“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.
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Denne historien er fra Issue 142-utgaven av Prog.
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