Roy Harper: A musical journey from Pink Floyd to West Cork
Roy Harper, resident in West Cork since the 1970s, plays De Barra's in Clonakilty.
Roy Harper ran away from London in 1973. He was in a temper. The music business wasn’t somewhere he wanted to be any longer. He pointed his battered old Bentley car, which he bought for £600, westwards. He got as far as Wales. He came across signs saying “Ferry”. He didn’t know where the ferries were headed until he got to a port, and discovered, before he knew it, he was on one, bound for Ireland.
When Harper landed in Rosslare, he kept driving west, right down to the tip of Baltimore in West Cork. It was a fine day. He found an old stone jetty that angled into the water, and he sat on that for a long time. He realised there were mackerel swimming around him. That's breakfast, he thought. He went into Skibbereen. He bought a line, a spinner, a frying pan and some margarine, and he went back and stayed on that beach in Baltimore for 10 days, sleeping in the back of his car.
