Roy Harper (born 12 June 1941) is an English folk / rock singer-songwriter … Read Full Bio ↴Roy Harper (born 12 June 1941) is an English folk / rock singer-songwriter and guitarist who has been a professional musician since the mid 1960s. He has released a large catalogue of albums as an artist (22 studio albums and 12 live albums) and his influence has been acknowledged by many musicians including Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin (who named the song "Hats Off to (Roy) Harper" after him), Pink Floyd (who invited him to sing guest lead vocals on their song "Have a Cigar"), Pete Townshend of The Who, Kate Bush, and Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, who is on record as saying that Harper has been his "primary influence as an acoustic guitarist and songwriter".

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.

Legend
Roy Harper Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

I heard the song birds singing in the trees above my bed
In the valley of the shadow of the sea of living dead
I see the same old smells aboard my ship of shapelessness
Meandering suspended in amorphous tastelessness

I hear the happy people striking down their matchless road
The false teeth and the cologne partly sharing half the load
I know I cannot ask them so I leave their eyes to say

I know the way to Mount Street, but I just don't know the way
I see the hollow buildings hanging in the winter sun
Throwing empty shadows that hide the hollow men
The world just isn't real it's built on endless timeless time
on land marks in the desert wastes of multicoloured crime

The maps stuck in the tube trains will tell you where're you going
They'll also tell you pratically everything worth knowing
So if anybody asks me I'd say "take a few salt sodas"
If you don't you stand the dirty chance of dying stone cold sober

And as I hear you breathing life's last distant compliment
I know I can't have said much of what I really ment

The sky desolates the sky and the snowflakes face to face
And everything is just everything because everything just is

Overall Meaning

The lyrics of Roy Harper's "Legend" depict a surreal landscape in which the singer is essentially lost, both physically and emotionally. The song begins with the sounds of songbirds above the singer's bed, but the setting quickly turns to a "valley of the shadow of the sea of living dead." The singer observes the world around them, including the "happy people" on their journey, but ultimately feels disconnected from it all. The buildings appear hollow and the world is described as not being real, rather built on "endless timeless time" and "multicolored crime."

The singer reflects on his own limitations and inability to connect with others, saying "I know the way to Mount Street, but I just don't know the way." The song seems to suggest themes of isolation, disconnection, and the breakdown of meaning in contemporary society. As the song progresses, the lyrics become increasingly abstract and dreamlike, ending with the observation that "everything is just everything because everything just is."

Line by Line Meaning

I heard the song birds singing in the trees above my bed
I woke up to the sounds of birds chirping in the trees outside my bedroom window.

In the valley of the shadow of the sea of living dead
Metaphorically, I feel like I'm in a depressing, lifeless place where people just exist and don't truly live.

I see the same old smells aboard my ship of shapelessness
I am experiencing nothing new, just the same old scents and sensations on a journey that lacks direction or purpose.

Meandering suspended in amorphous tastelessness
I am aimlessly drifting through life, feeling numb and devoid of any real experience or emotion.

I hear the happy people striking down their matchless road
I see others who seem content and fulfilled in their lives, confidently making their own path.

The false teeth and the cologne partly sharing half the load
These people are putting on a facade, hiding their true selves behind superficial layers.

I know I cannot ask them so I leave their eyes to say
I feel disconnected from these people and therefore do not ask for their guidance or opinion.

I know the way to Mount Street, but I just don't know the way
I may have knowledge or some sense of direction, but I lack a true sense of purpose or understanding of where life will take me.

I see the hollow buildings hanging in the winter sun
I observe lifeless structures that offer no real warmth or life to those around them.

Throwing empty shadows that hide the hollow men
These buildings shelter people who are just going through the motions of life, lacking any true passion, meaning or depth.

The world just isn't real it's built on endless timeless time
Life feels artificial and superficial, governed by cycles of time that seem to repeat endlessly.

on land marks in the desert wastes of multicoloured crime
In the barren expanse of life, there are scattered hints of colorful experiences that are just out of reach, lost amidst a landscape of meaninglessness.

The maps stuck in the tube trains will tell you where're you going
One can find direction in life through external sources or guidance from others, such as maps and transportation schedules.

They'll also tell you pratically everything worth knowing
These external sources offer practical knowledge, but not necessarily insight or meaning.

So if anybody asks me I'd say "take a few salt sodas"
If someone were to ask for my advice, I would suggest they indulge in some form of escapism or distraction.

If you don't you stand the dirty chance of dying stone cold sober
Otherwise, one risks living a life of stark sobriety, free from the fleeting comforts of distraction and fantasy.

And as I hear you breathing life's last distant compliment
As I hear someone giving their dying words or final words of praise, I realize that I have not truly expressed myself as authentically as I could have during my lifetime.

I know I can't have said much of what I really ment
I understand that there are things left unsaid, expressions of true emotion or purpose that have been left unaddressed.

The sky desolates the sky and the snowflakes face to face
The world feels bleak and empty, with even the natural beauty of the sky and snowflakes failing to instill any sense of joy or meaning.

And everything is just everything because everything just is
Ultimately, there is no grand meaning or purpose to life - it simply exists, and everything in it holds equal value or lack thereof.

Contributed by Bailey H. Suggest a correction in the comments below.

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