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.
China Girl
Roy Harper Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Tiny oriental pearl
Hold me in your dragon magic
Willow pattern smile
How does it feel?
Is it unreal?
And the other side of the plane
Locked inside your raven hair
Won't you love me?
Don't you care?
Need that love, yeah
But you're just walking away
I'll see you some other day
On some other planet
Pretty china girl
Pretty china girl
I'm ah dig on you
Pretty china girl
I'm ah dig on you
Puffy diamond, dribbling eyes
Sitting in your sun blast skies
Fly me just one sunrise of your China painted land
Paradise but delicate wild, like snow
Shelters in its own mess
Burning leaves, the trees unfurled
Of emptyness and naked world
That falls around our mellow herd
Like you disparing, fading into your sun
I don't know what you've not won
Or how much i'm bleeding
Pretty china girl
Pretty china girl
I'm ah dig on you
Pretty china girl
I'm ah dig on you
China girl,China girl
China girl,China girl
China girl,China girl
China girl
The lyrics to Roy Harper's song China Girl are rich in imagery and emotion. The song appears to be about a love affair or infatuation with a Chinese woman. The lyrics describe the woman as a pretty little china girl, a tiny oriental pearl, who holds the singer in her dragon magic. The woman's willow pattern smile and mysterious allure seem to have captured the heart of the singer, who is left feeling unreal and unsure of whether the feelings are reciprocated.
The lyrics continue to explore the idea of distance, both physical and emotional. The singer describes being on the other side of the plane and feeling pieces of his heart somewhere. He imagines that the woman has locked them inside her raven hair. The singer pleads with the woman to love him and not walk away, but she seems to be indifferent to his affections. The singer hopes to see her again on some other planet, suggesting that the love he desires may be unattainable in this world.
Throughout the song, the lyrics are filled with vivid images of China and Chinese culture. The woman is described as possessing a puffy diamond and dribbling eyes. She is said to be sitting in her sun blast skies, suggesting a place of intense heat and light. The singer describes the woman's land as China painted, a place of delicate wildness and snowy paradise. The imagery is both beautiful and mystical, evoking a sense of longing and mystery that seems to be at the heart of the singer's fascination with the china girl.
Line by Line Meaning
Pretty little china girl
Small and delicate oriental woman
Tiny oriental pearl
A little gem from Asia
Hold me in your dragon magic
Embrace me using your mythical powers
Willow pattern smile
A smile as calm and gentle as a willow tree
How does it feel?
Do you understand the significance of this?
Is it unreal?
Could this be a fantasy?
And the other side of the plane
Thinking of the place far away from here
Pieces of my heart somewhere
Leaving a part of him in that distant land
Locked inside your raven hair
The memory is kept in her dark hair
Won't you love me?
Will you not show me your affection?
Don't you care?
Do I mean nothing to you?
Need that love, yeah
Craving for her love
But you're just walking away
She is leaving him
I'll see you some other day
Hoping to meet her again someday
On some other planet
In a different world
Puffy diamond, dribbling eyes
Shining eyes filled with tears
Sitting in your sun blast skies
Basking in the brightness of her world
Fly me just one sunrise of your China painted land
Take me to China for just one day
Paradise but delicate wild, like snow
A beautiful yet fragile paradise
Shelters in its own mess
Finding protection amidst chaos
Burning leaves, the trees unfurled
The trees shed their leaves and revealed their true selves
Of emptyness and naked world
A world with nothing left to give
That falls around our mellow herd
Encircling the peaceful group of animals
Like you disparing, fading into your sun
Disappearing into the sunset
I don't know what you've not won
I am unsure what she has yet to achieve
Or how much i'm bleeding
He is hurting deeply
China girl
Referring to her origin
China girl
Referring to her beauty
China girl
Still referring to her origin
China girl
Still referring to her beauty
Contributed by Madison B. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
John Randall
How come such a great song has so few views?
Bill George
When the record company went bust, you just couldn't get it any more ... and I had foolishly lent my copy to an American girl, called Summer
Kreso Caren
I'm looking for one particular song by Roy ......nowhere to be found on yt......it's name is PLAYING GAMES......1980 IS THE YEAR.......
delboy4711
In the description YouTube lists David Bowie and Iggy Pop as the writers. Some mistake surely?
Tracy Harper
Yes. It’s a mistake. Not part of the description but information compiled and added by YouTube. According to Wikipedia, Iggy Pop wrote a song titled ‘China Girl’ which was recorded in 1976 and produced by David Bowie. Presumably nothing to do with Roy’s song released in 1966. Crossed wires in the digital metadata mess…
Tracy Harper
Fixed now...