Few survivors from the golden age of British folk-rock have kept their reputations intact. Of the generation of troubadours who came of age in the folk clubs of London in the mid-1960s, some have passed away, others have surrendered to the regurgitation of the blandest form of acoustic folk music. But among the survivors, there is one figure whose body of work, comprising 23 studio LPs and almost as many live and compilation releases, has come to stand for a particularly single-minded form of integrity. That man is Roy Harper.
Now officially ‘retired’, and living in a secluded corner of Ireland, Harper has recently been hailed as a key influence by a much younger generation of devoted starsailors who instinctively recognise his innovations, his refusal to compromise and his visionary world view. It is rumoured that Joanna Newsom insisted she’d only play her recent UK shows if he would support her. The likes of Fleet Foxes, Joanna Newsom, and Jim O’Rourke are avowed fans; and in previous decades he has enjoyed public endorsements and tributes from the likes of Led Zeppelin, Kate Bush, Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour and many more.
Biography
Born in 1941, Harper lost his mother within a few weeks of his birth and was brought up in the outskirts of Manchester by his father and stepmother, a Jehovah's Witness. Harper developed a deep hatred of organised religion and ran away, aged 15, to join the Royal Air Force. The rigid discipline required did not suit him. In order to be discharged early he pleaded insanity and was committed to an institution where he received ECT. A former participant in the skiffle revolution in the mid-50s, around 1964 Harper found himself joining the stream of bohemian rambler-buskers hitching and singing their way around Europe and North Africa. On his return to Britain he pitched in to the London coffee-house folk scene and secured a residence at legendary folk club Les Cousins, where he was spotted by the obscure Strike label.
Beginning with 1966’s Sophisticated Beggar, Harper’s music has consistently rattled the cage of received ideas. His versatile, poetic sensibility was employed in a wide range of song styles from romantic love songs to late-night mantras to blackly comedic throwaway numbers. A brilliant, percussive guitar stylist in his own right, he extended the form of folk music over the next few years, allowing himself the space to stretch out in long, lyrically dense and mantrically repetitive odysseys of poetic thought. “I was writing long poems in the 50s,” says Harper, “none of which unfortunately made it past the first few moves of living quarters. My first inspiration was John Keats’s Endymion.”
The first inklings of his expansive approach on record came on the ten minute “Circle” on 1967’s Come Out Fighting Genghis Smith – produced by Shel Talmy – and was vastly ramped up on the following year’s Folkjokeopus, which contained an 18 minute “McGoohan’s Blues”, named after the lead actor of TV’s The Prisoner and whose enigmatic verses were laced with anti-establishment rants.
By this time Harper was a favourite at the outdoor Hyde Park Festivals, where he was exposed to the wider attention of the underground scene. Now produced and managed by Peter Jenner, and signed to EMI’s progressive label Harvest, his 1969 LP Flat Baroque And Berserk reflected his reputation as a bloodyminded, truculent troubadour, reflecting turbulent times with anger, wrath and sardonic humour, singing – like the mistle thrush after which his next opus would be named – into the eye of the storm.
Stormcock (1971) is generally regarded as a masterpiece: a sprawling but focused suite of four lengthy tracks which explored the inner space of Abbey Road Studio to rhapsodic effect. Like Astral Weeks refracted through the pages of OZ magazine, the songs span an enormous spectrum of experience, from the frontline of social unrest to the secluded, birdsong-infested lanes of the English countryside. Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page added guitar, disguised as ‘S Flavius Mercurius’, highlighting a relationship with the group that had begun at the 1970 Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music. “Hats Off To (Roy) Harper”, an incoherent, gutsy blues workout on Led Zeppelin III, paid tribute to the singer’s status as a beacon of integrity for the underground scene.
Harper enjoyed a special relationship with Led Zeppelin, and his subsequent albums began to move into harder rock territory with the addition of various key collaborators including, as well as Page, orchestral arranger/keyboardist David Bedford, David Gilmour, Chris Spedding, Bill Bruford and John Paul Jones. Lifemask (1972) contained several songs written for the film Made, directed by John Mackenzie, which starred Harper as an edgy, high-maintenance rock star. Valentine (1974) was launched with a gig featuring Page and Bedford plus Ronnie Lane and Keith Moon. He was invited to sing lead on the single “Have A Cigar” from Pink Floyd’s classic album Wish You Were Here (1975). In the same year Harper released HQ, a rock based album notable for the closing track, “When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease”, an elegiac hymn to unchanging ways and mortality which BBC DJ John Peel insisted should be played in the event of his death.
With the dawn of the 1980s Harper took part in a musical exchange with Kate Bush, who guested on The Unknown Soldier (1980), while Harper returned the favour by appearing on Bush’s hit single “Breathing”. Harper rode the unsteady waves of the music industry during the early 1980s but kept up a productive output that saw his music taking on a prophetic role, expressing more explicit concerns with environmental disaster, religious fundamentalism, urban poverty and the first Gulf War, on releases like Once (1990) and The Dream Society (1998), through to his most recent studio album, The Green Man (2000). In 1994, exhibiting typical desire for autonomy and self-sufficiency, he set up his own record label, Science Friction, to curate and rerelease his entire back catalogue, along with a clutch of CDs of live and unreleased material covering his entire career. In his book, The Passions Of Great Fortune (2003), he published his complete lyrics together with photos, annotations and re-evaluations of every one of his songs.
With a new series of reissues in 2011, Roy Harper’s incredible, visionary catalogue of work enters the digital domain in time for his music to take on a new, urgent and timely appeal, in an age in which the hypocrisies and injustices he railed against are more present than ever before. It’s been a damned good innings and he’s still not out.
Cardboard City
Roy Harper Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Who gives a shit
Cardboard city
It's a hit
Hoards of the medias
Whirring their cameras
Living vicarious lives
Tasting it
Beyond telethon
Cardboard city
Unwashed and gone
Who needs the dregs?
We should cut off their legs
And their thoughts
And have gone
I live in the loneliest place
I could find
A city where everyone's
Very mankind
You get what you vote
To perpetuate
Cynical people, trivial state
Cardboard city
The underclass
Cardboard city
You quickly pass
It might be someone
Who would be like
No one you knew
You bet your ass
Cardboard city
A sympton of
Cardboard city
A loss of love
The face of your parliament
Cold on your pavement
And you can't get enough
Roy Harper's song "Cardboard City" is a commentary on modern society's treatment of the homeless population. The title and repeated refrain "Cardboard city, who gives a shit? Cardboard city, it's a hit" seems to express the apathy and indifference towards the plight of the homeless. The "hoards of the medias whirring their cameras" suggests that society is more interested in using the homeless for entertainment rather than addressing the root causes of homelessness. The line "beyond telethon" implies that relying on charitable events to alleviate poverty is insufficient.
The song also criticizes those who blame the homeless for their situation. The lyric "who needs the dregs? We should cut off their legs and their thoughts and have gone" suggests that some people believe the homeless are deserving of their hardship and should be pushed further to the fringes of society. The line "the face of your parliament cold on your pavement" suggests that government policies have contributed to the homelessness crisis.
The song's title refers to the cardboard boxes that many homeless people use for shelter. Harper uses the metaphor of a city made entirely of cardboard to suggest that society's treatment of the homeless is flimsy and impermanent. Overall, "Cardboard City" is a searing indictment of society's mistreatment of the homeless and a call to action to address the root causes of homelessness.
Line by Line Meaning
Cardboard city
The image of a place where people are living in poverty and without proper homes.
Who gives a shit
A dismissive statement indicating that many people do not care about the plight of those living in Cardboard City.
Cardboard city
The redundant title of a song, mentioning the same image of poverty and destruction.
It's a hit
Despite the subject matter, the song is doing well commercially and garnering attention.
Hoards of the medias
The media outlets have descended upon Cardboard City to cover the story, hoping to gain attention and ratings.
Whirring their cameras
The media is taking footage of the poor living conditions in Cardboard City to broadcast to the world.
Living vicarious lives
The media is living vicariously through the poor, taking pictures of their lives to use up the media's day-to-day life.
Tasting it
The media is enjoying the sensation of the story and the effect its coverage is having on the public.
Cardboard city
A place that is beyond what a telethon can help and solve quickly.
Beyond telethon
The situation in Cardboard City is beyond being solved by merely having a telethon or raising money for charity.
Cardboard city
The idea of how a place has lost its value and dignity in terms of humanity and hygiene.
Unwashed and gone
The people of Cardboard City are lacking in basic hygiene and are often ignored and dismissed by society and governments.
Who needs the dregs?
Why should they even bother helping the worst of cases?
We should cut off their legs
A dehumanizing statement about the people living in Cardboard City, implying that they should be punished and made immobile as they are seen as beneath human standing.
And their thoughts
Their thoughts and opinions are useless and should be ignored and not taken into consideration.
And have gone
They should be ignored and forgotten about.
I live in the loneliest place
Roy Harper does not identify with the setting of Cardboard City as he lives in a place devoid of human connection.
I could find
He searched for and found a place that was incredibly isolating.
A city where everyone's
The loneliness of the city and the seeming lack of community lends itself to feelings of alienation.
Very mankind
People in this city often don't seem to be regarded as full human beings given their impoverished circumstances.
You get what you vote
The government and officials that people vote into power aren't addressing the plight of people in Cardboard City.
To perpetuate
The current government remains in power and the cycle of poverty and neglect continues.
Cynical people, trivial state
The people in power are often uncaring and the combination of cynicism and a lack of empathy leads to nothing being done to help those in need.
Cardboard city
The place where the most marginalized people, the underclass, are making makeshift homes out of cardboard.
The underclass
The lowest class of people in society who are struggling the most to make ends meet.
Cardboard city
A place of destitution that people quickly pass by without paying much attention.
You quickly pass
People ignore the plight of those living in Cardboard City and don't stop to help or seek to understand the cause of the poverty in the area.
It might be someone
The people living in Cardboard City are often not given the chance to be seen as individuals with their own history and life stories.
Who would be like
They could be someone that you know or someone who had aspirations and could have been much more successful in their life if they weren't born into poverty and neglect.
No one you knew
They don't fit society's glamorization of success or can lead to the successful lifestyle laid out by society.
You bet your ass
You can be sure that many people living in Cardboard City have the potential and abilities to be much more successful if given the opportunity and resources.
Cardboard city
The physical manifestation of a loss of love and empathy for other human beings.
A loss of love
Often, people in power are lacking in empathy and kindness, so the people living in Cardboard City are disregarded and the issues that lead to such dire living conditions are ignored.
The face of your parliament
The people in power, like members of parliament and the government, are often cold and uncaring and that attitude is reflected across society.
Cold on your pavement
The idea of an icy indifference to the suffering of others is emphasized through the imagery of cold, harsh pavement.
And you can't get enough
Society craves more stories and images of striking poverty and hardship, but not enough is being done to alleviate those issues in reality.
Contributed by Kayla G. Suggest a correction in the comments below.