Roy Harper: the folk singer with a Led Zeppelin song named after him
Reaching the end of the classic Led Zeppelin album Led Zeppelin III leaves most listeners in a calm place. Although the album’s first side has the band’s familiar bluesy hard rock style in songs like ‘Immigrant Song’ and ‘Out on the Tiles’, the album’s back half is largely acoustic, with songs like ‘Tangerine’, ‘That’s the Way’ and ‘Bron-Y-Aur Stomp’ providing a gentle contrast to the band’s heavier material.
But for the album’s final track, swampy Delta blues once again comes back to the fore with ‘Hats Off To (Roy) Harper’. Featuring Robert Plant’s voice filtered through distortion and Jimmy Page’s guitar sliding up and down like a classic Delta picker, the track is a take-off of Bukka White’s ‘Shake ‘Em On Down’. Despite that, the song was credited as a traditional composition arranged by “Charles Obscure”, an in-joke within the band, continuing their trend of not giving proper credit to old blues songs.
“This came about from a jam Robert and I had one night,” Jimmy Page told Melody Maker before the album’s release. “There is a whole tape of us bashing different blues things. Robert had been playing harmonica through the amp, then he used it to sing through. It’s supposed to be a sincere hats off to Roy because he’s really a talented bloke who’s had a lot of problems.”
So, who is the song’s namesake? That would be Roy Harper, the Engish folk singer-songwriter who had made inroads in the music industry thanks to his lengthy lyrical excursions and unpredictable behaviour. The members of Led Zeppelin befriended Harper at the 1970 Bath Festival. Beginning in 1970, Harper began a longstanding association with Pink Floyd, signing to the same EMI subsidiary label (Harvest Records) that the Floyd recorded for while being represented by the band’s former manager, Peter Jenner.
“Harper is a terrific songwriter, but a bit crazy, like all the best people,” Jenner claimed about Harper. “The great problem for him was seeing all these people who’d nicked his licks doing so much better than he did. People like Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin and, to some extent, Roger Waters.”
Despite having a prominent catalogue of songs under his own name, Harper is probably best remembered for his appearance on Pink Floyd’s 1975 track ‘Have a Cigar’. Harper provided the lead vocals, taking on the guise of a money-hungry music executive without any clue as to who the artist they are representing is (“By the way, which one’s Pink?). Page and John Paul Jones would continue to contribute to Harper’s albums over the years, even as he never quite reached the heights of his famous peers.
Check out ‘Hats Off to (Roy) Harper’ down below.
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