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Legends of Harper

by 101 Comments

18/02/2024

There is no way of doing this that doesn’t seem ridiculous, but here it is… my friends Barry Devlin and Cormac O’Kane have made a documentary about me and my ‘world’. In a way, it has spun off (out of any normal sense of reason) out of the 35-disc Horslips box set that I curated for Madfish, released early last year.

Barry (Horslips alumnus, later an adventurer in the world of TV and film – scriptwriting, U2 promos, documentaries etc.) didn’t know me before that process. He didn’t know Cormac either – Cormac, an old friend of mine who has tolerated/aided/abetted my adventures in music recording for nearly 30 years, had mastered the Horslips box set.

Barry seemed to find our circle to be fun… and around June last year he decided that the world needed this documentary and set about creating it. Somehow, he convinced BBC NI to acquire it – and then convinced technological wizard and can-do man Cormac O’Kane to direct it, with Cormac’s mild-mannered studio sidekick Richard Brown roped in as editor. The whole thing has been made on wings, prayers and enormous goodwill. My contribution was organising a couple of interviews/performance things with certain musicians and staging a Legends of Tomorrow first-ever concert in December (24 musicians out of the 60-70 I’ve made studio recordings with since 1996) for the cameras – which was scary for a non-performing musician. But again, the goodwill in the room was extraordinary – like finding oneself in the final scenes of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’. It really was.

I haven’t seen the film in any form yet – I have genuine deniability! It’s a very unusual situation to be in. Anyway, Barry & Cormac came up with a press release about the film today – it’s on BBC NI (and iPlayer nationally) on February 18 – and asked me for some recipient suggestions. I gave them a few, and it’s up to them now. This is the only place I’ll be posting it myself – because the AW is ‘family’. 🙂

I hope I don’t come across as an idiot in it – but I resigned myself to the doc from the start, however it turned out, to honour Barry and his extraordinary passion for it. I did whatever I was asked to do, he and Cormac wove it all together to present some sort of impression. The BBC cut is 54 minutes. Fingers crossed…

Here’s that PR sheet:

Press release: Legends of Harper, BBC2, 09-02-2024

Legends of Harper is a one hour documentary special for transmission in BBC NI’s new Spring Arts series. It will air at 10:30pm on BBC2(NI), Sunday 18 February and will be available nationally on iPlayer for 30 days.

Legends of Harper is a one-hour piece about Belfast man Colin Harper and how his extraordinary oeuvre as a writer, archivist and musician has managed to slip under the radar over the years.
Maybe that’s unsurprising as he works mostly from a tiny box room in East Belfast and his remarkable studio collective, The Legends of Tomorrow, had never played live – from their first recording, in 1997 – until two months ago.

As well as that, Colin’s somewhat elusive and private persona has tended to mask the remarkable ripples that radiate from the work he describes as his “pebbles” into the musical and literary life of Belfast.

So, as a writer, Colin has authored definitive but highly readable books on musicians Bert Jansch, Mahavishnu John McLaughlin and Andy Powell as well as the go-to text on Irish pipering, The Wheels of the World, and Irish Folk, Trad and Blues,* which does what it says on the tin.

In his life as a musician – though he has released a number of splendid albums of purely instrumental longer works – it is the memorable songs he has recorded over the years with his studio collective The Legends of Tomorrow that form the musical core of the documentary. The narrative of the piece revolves around the concert – filmed over two nights – that reunites two dozen members of The Legends of Tomorrow onstage in Scott’s Jazz Club in East Belfast for a kind of joyful revival meeting.
Legends of Harper features interviews and commentary from Colin’s admirers as well as artists with whom he’s played (and for whom he has curated major box sets, another aspect of his work). These include Ralph McTell, Johnny Marr of The Smiths, Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, Beatles biographer Mark Lewisohn, Wishbone Ash man Andy Powell and Duke Special, but Irish and trad musicians also feature strongly: Martin Hayes, for instance, plays with Colin before delivering some striking insights into composing and performing. Noted uilleann piper John McSherry, Horslips flautist Jim Lockhart and Bono all contribute.

The documentary was produced by Barry Devlin, directed by Cormac O’Kane and edited by Richard Brown at Live Under Giants.

*With Trevor Hodgett

13

Comments

  1. Sounds interesting and I may have to finally try the VPN route to be able to see it (I assume that would do the trick?)
    I hope you’ll be able to enjoy watching it yourself, and embrace the many words of praise that will be heaped upon you in this documentary – because you definitely deserve it!

  5. I should have mentioned that the pic above is a snap taken after the Johnny Marr interview, back in August when he played a festival at a sports ground in Belfast – editor Richard Brown and wizard of sound & vision Cormac O’Kane are also pictured.

  13. Not only do you have a BBC documentary made about you, you have to go one step further and have it produced by the legend that is Barry Devlin! Top achievement Colin, and richly deserved. Here’s another Afterworder who will most certainly be watching.

  15. Well done to our, Col with just one minor quibble.

    Wíth many shows now followed by post-screening discussion panels where viewers are gently probed about what they’ve just seen, it’s disappointing the BBC didn’t run a show called Colinoscopy..

  18. Congratulations and richly deserved.
    When you say available on iplayer for 30 days do you mean on UK mainland or only in NI?
    I would really like to watch it.

  21. Me too (with trepidation and all sorts of emotions). I’m in the strange position of talking about it live on air on Radio Ulster in an hour and I’ve seen it once. Plus how do you even recommend a programme about yourself (unless you’re Donovan)? All I can think about are the caveats I’ll have to keep saying…

  22. Me in the very odd, and self-conscious, position of promoting someone else’s documentary about me on the radio an hour ago. I think in the chat we found the core of the film – it is, in large part, a celebration of a musical scene in Belfast 30 years ago, and I’m thrilled a lot of my musical pals are getting a moment on TV. From around 1 hr 8 mins in:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001wh25

  23. just opened up FB and seen a friend of mine, unassociated with this place afaik (although he is a Belfast muso) has described it as a fantastic documentary about the great Colin Harper!

      • It’s a magic film, Colin – that was seriously good!
        It reminded me how many books and box sets, currently sitting on my shelves, are associated with your good self, either as author, editor or collator.
        I can feel you cringing from over here but the proof’s right there in the film: those people love you, of course they do! And having watched it, so do I…
        Gaun yersel’!

  31. Finally got to watch this. Congratulations Colin, what a lovely tribute to you and all of your hard work. Having watched it I feel like I wasted those years as a nurse working night shifts. I should have been researching and writing some serious stuff (would’ve helped if I could write- my nursing notes were no better than “slept well, nothing to note “

    • Thank you, Paws – I think we ALL feel we’re wasting our time for much of the time we have. I don’t think anyone in medicine is wasting their time – to semi-quote myself (!?!), if a bunch of people wash up on a desert island, a medical professional is going to be much further up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs than a singer-songwriter or someone concerning with yellowing newsprint! 🙂

      Funnily enough, I proofread a fair numbers of nursing PhDs and Master’s degree dissertations…

  33. What a lovely watch. Really enjoyed it, and knowing Colin a bit and having actually interviewed him I was beaming at the pleasure I got from the pleasure he got making it. Certainly one for a rewatch, especially for the terrific music selection. Well deserved tribute!

  35. That you Twang, Skirks, Chiz, Paws & co – the funny thing is, my proofreading work has dried up in the past couple of weeks – the first time in two years or so. Hoping it’s just a coincidence! I need that balance to rigorous slog and creative fun…

  37. Well I had no idea – an actual legend in our midst! Really enjoyed the doc Colin – blimey you are a modest man. I knew your own music was excellent as have a copy of the lovely Sunset Cavaliers album but can’t fathom how you have the patience to take on such mammoth tasks within your real job. The respect of the many, many musicians and artists you have worked with was sincere and quite touching. Final thought – Johnny Mac has such a strange accent for a Yorkshireman. I’m genuinely quite taken aback that ‘one of us’ has a documentary on the Beeb!!!

  39. Watched it this morning. What a lovely heart-warming bit of TV. My trips to Northern Ireland left me convinced that it was full of the friendliest people I’d ever met – just not towards each other. And this programme has made me revise the second part of that.

    No Carol from Luton but on the other hand, a Mahavishnu boxed set to look forward to. Yay!

      • It’s an Avalon ‘Millenium Oak’ – made in NI. About 15 years back I was in the doldrums and Mrs H very kindly offered to buy me a guitar. My existing acoustic – bought second hand 20-odd years earlier – had developed one too many quirks. So I went down by Avalon (down by Avalon…) and they had some near-new examples in a showroom – only used once or twice at trade shows. I was very lucky to get the MO at below half price – even then, it was a sum I could never have justified for an instrument outside of Mrs H’s generosity. But it’s served me well – I immediately created the ‘Titanium Flag’ album on it…

        You’ll get from the above that I’m not a guitar collector. I was bequeathed the black Tele copy (a Fenix) by a muso pal and Legends alumnus, Susan Enan, when she left NI for Nashville 20-odd years ago and my only other guitar is a Westone Thunder – bought in the mid-80s, dormant for many years, but refurbished by a pal (Chris Probst, another Legends alumnus) 4-5 years back. I feel guilty having three guitars, to be honest.

        • It looked like an Avalon but I didn’t recognise the logo. I have an Avalon L320C hand made in Newownards in 2004 and initally owned by Steve from that firm. I bought it in July 2013 from Chandlers in Kew (RIP). I’m very attached to it

  41. Loved that Colin, fabulous stuff. Many congratulations. The affection and respect everyone feels for you is palpable. What a difference you’ve made. Truly the Kenny Loggins of East Belfast….

    Enjoyed seeing a few haunts from my own childhood – the Scrabo Tower, and even Sullivan Upper which I went to some years before Colin.

    ‘We’re all wierdos, really’. Afterword T-shirt right there.

    • It was very, very humbling to see the doc for the first time (a week before broadcast) – a very unusual situation to be in, I imagine. We all just bumble through life, really – and if you try and be nice to people along the way, it can only have a ripple effect to the good, I think. 🙂 Obviously, there must be an exception when it comes to one’s attitudes to Northern Ireland politicians.

        • That’s very kind, Dave – thank you. I’ve not seen it since February – I watched it three times in all, albeit once to note down timings of music for a PRS claim! Director Cormac O’Kane said recently he’d like to restore the ‘director’s cut’ – about 8 minutes longer – once it’s no longer on iPlayer. I’ve not seen it, though I can recall a couple of ‘pontificating on hilltop’ reveries that might be in it.

          You’ve reminded me to ask Cormac for about 2-3 hours of ‘show and tell’ stuff (artefacts like LPs, books, box sets plus stories around them) that was filmed on my sofa during the production period, over a few nights when the mood took me. He’d left me camera/tripod to do so. I think there’d be three or four half-hour YouTube podcasts in there that might be interesting to people.

          I’m still hoping to get some of the concert mixed / edited at some point. It’s been a lean enough year, financially, though.

  43. Yep, still on iPlayer for a few months. During the making of it, Cormac O’Kane (director) gave me a camera/tripod and set it up opposite the sofa in my music listening area, for me to use in case the muse struck me. I filmed about 2 1/2 hours of ‘show and tell’ stuff with various records/box sets, including much paying of tribute to other people involved in that world, and some stories about discovering this or that artist and the making of this or that set. I was just thinking last week that I must look into getting that material from Cormac – from which there was only a glimpse in the doc, from memory – and having a pal edit the fun bits into three or four videos for YouTube.

    There was a trip to Yorkshire where I interviewed Martin Carthy, Andy Powell and archive British jazz mogul John Thurlow for the doc – effectively, me and camera pal Mark Case offering stuff to the doc makers that I felt might be useful (so that the thing wasn’t all about me!) – but only a glimpse of Andy Powell was used. Myself and Mark edited the John Thurlow material into a three-part film for YouTube a couple of months ago (first part below).

    If I can scrape together a thousand or two spare quid at some point, I’ll have some of the concert glimpsed in the doc audio mixed and at least a couple of the songs video edited for YouTube.

  44. I can’t leave this on 99 comments. Have a hamper Colin!

    Now tell us, which is better- having Johnny fucking Marr saying nice things about you on the telly -or- a tin of Corsair chicken?

  45. Ha! Well, having never heard of Corsair chicken, I’ll have to go for option 1. The funny thing is, a number of people – people I generally don’t know (it happened in a bar as recently as last week) – have said to me, ‘Bloody hell, it’s Johnny Marr…’ – but I can fairly safely say that both Johnny Marr and me are thinking ‘Bloody hell, it’s John McLaughlin…’ 😀

    I’d forgotten that Cormac had passed on to me the complete take of ‘Blues For a Green Earth’ – the first thing filmed for the doc, last August. When it seemed likely (but not at that point BBC-agreed), I thought ‘I must have Martin Hayes in this if it’s at all possible’ – he’s a genius, and an old friend. Martin lives in Spain these days and the only time we could get him in Ireland for ages was if he flew in a couple of days ahead of a few dates in August – and he did. An incredibly generous man. Claire from the fabulous Lemoncello – brilliant first album recently released – was up for it too, travelling from Dublin. We had a great night’s fun and pizza in the garden afterwards, with a few other cronies – like Barry Devlin and Cormac O’Kane, who did sound at that afternoon’s filming session (I hired a freelance news cameraman to film it).

    I remember a BBC chap (there in private capacity) saying that evening. ‘What’s the elevator pitch for this?’ – and none of us could really say what it was. It was Barry’s vision – maybe he’d left at that point. Cormac O’Kane – being an inveterate lone wolf, no-nonsense, no-committees character – got fed up with this sort of talk and I think at that point decided, ‘Dammit, let’s just make it – me and Richard [his studio sidekick] and Barry’. And somehow they did – which is almost impossible these days, in terms of getting anything on BBC NI. It’s effectively a closed shop – a handful of preferred indie production companies get almost all the work. I still have no idea what the elevator pitch is. 😀

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