[kj] Nick Harper quotes Killing Joke

Mon Sep 20 09:20:55 EDT 2004

Anybody heard of Nick Harper and know anything about him quoting Killing 
Joke lyrics at his gigs?? Apparently he has a rock star dad.

>>>>As well as his own songs, a Harper gig might well include Monty Python's 
>>>>The Galaxy Song and his Guitar Man-Whole Lotta Love medley...then there 
>>>>are quotations from songs by Killing Joke, Kool and the Gang, Public 
>>>>Enemy, Gang of Four and Prodigy et al.

Nick
Press Cuttings Department

The Herald (Glasgow)

August 21, 2004
HEADLINE: Hats off to Harper;Nick Harper thought it was only natural to 
follow in his rock-star father's footsteps, but he is very much his own man.

BYLINE: By Rob Adams

BODY:
There's a code among Nick Harper fans that during his Fringe runs they buy 
tickets for two of the concerts. The idea is that the first concert they go 
to, they take someone who hasn't seen Harper before so that they can watch 
this person's response to his supernatural singing, guitar playing and 
songwriting gifts. Then, at the other concert, they can simply sit down and 
enjoy him for themselves. Basically, this indulgence allows the committed 
fan to relive their own gobsmacked discovery through someone else's.

Something similar happened last year when Harper was awarded a Herald Angel 
for his Fringe performances at St Stephens: a Harper

virgin returned to the office and confirmed that the reviewer (hey, there's 
a first time for everything) had got it absolutely right, the guy was - is - 
indeed a genius.

Another code among the converted is that no newspaper article can resist the 
temptation to mention Harper's father, Roy, the rock star championed in Led 
Zeppelin's Hats Off To Harper. This isn't strictly true but this article 
isn't going to resist the temptation, either. Roy's genes have much to do 
with how his son turned out, although it's long been the case that Nick is a 
talent in his own right.

Having a rock star for a father isn't all it's cracked up to be, anyway. For 
all the appearances Harper Jr made as a nipper on dad's record covers, the 
hanging out as a titchy budding guitarist with rock leviathans such as Led 
Zep and Pink Floyd (on whose Wish You Were Here album Harper Sr sang Have A 
Cigar) and the kisses he was able to claim from impressionable girls at 
school, Nick's view is that he'd have preferred just as often for his dad to 
be something ordinary, like a milkman.

"I'd never, ever disown Roy and I'm very proud of what he's done and I love 
his music, and him of course, but it can be very frustrating when people 
look at me and they don't see me, they see him instead," he says. "Younger 
people who come along to gigs and get interested in my music probably don't 
know Roy, so it doesn't happen with them. But it can be really depressing 
when you come off stage after focusing on your own songs and someone comes 
up and the first thing they say is, 'How's your dad?' I just feel that I've 
been doing this long enough now that I should have got past that stage."

More frustrating still is the assumption that, because Roy tends to be 
associated with the 1960s and 1970s, Nick is following in his

footsteps as an old hippie.

"I've been accused of that but I don't align myself with any musical 
manifesto," he says. "What I do is just a personal expression of what I feel 
at any particular time. Besides, I wouldn't call Frank Zappa, for example, a 
hippie; he's a genius, a one-off. I don't like putting music in pigeonholes, 
either. When it comes to cover versions or just borrowing stuff, if I think 
the song or whatever I'm plundering fits, I'll take it from anywhere."

This is no lie. As well as his own songs, a Harper gig might well include 
Monty Python's The Galaxy Song and his Guitar Man-Whole Lotta Love medley, 
both long -term concert favourites, and - if the moon's full - 
a-hear-it-to-believe-it version of Zappa's Titties and Beer. Then there are 
quotations from songs by Killing Joke, Kool and the Gang, Public Enemy, Gang 
of Four and Prodigy et al. Harper is also one of the few people who can 
credibly borrow songs from Jeff Buckley, who just so happens to be another 
"son of" whose talents actually outstripped his father's.

Yet the Harpers' father-and-son relationship was, and remains, altogether 
closer than the Buckleys', although one of the things that Nick didn't like 
about his father's work was that they didn't see each other all that much at 
times and there was no coercion on Roy's part when it came to Nick learning 
to play guitar.

"I just thought that's what grown-up Harpers did and I pretty much decided 
that I was going to be a musician soon after giving up my plans to be - 
let's see - an astronaut. I started off by trying to kill the cat with one 
of my dad's old guitars. Then I learned three chords at 10 and another three 
at 17," he deadpans before reverting to the truth that he got completely 
lost in the instrument.

"I started making things up and found that this really moved me. Then I just 
wanted more and more of that feeling. There was something cathartic about 
it, so I would just play guitar all the time," he says, adding with typical 
self -deprecation: "It's sad, really."

The result of all this practice is a oneness with the instrument, where the 
acoustic guitar genuinely seems to be an extension of Harper himself. It's a 
battered extension, because such is the force that he brings to his rhythm 
patterns that he long ago had to perfect the art of changing a broken string 
while continuing to sing unaccompanied, sometimes improvising around the 
melody, until the guitar comes charging back, restrung and retuned as if 
nothing had happened.

"Actually, it gets a fair old thrashing in the kitchen as well, because I 
just love being loud," he says. "I thrashed about on some electric guitars 
when I was a teenager and made a lot of noise. So, it's the product of a 
misspent youth. But I like to be able to play with a light touch, too."

Songs such as She Rules My World (she being Mother Nature) bear out his 
abilities as a sensitive singer-songwriter as well as the mad power-chord 
animal, but the term singer-songwriter is almost as much of a red rag to a 
bull as the hippie accusation.

"Too many singer-songwriters are tainted with this whole idea that they're 
introspective and a bit down," he says. "I have my serious moments. There 
are things going on in this world that are bizarre, evil and wrong, and I 
think you should say what you think about them. But I wouldn't want people 
to feel I was ramming my ideas about politics and green issues down their 
throats. I see myself essentially as an entertainer. I try to provide a real 
show."

Nick Harper plays Pod Deco, Edinburgh, from today until

Monday and then Wednesday

until Saturday, August 28.

GRAPHIC: IN THE GENES: Neil Harper began playing the guitar "because I 
thought that's what grown-up Harpers did".

LOAD-DATE: August 21, 2004

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