After a 32-year run, Barclay James Harvest split into two different bands in 1998. Bassist and vocalist Les Holroyd leads one while John Lees fronts the other. In 2016 Holroyd looked back on their early days, including one moment involving The Moody Blues that he’d rather hadn’t happened.
Les Holroyd remembers the time when he, John Lees, Mel Pritchard and Stuart ‘Woolly’ Wolstenholm were left to develop their own style without interference.
“Harvest, to whom we were signed at the time, really didn’t have much of an idea of what to expect from us,” he says. “The idea of progressive music was totally new, and we were right at the forefront of what was happening.
“So we were left to our own devices to write songs and create albums. We stayed in our farmhouse and just got on with the job of writing.”
He feels the music business wasn’t prepared for the progressive explosion. “The labels were all used to dealing with commercial, mainstream artists. There were so few who appreciated how to handle a band like us.”
While a lot of musicians in the late 60s and early 70s had a strong bond, BJH were a little removed from any notion of a movement. In fact, Holroyd recalls, there was just one band with whom they had any rapport.
“We got on really well with Argent. We did a lot of gigs with them. But we had very little to do with others like Yes, Genesis or any of the names getting attention at the time.
“We were often regarded as a cross between Genesis and Pink Floyd. Personally I never quite got that comparison. We were also seen as being close to The Moody Blues – but a lot of that was down to the fact that both bands used the Mellotron.”
BJH were sometimes referred to as a second-rate version of the Moodies. That led to the writing and recording of 1977 song Poor Man’s Moody Blues.
One of prog rock’s few diss tracks, it lampooned elements of the Moodies’ Nights In White Satin, with a similar pace and feel. The lyrics referenced nights, missing and loving someone – just as the 1967 song had.
Poor Man’s Moody Blues appeared on BJH’s eighth album, Gone To Earth, whih became their biggest-selling release. Eventually, perhaps predictably, there was a reckoning over the song in the form of Holroyd’s uncomfortable encounter with the other band’s vocalist, Justin Hayward.
“I met Justin a long time after we’d done that song and we had a chat about it. He wasn’t too pleased about that song. I can understand why.
“For me, it was never funny or clever in the first place. John Lees wrote it, and I was uncomfortable recording the song. I wish we’d never done it.”
Still, Holroyd regards that period as being highly successful. “We followed our own musical journey. Being commercial never worried us. All that mattered was being true to our vision.”
