The sixties raged. I was young, crazy, full of hormones and wanting to snatch life by the balls. There was a life out there for the grabbing and it had to be wrestled into submission. There was a society full of boring amoral crap and a life to be had in the face of the mind-numbing vision of slow death on offer.
Rock music vented all that passion.
This book is a memoir of a life spent immersed in Rock Music. I was born in 1949 and so lived through the whole gamut of Rock.
Rock music formed the background to momentous world events – the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War, Iraq war, Watergate, the miners’ strike and Thatcher years, CND, the Green Movement, Mao and the Cultural Revolution, Women’s Liberation and the Cold War.
I see this as the Rock Era.
I was immersed in Rock music. It was fused into my personality. It informed me, transformed me and inspired me. My heroes were musicians. I am who I am because of them.
Without Rock Music I would not have the same sensibilities, optimism or ideals. They woke me up!
I was privileged, as one of Roy’s friends, to be invited down to Abbey Road Studios for the recording of this album. I’d toddle along to St John’s Wood on my old AJS motorcycle to quietly sit in the background in the control room as Roy recorded this gem of an album. He and Pete were meticulous and Roy was very hands-on, experimenting and learning how the mixing board worked. The quality of the sound matched the quality of the songs – and what a bunch of songs!
Going to the studios was an experience. I’d just park up and walk in. Often there was nobody on the front desk. When there was I’d just nod and walk through. Security was virtually non-existent. John Lennon, Syd Barrett and Paul McCartney were recording and wandering around. Pink Floyd were there. Sometimes the control room would fill up with rock luminaries. At one time I found myself sitting with Keith Moon, Jimmy Page and Dave Gilmour. At other times the Nice all piled in and Robert Plant. We bumped into Syd in the corridor for a chat. Roy was hot property. It was widely expected that he was going to explode onto the scene. All the major acts – the Who, Led Zep and Pink Floyd rated his songs. They recognised the huge talent. It felt like a matter of time and this album seemed as if it was going to be the breakthrough album. I sat in amongst this melting pot of talent and absorbed it. A camera would have been good. It felt as if I was at the very centre of a hurricane that was going to blow Roy into the stratosphere. I’d known him for a few years, from the tiny clubs and Cousins to the Royal Albert Hall and now poised on the brink of major stardom. Bewildering.
I could only imagine what Roy was actually feeling at the time. He knew his songs were good. By this time he’d produced epics like McGoohan’s Blues and I Hate The Whiteman and was being courted by the biggest label in the world and all the top rock musicians of the age. He was riding the wave. This album was going to do it. Each song was being honed to perfection. The quality was obvious.
To be sitting in a control room with the top hierarchy of the rock world was incredible for me, but heaven knows what emotional impact it was having on Roy.
From: Roy Harper: Every Album, Every Song (On Track) Paperback – Flat Baroque and Berserk – 1970
Harvest Label 1970
Recorded at Abbey Road Studio
Roy Harper: vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar on Hell’s Angels and all song writing
Pete Jenner: producer
David Bedford: strings
Skaila Kanga: harp on ‘Song Of The Ages’
Tony Visconti: recorder on ‘Tom Tiddler’s Ground’
Keith Emerson: keyboards on ‘Hell’s Angels’
Lee Jackson: bass guitar on ‘Hell’s Angels’
Brian Davison: drums on ‘Hell’s Angels’
Lon Goddard: gatefold cover design
John McKenzie: photography
EMI had become aware of the burgeoning underground scene that was emerging in the late sixties. They had a few fingers in that pie, with Pink Floyd, but wanted an opportunity to delve deeper into this potential market. Their answer, in 1969, was to set up a subsidiary label which was to specialise in music from the underground scene. That was the Harvest label. They signed up Deep Purple, The Battered Ornaments, Syd Barrett, Robert Wyatt, Pink Floyd, Edgar Broughton and others.
By 1969 Roy was making quite a name for himself. He was recommended to EMI by Pete Jenner who managed the early Pink Floyd. Pete had been impressed with Roy’s Hyde Park performances at the free festivals and after hearing his recorded material he thought that Roy had the ability to do more. So Roy became one of their first signings on the Harvest label.
The beauty of the deal was that, for the first time, Roy had access to top quality recording facilities (the Abbey Road studios where the Beatles recorded), unlimited studio time, a quality producer in Pete Jenner (they became good friends and cannabis buddies), and brilliant sound engineers in Phil McDonald and Neil Richmond.
Roy had been prolific on the song writing front and in 1969 he entered the studio with a batch of songs surpassing anything he had created previously.
With a bunch of friends to egg him on, a producer who was happy to work in collaboration on the whole process, all manner of rock cognoscenti dropping in to listen, comment and contribute, Roy was all set for a ground-breaking album and that is what we were treated to with the magnificent Flat Baroque And Berserk.
Even the gatefold album cover is brilliant. Designed by old friend Lon Goddard with a photograph from John McKenzie, Roy looks resplendent in psychedelic shirt and flat cap. Eyes shut, cig in mouth, he is reclining on a chaise longue with a background of flock wallpaper and a tiger growling into his face!
The times I saw Roy perform this little ditty. Another epic. Sums up the stupidity of mankind for me. We are burning the world.
Burn The World – 1990
Awareness Records 1990
Roy Harper: producer
Roy Harper: acoustic guitar, vocals and song writing.
Dave Gilmour: guitar
Tony Franklin: bass
Kevin McAlea: keyboards
Steve Broughton: percussion
Engineer: Jacqui Harper
Photography: Colin Curwood
Roy wrote ‘Burn The World’ in 1984. When he had re-signed with EMI he presented them with this twenty minute demo. They rejected it on the basis that it was not a good commercial proposition.
However the song is an amazing concept that is even more relevant today, thirty years later, when we are experiencing the impact of global warming (we are burning the world) and beginning to realise the catastrophic effects it will have.
Roy sat on the recording for six years. He hoped that he might work more on its production, as he had successfully done with other epic songs such as ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ or ‘Me And My Woman’, but that never came about. Without a music contract to a major label Roy lacked the finances to devote the time to such a project and he knew this was unlikely to happen in the near future. Yet he believed the song was important and began including it in his live sets. He continued developing the musical arrangement and received positive response from audiences. Rather than abandon the piece altogether he decided to put the song out as it was – basically a partially completed demo.
When I first heard about Roy releasing the two twenty minute tracks – the studio version and live version – I immediately said ‘That’s a single, then Roy!’ And so it was!
The live version demonstrates the way Roy was playing the guitar aided by the use of technology through the pedals, showcasing his versatility and amazing ability to produce and sustain a piece of this length, as well as Jacqui’s ability to handle the mixing desk and use the effects to the maximum. At times it sounds like a full band. Once again Roy lives up to the epithet of a one man rock ‘n’ roll band.
The song itself is written in eight distinct sections:
I was 18 when this album came out. I had this and Roy’s Sophisticated Beggar. Loved ’em both but this one received more needle-time. I lost myself in the philosophy as much as the music. It hit me at exactly the right time. I was taking my A Levels with a lot of pressure from teachers and parents dangling careers and money when all I cared about was music, girls and gorging on ideas, books, travel, poetry and an alternative type of life that had opened up before me. I was impervious to the pressures. I had no interest in careers, money or this narrow path on offer. I was reading Kerouac, getting into Beefheart, Dylan and motorbiking off to catch Roy playing two or three times a week. The London underground scene was in full swing and, blindly, I wanted in. The future could look after itself.
Consequently songs about pressures, infinity and possessions hit me right in the centre of my cerebrum. I wanted a life full of meaning and adventure, not boring security. Life for me was a quest. I was after something more fulfilling and meaningful. What Roy and this album had to offer was far more exciting than A Levels, a university place and some future career. I was ripe for it.
While this is not one of Roy’s favourites it still hits home every time I play it. Those words still resonate. The music is adventurous, melodic and captivating. The whole concept pushes the boundaries. Roy’s creative juices were on fire!!
When I was 18 back in 1967 I was desperate to get hold of Roy’s first album – Sophisticated Beggar. Roy had been hawking it around at his gigs but had just sold the last one. I think they’d only press 400. There were none left. So Roy lent me his own copy! (Just imagine! – The only copy he had!)
I remember that Roy had drawn in a moustache with a felt-tip.
I was lucky. One turned up a few week’s later in one of the second-hand record shops I used to browse through. Although it was a hefty £4 (a fortune for an impoverished student living off one meal a day of pig’s head soup) I snapped it up.
Here I am, some fifty seven years later, holding that album. A treasured copy.
The cover artwork was Lon Goddard. He played some guitar on the album too!
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.
Every time I play this song it takes me right back to Les Cousins and that day in 1969 when Roy had gathered the faithful to make a live recording for the album. I can still feel the nervousness and expectation as I sat at that little table and waited. I so wanted it to be perfect. I’m sure I was eaten up with nerves more than Roy was – although he did break a string in the course of the performance due to hitting the guitar too hard.
The whole gig was recorded and later came out as Live At Les Cousins. A great slab of history.
He wanted a fiery live version for the album. As it turned out Roy wasn’t satisfied with what had come out of the gig.
I Hate The White Man
Just as ‘McGoohan’s Blues’ is the centre-piece to Folkjokeopus, ‘I Hate The White Man’ is the guts of Flat Baroque And Berserk. Like ‘McGoohan’s Blues’ it is an extremely powerful statement of a song.
Roy was very much aware that it had been hard to generate the required passion for ‘McGoohan’s Blues’ when he recorded in an empty studio. He wanted the ‘White Man’ to be a live recording in front of his own audience and what better place than Les Cousins, the small intimate club where he had started out that became his second home. Amazingly EMI agreed and their mobile recording studio was set up in the club. That is incredible because we now have a recording of the entire show – which later surfaced as Live At Les Cousins.
The decision to leave the spoken preamble on the record was a dubious one. Roy always likes to talk about the lyrics and explain the ideas within his songs. He wants the inherent meaning to be understood but once you have listened to the introduction a few times it begins to pale. Roy knew that with a title like ‘I Hate The White Man’ it would be easy to mistake what the song was about and he felt the lyrics required explanation. Perhaps that was best kept for the liner notes or the live album?
This song features Roy and his guitar without any other backing yet he creates a full and complex piece of music. Roy has reverted to normal tuning. The chords are powerful and the voice is clear and pure. As the piece progresses passion builds and builds until it is storming along with Roy hitting those strings with real venom.
The poem has nothing to do with skin colour. It is all about an attitude. It concerns the empty culture, hypocrisy and arrogance of western society with its violence, avarice and inherent racism. Roy detests the destructive nature of western values. His central premise is that this so-called civilisation took away a natural hunter-gatherer way of life and replaced it with concrete and shackles.
‘The land of look and see’ refers to America and Native Americans prior to the arrival of the Europeans.
Roy is hankering after a simpler life away from this plastic society of drunkenness, guns, teargas and unfulfilling lifestyle. His fury is aimed at the establishment and the lust for power and wealth that not only creates war, enslaving us and taking away our freedoms, but destroys the planet in the process.
This ‘attitude’ is not confined to those with white skin. There are plenty of our brown, yellow and black skinned fellow human beings who worship the same gods of arrogance and greed, whose media propaganda feed the same lies and maintain the same fallacies.
Roy envisions a tragic nuclear finale to our violent culture which in the face of the evidence from history will inevitably perish. At the end of the song ‘the shooting star has summoned death’s dark angel from his night’.
Phew!! Has there ever been a more powerful song filled with such meaning?
A four or five minute version of this song could have been a hard-hitting single! It should have been Roy’s ‘Working Class Hero’. It’s a far better song than Lennon’s but with a very similar arrangement and chords. His first opportunity missed I think.
As an eighteen-year-old, Les Cousins was the place where I first heard Roy sing (and talk) but the journey to get there started a long time before that.
I had to first discover acoustic folk and blues and then the fabulous contemporary folk singer-songwriters. But I’m jumping ahead. I’ll start at the very beginning.
Way back in 1960 when I was around eleven-years-old there was an older girl down my street who was a bit of a beatnik. I remember black polo necks and medallions. She was called Daphne and she introduced me to Joan Baez by endlessly playing Joan’s first album of traditional folk songs. That was a departure from the Buddy Holly and Everly Brothers I had been listening to (along with Adam Faith and the Shadows). I enjoyed the Joan Baez but wasn’t completely bowled over.
A year or so later my friend Charlie Mutton introduced me to Bob Dylan’s first album. I quite enjoyed the rawness. It was very different. But I was not convinced enough to buy the album (money was tight). That happened about the same time that Dick Brunning turned me on to Blues and I started listening to the likes of Robert Johnson’s great acoustic stuff.
By late 1964 Donovan started appearing on Ready Steady Go and released the single Catch The Wind in early 1965. By this time I’d been getting into Dylan (his next few acoustic albums were inspirational) and Donovan seemed related. I had a girlfriend – Viv Oldfield – who was really into Donovan and she had an elder brother who was mad on Woody Guthrie and Big Bill Broonzy. So my musical adventures were going all over the place with the discovery of new singers – Sonny Terry Brownie McGhee, Sleepy John Estes, Snooks Eaglin and Big Joe Williams. Phil Ochs rocked my head with his hard-hitting anti-war and civil rights songs – only second to Dylan. Paul Simon’s first album (The Paul Simon Songbook) had quite an effect. I loved that. Then there was a plethora of others from the Greenwich Village folk scene – Buffy St Marie, Richard and Mimi Farina, Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and the Native American Peter LaFarge. I enjoyed hunting out people my mates hadn’t heard of.
At the time records of Blues and Folk artists were really hard to come by. I used to hunt through the second-hand record bins for obscure Folkways records or a cover that took my fancy.
Bear in mind that at this time I was also really into the beat bands – Beatles, Stones, Yardbirds, Pretty Things, Who, Downliners Sect, Small Faces and Measles, as well as the old Rockers – Chuck Berry, Bo Diddly, Little Richard, Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly – plus Electric Blues – Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Sonny Boy Williamson and Elmore James – but that’s a different story. I’m focussing on the acoustic. Safe to say that music dominated my mind. I never stopped playing it.
Anyway, I became besotted with Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan because of the lyrics. I’m a lyric guy. Then a mate called Robert Ede lent me this fabulous album by Jackson C Frank which blew my mind. I couldn’t stop playing it. Another mate called Neil Furby, sold me the Bert Jansch and John Renbourn debut albums and they opened my mind. Neil also played me Anji by Davey Graham and that opened up new horizons. The British contemporary folk scene was exploding and I was in at the beginning.
By 1967 I was really immersed in the contemporary folk scene and was listening to a wide range of American and British singer songwriters. I was also into psychedelia, Blues, R&B and West Coast. No wonder my studies weren’t going well. I had trouble fitting it all in. The Incredible String Band reared their head – a friend called Gary Turp was mad on them and dragged me off to a gig or two.
It was spending my evenings at the Toby Jug in Tolworth, Eel Pie Island in Twickenham and Middle Earth, The Marqui and UFO clubs in London as well as a number of smaller clubs and college venues. Not much time for sleep.
Then a long lost friend called Jeff (with the white plastic mac) told me about this fiery singer who was ranting about the same stuff as me. He told me I had to go and hear him.
By this time my interests in the folk scene had taken me to the Barge, Bunji’s and Les Cousins. I’d turn up on my motorbike, pay a few shillings and get a fabulous evening/night of entertainment from Bert, John, Martyn, Al and hosts of others. Then, one night, between Bert and John, that fiery force of nature took the stage for a short set of three numbers and some gab, and altered the universe!
The opening track, ‘Freak Street’, sets the tone for Come Out Fighting Ghengis Smith. The production is different from Roy’s first album. The addition of strings, unusual for that time, has a muted effect on the guitars, pushing them back in the mix. Laid-back snare drums create a jazzy feel that carries the track along. Although it makes for a muddy backing sound (much clearer on the remastered rerelease) I like the effect. The vocal is clear and melds well with the backing; Roy gives vent to the full range of his voice.
The poem/lyric is complex with much use of alliteration. It dictates the pace of the track which speeds up and slows down in keeping with the words. At times the words come thick and fast (making them difficult to decipher) and at others more slowly and thus easily understood.
The result is a beautiful song, teeming with poetic descriptions and expressively delivered.
Greek Street is in the centre of Soho, where the freaks and buskers hung out and Roy renamed it Freak Street. An area that was once grand had now become a place of dives, sex shows and cosmopolitan bohemia. A place where it all happens – dope, sex, cakey make-up, Newcastle brown, music, in a ‘neon desert storm of tin can shabbiness’.
Way back twenty-odd years ago I was teaching in Beverley and Nick was starting out on his career. A group of us had organised the first of Nick’s solo gigs in Hull which had turned out a storming success. Hull, and the surrounding area, is a place that Nick has triumphantly returned to, at a variety of venues, time after time and he always receives a rousing reception.
I suggested to him that, as he was up in Beverley for a couple of days he might like to come into my school and meet the kids. He foolishly agreed. He’s up for anything, is Nick.
So, it came to pass that Nick arrived, guitar in hand, and I took him along to the 6th Form common room where a bunch of bemused 6th formers wondered what the hell was going on. I had nothing planned. They had not been prepared.
Nick was very relaxed about the whole thing, sat around talking to the kids. They didn’t have a clue who he was, even after I introduced him. They had never heard of Nick Harper. He then took his guitar out and started playing and they were bewitched and amazed. I don’t think that they’d ever seen or heard such virtuosity close up, live. He stayed for an hour or two, chatting and playing, laughing and joking, impressing them with his skills. It was such a relaxed impromptu gathering. News spread. More kids arrived. They all sat around thoroughly enjoying this unexpected sharing. I bet there were a few lessons short on numbers that morning.
From that day forth I noticed quite a few of those students turning up to Nick gigs.
I think Nick enjoyed the experience too. I certainly didn’t have to twist his arm too much to get him to come back. On five or six more occasions he’d turn up and play for the kids, turning them on to good, live music. Of course, I loved it too! Nick’s a special guy and his warmth was contagious. It was great to watch them all interact.
