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.
My Friend
Roy Harper Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
And I can but leave you
Into your world blowing
There isn't time to say goodbye
Nor would I ever wish to
You brought me a very many good dreams, my friend
And I'll smile beside you
The two halves of our spinning mess
Covering our laughter
And time may spread it's woven whirlwind, my friend
Far beyond our hearing
Through eternal raging
And yet I hear our voice of love
Above the loudest madness
So now you tell me that you're leaving, my friend
And I can but leave you
Fare you well
Fare you well
We'll meet again along those paving stone
Patterns of our living
And was it gold or is it silver, my friend?
I can hear you crying
Through the mist you stumble
And when you've taken that last sun
We'll watch it in the darkness
The song "My Friend" by Roy Harper is a melodic and emotional goodbye to a close friend who is leaving. The lyrics are heart-warming and emotive, as Harper speaks about how the friend has brought a lot of good memories and shared laughter to his life. The song is somber, in a way that it’s a goodbye song, a final thank you to someone who was such a big part of his life.
The first verse is deep and simple, Harper is saying that he accepts the friend's departure, he won’t hold him back, and he wishes him nothing but the best. The third verse is about how time flies, and he is saying that even when they are thousands of miles apart, the voice of their love will still be above the noise of everything else.
The last verse is profound and almost eerie, the tone of the song changes from a reluctant goodbye to a final farewell. The last line of the song is about watching the sunset, which can be seen as a metaphor for a loved one dying, but also that they will still be there for them even in death.
Overall, "My Friend" by Roy Harper is a timeless and touching tribute to a close personal relationship.
Line by Line Meaning
So now you tell me that you're leaving, my friend
You're informing me that you're departing, my friend
And I can but leave you
I too must leave you on your journey
Into your world blowing
You'll be going into your own world
There isn't time to say goodbye
There isn't enough time to formally say farewell
Nor would I ever wish to
But even if there were, I wouldn't want to say goodbye
You brought me a very many good dreams, my friend
You have brought me a lot of good dreams, my friend
And I'll smile beside you
I'll be smiling next to you
For I know I saw you
Because I know I have seen you
The two halves of our spinning mess
The two fragmented parts of our chaotic lives
Covering our laughter
Despite the chaos, we still find reasons to laugh
And time may spread it's woven whirlwind, my friend
As time moves on, it may bring chaos to our lives
Far beyond our hearing
We may not be able to hear this chaos coming
Through eternal raging
This chaos may continue forever
And yet I hear our voice of love
But even in the midst of chaos, I still hear our loving voices
Above the loudest madness
Our love is louder than any chaos or madness
Fare you well
Goodbye
We'll meet again along those paving stone
We will see each other again sometime in the future
Patterns of our living
Within the patterns of our daily lives
And was it gold or is it silver, my friend?
I am wondering if it was valuable or not, my friend
I can hear you crying
I can sense that you are hurting
Through the mist you stumble
You are struggling through difficult times
And when you've taken that last sun
When you have reached the end of your journey
We'll watch it in the darkness
We will watch as the sun sets on your journey
Contributed by Julian N. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
@paulnolan4971
All Roy does is wow and captivate you
@Shucky69hellyeah
always loved the stoned outtake/live feel of our young Roy. Poor spider!😁
@user-ih9dg3uz5y
Magic God what a song
@RobbieM72
Very Bert Jansch sounding
@michevicus2987
Dedicated to the great Jackson C.Frank.
@user-ih9dg3uz5y
A tragic man Jackson great song writer. I did not know this wonderful song of Roys was about him. Paul Simon has a lot to answer for....