Roy Harper
Roy Harper
Roy Harper is an English folk rock singer, songwriter and guitarist who has been a professional musician since 1964. Harper has released 32 albumsacross his 50-year career...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionFolk Singer
Date of Birth12 June 1941
enjoy fantastic heaven spending time
It's fantastic to put your hands in the earth. I enjoy spending my time in heaven here. I don't care what you say, this is my heaven.
attitudes life music towards
I wanted to modernize music, but more than that, to completely modernize people's attitudes towards life in general.
beard goal hanging hardly shades wearing
When I was 15, I was wearing sandals and corduroys, Guernsey, striped pullover, a beard that was hardly there, shades and a beret, and the goal was hanging out.
age bits classical echoes hall listening music stuff
As a really young child, I was listening to the echoes of the age before, music hall and stuff like that, as well as classical bits on the radio.
english-musician inwardly leader people raging revolts
As a revolutionary and leader of people at the barricades, I failed. But as a person who inwardly revolts all the time, I'm a raging success.
brought exposes therapy
At school, I was always daydreaming and fiddling in inkwells, but I had to learn to grow up and become articulate. And doing that was what brought me into writing songs. It's like therapy for me, because it exposes what I'm really thinking.
album burden handed hell led saw song zeppelin
They showed me this album sleeve, the new Led Zeppelin album, and I said 'very nice' and handed it back. 'No, go on - look again' they said, and then I saw this song 'Hats off to Harper'. It was very, uh... to be honest, it's been more of a burden than anything. A hell of a thing to live up to.
since superstar
I was determined if I was going to become a superstar it would be on my terms. I've had that ethic since the beginning.
english-musician felt ignorant records social thirteen turning
Remember, this was a world that was still ethnically separated. I was thirteen and ignorant of the social situation in America, but I felt these records were better than what my own culture was turning out.
offered pill
I'm careful, controlled, bodily conservative: if someone offered me a pill I'd only ever take a half.
attending best shape sure travels
I'm attending to my legacy, making sure that it travels the universe in the best shape I can get it into. For as long as I'm alive, I'll still be its interpreter.
bunch familiar huge mentally state turned
If humanity was still in the feral state, we wouldn't have any need for these huge conurbations that we have now, that have turned us into a different bunch all together. In the feral state we would be much more secure, much more familiar with each other, much more mentally well-balanced.
aim anyone arnold bryan hard madonna mind thinking
In a lot of the things I write, I aim for timelessness. It's not really that hard to do. When you've got something in your mind you have to impart, you're not thinking about Madonna or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bryan Adams or anyone who inhabits the popularized world.
couple people together
Id just like to prove to myself that Im all here and all together and can get the best out of myself. Id also like to prove that to a couple of other people.