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.
Sgt. Sunshine
Roy Harper Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
The milk man rides his clanging cow
The sun explodes above the brow
The village venom's daily vow
That can't tell when from anyhow
That seized a grip upon it's plow
And knows how much to raise a brow
A thoughtful thought to take a bow
But all the time it's now somehow
All the time it's now
Sgt. Sunshine made the choice
Sgt. Sunshine smokes the choice
Sgt. Sunshine struck the light
Outside the city hall
With the sky so blue, to fall into
And disappear, today
And a way away across the son's same day
The opening verse of Roy Harper’s song Sgt. Sunshine is a picturesque description of a morning scene, with the sun rising and the milkman (clanging cow) making his daily rounds. However, Harper is not merely describing a serene setting but rather using the imagery to comment on the daily monotony and lack of awareness of people in the village. He describes the village venom’s daily vow, indicating the toxic mindset or attitude prevalent among the people there. The line, “that can’t tell when from anyhow,” implies the lack of discernment or consciousness among the villagers. The idea of seizing a grip upon the plow is a metaphorical reference to the way people get caught up in their daily routines and habits, without giving much thought to their actions, and how their mindset and attitude affects their lives.
The chorus, consisting of the title of the song, Sgt. Sunshine, highlights the paradoxical nature of the character that Roy Harper creates in the song. The verses describe a society that is apathetic, passive, and unthinking, while Sgt. Sunshine is the opposite, an individual who has seized the moment and made choices that differentiate him from the herd. The reference to smoking the choice suggests that Sgt. Sunshine is not afraid to take risks and make unconventional choices. The image of him striking the light outside the city hall is significant, indicating that he is a catalyst for change or rebellion, challenging the status quo. The closing line, “And a way away across the son’s same day,” implies that Sgt. Sunshine is on a journey to explore new horizons, to discover something different from the monotony of everyday life.
Interesting Facts:
1) Sgt. Sunshine is from Roy Harper’s 1971 album, Stormcock, which features Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin on guitar on some tracks.
2) The song clocks in at over seven minutes and was never released as a single.
3) The lyrics were originally inspired by a trip to India that Harper took with his then-girlfriend and Pentangle vocalist, Jacqui McShee.
4) The song title is a nod to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, which was released four years prior.
5) Many fans and critics regard Sgt. Sunshine as one of Harper’s finest compositions.
6) The song makes use of unconventional time signatures, and the music has been described as a fusion of progressive rock, folk, and jazz elements.
7) The artwork for the album features a painting of a winged horse, which has since become an iconic image associated with Roy Harper.
8) Harper has stated that he wrote the song with the intention of creating a character that was the opposite of the apathetic society depicted in the song’s opening verses.
9) In a 2003 interview, Harper revealed that he had to relearn how to play the guitar solo in the song because he could not remember how to play it after recording it.
10) Sgt. Sunshine was performed live by Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant during his 2018 tour.
Chords:
Unfortunately, we could not provide the chords for Sgt. Sunshine as they are not available in the public domain.
Line by Line Meaning
Sunrise,
The beginning of a new day
The milk man rides his clanging cow
The sound of milkman's bell on his delivery cart
The sun explodes above the brow
The sun rises up over the horizon
The village venom's daily vow
The daily routine of people in the village
That can't tell when from anyhow
People in the village are not concerned about the exact time
That seized a grip upon it's plow
Farmers in the village are working hard in the fields
And knows how much to raise a brow
Farmers know how to show expression when needed
When steps are taken to allow
When there's a break from working on the fields
A thoughtful thought to take a bow
People in the village have time to think and reflect on their lives
But all the time it's now somehow
Despite the slow pace of life, everything is happening in the present moment
All the time it's now
Emphasizing the importance of living in the present moment
Sgt. Sunshine made the choice
A person named Sgt. Sunshine made a decision
Sgt. Sunshine smokes the choice
Sgt. Sunshine is enjoying the consequences of that decision
Sgt. Sunshine struck the light
Sgt. Sunshine lit something up
Outside the city hall
Happened in front of a government building
With the sky so blue, to fall into
Picturing a beautiful blue sky that people could get lost in
And disappear, today
Enjoying the moment and forgetting about the worries of tomorrow
And a way away across the son's same day
A reference to the cycle of life where every day is similar to the last
Contributed by Taylor V. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
Welding2day
Bought this on vinyl way back in 69 , never regretted it. What an incredible man Roy is. and mostly unrecognised as the true talent he is.
kirk wright
An underrated track from a vastly underrated music master. A one -off genius.
john evans
Had this on a sampler album back in the late 60s - it's still sounding as good 50 years on.
Shawn Hardy
So glad I found this for a buck at a garage sale! Never would have known it existed. Yay!
Dave Whittaker
Love it to bits! Cheers for uploading it :)))))
Chris Williams
remember this well from the late 1960's. Really great track.
the son of noahs brother
Amazing song! Cheers!
Jill Elliott
It was a 60s album full of 60s mems & values that we relished
Kreso Caren
I just gave the man this vinyl.......he seems like one who could like this record......
Bruce Teafatiller
è un capolavoro mio caro Roy