Roy Harper C/D

With such a voluminous amount of recorded material it's hard to intelligently comment without first hearing a more substantial cross-section of his output. However, what i have heard (a few of his early 70s folky albums) places him somewhere inbetween the two extremes you outline (or, occasionally occupying both those extremes). I came to him from the This Mortal Coil box that also included Another Day from 1970s Flat Baroque and Berserk and worked outwards a few albums from there. Substantial but not essential.

Also, he's a guitar player of historic proportions. I mean, Jimmy thought so...

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go.to/stevek

Have you heard anything by his son Nick? What's his stuff like?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naZmBF-h6FI

this bangs so hard

Mojo are doing the "Roy Harper albums" as a 'search/destroy' type feature (forget its real name) for next months issue.

I like Bullinamingvase best, mainly because it's the only one I ever owned. Still, though...

The stuff about Harper in "Hammer of the Gods" is amusing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-24955436

Folk singer Roy Harper has been charged with sexually abusing a girl from the age of 12.

The 72-year-old is due before Hereford Magistrates' Court on Monday accused of nine counts of sexual assault.

West Mercia Police said the offences are alleged to have been committed in Herefordshire between 1975 and 1977 and relate to one victim.

Mr Harper, from the Republic of Ireland, has performed with Pink Floyd and was an influence on Led Zeppelin.

The summons was issued to the musician from Rossmore, Clonakilty, County Cork, on 16 October, after he was voluntarily interviewed by police at Heathrow Airport on 22 February.

Mr Harper has produced more than 30 albums during his career and performed on a sold out tour, last month.

He sang lead vocals on Pink Floyd's Have a Cigar on their 1975 classic album Wish You Were Here and was awarded the MOJO Hero Award by the music magazine in 2005.

oh god

i mean really, fucking hell

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/roy-harper-sexual-abuse-charge-2793223

Fuck sake

can't make any assumptions here but really thought he was one of the good guys :(

Bit crazy, it's true, but...

In any other circumstance I would be getting pissed off with all these tweets starting "Former Pink Floyd singer Roy Harper..."

had to be on the same day as SRT's final innings huh

urgh am i the only person left alive who isn't a paedo?

What the fuck? How do you even prosecute something like this 4 decades after the fact? Wow.

How do you even prosecute something like this 4 decades after the fact?

You haven't been following the news in the UK then, Josh.

xp now it's turned out Wayne Rooney isn't a gerontophile after all, looks like it yeah

Yeah, this is just the latest in list of cases that have come to light in the past year involving 70s showbiz types here. Feel very sad about this as Roy is someone whose music I've loved for a long time, but if there's a case to be answered then I hope the victim gets the justice they deserve.

"deserve" is the wrong word there but ykwim

I think I'm up on a lot of the scandals - like that talk show host, right? Jimmy Something? But in his case allegations came out after he was dead, right? So he wasn't prosecuted, at least outside the court of popular opinion. Is that accurate? I guess I don't know enough about the law, or UK law, about statutes of limitation and the like. Clearly the church sex scandals weren't stopped by the passage of time, but that was a proven pervasive enterprise with cover ups and conspiracy. This is a (formerly) upstanding individual. It's not like Gary Glitter getting busted for something he just did, or even Roman Polanski, who has been hounded by charges he's literally evaded. Just a shock.

But absolutely, first and foremost, if the allegations are proven I hope the victim finds peace and sees justice served.

Stuart Hall
Bill Roache

... and that's just the ones that have gone to court

cleaning of the Augean stables type sitch, it would appear

Yeah, I didn't know those (xpost). But in the case of Hall (who I've never heard of, sorry), he's already in jail for related offenses - indecent assault - which tends to opens the floodgates. Bill Roache, that seems like a similar situation, dating back even longer, to the '60s! So over 50 years ago. Aha, just saw this:

Britain is unique in Europe in that it has no Statute of Limitations for serious sexual crimes.

Interesting.

This sums up a lot of stuff, pre-Harper:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/04/stuart-hall-statutes-of-limitation

xxp Certainly a lot of shit to be flushed out.

(It also directly explains away my confusion over statute of limitations by specifically saying the conviction of Hall could never have happened in America, or even most of the EU.

(sigh)

just realised that both roy harper and rolf harris are both friends of kate bush - bit of a rough year for her

Baby, won't you play with me?
Games that no one else can see?
Leaning over out my window
Flashing me a mini flower show

Steal away from mummy, oh there's my little girl
On the pillow of my tummy give my hair a curl
Run your fingers under and over, make us a little pool
And don't forget about tomorrow in the same place after school

Baby, make me calm your fears
Let me hold your thirteen years
In between the silky, love me
Race my heart and let...

Oh baby I can feel you, see my thunderburst
Melting us together in the plains of magic thirst
We can be forever and ever, watching the water fall
Floating in the lake of all peace after love and after all

Yuck.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-24987275

gah.

This is him discussing the song anagram posted ('Forbidden Fruit') in 1974 - "That song is a pounder, and the lyrics aren't acceptable to your average BBC listener. And then there's Forbidden Fruit the thirteen-year-old-girl thing. I'm a Lewis Carroll freak, basically I love to watch things like Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. I'm into the beauty of the young female, and the older I get, the more fascinated I become." Pretty easy to hide in plain sight in the '70s.

damn

i must admit i wasn't familiar with that song or anything else on that album before this thing blew up, jeepers

roy looks so sinister on the cover of his new album

Didn't see this news til now. God dammit. Ugggghhh

Been so long since we heard anything on this I somehow assumed the case had been dropped, but his trial started today.

Oh right.

That was often postponed then..

I bought "Valentine" last year, 2nd hand, cheap.

Still not played it, dreading it..

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/20/folk-musician-roy-harper-abused-assaulted-girls-court

It is alleged that Harper committed nine offences against the younger complainant in the mid-1970s

uggghhhh

no wonder jimmy page and he were so tight

Roy Harper cleared of indecently assaulting an 11-year-old girl
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-31170479

Folk-rock musician Roy Harper could face a re-trial on five charges of historical sexual abuse after a jury failed to reach verdicts.

The 1970s star was acquitted of two counts of indecent assault following a three-week trial at Worcester Crown Court.

But jurors, who deliberated for more than 13 hours, failed to agree majority verdicts on two further counts of indecent assault, two of indecency with a child, and one of having sex with a child.

no wonder jimmy page and he were so tight

― a drug by the name of WORLD WITHOUT END (Jon Lewis), Tuesday, January 20, 2015 2:14 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Kinda surprised nothing has come out about him yet.

You mean other than Lori Lightning's own (non-regretting but deeply icky) account

Hasn't it been out for decades?

xpost(!)

Replying to a 3 hours old post, and I get to xpost?

Lol

So what happened, or is it still ongoing?

What do you mean?

Discharging the jury, Judge Robert Juckes QC gave prosecutors two weeks to consider whether to seek a re-trial on the remaining charges, which all relate to the younger complainant

You mean other than Lori Lightning's own (non-regretting but deeply icky) account

And what is this?

Lori Lightning aka Lori Maddox was a groupie who had a relationship with Jimmy Page when she was 14.

That I know (tho I didn't know her by Lightning).

Other than being friends with Page, what is the Harper connection? Is there one?

BTW, I hadn't heard about this trial until now. Following the ghastly Runaways story, the number of rock heroes who I'm discovering not only had relationships with pre-teens in the 70s but did things like become their guardian is just horrifying.

I think it was just in response to this, Naive Teen Idol:

no wonder jimmy page and he were so tight
― a drug by the name of WORLD WITHOUT END (Jon Lewis), Tuesday, January 20, 2015 2:14 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Kinda surprised nothing has come out about him yet.

― how's life, Friday, February 6, 2015 7:19 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Plenty has been written about Jimmy Page and underage groupies or fans, if you prefer, ditto Iggy, Johnny Thunders, I imagine it's a long long list.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/nov/09/roy-harper-cleared-historical-sexual-abuse-angry-court-battle?CMP=twt_b-gdnnews

Prob. pretty hard to bring a case like this so long after the fact. Depressing.

i had been wondering what happened with all this.

tbh this is a case where i pretty much believe the charges, an opinion which doesn't and shouldn't matter since i'm not a judge or jury member sifting through the evidence.

Lucky for Roy you weren't on the jury, then.

Well, this is what we are encouraged to do about most things that go to trial..

"Guess Guilty or Innocent"

Rolf? Innocent - he seems a nice bloke. Stuart Hall? Bit weird, can imagine him guilty. And so on.

Of course, the jurors get to see the actual evidence, and if the person is found guilty, so do we. If found innocent or not gone to trial, we don't, usually.

Which means, our earlier guess tends to stand.

Even though I know none of the evidence he once wrote that creepy song so GUILTY

The reason for dropping the case was the unlikeliness of obtaining a conviction based on the strength of the evidence. That... does not make me feel like hauling out my copy of Lifemask.

Of course, the jurors get to see the actual evidence, and if the person is found guilty, so do we. If found innocent or not gone to trial, we don't, usually.

right, thing's precisely my point.

er, i mean, that's precisely my point.

I want to say in the case of those other recent decades-after-the-fact prosecutions there were letters and confessions, that sort of thing, that sealed the conviction. But other than overwhelming, damning evidence, what other evidence could convict in cases of this nature? Is the UK unique in a lack of a statute of limitations for these sorts of crimes? It would be weird to make it (rightfully) easy to open a long after the fact case but impossible to prosecute short of some sort of explicit smoking gun, but how else could they convict? Any lawyers here privy to this stuff?

in several of these cases there have been lots of people coming forward independently of each other with similar accounts of abuse, I think that plays a large part?

Yes, the famous people convicted so far have all been serial abusers over many years with many victims.