Hats Off To Roy Harper

Introduction

Most of my Roy Harper collection was released on the Harvest label, and he has written so many songs that I love that I thought I would share them with you, well some of the shorter ones.

I have loved Roy's music since I first heard him and saw him in the seventies when I got invited backstage with my sister and her friend. When we got backstage I spoke to the band Trigger (his backing band) which included Chris Spedding (who was very shy) , then some roadies came up and told me I could F*ck off as they just wanted the girls.

I was more threatening than the roadies so I took the girls home.

I never got to chat with Roy, but now on to some of my favourite songs of his.

To start with, it's not a Roy Harper song but the Led Zeppelin song that gave me the title for this piece.

Led Zeppelin - "Hats Off To Roy Harper" from "III"

Some quite silly screaming from Robert Plant and slide acoustic from Jimmy Page.

Some comments on it:

"Unusual tribute to Roy Harper, the tremendously idiosyncratic, uncompromising and influential folk and rock artist whose albums in the 70s especially should be as celebrated as Led Zep's. Hats off to Roy!"

"I love this song. It is a homage to Leadbelly and all the very early blues recordings. Plant's voice is so haunting and echoey and Pagey's slide work is eerie af. Amazing."

And now on to the man himself

Pink Floyd - "Have A Cigar" from "Wish You Were Here"

Not quite onto Roy's stuff yet because he was the lead singer on Pink Floyd's "Have A Cigar".

English folk-rock singer Roy Harper provided lead vocals on the song. It is one of only three Pink Floyd recordings with a guest singer on lead vocals, the others being "The Great Gig in the Sky" (1973) with Clare Torry and "Hey Hey Rise Up" (2022) with Andriy Khlyvnyuk.

Harper's involvement with the recording arose from the dissatisfaction that Waters and David Gilmour felt with their own attempts to sing the lead vocal line. After trying it both separately and as a duet, with Harper still technically on the track singing vocals on the bridge (available on the 2011 Experience and Immersion editions of Wish You Were Here), they turned to Harper to sing lead, who was recording his album HQ at Abbey Road at the same time as Pink Floyd. Harper agreed to sing the part as a way of repaying a favour to Gilmour, who had earlier provided him with some guitar licks ("...for a price").

"Commune" from "Valentine"

A beautiful love song that I could listen to forever. One of those I never want to end.

"Forever" from "Sophisticated Beggar"

Almost as beautiful as "Commune" and these are songs that are too complex for me to play despite many attempts.

"Watford Gap" from "Bullinamingvase"

A complete burndown of the Watford Gap service station for which Roy was taken to court for defamation and the royalties from the "Bullinaminvase" album were awarded to Watford Gap's owners.

I think the song is excellent, funny and accurate.

"The Same Old Rock" from "Stormcock"

This is an acoustic epic with Jimmy Page, another stunning performance of an amazing song.

"I Hate The White Man" from "Flat, Baroque, And Berserk"

Roy takes on modern life with one of his best-known songs.

This, in particular, is noted for its uncompromising lyrics.

Allmusic described the song as

"Certainly one of his most notable (and notorious) compositions, a spew of lilting verbiage that's hard to peg. It could be irony, it could be ironic self-hatred, it could be muddled reflections on the chaos that is the modern world, or it could be a combination of all of them."

Harper described the song as

"A testament to my lifelong devotion to espousing equal rights for all humans. I have long since wondered about the wisdom of stating that you have more than the capacity to hate your own race for it's [sic] misdemeanors, but as a polemic it has been both an effective tool and somewhere of a place to stand."

"When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease" from "HQ"

Another gorgeous beauty to close this playlist complete with a full brass band.

This masterpiece really doesn't get the recognition it deserves, at least the late, great DJ, John Peel recognised its genius by choosing this track to be the last ever tune he would play on the radio, unfortunately he never got the chance.

The whole arrangement and production is so captivating portraying a quintessentially English village cricket scene which is gradually dying out along with a brass band evoking a sense of nostalgia and serious reflection of times past and the fleeting existence of life.