Emitt Rhodes died this week. He never made much of an impact on the charts in the UK despite being championed on Alan Freeman’s radio show. It’s still sad to see him go.
There’s a mellotron sound here (I’m a sucker for a bit of mellotron) and echoes of Barclay James Harvest.
Emitt Rhodes: Till the Day After
This one’s a bit more rocky.
Emitt Rhodes: Really Wanted You
Emitt Lynn Rhodes: 25/2/1950 – 19/7/2020. So it goes.
Again speaking of Stuart Henry, he must have had a soft spot for Barclay James Harvest. In his Saturday morning show on Radio 1 he later began to use the, “So goodbye, pleased to know you. We had some laughs along the way. But I have to be leaving and there’s nothing you can do to make me stay,” refrain from this song – in its second iteration at 2.23 to 2.48 minutes in – as a jingle when he was about to hand over to the next broadcaster.
Speaking of Stuart Henry this is a track I remember him championing when he first started broadcasting for Radio 1.
It later featured on the first Barclay James Harvest album I bought, the retrospective compilation Early Morning Onwards which EMI put out on a budget label when the group jumped ship – or were they pushed? – to Polydor.
I probably liked Early Morning at the time due to the mellotron. Still do now.
I remember Barclay James Harvest – one of the long gone Stuart Henry‘s favourites – from Early Morning, their first single, onwards.
It wasn’t till I finally bought the album Everyone Is Everybody Else that I realised that the jingle which Henry used to play on his Saturday morning Radio 1 show,
“So goodbye, pleased to know you,
We had some laughs along the way,
But I have to be leaving,
And there’s nothing you can do to make me stay,”
came from the track Poor Boy Blues.
I’m Over You is from 1972, around the time when their record deal with EMI’s Harvest label (which was said to be named after them – though that may be an urban myth) was running down.
It gained some airplay (Johnnie Walker’s record of the week I think) but sank almost without trace.
It’s one of those songs where the lyric seems to be saying the opposite of its apparent meaning.
I haven’t been able to find a video for this but I did find a site where you can play the track. The link leads to it.
I must have been one of the last to catch up with the news of the death last month of “Woolly” Wolstenholme, one of the founders of prog rock group Barclay James Harvest. I almost skipped the Guardian’s obituary page on Friday. I’m glad I didn’t now. (Though the picture does the band no favours, making them look like a bunch of effetes. Still, it was the seventies, a lot of bands looked like that then.)
BJH were one of the main purveyors of the branch of prog rock that took the adjective “symphonic” and Wolstenholme was perhaps the main driver of these leanings towards classical music.
They were famous notorious for touring with a live orchestra – though they gave that up pretty quickly as being too expensive.
While not providing the bulk of the group’s songs – John Lees and Les Holroyd did that – Wolstenholme’s contributions lent the band a distinctive tone.
The fullest extent of Wolstenholme’s classical extensions to their work is probably the track Moonwater from the Baby James Harvest album.
A more typical flavour of his songwriting can be gleaned from listening to Beyond The Grave from the album Time Honoured Ghosts or Sea of Tranquility from Gone To Earth though Harbour from XII (of which this is a performance by successor band John Lees’ Barclay James Harvest) is more folkish. I have a sneaking regard for Ra from Octoberon but haven’t found a net-playable version.
XII was the last BJH album to which Woolly contributed. It featured the track below, which seems to be the favourite of those devotees who have posted on You Tube.
Barclay James Harvest: In Search Of England
Woolly’s death is even sadder in that as a sufferer from depression, he took his own life.
Stuart John “Woolly” Wolstenholme. 15/4/47-13/12/10. So it goes.
