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.
Mr. Station Master
Roy Harper Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
And i'm going out shoppin for a igloo
Coz standing on your station
Is an antarctic exploration
And the grim scene every morning to be dragged through
Mister station master mr mundane
With your morning paper man clock on your watch change
I need a team of huskies and a barrel of whisky
I think that old iny
Get off of my crossfire
Otherwise it might just grab at your bag
Oh mister station master
With your peanut brain in plaster
Tell me why'd you draw them pictures on your posters
I'm looking for amusement please believe me
So strip me to my underpants and leave me
And every time he yells "quite soon now"
Thrown out the waiting room
Around my neck at 90 miles an hour
My will and testament are on my forehead
My forwarding address is on my highhead
Oh mister station master
Lung cancer is much faster
Never mind i guess the train will be here any day now
If i was in your onion
We'd both be underneath that ten fifteen
Oh mister station master
You're a national disaster
A country could do without the job
The song "Mr. Station Master" by Roy Harper is a satirical piece, mocking the mundane and uneventful life of a small-town train station master. The first verse expresses the artist's disdain toward the station master, saying he is going out shopping for an igloo instead of enduring the depressing scene of an Antarctic exploration. The second verse paints the station master as a boring and unintellectual man with his clock and morning paper, while the artist expresses a desire for a team of huskies and whiskey to escape this dullness.
In the third verse, the lyrics take on a more surreal quality as the artist sarcastically asks why the station master drew pictures on his posters. He then requests amusement, even to the point of being stripped down to his underwear. The repeated phrase "quite soon now" seems to mock the station master's attempt at authority, and the artist's will and testament are metaphorically hanging around his neck. In the final verse, the singer addresses the station master more directly, telling him that if he were in his shoes, they'd both be underneath the ten fifteen. The song ends by calling the station master a national disaster, asserting that the country could do without his job.
Line by Line Meaning
Oh mister station master i dont dig you
I don't like you, Mr. Station Master.
And i'm going out shoppin for a igloo
I'm going shopping for an igloo, which is a symbol of my desire to escape from you.
Coz standing on your station
Because being on your station
Is an antarctic exploration
Feels like I'm exploring the harsh Antarctic climate just to wait for the train here.
And the grim scene every morning to be dragged through
Every morning I'm dragged through the sad scene of waiting for a train on your station.
Mister station master mr mundane
You're a boring and ordinary Mr. Station Master.
With your morning paper man clock on your watch change
You're always reading the morning paper and changing the time on your watch, stuck in a routine.
I need a team of huskies and a barrel of whisky
I need a dog sled team and some alcohol to survive waiting for the train on your station.
To make the other end of the platform
Just to get to the other side of the platform.
I think that old iny
I think that old guy (referring to someone else).
Get off of my crossfire
Stay out of my way.
Otherwise it might just grab at your bag
Otherwise something bad might happen to you.
Oh mister station master
Oh, Mr. Station Master
With your peanut brain in plaster
You have a small and limited brain.
Tell me why'd you draw them pictures on your posters
Why did you put those silly pictures on your posters?
I'm looking for amusement please believe me
I'm looking for entertainment, if you can believe that.
So strip me to my underpants and leave me
Do whatever you want to me, even if it means leaving me nearly naked.
And every time he yells "quite soon now"
Every time he tells us that the train will be arriving soon.
Thrown out the waiting room
We are forced to leave the waiting room after waiting for so long.
Around my neck at 90 miles an hour
Fiercely and quickly (referring to something that might happen).
My will and testament are on my forehead
I'm prepared for anything to happen, even for me to die (referring to a legal document).
My forwarding address is on my highhead
I'm ready to leave this life behind (referring to another legal document).
Oh mister station master
Oh, Mr. Station Master
Lung cancer is much faster
You might get a disease and die faster than the train will ever arrive here.
Never mind i guess the train will be here any day now
I don't think the train will ever arrive, but I'll keep waiting and hoping anyway.
If i was in your onion
If I were in your shoes.
We'd both be underneath that ten fifteen
We would both be crushed by the 10:15 train, which I'm jokingly implying would be a relief.
Oh mister station master
Oh, Mr. Station Master
You're a national disaster
You're a terrible public servant who represents a failure of the government.
A country could do without the job
The country doesn't need your employment, which is another way of saying that you're useless.
Contributed by Reagan O. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
William Gibson
There will always be a track on every one of his albums which bucks the trend somewhat. sometimes they can irritate but you have to be careful about mentioning this because it can upset some people. This to me is that track, on this album. I don't mind it, but I could quite easily go to my maker without ever hearing it again.
Carlos Moura
great song
Bojan Renuša
@Roy Harper, what are you doing these days? Wondering from Slovenia.
John Randall
He retired several years ago and now lives in the Republic of Ireland if I understand correctly.