In 1970, Barclay James Harvest caught the critics’ attention when they experimented with rock and orchestra on their bold self-titled debut. Half a century later, John Lees‘ Barclay James Harvest are preparing for their final live shows before the bandleader retires, including a special orchestral concert in Huddersfield in September. John Lees discusses the band’s incredible career and the tracks that made up their recently reissued second album, Once Again.
'The last time we played with an orchestra was in Athens five years ago,” says Barclay James Harvest guitarist and vocalist John Lees. “We played at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, an amphitheatre on the slopes beneath the Acropolis. It was fantastic. Standing there on stage looking up at the Acropolis in spotlight in front of an orchestra was quite surreal.”
Although Barclay James Harvest might not have been the most flash and virtuosic of progressive rock bands, they were certainly one of the most ambitious and broke new ground, in early 1971, by touring with an orchestra. And, as their Acropolis concert demonstrated, they can still do rock and grandeur like no other group. But the road to Athens has been a long, and at times difficult, journey.
They formed in 1967 in the Oldham area and early on played at Middle Earth and with Pink Floyd at All Saints Hall, London. They established a melodic style with blues and folk elements and attracted a sponsor and manager, a local fashion entrepreneur John Crowther. They moved into one of his properties, Preston House, an 18th-century farmhouse in nearby Diggle. If that sounds like a cool way to ‘get it together in the country’, the facilities were, if not quite 18th-century, then certainly primitive.
Barclay James Harvest – Lees, Les Holroyd on bass and vocals, Stuart ‘Woolly’ Wolstenholme on keyboards and vocals, and Mel Pritchard on drums – signed a one-off single deal with Parlophone and released a single, Early Morning, in April 1968. The group had already experimented with cello, tenor horn, flute and recorder and although they didn’t have the budget for strings, they had been impressed by The Moody Blues’ use of the Mellotron and hired one for the recording from a piano shop in Derby.
“We were the first and only people to actually rent the thing,” says Lees. “The guy didn’t want it back, so we got it at a knockdown price. And that was the start of introducing orchestral strings as part of the palette. We had some other songs which lent themselves to that kind of sound picture, and from then on it became synonymous with what we did.”
In 1969 Barclay Ja
