By Irishexaminer.com,Richard Fitzpatrick

Copyright irishexaminer

“At the end of the 10 days, I drove to London with my tail between my legs,” he says, “but I thought if there’s ever a time when I need to go anywhere, at any time, I know where to go. So, when it came to the day, in 1989, when they were trying to scrounge too much tax off me, I drove out again to Cork. And well, 36 years later, I’m still here.”

Harper lives in an old convent outside Clonakilty and he’s a headline act at this year’s Clonakilty International Guitar Festival. He’ll perform at De Barra’s, which reminds him of Les Cousins, the legendary Soho music club, which was the centre of London’s folk world in the 1960s. Harper pitched up at Les Cousins in 1965, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Paul Simon, “Long John” Baldry and a young Nick Drake.

“I saw two or three of Nick’s gigs. He was so withdrawn, shy, so singular and painfully lonely. Seeing him on a stage was painful because you wanted to shelter him somehow, to say, ‘Can I help you?’ It was a natural thing. Of course, the women loved him because they wanted to mother him. It was obvious. I felt for him because he was obviously doing something he didn’t really want to do. He tried to overcome his demons by playing. That sounds pretty bad, but it was like helping a young man to get over the fence.”

Harper goes back to Pink Floyd’s ground zero. He’s a couple of years older than Roger Waters and five years older than David Gilmour. He’s been friends with them since they were boys. They shared the same manager, Peter Jenner. Harper did the lead vocals, for example, on Have a Cigar, Pink Floyd’s critique of greed in the music business from their 1975 album Wish You Were Here.

“The first time I saw Floyd with Sid Barrett was in The Blarney Club,” says Harper. “The club became the UFO on the weekends. The gigs there were weird. The place was broken up into different sections. There were five or six things going on at once. I remember playing once in one part of the building in a room by itself, Pink Floyd playing in another small room by themselves and in another room, another band – I can’t remember their name – with naked women wrestling in mud. Their room was quite full.

“Syd Barrett was aloof a lot of the time. I never really spoke to him. I just saw him. He had a way with him. He was the non-speaking boss. He probably had too much acid, and he flipped, but that was early on, so I didn’t have much chance to get to know the real Syd. He was a very insular type of guy anyway, but we were still in the Sixties by the time he finished. I saw him kind of leave the planet. I was in the dressing room the night that Floyd retired. Syd was gone. There were just the three of them left.”

Famously, Pink Floyd replaced Barrett with Gilmour. Subsequently, Harper and Gilmour did numerous solo projects together over the years, guesting on each other’s recordings, and they also worked as a pair with Kate Bush on different tracks. Kate Bush has praised Harper as being one of England’s finest songwriters.

Harper has also been running with Led Zeppelin since way back. They first met at the Bath Festival in 1970. At that first encounter, what struck Harper was that Jimmy Page’s pants were too short. The closing track on Led Zeppelin III, the song Hats Off to (Roy) Harper, is a tribute song to a man known for sticking to his principles and refusing to sell out to commercial pressures. Harper and Page became fast friends.

“We were both peas in the same pod. Believe it or not, we’re both quietish. I always think of Jimmy as a gentleman. He sets a good example a lot of the time. He doesn’t swear much at all. Neither do I. We’re both from that lower middle class rung, from the same social strata, both aspiring young men.

“My family weren’t working class, although the way my dad behaved, we deserved to be,” says Harper laughing grimly. “He spent the family fortune in the betting shop. When he was in the coffin, one of my brothers said, ‘I think we’d better leave now because [betting firm] Corals will be over the hill soon, looking to straighten their debts out.’”

Roy Harper will perform at the Clonakilty International Guitar Festival, De Barra’s, 8pm, Wednesday, September 17. See: www.clonguitarfest.com

Five other highlights – Clonakilty International Guitar Festival (September 17–21)

Muireann Bradley: The Donegal blues singer and finger-picking guitarist has generated a huge buzz since her standing-ovation performance on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny a couple of years ago. Hard to imagine she’s still only 18, and already has an acclaimed album, I Kept These Old Blues, under her belt. Not to be missed.

John Spillane and the Band of Wrens: The Cork songwriter, one of Ireland’s finest, teams up with his superstar band of wrens for the festival. A John Spillane gig, especially at De Barra’s where he has a long-running musical residency, is always a special event.

Mohammad Syfkhan: One of the more interesting names on the bill – a Kurdish singer and bouzouki player, who fled war-torn Syria with his family over a decade ago, settling in Ireland. His repertoire includes a mix of Kurdish, Turkish and Arabic traditional songs as well as covers and original tracks.

Bill Shanley: Hugely regarded as a gun-for-hire, providing guitar licks on albums by the likes of Gilbert O’Sullivan, Paul Brady, Sinéad O’Connor and Jackson Browne, but also performs solo work, giving full reign to his world-class guitar-playing and ability to write great melodies.

Hussy Hicks: Australian duo, featuring Leesa Gentz on vocals and Julz Parker on guitar, are renowned for their full-on live performances, where they throw blues, folk, rock and Americana roots into the mix.