JAN WOOLF finds out where she came from and where she’s going amid Pete Townsend’s tribute to 1970s youth culture
Roy Harper, Leeds Town Hall
Half a century on, the folk-rock veteran still knows how to connect with an audience
Voice of experience: Roy Harper
MARY CONWAY revels in the Irish American language and dense melancholy of O’Neill’s last and little-known play
MARJORIE MAYO, JOHN GREEN and MARIA DUARTE review Sudan, Remember Us, From Hilde, With Love, The Road to Patagonia, and F1
MARIA DUARTE recommends the very human portrayal of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist in Putin’s Russia
This is a remarkable set of hop hip, salsa, reggae, soul, cumbia and traditional Mexican music finds TONY BURKE
MATTHEW HAWKINS enjoys the perverse jocularity, depraved glamour and inner turbulence of the Tate gallery’s tribute to Leigh Bowery
THIS may be being promoted as Roy Harper’s farewell tour but it seems he’s already having second thoughts.
As the applause dies down at the end of the folk-rock musician’s set, he muses that he might continue playing live for as long as he can skip.
The Mancunian then gambols right off stage, his six-piece band looking expectantly at the wings for him to reappear. When they realise he's not coming back, they awkwardly shuffle after him.
By turns humorous, shambolic and endearingly human, those traits define a two-hour set during which he only manages to play a dozen tracks. These are preceded by long, rambling anecdotes or — in the case of Man In The Glass Cage — interruptions to the actual song so that he can explain the lyrics.
That the audience forgive such brain-fade moments is credit to the skills Harper’s learned over the course of his 50-year career. Time has left his voice slightly rusty, markedly so during the 16-verses of social comment on McGoohan’s Blues, but come the second half of the set he’s warmed up for the folk-rock Highway Blues and elegiac When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease.
His weathered voice is at its most affecting on the encore of I Loved My Life, a new song that could only have been written by someone his age, he notes, although its sentiments are universal.
Its reflective quality draws on his experiences to express gratitude for the small things in life; experiences that those present tonight are thankful to him for sharing.
Touring England and Ireland from August to October, details: royharper.co.uk
More from this author
SUSAN DARLINGTON is bowled over by an outstanding play about the past, present and future of race and identity in the US
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys, with minor reservations, the Northern Ballet’s revival of its 1992 classic
SUSAN DARLINGTON revels in an exhilarating adaptation of the gruesome fairytale that invokes the real-life horror of women lost to male violence
SUSAN DARLINGTON is disappointed by a show that aims to highlight misogyny within the police but fails to arrest the audience's attention
