He’s never out of tune

Roy Harper's is one of the great lost stories of English music.
Uncut's Editor´s letter by Allan Jones.

There was A lot of catching up to do when I interviewed Roy Harper for the feature in this month's issue. We've kept in touch, sometimes vaguely, rather more regularly recently, but I hadn't seen him for many years, one thing or another scuppering various plans to get together. With Roy fast approaching his 70th birthday, talk between us meandered around the subject of how he'd be remembered.
There was much laughter when it seemed to him that it might be for kissing a sheep. This was a story put about when people were wondering what had happened to him after he was hospitalised in the early '70s for what was eventually diagnosed as a serious degenerative condition.

According to Uncut´s feature, Roy Harper:
Very early on, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and myself were listening to something one of us had done. I said “Jimmy, are you out of tune there?” And Robert flew at me: “What do you mean, is he out of tune? He’s never out of tune!” I thought shit, I’ve been really told off.
I told them not to worry about it and that I’d just listen again. So I listened to it again. It was out of tune, but at the same time, it wasn’t. !

There was an ethos about it that was completely on the ball. And it had taken Robert, just with a couple of words, to tell me that not everything is perfectly in tune, but it is if you listen to the context.

He was being very protective of Jimmy, but at the same time, it was a good lesson for me to learn. I took it as an educated thing from Robert. Both he and Jimmy were in a realm were those things had ceased to be the major concern. The major concern was the feel of the music.

And that is the real nature of rock’n’roll, the core of it.

I read this Umcut's new interview, I did enjoy but I cried.
Yes, like Roy did say:
`I need my own Good Friday.´

Roy´s fine lyric is hard sometimes, as they used to say, but he is the one easier as Peter Hammill, for instance