His work doesn’t reward casual listening, and his songs generally demand many plays before they begin to reveal themselves.

(He refers to himself as the “longest running underground act in the world”.) His lyrics can tend toward the abstruse, and since he regards himself primarily as a poet, he can be indifferent toward melody or even musical variation within his songs. This meant that the typical American rock fan has probably only ever heard him on Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar”, on which he sings the lead and sounds less like his reedy self than a Roger Waters impersonator.ĭespite working with a bevy of his more-famous friends, Harper’s solo albums have never had much of a hearing, though he has never seemed particularly concerned about being accessible. (It probably didn’t help that the song, “Hats Off to (Roy) Harper”, is one of Zeppelin’s worst.) Harper’s two dozen or so albums have, for the most part, been out of print in America, and before the advent of the Internet, were generally inaccessible. Despite having a Led Zeppelin track named after him, British folk singer Roy Harper never quite caught on in America.

Berserk tell me why spotify