by Dave McNarie
conducted at a pub and a snooker hall, both in Brixton. And to think Roy could have
been at Billy Connelly's gig instead... 19-20.12.83
DAVE: How did you first get into music?
ROY: Up until the age of about ten, the only music that was available to me in the north of England was music which was very straight-laced. I wouldn't know how you could describe it without saying that it was just incredibly square. That word comes and goes and comes and goes, along with a load of other words in the English language, but [that music] didn't really pertain to the society I lived in, in that it wasn't a music 'of the folk'. It was music that you heard via the radio and via the simple media that was available in those days, which was being pumped to the people. What it consisted of, mainly, was the dying embers of the swing bands, who were very straight at the time, and people like Victor Sylvester. His music was light orchestral... junk. It was pre-Henry Mancini, interspersed with the odd Frank Sinatra hit and things like that. Those were the only things which reached us.
All of a sudden, when I was about ten years old, there was a guy in this country called Lonnie Donegan, who had a hit with a song called "Rock Island Line". It was American-Southern-Country-Black-Blues, really, that he'd heard on record somewhere and anglicized. It did actually get to number one, which is the only reason that us kids heard it. Of course, his second and third records also did as well. They were massive hits for him. After his first two or three hits, we didn't really pay as much attention to him as his sources. His sources were people like Leadbelly, Josh White, Brownie McGee and Sonny Terry, Big Bill Broonzy, Blind Lemon Jefferson, all those guys. I know, to a man, that that's where all of us started. Clapton; Page; Plant to some extent, but not entirely; Lennon; McCartney; Harrison; all of us in our little generation. We all started at that point, because we started hearing this imported music. What happened in our teens is that we'd learned how to play and we'd learned all those songs, and we all started writing our own songs in the genre. One of the things that happened to world popular music in the West is that that whole movement had imported American Black Blues, anglicized it, and reintroduced it to the world. That went on and is still going on now. The end of that particular scenario has not been reached yet.
I think there's probably another fifty or sixty years in it, until another force in music takes over completely. I think it could be something coming from Latin America, something with a whole change of style. Maybe they are now importing us, and we're going to reemerge in some kind of Mardi Gras vomiting in fifty years time.
DAVE: You can lump most of the people you mentioned tightly together, but your music has the least similarity to theirs. While you had the same influences, why did you choose a separate path or direction?
ROY: Well, it's not really a different direction, you see. It's just that they automatically existed in groups of people and formed bands. A lot of people, obviously, were very heavily influenced by rockabilly and Elvis at the very same time, 1955 or ‘56. It was an explosion, the first explosion. A lot of people were very heavily influenced by that, and wanted to get together and do that kind of thing. You will find, I think, that the people who were more influenced by that music hear more in sound than they do in lyrics. I was more heavily influenced by the other side of it, which was Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, people like that. I was inspired by the idea of sitting there and telling a story on the stage. I've always been more articulate than most of the band members put together, I would say.
I'm writing a song at the moment which more or less says that I am English, and yet there are 7/8ths of the population of this country that can't understand what I'm saying. Of the eighth that can, probably 7/8ths of those just don't want to [understand]. Of the remaining eighth that do, they’re spread right across the political spectrum.
I'm kind of an anarchist, I suppose, but I don't have a political leaning. A lot of people tend to think of me as left, but I'm no more left than the majority of people in this country. By the very nature of what I am, I'm precluded from the people who would be able to understand me, who are also members of the conservative club-- the intelligent conservatives, for instance. So what I am, virtually, is a foreigner in my own country. I guess a lot of people are [foreigners] in their own countries. It's a realization that has produced enough inspiration in me to actually embark on a song about it.
DAVE: How do you feel about being such a small minority in your own country?
ROY: It's a strange phenomenon. I realize that I'm probably the best at what I do in the country-- I can't see any of the younger ones coming up who are remotely interested in doing the sort of things that I do, so I'm kind of one in a field of one. There's no competition, really. At the same time as knowing that, there is also an overbearing feeling of actually being a foreigner in your own country. We're all so culturally dispersed in this society, if you compare it with a society which is integral, a society like the North American Indian was or the Polynesian races still are. You find in those societies, generally, all of the population know all of the population. All of them partake in the same cultural events, and all of them, at certain times of the year and at certain times of their own festivals, are all of the same mind. They are all, therefore, part of an integral culture.
There are some of us that have beliefs that are an extreme from others. Even within as extreme an organization as the IRA, there's a terrible split. The organization actually says, "rest easy, we're not going to bomb you at Christmas time. What we really want to do is to get around the table with you and talk." But hey, presto, there's a bomb which kills five people outside Harrod's. That’s very sad, because it’s a national sickness now. It has nothing to do with the original tenets on which it started. It's down to blood revenge and feud. You'll probably find that the guys who were involved in [the Harrod's bombing] have either got brothers or fathers who are in prison, [or] family who have been killed, so it's all down to revenge. It's an outward manifestation of all the things that are a bit jerky about this society. Those sorts of extreme situations would not prevail in a society which is more integral.
The extremes of our different viewpoints, in these societies, are so extreme that we might as well be different races living on different planets. And yet we're part of the same language, and kind of in the same culture. I don't really like that aspect of living in the west.
DAVE: How and where did you begin performing?
ROY: The performing part has always been easy for me. I've always been a performer. In recent years, I've thought of myself as an actor. I know that I've been that for the sum-total duration of my years, without knowing it for the majority of them. I've just come to realize that within the last four or five years.
I think that the best answer to your question would be that I started on the streets. I hitchhiked around Europe and spent time in places like Barcelona or northern Spain, Paris, Rome, Hamburg... Copenhagen a lot. Copenhagen was a big center for me. I was part of a team that ran dope from Tangiers to Stockholm. I got exported from Denmark at one stage. It was a very funny situation. There were 26 kilos of grass on the table in front of me at one stage, and there was a lot of if-ing and are-ing and but-ing and errr-ing. I was about 21, highly responsible. The only connection I had with dope was that I used to smoke it, and still do.
DAVE: Obviously.
ROY: Obviously. Actually, it's had quite an influence on my songwriting, I must admit. These days, if I find myself at a corner or a crossroads and I don't know which way to go with a song or whatever I'm working on, I'll have a little smoke and find out which way I ought to go. It always works. One of the best things that you can do is sit down and slave over something-- unless it comes as a pure inspiration, in a matter of minutes, and there are songs like that. There are songs that I've written in minutes which are better than songs I've written over six months. If you think it’s a worthwhile project to write a song about, and you've not quite got it but want to persevere with it until you do, one of the best things to do is get all the various points sorted out, then have a smoke. You can refer to any or all of the [points] at the same time, and then you can maybe reach the original source of inspiration and tie it all together. Sometimes writing songs is contrived. Sometimes it's not, it floods you.
I'm very, very hard on myself. I can always spot when something isn't quite up to scratch, or when I think that something's not working well. I'll just throw it out of court. There's one good idea in there, and maybe I'll come back to it at some later stage, [but] I'll just throw it away. There are not many songs that I actually do throw away. The ideas behind the majority of my starts, I think, are good ideas. There's only probably about 15% that don't get finished. I used to know Paul Simon well, at the time when the vast majority of what he did was in England. He used throw the majority of what he did away, yet at the same time he would go on a stage at night and have a performance that you could time to the second. You would know that the joke was ten past nine and twenty-eight seconds. You could actually look at your watch and time him. With me, you can't do that at all. By the time the second song has ended, I've strayed totally from the set list! We're both alike in many ways, but I can't think of anybody in the same genre that I'm more different than. I can look at people like Paul and say I know how success on that level is gained. What you have to be is consistent and offer people 'a show'. After all, you're part of the entertainment industry, etc. etc. If I did that myself, I would probably get so bored that I wouldn't be able to carry on.
Songs, songs... we were talking about songs... I just think the majority of the songs that I've written, I still have a lot of faith in. There are those songs that I would disown at this point, but they're mainly on the second record. It was written in about a week and made in three weeks, and it doesn't bear any resemblance to the other 17 records.
DAVE: When did you actually pick up a guitar?
ROY: Well, that's the telling question, as well. I picked up a guitar when I was fourteen, but... I had a skiffle group with my brothers, and by the time I was 17 I put it down again. I knew three, four, or five chords, and I could do a tiny bit of twiddly Spanish stuff. I knew one party piece that I could bang my way through, for adolescent bonfire nights and stuff, I didn't touch a guitar again between the ages of 17 and 24, so I picked the guitar up again when I was 23.
DAVE: Around the time you began traveling?
ROY: Just about at the time that I did that. I decided that, to earn money, I had to become a street singer. What I was doing between the age of 17 and 23 was writing poetry. I used to write reams of poetry. Actually, most of it did get thrown away, or it stuck with me over the journeys of the next few years and it's slowly fallen off somewhere. I have a poem which was immensely long, called The Wilderness, which I've lost somewhere. It no longer exists. Somebody came up to me in the street and said that they'd got a copy of it not long ago, and I thought, 'Ah! I must keep hold of that guy!', but I've actually lost his number now as well.
Anyway, I was writing poetry between the ages of 17 and 23. You must understand, by the way, that this country is incredibly incestuous. Everybody knows everybody else. They've not actually slept with everybody else's old lady, but an awful lot of that goes on. In the music, everybody knows everybody else. I don't think that's so in America, because you've got east, west and south, and points in-between. There is physical separation of the three. Here, it's incredibly incestuous. Everybody who is anybody knows...
DAVE: …anybody who is anybody else.
ROY: Yes. Maybe that's one of the main sources of inspiration, perhaps: the continual turnover of relationships within the same boiling pot. There's a quirky national character here that ha no obvious explanation, other than it's developed over thousands of years. Some of it is very eccentric, indeed. There are some things here that have been going on for probably thousands of years which get new coats of paint now and again and called new things. Christmas is one of them, probably. Here, Christmas is only a thousand years old, but , Christ! my own relatives predate it. It’s a pagan festival that was purloined by the Christians and turned into a Christian festival, and it was something else long before that. The fermentation here carries on, regardless There is a good turnover of incestuous relationships on that level, [and] its that quirky national character which does aid and abet inspiration. I don't quite know where else on earth you would be able to describe an artistic scenario like this at the moment. I don't think there are many, due to social and political delineations in other countries, distances between peoples. Underdevelopment is to blame in most places.
Your original question there, by the way, was 'when did I first pick up the guitar'.' Well, you got an answer, but it was rather a long one. It was full of other thoughts.
DAVE: How did the street performing turn into a recording contract? What were the circumstances surrounding your first recording contract?
ROY: I was playing in the streets of Copenhagen when I was offered a gig in the local folk and blues club. It was one of the first of it's kind in the Western Hemisphere, I should think, at least in the European sphere. I thought, 'Ah! I must be progressing in life!' When I got deported, I came back to London and began doing the same things on the street. I started to wonder about the English equivalent of folk and blues clubs. I started going in and out of them and getting myself little spots. At first, it was just one song. As people got used to what you were doing and became more inclined towards you, you'd get a regular spot doing three songs. At one stage, I was diving up and down London, doing three songs up in Harrow, then I'd whip down into central London to do three songs somewhere else, and then three songs somewhere else entirely. You'd play nine or ten songs that night, but they were all over the place, and for no or hardly any money at all.
I got offered a Thursday night residency at a club called "Les Cousine", which was in Greek Street in Soho. It started getting packed and doing well. I didn't have a clue at the time, really, as to what was happening. I've always been riding the crest or the trough of the next wave. At that point, the friend of a friend who ran a record company made an offer for me to make an album or collection of songs that I was doing. I jumped at the offer, as you would, and the album was made in a day. It was mixed in the following two days, so it was made in three days. Jesus, I wish I could do that now!
The first album was written over a period of time that justified a lot of the stuff. They were decent songs, and they'd had an outing or two. The second album was written in about a week and recorded in a week, and it really shows. The second album suffered. It's the skeleton in the cupboard, really. All the other albums I'm somewhat...
DAVE: ...pleased with..
ROY: Yeah. Some of them are very good. Stormcock,
I think, is very good. HQ is very
good. I think Bullinamingvase
is very good.
DAVE: That's what this list is for. Why don't you give a quick critique of what's on here.
ROY: Sophisticated Beggar, I've given you the critique of that. I still think some of the songs on it are very good.
The second album I've got no time for at all.
The third album I really like. The third album is folkjokeopus, which has a long song on it called McGoohan's Blues. At that time, the song was dedicated to Patrick McGoohan, who had a series on British TV called The Prisoner. It was the TV equivalent of 1984. McGoohan's Blues I still sing today, and I still like that album a lot.
The 1970 album, Flat Baroque and Berserk, is a decent album. It's the one that's sold the most, which says something about public taste, really.
Stormcock and Lifemask, which are the fifth and sixth records, weren't electric at all. Those are really the only two. There's been a tendency to do a couple of electric tracks on each album. Stormcock and Lifemask have no bass and drums to speak of. It’s perhaps the age in which I crystallized the majority of my thoughts.
I had a habit, and it persisted for many years, of having a track on the record, usually on the end of the record, which made everybody jump up and take the record off the turntable. That was so with Flat Baroque and Berserk, because the last track is Hell's Angels, which contains such glorious lyrics as "Free speech / One each". It's got one line that is fairly offensive, in a true anarchist context. I'll always remember that whole session was wrecked by Keith Emerson’s girlfriend who came in, crying her eyes out, saying that Chick Churchill of Ten Years After had called him the worst organist in the world. She was Danish, as it so happens. She came in, floods of tears, and absolutely disrupted the whole session. We had to use the third take that we had, which wasn't that good but was all right.
The next record, Stormcock, I rate as joint best. That is the first real zenith. Lifemask continued it. Lifemask was written after I'd been really ill. I was carted off to hospital in ’72. It took them sixteen days in hospital before they found out what was wrong with me. My body was making too much hemoglobin, and I found out the reasons why. I became very ill, indeed. I've managed to control it ever since so it's not been bad, but Lifemask was almost Deathmask. It was almost the last one. It’s the one I'd write for you if I were on my deathbed now. It contains the very long song, The Lord's Prayer, which has nothing to do with the other Lord's Prayer; in fact, it's the opposite.
When I'd recovered, I made Valentine, which is a collection of small songs that I'd written over the period of Stormcock and Lifemask. Therefore, it's rather a lighter album altogether. I did a concert containing those songs and other things around that time at the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park. Jimmy Page and Ronnie Lane were there, with Keith Moon on drums. Some of the tapes from that concert are on the next record, which was the live one, Flashes From the Archives of Oblivion. That's really what I've been the whole of my life, I feel. I've written all these flashes from the archives of oblivion. I shouldn't really have said that. I should have said that what my work represents are flashes from the archives of oblivion. (Laughter)
DAVE: You've bared your soul this time, I'm afraid.
ROY: HQ is another really good record. HQ is a record that I still believe a lot in. Bill Bruford, who used to be in Yes and King Crimson, Chris Spedding, John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin, and Dave Gilmour from Pink Floyd, got together with me and did a concert in Hyde Park in 1976. It was a very good time for me, that.
Then there was Bullinamingvase. There was legal action on that record against a song called Watford Gap, which was a protest song about the state of the English motorway cafes. The song went to the effect of, "Just about a mile from where the motorways all merge / You can view the national edifice, a monumental splurge/ It's the lonesome traveler’s rotgut or bacteria's revenge/ The great plastic spectacular descendant of Stonehenge / And the people come from miles around on death-defying wheels / fancy-dressed as shovels for their death-defying meals / It's the Watford Gap, the Watford Gap / A plate of grease and a load of crap." Actually, there was legal action against that, yes.
DAVE: They pulled that song and re-released the album.
ROY: Right. Then there was Commercial Break in 1977, which was not released. We almost had a single hit on Bullinanmingvase. The [record company, EMI] said to me at that time, "get an album together, Roy! Quickly! Get it together and we'll do it."
So, I got it together. I worked like fucking shit on it. I phoned them up when the recording time was supposed to begin, and they said, "Oh! Oh, uh... Oh... We'll get back to you, Roy..." They'd obviously not given it one ounce of consideration. So, studio time was arranged for about a month later, or something weird, and I began to realize that it wasn't going to get out for before the new year. I said, "Look, unless we do something about this, I think we're going to fail with what the original intention was." They said, "Ah! All right. Don't worry about it, it'll be fine. We'll get it out before Christmas." I said, "remember that. That's part of the deal to have it out by then." They said, "all right."
Come November, still nothing was together. I said, "look, unless you get this record together now, I'm going to pull it." I'd already recorded it by then. EMI called back and said, "look, Roy, I'm afraid it's going to have to be February." I said, "Forget it. The record's pulled" And they absolutely hit the roof. Nobody had ever done that to them before but, as the publisher, I could do that. Then began a whole legal wrangle that is still going on now. I had two more albums to make between that record and the end of the contract [with EMI]. I only made one because of all sorts of managerial disputes that I've had. In fact, the whole of my business life for the last five years has been incredibly chewed up. I don't know where it actually all is. At the beginning of this year, for instance, I was 200,000 quid in debt, say $500,000. I've paid most of that off now. I had to sell the house and everything to do it, but most of it is paid off. There's about $20,000 now that I owe...
My debt to EMI is still £75,000, which is what we're disputing. I feel they've been absolute bastards with me. They've stopped me from having any sort of career in music for the last four or five years. I think that something has to be done about artists owning their own copyright. OK, a company puts 'x' amount of money in and expects a certain amount back, and that's fair enough, but I don't think anybody should be tied into the things I was tied into and am still tied into now. A company like that, a corporate conglomerate, ought to be able to put money in and say, "if it doesn't work, it doesn't work."
DAVE: They ought to be able to gamble and afford a small loss...
ROY: That's right, they ought to be able to afford that loss
and not be able to put it onto to the artist at the end of the contract, saying
"right! You owe us money, and you will pay us back through future sales of your
records." In effect, I can't earn a penny from any of the past records that I've
made, because they're keeping the receipts. So, as the publisher, I've stopped them from
putting them out. This dispute has carried on for five years, but what it really means is
that I've become invisible on the streets because none of my old product is about.
DAVE: It's not exactly true that you're invisible, as you have sellout crowds wherever you go.
ROY: Yes, in a way, but I can't sell out Wembley Arena or any place like that...
DAVE: Not many people can...
ROY: No, not many people can. But the smaller gigs, the second division, I can do quite well. The thing is, if I was more visible I'd do a lot better than I do now. I'd be in a position to pay off some of the debt. It's an incredibly self-defeating spiral that I'm in at this moment, and it's not very artistically inspiring. It doesn't make for the same amount or depth of inspiration that I used to have and am still capable of. Just by virtue of some of the songs that do come out in-between the business hassles... There are four songs that I've written very recently that I think very, very highly indeed. If I'd had more time to actually concentrate on writing, there'd be more of them.
DAVE: Has this squabble tainted the outlook or message of your writing?
ROY: Life's a very strange thing in that respect. What tends to happen is that as the years go by, and maybe your metabolism isn't as fast and maybe you're not in the exuberant stage of production, you're more in control of your talent. They do say that your fifties and sixties is when the brain works at it's most economical. If you've remained 'together', if you do manage to retain all of your mental powers to that age, the brain is actually working better at that stage in life than it's ever worked before, long after the body is over the hill and is falling away. I'm coming to the end of my youth yet not, by any means, physically over the hill. I can still run a mile in under nine minutes, so I can't be that bad.
You notice, as you go on in life, that there is an economy of effort that you can utilize. At one time it would have taken you x amount of calories to achieve a task, whereas now you can achieve it through ingenuity and wisdom. I'm enjoying it for the simple reason that I can view it as life changing yet again. My life is a continuous change. [Life] doesn't leave you in one position, statically, ever. Your output is never statically controlled. I do find that I have an incredible control in what I do, and I'm still managing. It's not even a case of managing. Some days I wake up and I've got a guitar in my hands straight-away. I do feel the need to do that today, to produce. If I produced 1/8th of the ideas that I have, I'd count myself as being very lucky indeed to have achieved that amount of work. I think I've written about 1/20th of the ideas I've had.
DAVE: How do you see yourself coming out of that commercial depression and coming back?
ROY: Those are the right words. 'Commercial depression' is the right phrase, because it's had a terrible effect in that I'm kind of disabled. There's all sorts of shit to clear up before I can even attempt to get into music. The tax man waits, with baited breath. I spend my time dodging, and it's not a very healthy situation at all. The only way that I can come out of it is with time. It happens to certain of us. It's happened to people who have made many more millions than I. It's not exclusively me that falls fowl of the system. I think that the only thing that's going to bring me out of this is time itself.
I'm not going to be able to bring myself out in a very short time, not unless I have some remarkable and unforeseen success with the next record. The next record is going to contain the songs that I've got at the moment, which are a very decent set of songs indeed. There's two or three that I would put on the very best of my albums. It's not going to be any sort of also-rans or make-weight. It is going to be a good one, the next record. Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin has offered to help me on three or four tracks, and Dave Gilmour has offered to produce two or three tracks, so God knows what I'm going to have at the end of it. But I would be very surprised if it was anything remarkable in the way of commercial. I've never aimed for that, in any case. My one true aim has always been to satiate my own demands, as far as lyrical and musical content is concerned. I'm still only going to appeal to those people who can actually understand certain things about the English language, and how it can be used, how pliable, malleable, and expressive it can be. I don't see any great success, I just see honest-to-goodness turnover for me.
I don't know what the next record is going to be. It might be that the songs are very good, the performances are great, but the quality of recording isn't that good because I'm not going to be able to use the same quality of equipment that I've used in the past. I no longer have the money to do that. Unfortunately, that's one of the things that I've got to put up with. Artistic integrity has led me into financial disruption, really. It's a hard equation to make, and it's an impossible equation to make...
DAVE: Particularly with you...
ROY: Yeah, particularly with me. But, if I'd gone for a more commercial approach, I'd have ended with one of two things: One-- nothing at all; or Two-- everything. If I'd ended up with nothing at all, I'd have been sad. If I'd have ended up with everything, I would probably be sad that I hadn't gone for what I've got now. Everybody seems to be as unsatisfied as everybody else. You never meet the totally satisfied person. It is a non-existent entity. Page is completely fucked up, and I'm not going to be the one to say why or how. I know why and how, but that would be totally unfair to everybody and, most of all, to him. But I'm fucked up, as well. I'm still articulate, and I can still work, and I can still get through the game that we all play, but...
Let me tell you, perhaps the straightest of men that I know is Dave Gilmour. He's a gentleman in all the senses of the word, and he's a true human being. But even Dave is off at a tangent. Having millions of dollars doesn't really count for very much at all. You can maybe get the things done that you want to do, in a manner that you're accustomed to. But, when all is said and done, you're still eating the same corn flakes as me. I still have my little enjoyments, my little sidetracks and my little quirks, which don't cost me anything at all in terms of loot. I might as well just be where I am and not be entirely satisfied with it, because that's not the nature of the human beast. I don't really need an excess of money to achieve certain goals. It would be nice, at this point, to have a little bit more money in order to facilitate recording. But, no sweat-- I think I'll get through it. I think there's another twenty albums in me yet. Whether I'll be able to get to them or not is another thing.
If there is one thing that I actually can do it is work, and I love it. I love getting up in the day and setting myself up and going for it. I usually go for it anytime from eight o'clock onwards. Sometimes I'm at it quite early. I'm talking about recording and the use of my voice. I usually feel as though I can go for it from eight o'clock onwards. I'm physically together, and I expect to be for another ten years. I've still got all my faculties and I've got a lot of assets, so I tend to look on the situation positively. But the tax man is a helluva drag, let me tell you. I only owe something like $15,000 at the most. In fact, it's money that I have to go out and earn. I can't sell anything else. I haven't got anything else to sell anymore.
DAVE: Are you earning strictly from performing?
ROY: I am, but as fast as I'm earning it, it's going to things like debts, interest, things like that. I got another letter today from one of my creditors. I didn't open it, because I know what it is. I'm going to get on the phone to him tomorrow and say, "look, it's Christmas. Give me a break."
If I paid off all my debts right now, I would actually be in a situation where I was in debt again and fighting to clear off more debt. What I'm trying to do is avoid everyone until I've got enough to pay for the things that I want to pay for, and enough to carry on at the same time. It's a ridiculous position to be in, and I don't want to have to ask anybody for any help. That's not the nature of this beast that's sitting here. I have asked for people for help in the past, in different ways in terms of recording and whatnot, but it's not a very good position to put yourself in because then you end up owing on some level.
The one thing that I would actually like to say is that I need to get out of this country. Of course, continental Europe has never taken that kindly to me because I'm mainly English, and I mainly speak the English language, and I mainly twist the English language. In France, particularly, the English language is not appreciated. The French have hated the British for a good 2000 years, and it's not going to change at the toss of a coin. Trying to promote English culture in France is a bit of a dead loss, to say the least. So, I need to get out to the English speaking world, which is Australia, New Zealand… South Africa is out, of course, unless I could play to a totally integrated audience, which is impossible. That leaves Australia, New Zealand, Canada…
DAVE: Parts of Canada.
ROY: Parts of Canada, right! Not the French bit! (Laughter) And the USA. The one thing that I would really like to say is that I really would like to come to the USA. Not particularly to earn millions of dollars, because I'll never do that, but, for a rest! For a break from England, for more experience, for another toss of the coin, another view. I need it, and I need it badly.
There are 80,000 records of mine over there, available, that people have in their homes. Although I've sold somewhere like 80,000 records in the USA total, it’s a pee in an ocean. So, if you were to divide that by four, you've got 20,000 people in the USA who are into Harper, and I'm sure that if I went and found those 20,000 people they would be quite happy to see me. I'm very sure, also, that I could expand those 20,000 into 200,000, given the right opportunities. I think that, per capita, there are more people [in the US] that can understand the things I'm saying in the ways I'm saying them than there are in England. The population in America is, say, 250,000,000, and the population of the British Isles is 500,000. Even if you put it on a bad ratio, I think that there are four times as many people in the USA who can understand me than there are here, which means that the USA must be somewhere that I ought to be thinking about drifting to. I can't really say this, but I'm going to: I find all the doors [in England] closed to me at the moment, and I find much lesser talent than myself that have gone across and done phenomenally well, for the amount of talent that they've got.
DAVE: Duran Duran!
ROY: Well, all of that, right?
DAVE: Plus a lot of other, more obscure stuff.
ROY: Yeah, that's right. I don't ask for [that type of enormous financial success], because I'm never going to be that. Once you've seen me live, you know that. I'm not a guy who arranges 'a show'. I'm somebody who the audience screams at, and I say, "oh, yeah, okay. I'll play that for you," or "no! Piss off! I'm not going to play that, I don't feel like it today." The ideas come and go and flow as the gig is going on, and it's not the sort of thing [I can or will change].
Perhaps I'm overstating it when I say there's four times more people who can understand me in America, but there are three times as many. And there's probably twice the amount of people that can actually understand me and take it. I never have been and never will be a 'showbiz personality'. I don't believe in that kind of an ethic. It's not that I don't think it has a valid part in society; I have no view on that particular point. There would be somebody who could come along and argue with me that one of the most important points in entertainment is to 'put on the Show’, to show the human at the best that human is capable of. I would rather that a performance be based on something much more spiritual, that came from the people that are watching, to the performer, back and forward. I've lived and thrived on that for the majority of my performing days, and I think it would be very wrong for me to ignore that at this time and go back on all of my old beliefs.
At this point in time, I would say: "America: HELP!" That's the one thing that I actually needed to say.
I've borrowed an eight-track Teac. That's what I'm going to be recording on for the foreseeable future. Sixteen tracks is the best, because you're using wider tape with less tracks, so you've got a wider band of tape on each track. If I could record Page and myself on the eight track, then expand it onto a 24-track, the possibilities would be limitless. I'm unwilling to ask Gilmour to borrow his 24-track studio again, and in any case, he's not going to...
DAVE: He might not really be open to doing it?
ROY: Well, no, he's up for doing it, but he says, "Yeah, Roy! You can come out for a week! Sure!", and it's a week, a week.
DAVE: Like you're living on borrowed time while you're there.
ROY: Right. The pressure. See, the studio is in his house. I'd be under everybody's feet. That would not be an enjoyable situation.
DAVE: This begs the following questions: How did you come to the attention of, and what is your correlation with, Led Zeppelin; What do you think of "Hats Off to (Roy) Harper"; and what's the connection with Pink Floyd? It's obviously a continuing relationship, because you're listing Page and Gilmour as current friends.
ROY: I was on the bill somewhere or other at the first or second Bath Festival, which was 1970 or thereabouts. Zeppelin were on the same bill. I didn't know them from Adam, I didn't know any of them at all. I'd heard that Robert was a fan of mine, but I didn't really know. I was like, "who? Led Zeppelin? Who?" It was a young band, in it's infancy. You don't care much about those kinds of things... "Baked Beans? Oh, yeah, Baked Beans. I heard of that once..."
I was sitting backstage at a table playing with someone, and this guy came up and said, "you know that track on your record called Blackpool? Can you play it for me?" So, I played it, and I made a bit of a mess of it, but I hadn't played it for quite a long time. He said, "Great. That's really great. Thanks a lot." He stood up and walked away, and the only thing that I thought was-- and I can remember it clear as a bell-- I remember thinking 'that guy's pants are too short for him'. (Laughter)
Later in the day, I sat out in the sun in the press enclosure at the front of the stage. I was lying there as one band came on after another. It was fairly good entertainment. Then this band came on, and I thought, "wait a minute, I recognize that guy. It's the guy I played the instrumental for. Oh, he's in a band. I wonder who this is, then." They started playing and I thought, "Shit! that was heavy!" So, I stood up and moved myself into a bit better position, and sat down again, and I started to watch them. I thought, 'well, the singer's definitely got his shit together. He doesn't know anything about what he's singing, probably, but he has his visuals together, definitely! The guy on the guitar is good. Christ, he is good! They're a good band!" It's getting towards the end of the second song, and I'm really getting into it. I'm thinking ‘they're really good, this lot’. I still sat on the ground, but I was bopping away inside, watching the drummer who looked like a really heavy lunatic. All of a sudden, I become aware that people are beginning to stand up around me. I started, at that moment, to look behind me as well as at the stage. All of the young women in the audience were involuntarily rising to their feet. Most of them had tears running down their faces. I recognized it straight-away as a highly-charged emotional moment. It was one that I wasn't likely to see again for many a moon. They played another seven or eight songs, and everybody was on their feet. Most of the young women were absolutely distraught. Most of them were out of their minds, one way or another.
From that moment onwards, regardless of their technical shortcomings or general abilities in one sphere or another-- and you can be very critical of Led Zeppelin, if you want to be-- Regardless of all that, that moment has stayed with me. Whenever I think of them, I think of that happening. It was a very beautiful thing, and if I never experience it again at least I know it happened that one time. They turned me on there to what they were about and what they could achieve emotionally with other people. I came away totally charged with what they were. Not convinced about them musically at all, but charged with what they could reduce other people to.
I was playing at Birmingham Town Hall a year later, and my then-manager said to me, "a fan of yours is coming to see you tonight." I thought, ‘I expect there's a few of those.’ "Who's that, then?" He said, "Robert Plant." "Oh! I know who he is. Yeah, that'll be interesting." I'm in the dressing room, and Robert and Jimmy came in with their old ladies. I had some extremely strong dope. I think it was called Durban Poison, really strong South African grass, really heavy-heavy-duty. We all turned on in the dressing room. It was a very, very funny situation, because we'd not actually met each other before, really. We were all smiles and not much else. There was polite conversation, then I said, "oh, well, I've got to go out and do this gig." I meandered onto the stage, completely bashed out of my head. They must have gone into the auditorium.
I played the gig, then they came back into the dressing room afterwards. Robert said, "How the hell did you manage to get through the gig on that stuff?!" I said, "oh, well, same as usual." That is what I actually used to specialize in doing: Getting completely blitzed and then going onstage and seeing what happened. On a few occasions, it was a total disaster. On many an other occasion, it was a real hoot. Anyway, we became fast friends at that point. Right after that gig, I asked Jimmy, "I'm in the throws of working on a record. Would you like to play on it with me?" and he said, "sure." He played on Stormcock, which is the record I was making.
We've looked back a couple of times since then, but we're still friends. I mean, I've fallen out with him over... one small thing, which I won't go into on this tape, because it's....
DAVE: It's just not the place to bring it up.
ROY: Right. But, he's off it again on this record, so we'll be into it again.
"Hats Off to Harper" was a total surprise. They gave me the third record in their office. I said, "Oh, yeah. Fine. Nice", twiddling around with the thing that goes round in the middle. I gave it back, and they said, "well, look at it, then!" So, I took a good look at it and eventually I found the title. "Oh, uh... Thanks, lads!"
AT THIS POINT, THE POOL HALL CLOSED DOWN AND WE WERE TOSSED OUT INTO THE STREET LIKE COMMON THUGS. FINIS.