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.
Forever
Roy Harper Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
No not three or four
I don't want that kind of forever
In my life anymore
Forever always seems
To be around when it begins
But forever never seems
To be around when it ends
Please your forever
Not a day less will do, from you
People spend so much time
Every single day
Runnin' 'round all over town
Givin' their forever away
But no not me, I won't let my forever roam
And now I hope I can find my forever home
So give me your forever
Please your forever
Not a day less will do, from you
Like a hand-less clock with numbers
An infinite of time
No not the forever found
Only in the mind
Forever always seems
To be around when things begin
But forever never seems
To be around when things end
So give me your forever
Please your forever
Not a day less will do
From you
Roy Harper’s song, “Forever,” is all about the concept of time and how people give away their “forever” too easily. In the first verse, Harper sings that he doesn’t want the typical kind of forever, which is measured in years. Harper is saying that he wants a different kind of forever; one that lasts forever but is defined by something more meaningful than just time. He suggests that people tend to think of forever only at the beginning of a relationship but forget it when it ends. Therefore, he implores his lover to give him her “forever” and thus secure his own.
Harper continues to explore the theme of forever more in the second verse. He sings about how a lot of people spend their lives chasing after fleeting moments of forever and ultimately give away their “forever” unknowingly. However, he wants to find his “forever home” and implores his lover to give him her “forever” so that he can achieve that.
In the last verse, Harper compares the concept of forever to a clock without hands. He says that true forever is infinite and is not something that can be simply measured. He again emphasizes that he wants his lover to give him her forever and nothing less.
Line by Line Meaning
Not talkin' 'bout a year
I'm not referring to a short period of time.
No not three or four
I'm not talking about a few years either.
I don't want that kind of forever
I'm not looking for a temporary or fleeting kind of long-term relationship.
In my life anymore
I don't want to have such relationships anymore.
Forever always seems
The concept of eternity often feels present at the beginning of a new relationship.
To be around when it begins
At the start of something new, the possibility of a lasting bond always seems feasible.
But forever never seems
However, as time passes, that optimism fades.
To be around when it ends
And that eternity never lasts until the end of that bond.
So give me your forever
I want a relationship that lasts a lifetime.
Please your forever
Denoting an earnest request for a long-term connection.
Not a day less will do, from you
Not even a single day would suffice for such a bonding.
People spend so much time
Many individuals spend an excessive amount of time, caught up in their daily dealings.
Every single day
Every single day is an intense affair.
Runnin' 'round all over town
Frequently traveling and uptight lifestyle.
Givin' their forever away
Giving away something as precious as eternity to anyone.
But no not me, I won't let my forever roam
However, I don't want to squander this into nothingness.
And now I hope I can find my forever home
Looking to settle with the right partner in a perfect place for a lifetime.
Like a hand-less clock with numbers
Referring time as a concept without a physical embodiment.
An infinite of time
Time is infinite.
No not the forever found
However, there is no sense of eternity or forever in reality.
Only in the mind
Forever is just a concept that exists within an individual's mind.
Not a day less will do
A single day less won't do for such an intimate and everlasting union.
From you
I ask for it from you, my companion for life.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: JAMES ELIOT, RUPERT MORGAN, ANNA PESQUIDOUS, JACK GOURLAY, BOGART GINER, SOPHIE-ROSE HARPER, KRISTY BUGLASS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@Zasu42
We're just spinning leaves
In the flight of dawn
Little girl
Falling through an eternal horizon of time
But as we lie here I'd like to think
That all we've got will be ours forever
Don't you think we're forever
I can hear a voice
On the wings of my dream
Little girl
Melting me into love as it touches my heart
But sheltered in the distance of your sleep
Is all that I could love in a lifetime
Don't you think we're forever
Open your eyes
To the call of the winds
Little girl
Can't you here them all saying I'll always be yours
Lying in the misty morning sun
The pillow of the night still beneath you
Don't you think we're forever
@yiabwstetienne7474
I heard this song, just once, played, on a bitterly cold Sunday afternoon, in February 1974. I was servicing my Motorbike, listening to my little tranny radio, Johnnie Walker played it and it stuck in my head with it's simple pure beauty. I never forgot it.
Hard times came and life got in the way.....
Fast forward to 2003, an unscheduled, chance visit to a small cut price general store with my then girlfriend, I found a Roy Harper CD in the bargain bin for £1, it contained this magical track.
Good things come to those who wait......
@jaquesaulait
Wonderful, just wonderful.
@MrApotator
(Hats Off to Roy Harper)
@cliffemall0404
And have a cigar
@user-sd8sm5ye7u
Give him a Throne...
@user-dz8bj6vt1v
Amazing how much known and respected he is among rock stars and how much unknown among their fans.
@user-sd8sm5ye7u
I'm finally going to learn this Spectacular song on guitar thanks! Roy , cameramann and the wonderful person that posted ... mucho gracious
@mortennilssen3114
This is from a Norwegian (NRK) broadcast produced by Svein Erik Børja, August 1969. I know because I booked all of Roy's gigs and TV appearances in Norway during that amazing time period. No wonder Roy can't remember when and where, there was a lot of smoke in the air in those days. "Forever" is a wonderful song, and this version is so simple and honest.
Roy is Roi!
@iancropton8113
***** Thx Morton :)
@connervickrage2742
Thanks for your comment, how did that come about? must of been a great experience to be along side roy