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.
The War Came Home Tonight
Roy Harper Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
The war came home tonight
Set alight by satellite
Drenched in tracer bullet bright
Left right left right
The newsmen stir their appetite
Camera zooming every goof
Shooting ratings bullet proof
A crisis to manipulate
You'll wonder where the country went
In the target rich environment
Left right left right
The corner of the room's alight
With images of pure uptight
To keep the voyeurs glued all night
You'll wonder...
Whose side dog is on
In the golden age of weapon
Wrong right wrong right
Death comes cruising through in spite
To give cold martyrs back their sight
As like as if this black was white
'Dark star' bombs will feed us
With bulletproof newsreaders
Read all about it - next
Turn to the tv - text
Left right left right
The war came home tonight
Set alight by satellite etc
Roy Harper's song "The War Came Home Tonight" is a powerful commentary on the impact of modern media on the public perception of war. It begins with the repetitive chant of "Left right left right," which invokes military marching and sets the tone for the rest of the song. The chorus states that "The war came home tonight," and the imagery of the second verse suggests that this is due to the news media's saturation coverage of the conflict.
The newsmen are portrayed as eager to stoke the flames of war in order to boost their own ratings and prestige. They are depicted as focusing on the most sensational and violent aspects of the conflict, which they present to the public in a way that generates fear and panic. The line "You'll wonder where the country went" suggests that the media's coverage of the war has succeeded in distracting the population from other issues that may be more pressing or important.
The final section of the song alludes to the danger of nuclear war, with the phrase "Dark star bombs will feed us." The term "dark star" can be interpreted as a metaphor for the mushroom clouds produced by nuclear explosions. The implication is that the media's relentless focus on war and conflict is leading humanity towards a catastrophic and irreversible end.
Overall, "The War Came Home Tonight" is a warning about the way that the media can manipulate public opinion and contribute to the perpetuation of violence and conflict.
Line by Line Meaning
Left right left right
Sounds of marching soldiers, indicating the war happening
The war came home tonight
The war has now reached people's homes, affecting them directly
Set alight by satellite
The media is using technology to sensationalize the war that is being reported on
Drenched in tracer bullet bright
The news being shown is full of imagery that is violent, dangerous and possibly disturbing
The newsmen stir their appetite
Journalists are trying to increase their viewing or readership by sensationalizing and dramatizing the events of the war
Camera zooming every goof
The media is trying to catch every small detail and zooming in to amplify the impact of the event
Shooting ratings bullet proof
Ratings are being considered as valid measure of the success of reporting
Desperate to generate
The media is desperately trying to produce news to stay relevant and maintain their position
A crisis to manipulate
The media is twisting facts and creating crises to make things seem worse than they actually are
You'll wonder where the country went
In the chaos of war, it may be hard to recognize the country and it's values anymore
In the target rich environment
War is an environment in which there are many targets, making it easy for journalists to focus on specific events and people
The corner of the room's alight
People are glued to their televisions and the room where TV is on is bright due to continuous propagation of light into the room
With images of pure uptight
The images emerging from war are intense to the point of making viewers anxious, tense and nervous
To keep the voyeurs glued all night
The media is catering to people who are eager to witness a war, rather than inform people on the reality of the situation
Whose side dog is on
Referring to the phrase 'Every dog has its day', who will be victorious in the war
In the golden age of weapon
The current era is seen as the golden age of weaponry, with technological advancements leading to better weapons and warfare tactics
Wrong right wrong right
The nature of war time leads to a lot of confusion and uncertainty about which side is right or wrong in the war
Death comes cruising through in spite
Death and destruction are an inevitable part of war, and they come even if people don't want them to
To give cold martyrs back their sight
People who die for the war are called martyrs, and the singer is saying the war gives them back their life in a way
As like as if this black was white
Things that are usually black and white are distorted and unclear during wartime
'Dark star' bombs will feed us
Referring to an advanced technology of the time probably which can provide feedback on success or impact on the target of the bomb
With bulletproof newsreaders
The media is determined to only report stories that are 'bulletproof' which means it can't come back to hurt them later
Read all about it - next
Traditional media is constantly trying to hype up their next story so people stay glued to them and don't get their news from social media or other sources
Turn to the tv - text
People are relying on television for information about the war, and possibly not other news sources
Left right left right
The march of soldiers continues
The war came home tonight
The war is being fought outside but people are suffering the consequences at home
Set alight by satellite etc
Media is using technology to make the war more entertaining and sensational, instead of reporting it accurately and objectively
Contributed by Bentley Y. Suggest a correction in the comments below.