HQ (Download) Remastered

HQ is to date my most integral 'rock' record. The songs on the record are less acoustically oriented than on any of my other albums. However this is not to say that any of the songs couldn't have been recorded playing just an acoustic guitar. The combination of Chris Spedding, Bill Bruford, Dave Cochrane and myself was a band I should have kept together, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Dave Gilmour, John Paul Jones and Steve Broughton were the band that played together at a Hyde Park Free Concert and then recorded the backing track for 'The Game'.

The highlights of the record are one, Chris Spedding's guitar solo on 'The Game,' which was a first take and is a wonderful piece of spontaneous Rock and Roll. He played it on a tiny amp in the middle of the empty aircraft hanger sized Studio 1, at Abbey Road, a studio built for a 100 piece orchestra and opera cast. He was dressed in a white suit with a red carnation and was in and out of the studio within 20 minutes! And two, the great lift that the Grimethorpe Colliery (brass) Band gave to the David Bedford arrangement of 'When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease.' It was recorded in the same studio and there were about 50 musicians in the studio that day.

My childhood memories of the heroic stature of the footballers and cricketers of the day invoke the sounds that went along with them. Paramount among these was the traditional Northern English brass band, which was a functional social component through all four seasons, being seen and heard in many different contexts. My use of that style of music on 'Old Cricketer' is a tribute to those distant memories. Finally, not least among the highlights is the third verse of the lyric of 'The Spirit Lives.' A poem of mine that I really enjoy. I always look back on HQ as a great album made at one of the best times of my life.

All songs written by Roy Harper
Recorded at EMI Studios, Abbey Road
Original sleeve design and photography by Hipgnosis
Originally released by EMI Records 1975