Roy Harper
FameRank: 6

"Roy Harper" is an English folk rock singer, songwriter and guitarist who has been a professional musician since 1964. He has released 22 studio albums and 10 live albums.

Musically, American blues musician Lead Belly and folk music/folk singer Woody Guthrie were his earliest influences, and, in his teens, jazz musician Miles Davis. Harper was also exposed to classical music in his childhood and has pointed to the influence of Jean Sibelius's Karelia Suite. Lyrical influences include the 19th century Romantic poetry/Romantics, especially Percy Bysshe Shelly/Shelley, and John Keats/Keats's poem "Endymion (poem)/Endymion". Harper has also cited the Beat Generation/Beat poets as being highly influential, particularly Jack Kerouac. As a musician, Harper is known for his distinctive Fingerstyle guitar/fingerstyle playing and lengthy, lyrical, complex compositions, a result of his love of jazz and Keats.

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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.

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I've never bothered much about the past, I'm always in the middle of the next step and so the past is really scattered.

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I've always had a 'take it or leave it' attitude to fame; I'm much more interested in what I'm doing, rather than in anything like that.

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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.

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I'd just like to prove to myself that I'm all here and all together and can get the best out of myself. I'd also like to prove that to a couple of other people.

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I've listened to a lot of music, and I reckon that my records are definitely better, more stimulating, and more carefully constructed than any others. I've studied the melodies and lyrical forms of many artists, but no-one else quite seems to sustain the burning intensity of my own work.

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I'm inspired by the poets, so I'm always going to give in that direction, rather than in any other. It's the making of me... and also the downfall of me.

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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.

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When you look at a Hogarth painting or a Picasso, they didn't take any notice of the mores and constraints of their age: they went and did something that they wanted to do. That's how I see myself.

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