Konsertrecension: Roy Harper says farewell to bid on new

Roy Harper was just over thirty when he wrote, ”When an old cricketer leaves the crease” in the middle of the 70's, but it is a song made to be sung by a more than twice as old man in the end of their avskedskonserter. A quiet meditation of old idrottshjältar who left the plan, you can be sure that they really have disappeared. To the most exquisite worthy vemodsmelodi, with strings and trumpet, which makes it almost stationary.

And as he sings it! Deeper in the base than when he was younger, and certainly with less precision in the falsetten. But with the whole registry in between intact, equally powerful and smoothly, as if this was not a man who fills seventy-eight in summer and now are looking at what has reclassified ”The last tour”.

It should be in the extra number, you could say, but instead he returns to his chair and picks up a brand new song, which probably will on the next album. The evening's third novel, to be exact. Not what one expects from old-timers who take leave, even if this is a kind of financial statements, which explains what an honor it has been to get to live as one of us for a small period of time.

Then, stepping he up to scenkanten again and explains this with ”the last tour” also can be understood as the ”last a long time”. So it's probably just like with the old distinguished, that we do not really know how it is.

sub-heading too, which is that it is fifty years ago, Roy Harper gave out ”McGoohans blues” and that he wanted to play it again, because it does not become less relevant with the years. Which is easier said than done, because there is an eighteen-minute-long tirade about all that is bad and förljuget with the world, with twelve long verses, and less than an ounce of air in between.

Even the he takes on with the energy of a man who really just have so much at heart. Even if konduktörerna not make the holes in the tickets anymore, so he sings, and he drops the text in a few places.

It was not the first time Roy Harper wrote an input song, but the first where he got into it. Soon it became one of his hallmarks, to make songs that needed ten, fifteen, twenty minutes to be able to get with all of the words.

of Course, compared him with Bob Dylan, it all made with an acoustic guitar and the long hair, but the jämngamle Roy Harper had a much more colorful history behind him when he came to London folkklubbar in the mid-60s. He had enlisted as a teenager, fake insanity to get out of there, got electric shocks, escaped, been in prison, and for several years hitch-hiking around Europe and north Africa as street-musicians.

In England, he was called a hippie, but looked more like a since. No matter what he heard, obviously, to bring underground culture, proud to not fit in the format – even if it was a clear disappointment that he never got it where wide impact, despite its importance as a source of inspiration for others.

In return, he had the whole rocketablissemanget at their disposal. Led Zeppelin named the song ”Hats off to (Roy) Harper” (and Jimmy Page sitting in the audience now), Pink Floyd let him sing on ”Have a cigar”, he was attended by Kate Bush and the spouses McCartney, in his backing band appeared members from Led Zeppelin, The Who, the Faces, and King Crimson.

felt mature and end there was a similar wave of recognition from a younger generation, who helped attract him tilllbaka from the privacy in the south west of Ireland. Names like Joanna Newsom, Fleet Foxes, Jonathan Wilson, Bonnie ”Prince” Billy, Jim O’Rourke, Johnny Marr, Ryley Walker, Laura Marling...

Now he sits as a Gandalf the white hårman and beard, with a small folkloric west, and allow themselves to översköljas of love from the audience at London's sold-out the Palladium before he's even taken a tonne. So completely at home on stage, despite the fact that this tour on just seven plays is his first since an equally short turn around for the three years since then, and with an almost bindgalet laughter that breaks out occasionally, and disturbs the image of the peaceful uncle.

He makes a fine ”Another day” but neglect to remove the ”Don’t you grieve” in some sort of light-hearted pubfolk, and select at all a little strange in the main directory. At the same time he is curious entertaining between songs, like when he ironiserar over how the critics took the ”Drawn to the flames” from 1982-as a song about to ignite rather than on the consequences of climate change.

Seen just as avskedsföreställning it is actually not very successful, much better as just a concert in the long line.

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