harper – the 80th Birthday poem
We’ve walked many roads
Seen mysteries
And said our piece
We’ve reflected on love
And dreamed
In the music of time
We’ve sought better lives
Voiced objections
And made our stand
We’ve perfected creations
Given all we could
And held nothing back
For, in the end,
Isn’t it in the striving
That we live
Have lived
And still live
Happy 80th Birthday
Opher 8.6.2021
I wrote this for Roy to celebrate his 80th birthday.
Roy Harper must be one of Britain s most undervalued rock musicians and songwriters. For over fifty years he has produced a series of innovative albums of consistently outstanding quality. He puts poetry and social commentary to music in a way that extends the boundaries of rock music. His 22 studio albums 16 live albums, made up of 250 songs, have created a unique body of work. Roy is a musician s musician. He is lauded by the likes of Dave Gilmour, Ian Anderson, Jimmy Page, Pete Townsend, Joanna Newsom, Fleet Foxes and Kate Bush. Who else could boast that he has had Keith Moon, Jimmy Page, Dave Gilmour, John Paul Jones, Ronnie Lane, Chris Spedding, Bill Bruford and Steve Broughton in his backing band? Notable albums include Stormcock, HQ and Bullinamingvase. Opher Goodwin, Roy s friend and a fan, guides the reader through every album and song, providing insight into the recording of the songs as well the times in which they were recorded. As his loyal and often fanatical fans will attest, Roy has produced a series of epic songs and he remains a raging, uncompromising individual.
I do enjoy reading the reviews for the book. Gives me a boost! Thank you to all who leave reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Means a lot!!
country: UK
year: 2021
info:
Mark Hughes
Another title in the rapidly growing list of books published by SonicBond, this time featuring original maverick and friend to a guitar rock god or two, Roy Harper.
As a long-standing Harper fan I know that tackling his discography is not a task for the faint-hearted. With albums going in and out of print, reissues, alternative versions and limited editions, there is a lot to get to grips with. Thankfully Goodwin handles everything with aplomb, clarifying where extra tracks on various re-releases originally stemmed from and where they fit into Harper’s recording chronology. It makes it easy to disentangle the frequently messy and confusing slew of releases from a prolific writer.
Of course, it helps that Goodwin has been friends with Harper since 1967, just after the release of Harper’s surprising debut album Sophisticated Beggar; surprising in that it eschewed the folk and blues numbers that Harper had gained a reputation for from his busking and folk club performances and comprised all-original material. Perhaps more startling was that it also featured a full band in places, not what the folk crowd that had primarily been his audience up to that point had been expecting. These were the first signs that Harper would stick to his own plans and not be pushed into doing what others necessarily wanted or expected.
What will be alien to modern bands is the fact that Harper’s first two albums, released on different labels, were both commercial failures. Yet the musical environment of the time meant that it was the music that mattered and the lack of commercial appeal was not considered a black mark against the artist. He found a longer-lasting home on Harvest Records for his third album, Flat Baroque And Berserk, the first of seven essential albums he recorded for the label over the next decade.
Goodwin’s personal memories and analysis of the songs and albums adds a lot to the book and offer insights that keep things interesting, more than some other titles in the series in being a sterile list of songs. Harper was never an artist that was likely to trouble the singles chart but he did consistently release such items. Although a lot of the songs unique to the format, particularly from the earliest years, have been compiled and re-issued, his b-sides remain some of the hardest items to locate for the collector. In that respect this book is a valuable guide to what was released, and in some cases what has not been released, both of which can be quite frustrating for the searching completist!
I would have liked to have seen a bit more on the live Roy Harper as, despite the brilliance of the studio output, it was on stage that Harper excelled. As at least a couple of the official live albums were assembled from a multitude of recorded concerts, there is potentially a lot of recorded material that remains locked in the vaults. However, considering that recording details and locations were omitted from Inbetween Every Line as all the tapes were mixed up and it wasn’t deemed necessary to sort them out, it could be a major task sorting them out if, indeed, they still exist.
Despite his long recording career, there doesn’t appear to be much studio material left languishing in the vaults and it seems increasingly unlikely that Harper will return to the studio to record a new album, despite how well his last album, 2013’s Man And Myth was received. So it is from these putative live archives that any future releases will presumably be drawn.
As such, this volume can be assumed to be as complete a record of the musical legacy of one of Britain’s finest and most idiosyncratic singer-songwriters as you are likely to find. Written in a relaxed and enjoyable style, it is an easy-to-read volume that will introduce, and re-introduce, the reader to the delights of the Harper catalogue. I certainly dug out a few of his lesser-played albums from my collection and listened to them in a new light after reading the book. And if that is not recommendation enough, I don’t know what is.
Now, back to searching for the missing items. Anyone know where I can find Goodbye Ladybird?
