Folk stylist, protest singer, poet, rocker, rebel prophet… There hasn’t been anyone else quite like Roy Harper. His sheer plurality, lashed to a bloody-minded refusal to tailor his music for the commercial market, has made him special, and also consigned him to a career of eternal cultdom. He’s an artist capable of writing the most delicate acoustic song one minute, a raging, emotive social critique the next. He’s a mercurial figure who, by his own admission, “divides opinion a lot”.
Harper has always had friends in high places. The journey from “impressionable little beatnik” of the 60s to the folk-rock titan of today has produced 21 studio albums and plus live recordings, peppered with appearances from the likes of David Gilmour, Kate Bush, John Paul Jones and, most prominently, his great friend Jimmy Page. Led Zeppelin included the tribute Hats Off To (Roy) Harper on their third album, while Pink Floyd brought him in to sing Have A Cigar on 1975’s Wish You Were Here.
Harper was born in Manchester in 1941. He survived a tortuous early life of homelessness, petty crime and prison, fetching up on the Soho folk scene of the early 60s. He was never a folkie in the traditional sense, though, and laced his songs with a freewheeling sense of experimentation. His spate of scintillating albums in the 70s – from Flat Baroque And Berserk through to Bullinamingvase – have been hugely influential.
In the 80s Harper found himself stigmatised as part of the old guard that punk and new wave had supposedly swept away. He nonetheless recorded some fine records, among them 1985’s collaboration with Jimmy Page, Whatever Happened to Jugula. The following decade found him in exile in Ireland, where he still lives, quietly releasing albums of extraordinary power, chiefly Death Or Glory? and The Dream Society.
His last studio release was 2013’s critically acclaimed Man and Myth, which featured a guest appearance from The Who's Pete Townshend on Cloud Cuckooland. Now in his 80s he remains an uncompromising talent, admired by everyone from Robert Plant and Ian Anderson to Johnny Marr and Joanna Newsom. His influence on the folk and rock fraternity is immense.
And one to avoid...
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