GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
This delusion persisted until, in a record shop, a friend played ‘She Said’ for the first time in years. Those guitars, orchestrations and harmonies! And most of all, those churchy, melancholy keyboards – best demonstrated on the ’74 live album where they drench every song, from the reworked up-tempo ‘Medicine Man’ to the yearning ‘After The Day’ in swirling Mancunian mist. I fell in love all over again, something which never happened with Katrina.
The Bloomsbury show, where Lees joined his bandmate onstage for a spine-chilling ‘Galadriel’, proved they could still play like that – and afterwards, I was introduced to the men themselves. It was a dream come true, but even as Lees regaled me with priceless anecdotes about their meeting with Bowie, which inspired ‘The Great 1974 Mining Disaster’, Woolly’s dry, self- deprecating humour and natural syntax stood out. Little did I know how self- deprecating he could be.
“On a new day came a new way of living, and giving delight”
THE SUN WILL NEVER SHINE
A tribute to STUART “WOOLLY”WOLSTENHOLME of Barclay James Harvest by DARIUS DREWE SHIMON
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first met Woolly Wolstenholme in 2004 through Vicky and Mark Powell, managers of both BJH and Nektar, for whom I’d recently co- promoted a Nektar show at Camden Underworld. He’d played two
London shows that year, headlining the LA2 and supporting Caravan at Bloomsbury Theatre. Whilst uneasy onstage without his usual bandmates, his charisma and dexterity were still in full reign, even when struggling with a dodgy PA, and, as my sole experience of BJH live had been in 1987, long after he’d left and bassist Les Holroyd had edged them further towards AOR, seeing the great man play these songs was a lifelong ambition fulfilled.
When Barclay James Harvest formed, in Oldham, Lancashire in ’65, Woolly’s vocals and keyboards formed the core of the sound: as Holroyd and guitarist John Lees grew to dominate the writing, his influence waned, but his departure in ’78 after the uneven XII robbed the band of their focus and, to many, their identity.
Sure, they enjoyed greater success afterwards in mainland Europe, particularly Germany, where they were bigger than The Bee Gees, Chicago or Eagles, who Holroyd aspired to emulate, and they still cut the occasional classic (‘Capricorn’, ‘Death Of A City’, ‘Ring Of Changes’). But without Woolly, and his Mellotron, they lost their Englishness, individuality and grandeur, forsaking the rustic lanes of the Peaks and Pennines for a polished Autobahn.
In ’98 they cleaved in two. While Les went off to peddle soft metal, John chose to return to the sound of the original band, meaning Woolly, for the first time in 20 years, was back on board. Fans rejoiced, myself included – or at least I would have had I not been going through the “I only listen to the Velvets, Stooges and MC5” period every young alternative Londoner does in his 20s, pretending I’d “outgrown prog”, missing the reunion show at The Astoria, and denying my musical tastes in the hope that some Swedish piece from Camden called Katrina would shag me.
The band’s early material mined the same seam of psychedelic Albion as Kaleidoscope/Fairfield Parlour, Procol Harum, The Idle Race, The Moody Blues and, needless to say, The Beatles, but their principal influences actually came from The Grateful Dead, Peanut Butter Conspiracy, Jefferson Airplane and Love. Their name, chosen as an English equivalent, always sounded more redolent of some Arran-jumpered folk singer, and may have ultimately stymied their career, but I still can’t think of a more suitable appellation, steeped in hills, dales, cottages and the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” of an English autumn. Songs like ‘Early Morning’, ‘Night’ and ‘Pools Of Blue’ all convey this atmosphere, bearing Woolly’s trademark keyboard flourish and non-Americanised lead vocal, which only occasionally (on ‘Poor Wages’ and ‘Someone There You Know’) rocks out, bringing to mind a rebellious choirmaster: in accord, promotional pictures from ’67-69 present the band in a similarly quaint idiom, either sat like Bonzoesque loons around pianos, holding horns aloft, or standing windswept on Saddleworth Moor with t’at. Here, Woolly’s demeanour, whether laughing jovially into camera, beaming from ’neath an unruly barnet or clowning, chap-style, with a huge pipe, gives no hint of the demons that would destroy him – if anything, these snapshots depict a rural psychedelic idyll many still strive for today.
On their ’70 debut, released on the label EMI named after them, credits are shared,
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