Barclay James Harvest

   
Artist: Barclay James Harvest

   Genre(s): 
Rock
   Rock: Progressive
   Other
   Folk: British
   Rock: Folk-Rock
   

---

Discography:


   
 Revolution Days

   Year: 2002   
Tracks: 11


   
 Through The Eyes Of John Lees

   Year: 2000   
Tracks: 19


   
 [1999] Revival Live

   Year: 1999   
Tracks: 15


   
 River Of Dreams

   Year: 1997   
Tracks: 10


   
 Mocking Bird

   Year: 1997   
Tracks: 14


   
 Caught In The Light

   Year: 1993   
Tracks: 12


   
 The Harvest Years CD1

   Year: 1992   
Tracks: 16


   
 The Best Of

   Year: 1991   
Tracks: 15


   
 Best Of Barclay James Harvest

   Year: 1991   
Tracks: 15


   
 Welcome To The Show

   Year: 1990   
Tracks: 12


   
 Alone We Fly

   Year: 1990   
Tracks: 16


   
 Glasnost

   Year: 1988   
Tracks: 12


   
 Moking Bird

   Year: 1987   
Tracks: 14


   
 Face To Face

   Year: 1987   
Tracks: 12


   
 Victims Of Circumstance

   Year: 1984   
Tracks: 9


   
 Ring Of Changes

   Year: 1983   
Tracks: 9


   
 Berlin - A Concert For The People

   Year: 1982   
Tracks: 9


   
 Turn Of The Tide

   Year: 1981   
Tracks: 10


   
 Eyes Of The Universe

   Year: 1979   
Tracks: 8


   
 XII

   Year: 1978   
Tracks: 11


   
 Gone To Earth

   Year: 1977   
Tracks: 9


   
 Octoberon

   Year: 1976   
Tracks: 7


   
 Time Honoured Ghosts

   Year: 1975   
Tracks: 9


   
 Live

   Year: 1974   
Tracks: 11


   
 Baby James Harvest

   Year: 1972   
Tracks: 6


   
 Once Again

   Year: 1971   
Tracks: 8

---

Barclay James Harvest was, for many geezerhood, one of the most hard-luck outfits in progressive rock. A quartette of solid rock musicians -- John Lees, guitar, vocals; Les Holroyd, bass part, vocals; Stuart "Wooly" Wolstenholme, keyboards, vocals; and Mel Pritchard, drums -- with a knack for writing hook-laden songs built on pretty melodies, they harmonised wish the Beatles and wrote extended songs with more than of a beat up than the Moody Blues. They were sign to EMI at the same time as Pink Floyd, and both bands affected over to the company's progressive rock-oriented Harvest embossment at the same time, yet in some manner, they never managed to connect with the public for a major reach in England, practically less America.


The grouping was formed in September of 1966 in Oldham, Lancashire. Lees and Wolstenholme were classmates wHO played together in a band called the Blues Keepers; that grouping shortly integrated with a band called the Wickeds, which included Holroyd and Pritchard. They became Barclay James Harvest in June of 1967 and began rehearsing at an 18th century farmhouse in Lancashire. The psychedelic epoch was in full swing, and the era of progressive rock-and-roll around to begin -- the Moody Blues, in special, were beginning to cut an outside swathe across the music world. BJH cut a series of demos late in the year, and by the spring of 1968 they were gestural to EMI's Parlophone label; in April they issued their first-class honours degree single, a folky, faux-classical birdcall called "Early Morning." The radical got caught up a year subsequently in a bodied change at EMI, and it was decided to go the more progressive sounding groups on the label onto a new tag -- Harvest, taken from BJH's name. Their first-class honours degree release on the modern label was the single "Brother Thrush."


In 1970, they released their first-class honours degree record album, Barclay James Harvest, which included respective of the early songs and displayed the group's strengths: filled with hard harmony singing, belligerent galvanising guitar, and intumescence Mellotron parts, it place the blueprint for their subsequent releases, with Lees and Holroyd manipulation most of the songwriting. The record album failed to chart, and a subsequent circuit was a fiscal catastrophe. Their sec record album, Once Again (1971), was an artistic letdown, made up of kind of lethargic songs, although it did contain the superb, "Mockingbird," The band recorded deuce more albums for Harvest, Short Stories (1971) and Babe James Harvest (1972), and spent practically of 1972 on the road, including an abortive term of enlistment of the U.S. They likewise released a geminate of singles, "When The City Sleeps" and "Breathtaking," under the pseudonym "Bombadil" (a name taken from a J.R.R. Tolkien short story), all to no avail. 1973 sawing machine them part company with EMI later one last single, "Rock and Roll Woman."


Later in 1973, the striation gestural with Polydor, and their fortunes began turning around, though only very bit by bit. Their first-class honours degree record album for the modern label, Everyone Is Everybody Else, seemed promising: it was a more than powerful and coherent work than the group had ever released for EMI, with Lees' guitar commanding on songs wish "Paper Wings" and "For No One." The record album also presented the first base deterrent example of the group consciously paying tribute to (and satirizing) some other group's hit song dynasty -- "Nifty 1974 Mining Disaster" was a very heavy looking tribute/satire of the Bee Gees' "New York Mining Disaster 1941." (They would later do mold in this vein involving the Moody Blues.) The record album failed to chart, however, as did the single "Poor Boy Blues," with its gorgeous harmonies.


It seemed at first-class honours degree as though BJH was locked once over again into a hertz of failure. Finally, in late 1974, their double album Barclay James Harvest Live stone-broke through to the public -- the grouping was rewarded with a Top 40 placement in England and more than gross sales activity on the European continent than they'd antecedently seen. Their next record album, Time Honoured Ghosts, recorded in San Francisco, continued this gradual discovery when it was released in 1975, reaching routine 32 in England. A twelvemonth later, Octoberon reached the Top 20. An EP containing resilient versions of "Rock and roll 'N Roll Star" and "Medical specialty Man" became some other chart submission in the spring of 1977. By this clip, EMI had begun to take on advantage of the success of the group's Polydor work, and released A Major Fancy, a John Lees' solo record album that had saturday on the shelf for five-spot old age.


In 1977, they released Gone to Earth, their most realised album to date, and by the end of the class the group found themselves performing to arena-sized audiences. The sacking of Dozen in 1978 -- which managed to just miss the British Top 30 -- was followed by the group's first-class honours degree (and only) personnel department stimulate. In June of 1979, Wolstenholme announced his outlet from the dance orchestra in favour of a solo life history; the group's concluding term of enlistment with Wolstenholme was recorded and after released by Polydor under the title The Live Tapes. He was replaced by deuce new members, Kevin McAlea and Colin Browne; Wolstenholme released one solo album, 1979's Maestro, to little success and then retired for a time from the music business.


Their 1979 album Eyes of the Universe was a lowly polish off in England, just its press release marked a flashpoint in Barclay James Harvest's career in continental Europe, specially Germany; on August 30, 1980, the dance orchestra performed a unloosen concert in front of nearly two hundred,000 multitude at the Reichstag in Berlin, which was filmed and recorded. A subsequent live album, Concert for the People, became the group's biggest marketing album in England, rising to number 15 in 1982. Turn of the Tide (1981) and Hoop of Changes (1983) were less successful, although the latter did spawn their last charting single, "Just a Day Away." Their subsequent Polydor albums, Victims of Circumstance, Face to Face, and Welcome to the Show, charted ever lower in England, level as the group's popularity grew in Europe. In 1988, they released a new live album, Glasnost, cut at a concert in East Berlin.The group marked the twenty-fifth day of remembrance with a concert in Liverpool, and toured to documentation a British Polydor compilation, The Best of Barclay James Harvest.