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.
Duty
Roy Harper Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
On the planet
To a woman
Decided
That it was worth saving
That puppy foxes
In the spring air
Scratching parasites
Still brought a smile
Still told of an eden
Lost by some
Enriched by most
Then a duty might be heard
Calling in the distance
If the chemistry
On the planet
Collided
To expectation
Much would be saved
The parasites would flourish
In the long winter
The scorching greenhouse
Thirty, as we know it
Would perhaps be old age
Or not at all
Depending on the brew
In the collision
Who cares? Right?
Duty as a chemical event
Duty as an inevitable event
Right?
Ha...
So sayeth the lord
The lyrics of Roy Harper's song Duty are introspective and thought-provoking. The song begins with Harper contemplating the fate of humanity, suggesting that if all six billion people on the planet decided to take action to save it, there might be hope. He then muses about the beauty of the natural world and how it can still bring joy despite the fact that we have damaged it. There is a sense of longing for a lost paradise that was once ours and a desire to reclaim it.
However, the song takes a dark turn as Harper contemplates the possibility of a global disaster caused by the collision of chemicals on the planet. He suggests that if such a disaster were to occur, it would be futile to cling to duty as it would be beyond human control. The final line, "so sayeth the lord" adds a religious element to the song, possibly implying that fate is predestined and beyond our control.
Overall, the lyrics of Duty explore themes of hope, the natural world, and the inevitability of fate.
Line by Line Meaning
If the six billion
Assuming all the people on earth - a total of six billion -
On the planet
Referring to planet Earth
To a woman
If women collectively decided
Decided
Made a conscious choice
That it was worth saving
Determined that the planet was worth preserving
That puppy foxes
Even if something as small as the lives of puppy foxes
In the spring air
During the season of spring
Scratching parasites
Even though the foxes may have to deal with parasites
And springing hope eternal
Despite all that, the feeling of hope that comes with spring remains
Still brought a smile
Still manages to bring happiness
Still told of an eden
Evens reminds them of an ideal, perfect world
Lost by some
That may have been lost by some people
Enriched by most
But is still appreciated by most people
Then a duty might be heard
In that case, a sense of obligation or responsibility might be felt
Calling in the distance
A sort of calling from afar
If the chemistry
If, on a chemical level,
On the planet
On Earth
Collided
There was a collision
To expectation
As expected
Much would be saved
Many things could be saved
The parasites would flourish
Although parasites would thrive
In the long winter
In the winter months
The scorching greenhouse
And similarly, in the blazing heat of a greenhouse
Thirty, as we know it
The age of 30, which is currently seen as a milestone
Would perhaps be old age
May no longer be seen as old age if people were to live longer due to the effects of the collision
Or not at all
Alternatively, people might not even live that long anymore
Depending on the brew
It all depends on what kind of mix is created in the collision
In the collision
As two things collide
Who cares? Right?
Some people might not care about the outcome
Duty as a chemical event
But duty or responsibility might still arise as a result of this chemical event
Duty as an inevitable event
Because it might be seen as inevitable, or impossible to avoid,
Right?
Don't you think?
Ha...
An expression of amusement or cynicism
So sayeth the lord
The artist is perhaps suggesting that these are words of wisdom or truth
Contributed by Madison V. Suggest a correction in the comments below.