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.
Next to Me
Roy Harper Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I did it crazy by myself
I've always been that mad
I needed someone by me
To share the madness with
To help me through the growing pain
See me through the myth
I thought I'd found the goddess
But she, as fickle as the wind
On the springtime heather moor
Cavorted on her whim of change
And with her laughter loud
Cursed my good and howled my wrong
And left me in my cloud
I lie in awful silence
Pierced by passing seconds
Every one so long
And full of you
And why
I wake in dreadful hours
Frightened by each turning
Feeling that quite soon
I should give up and die
Of you, of you but stay alive
To walk the echoing
The feeling that it was
Or maybe not
A wretched lie
The silence of the night is pierced
By owls and thieves
Sudden gusts of wind
Rustling my leaves
Loud explosions in the still
Born thoughts of old
Please don't leave your bed for long
It's next to me and cold
The lyrics of Roy Harper's song Next To Me narrates the feeling of loss, desperation and solitude that comes with a broken heart. The singer paints a picture of someone who is struggling to cope with the aftermath of a relationship gone wrong. The opening lines convey the loss of someone - the only source of reason the singer ever had, leaving him to his madness. The sense of madness may be indicative of the inability to make logical sense and bereft all controls, leaving him open to hurting himself and others. The singer expresses the need for a companion who will join him on this crazy ride and make it bearable. Someone who can navigate the path of darkness with him and distill the phantom pains that come with growth.
He had found someone who he sees as his goddess, but quickly realises that she is unstable and inconsistent, responding to each change and whim, leaving him behind in a burst of uncontrolled laughter. The singer, awash with pain, describes his loneliness and solitude, the agonizing silence that seems to drag on, and his fear of giving up on life altogether. The last verse brings a sudden explosion of sounds, rustling leaves and loud explosions, which could well be the matching course of tumultuous emotions in his head or an echoing in his heart. The singer pleads that his lost companion should not stay away too long, as he senses her next to him but cold.
In conclusion, the song ‘Next To Me’ is a powerful poetic description of the sense of rejection, loneliness and despair that accompanies the end of a relationship. The singer is in the grip of this intense and overwhelming emotion, and his poetic description of the pain makes this song a heartfelt expression of grief and longing.
Line by Line Meaning
I lost the only reason that I ever had
I have lost the one thing that gave me purpose in life
I did it crazy by myself
I went about my life in my own chaotic way without anyone's help
I've always been that mad
I have always had a certain level of madness in me
I needed someone by me
I needed someone to be with me, to share my experiences
To share the madness with
I wanted someone to understand and share the craziness that I feel
To help me through the growing pain
I needed someone to be there for me when times were tough and painful, to support me
See me through the myth
I needed someone who could help me understand the reality of my situation, to guide me through the illusions
I thought I'd found the goddess
I believed that I had found the perfect woman, my ideal
I never was so sure
I was never so certain about anything in my life
But she, as fickle as the wind
She was inconsistent and unpredictable, like the wind
On the springtime heather moor
In a beautiful and tranquil natural setting
Cavorted on her whim of change
She behaved according to her own changing desires, without regard for my feelings
And with her laughter loud
She laughed loudly and without inhibition, seemingly amused by everything
Cursed my good and howled my wrong
She criticized me for my positive attributes and mocked my mistakes
And left me in my cloud
She abandoned me, leaving me alone with my thoughts
I lie in awful silence
I am alone with my troubled thoughts and feelings
Pierced by passing seconds
Every moment seems painfully slow and long, inducing sorrow and melancholy
Every one so long
Each moment seems to stretch on for an immeasurable amount of time, inducing a sense of desperation
And full of you
My thoughts are consumed by memories and thoughts of you, haunting me constantly
And why
I am left wondering why you left me, why things went wrong
I wake in dreadful hours
I struggle to sleep, often waking up in the middle of the night in distress
Frightened by each turning
Every time I toss and turn in bed, I feel a sense of unease and distress
Feeling that quite soon
I have a sense that soon something is going to happen, but I am not sure what
I should give up and die
I feel hopeless, lost, and on the brink of giving up on everything
Of you, of you but stay alive
Despite my despair, I cannot help but think of you and stay alive for that reason
To walk the echoing
To continue to wander aimlessly through echoing halls and life, feeling lost and alone
The feeling that it was
The sense that everything that has happened was inevitable and fated to happen
Or maybe not
Perhaps things could have been different
A wretched lie
The thought that everything was a lie and that there was no real meaning to what happened
The silence of the night is pierced
The quiet and peaceful night is suddenly interrupted
By owls and thieves
By the sounds of animals and potentially dangerous individuals
Sudden gusts of wind
Jarring, unexpected winds that shift the atmosphere of the space
Rustling my leaves
The wind shakes and disturbs the leaves on the trees, making them move in agitation
Loud explosions in the still
Sudden, booming sounds that break the stillness and reactivate the anxiety and distress already present
Born thoughts of old
Memories and thoughts come flooding back, overwhelming and apparently already known
Please don't leave your bed for long
Do not leave me alone for too long, as I am irrationally fearful
It's next to me and cold
The space where you once were remains, chilling and empty
Contributed by Oliver W. Suggest a correction in the comments below.