Who knew Roy Harper had a turn at acting? Playing a young rising musician in what the director admits was "a mess".
This film / trailer gets extra Quintessence of Old Wave points on account of actually featuring Whispering Bob Harris of Old Grey Whistle Test renown in it - presumably playing himself more or less as Harper plays himself more or less.
Amazingly how many movies there are one has never heard of - big budget efforts too. I guess the miss to hit ratio in the motion picture game is as poor as in the music industry.
There is a Roy in the bath scene in this trailer, which reminds me that while he's one of my favorite singers, I'd rather he hadn't taken his kit off at every opportunity
Watch out Sex Pistols, how about this for EMI shareholders-upsetting controv? This is 1977 and whatever the album (Bullinamingvase?) that Roy did that year
Originally the album contained the song "Watford Gap" which contained somewhat disparaging lyrics concerning the Watford Gap service station, a motorway service area situated between junctions 16 and 17 of the M1 motorway, near Watford Gap, in Northamptonshire, England.
Just about a mile from where the motorways all merge
You can view the national edifice, a monumental splurge
It's the lonesome traveller's rotgut or bacteria's revenge
The great plastic spectacular descendant of Stonehenge
And the people come to worship on their death-defying wheels
Fancy-dressed as shovels for their death-defying meals
It's the Watford Gap, Watford Gap
A plate of grease and a load of crap
Harper claimed the food was "junk, absolute junk. I tried to get the media food commentators of the day interested, but none of them would help me because they were all kind of bought off in some way, they were in the pockets of the corporations. I got a reply from Bernard Levin – he agreed with me but wouldn't go public about it".
Subsequent pressings omitted the song at the behest of an EMI board member who was (also) a non-executive director of Blue Boar (the owners of the service station). Under duress, Harper replaced the controversial track with "Breakfast With You", a song he himself allegedly described as "pap".[citation needed] In 1996, "Watford Gap" was finally restored to the re-issued CD, with "Breakfast With You" now the closing track.
Controversy of another and more unsavory type (he claimed the song was just a fantasy) stirred - retrospectively, not amazingly at the time (they were different times) by the song "Forbidden Fruit"
C.f. his mates Jimmy Page and Johnny Peel
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is pretty amazing - studio songscapery that takes the peaks of Stormcock to a whole other dimension
This is his "Starsailor" I guess
Stormcock is such an elemental album, a lot less stormy than Starsailor, kind of the calm before the storm, and the mistle thrush singing in defiance.
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