remnants of my ticket stub
Roy Harper Middlesbrough Town Hall 1977
1977 and Roy almost became a pop star. He released a fine single One of Those Days in England and had a proper rock band backing him. In Roy’s own words from his web site: “The single shot to no. 42 in the chart, with a promise from the Top Of The Pops producer, Robin Nash, to have us on the show as soon as the record reached 40 or better. That same week the record company released the album, with a free single inside it! ! ! So… that was it for that ‘campaign’.. At the time I had a constituency of about 150,000 people. Top Of The Pops would have given us a potential constituency of 13,000,000.” So Roy never made Top of the Pops and the single didn’t reach any higher in the charts. But he was pretty popular at the time and was filling concert halls up and down the country.
Flyer for an earlier tour (1975) I think. Don’t recall if I was at the gig at Newcastle City Hall or not!
I remember this gig at Middlesbrough Town Hall as being full, and Roy playing a loud electric set. Roy looked very much the rock star part, sporting a satin cowboy shirt, and a big hat. I think he may have even been playing an electric guitar, a Rickenbacker comes to mind, but that could be my memory playing tricks again. I do remember this as a great gig, one of the best times that I saw Roy in the 70s. Roy’s band at the time was (I think) the great Henry McCullough (ex Joe Cocker Grease Band) on lead guitar; Andy Roberts (Grimms) guitar; Dave Lawson (ex Greenslade) keyboards; John Halsey (Patto) on drums, and Dave Cochran (sole survivor of Roy’s previous band Trigger) on bass. I am not sure if the band was called Chips or Black Sheep at this stage (I think it was Chips), as both names were used for the band in 1977. The sheep reference was derived from Roy’s mysterious illness which he contracted from giving a sheep kiss of life whilst on his farm. This was also the time of the great Watford Gap song: “Watford Gap, Watford Gap, A plate of grease and a load of crap” hailing the delights of the service station. The song goes: “One of those days in England with the country goin’ broke”…pretty relevant today methinks 🙂
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Posted by beebfader on May 10, 2019 at 8:46 pm
Roy’s very fond of telling the tale of the free single with the album…the problem is, i wasn’t the single of `One Of Those Days’, it was a bonus EP of the previously released `Referendum’ (H.Q.), `Another Day’ (Live `Flashes From The Archives Of Oblivion’, and Tom Tiddlers Ground (Flat Baroque).. so really should have had no effect on sales. A bit disingenuous 😉