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.
Hope
Roy Harper Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
From your own century
I may seem to be
Strange archeology
But when the winds blow
From this direction
You may sense me there
In your reflection
But I will never know
As the swallows leave
And the children grow
I wanted to live forever
The same is you will too
I wanted to live forever
And everybody knew
When I caught you there
In tomorrows mirror
I thought I felt you
Jump out of my skin
Throwing oil into
My blazing memories
Filling empty footsteps
I was standing in
I wanted to live forever
The same as you will too
I wanted to live forever
And everybody knew
As the falling rain
Of the northern jungle
Hanging droplets on the leaves
Bombards my brain
I hear you
Across the room
A sea of daffodils spring into bloom
You are the mist
The frost across my window pane
And again
She moves her body
And her whispers weave
And the world spins
And tells me that I'll never want to leave
As I think of you
From this dark century
I will always be
With generosity
That we both may share
The hope in hearing
That we're not just
Spirits disappearing
The song "Hope" by Roy Harper is a lyrically profound piece that discusses the concept of time, memory and immortality. The opening lines suggest that the singer is from a different era, a "strange archeology" from the viewer's century. However, the winds of time are vast and complex, and the singer's essence may still linger in the space that one occupies. The singer suggests that they may feel the viewer's presence, but they will never know if the relationship is mutual. The reminder that the swallows leave and the children grow calls attention to the inevitability of time passing and the transience of life.
The singer then describes the desire to live forever, which seems to be a shared desire with the viewer. They have a moment of connection through the reflection of the mirror, but it is fleeting. The use of oil to throw into the blazing memories suggests nostalgia and the painful longing for things that cannot be recaptured. The falling rain of the northern jungle is a metaphor for the passing of time, as it bombards the singer's brain with memories. However, despite the remoteness of the singer's presence, the viewers can feel their essence in various forms, signifying the hope of immortality.
Overall, "Hope" is a song that explores the human need to strive for immortality, and how the memories and essence of individuals can carry forward into the future. It is a reflection on the passage of time and the limits of human existence.
Line by Line Meaning
When you look at me
When you observe me through your modern eyes
From your own century
In the present era that you inhabit
I may seem to be
I could come across as
Strange archeology
An odd artifact from a different era
But when the winds blow
Yet when the air moves
From this direction
Towards your location
You may sense me there
You may detect my presence
In your reflection
In your image or likeness
I think I feel you
I believe I can sense your existence
But I will never know
But I can never be certain
As the swallows leave
When the birds depart
And the children grow
And the young ones mature
I wanted to live forever
I wished to exist for all eternity
The same is you will too
Just like you would desire
And everybody knew
And it was a common knowledge
When I caught you there
When I found you in a certain moment
In tomorrows mirror
In the reflection of what's yet to come
I thought I felt you
I imagined perceiving your presence
Jump out of my skin
Exiting my body suddenly
Throwing oil into
Stoking and fueling
My blazing memories
My vivid and poignant reminiscences
Filling empty footsteps
Occupying vacuous imprints
I was standing in
That I was positioned within
As the falling rain
When the precipitation descends
Of the northern jungle
In the woodlands far to the north
Hanging droplets on the leaves
Draping beads of moisture on the foliage
Bombards my brain
Assails my intellect
I hear you
I listen for you
Across the room
From the opposite end
A sea of daffodils spring into bloom
A multitude of flowers blossom
You are the mist
You are like the fog
The frost across my window pane
The icy coating on my glass surface
And again
Once more
She moves her body
She shifts her physical form
And her whispers weave
And her murmurs interlace
And the world spins
And the Earth revolves
And tells me that I'll never want to leave
Assuring I won't ever desire to depart
As I think of you
While I ponder about you
From this dark century
In the gloom of our current period
I will always be
I shall perpetually be
With generosity
With kindness and abundance
That we both may share
So that we can divide between us
The hope in hearing
The aspiration in perceiving
That we're not just
That we are something more than just
Spirits disappearing
Souls fading away
Contributed by William Y. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
L G
It's such a beautiful song. Words can't adequately express .
dear-pixel-heart
Amazing Anathema lead me here... had no idea this was an original of Roy Harper, so beautiful :')
Ænigma Xeno
Same! Though I did know it was a cover. Have you listened to Duncan Patterson's post-Anathema works?
Bill Vrabel
I'm raised on the Anathema version but the original is also amazing and Anathema did a really great cover. I just heard the Townshend version and eeks!
Alvin Lee
the guitar intro is the same but the songs are entirely different. Eeks. I kinda feel like you pulled this comment out of your chute.
Singingsnow1
Roy Harper is a genius...I've loved his music since the early '70's. Thanks for this video since the first great video of this song has been removed!
resurgam responses
великолепная песня
Apparente Esistenza
David Gilmour ha composto la musica della terza traccia, "Hope", mentre Harper ha scritto il testo, e Nick Harper (il figlio allora sedicenne), ha suonato la chitarra solista in questo brano. Una versione suonata con ritmo più veloce e liriche differenti, compare con il titolo di "White City Fighting" nell'album White City: A Novel di Pete Townshend. Una cover di "Hope", con "Bad Speech" come introduzione, è presente nell'album Eternity del gruppo metal Anathema. (wikipedia)
Brooke RM
This album is so powerful.
InThrough TheOutDoor
I was first introduced to the music and poetry of Roy Harper almost 44 years ago. His writing, singing and guitar playing has always invoked in my imagination a journey, story or biography. A great commentator, humanist, both highly political and spiritual, he will continue to influence my world view and hope for the future.