Barclay James Harvest are an English progressive rock band, founded in Oldham in 1966. “I don’t think people realise how far back Barclay James Harvest goes” guitarist and vocalist John Lees recently said. “We played Middle Earth at the Roundhouse in 1968 with The Gun, and with Pink Floyd at London All Saints [in 1966, with Syd Barrett still fronting Floyd], that kind of heritage.”
That’s assuming people know much about Barclay James Harvest at all. In their native England they saw some popularity in the 1970s, always borderline breaking through to the mainstream, but never quite. Towards the end of the decade they found success in continental Europe, but they are still not one of the giants in their genre from a popularity point of view. Plenty of people will however debate that they are giants otherwise! Still, in the UK the formula would often be relatively positive reviews, somewhat lesser sales. (And as we’ll learn later in the story, not all reviews were positive.)
Barclay James Harvest released their eighth studio album, Gone To Earth, in September 1977. It reached #30 in the UK charts – the expected “no flop, but only minor hit”-territory – but it also finally saw the band break into the mainstream European market. People in Germany, France and Switzerland in particular embraced that album, which seemed to resonate with people in those countries. In Germany it peaked at #10 and stayed for 197 (!) weeks in the album charts. It is still ranked #6 on the list of longest running albums on those charts. It was the band’s largest selling album overall, eventually selling a few million copies worldwide. It set the foundation for an ongoing career in those markets, and since then these have been their strongest markets in terms of album sales and live shows.
Gone To Earth was a huge-sounding album. It contained tracks like the opener Hymn, which is a huge, cinematic track (about the dangers of drug use, dedicated to musicians like Hendrix, Kossoff and Joplin). It contains what appears to be massive brass and strings, but the track is in fact built using synthesizers, mellotron and guitars. Sea of Tranquillity was another orchestral sounding track (about the space race), built in similar fashion, and all in all a lot of the album embraced atmospheric prog and a certain level of sophistication to a larger degree.
One of the most popular songs on the album is Poor Man’s Moody Blues. This is a hauntingly beautiful love song, although its inspiration was anything but beautiful.
The song was written as a response to a music journalist from the magazine Sounds who referred to Barclay James Harvest as a “poor man’s Moody Blues”. The band encountered him at the Colston Hall in Bristol on 20 October 1976 during their Octoberon tour. The comment was not just unjust, but angered the band.
“The worst thing about this guy was that he kept criticizing our fans”, explains keyboardist Woolly Wolstenholme. “We thought it was okay to take the band to task, but insulting the people who bought our records and came to see us was taking things too far. From that point on we stopped talking to the UK music press.”
Vocalist/guitarist John Lees was particularly irked, and became determined to make that particular lemon into lemonade. He wrote the song in response, and it did in fact sound like a certain Moody Blues song. This was not an accident, because he had a point to prove. “I went back to my hotel room,” he said, “and started messing around with a chord structure that reminded me of Nights In White Satin. I was so pissed off with this journalist that I sat down and wrote most of Poor Man’s Moody Blues that night.”
All the nights that I’ve missed you
All the nights without end
All the times that I’ve called you
Only needing a friend
Now your eyes shine with beauty
That I missed long ago
Guess the truth is I love you
I can’t say any more
‘Cause I need you
Yes I want you
Yes I love you
Although the song reminds us of its inspiration, Lees made sure it was not the same. The melody is in fact entirely different, and attempts to sing the words of Nights In White Satin over the melody of Poor Man’s Moody Blues will not work – the words do not fit the music. This was Lees’ polite way of telling the journalist what he thought of his claim.
Far from all music journalists agreed with the “poor man’s Moody Blues” tag. Legendary radio DJ Alan “Fluff” Freeman from London’s Capital Radio said in 1988: “That was a load of shit. The Moody Blues were magnificent, and are magnificent, I think, but you will find them making not quite the music they were making years ago, but you find Barclay James Harvest still making the music they were making many years ago. To say that Barclay James Harvest are the poor man’s Moody Blues is just rubbish.”
“I wish I hadn’t penned it – it’s haunted me ever since,” admitted Lees years later. “The Greeks even use it as a wedding song. When they have the first dance, they play Poor Man’s Moody Blues. How that figures, I do not know.”
Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues was not pleased with the song either, even though it in no way was meant as a slight on the Moodies. There are zero insults flung in the Moodies’ direction, no put-downs, and the song does not even reference them in any way whatsoever. But, if you only look superficially, the words “poor” and “Moody Blues” in the same title may have seemed that way. Barclay James Harvest had nothing to apologise for, but when vocalist/bassist Les Holroyd met Hayward several years later, he still apologised for the song.
Interestingly, Barclay James Harvest used to play Nights In White Satin a bit earlier in their career, and even had a run-in with a Moody Blue on one such evening. “It was a big Friday night concert at the Students’ Union at Manchester University or UMIST,” said Les Holroyd in a 1990 interview. “The Moody Blues were supposed to be playing, but didn’t turn up, so they asked us to play. it was a really big audience and we finished the gig with Nights in White Satin, because at that point in time we did actually do that number, and we got an encore for it! The best thing of the lot was when we met the Moody Blues drummer, Graeme Edge, and [bassist] John Lodge. it was the first time that we’d actually come face to face with them, at a Christmas party or something, and Graeme Edge was under the impression that we were just starting in the business. He was spouting on for about an hour about the dos and don’ts of the business; at that point Lindsay walked in and introduced US and the guy’s face was incredible! He never lived it down, haha!”
As Barclay James Harvest began to play more in Germany, that country’s audience formed a particularly strong bond with the group. They became massive there. “On a tour we did in Germany just a few years later, in 1979-1980, we sold a million tickets,” says Lees. “It’s ridiculous! I’ve got a platinum ticket at home. Then we went on and played to 185,000 people in front of the Reichstag.”
Barclay James Harvest may have never had the hit single they wanted at the outset, and they were never, ever close to even breaking a part of America, but their global album sales are still impressive. “We’d sold something like seven million albums back in the late 70s – I hate to think of how many we’ve sold now,” smiles Lees. “It’s fantastic really. We’ve just always had massive support.”
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