From my Substack diary no.176: Sunday, 7th. June 2026

Every now and again I get a song – or just a song refrain – on repeat in my brain, seemingly from nowhere, and it often bugs me until I play it in the corporeal world. There is no point in asking myself – why that song? My brain consistently fails to provide an answer, or even to acknowledge the existence of the question. It just keeps right on playing its very own edit and mix of that song.

This morning a line from a song is on repeat. But unusually it is a line from a 14-minute epic covering so many aspects of the human condition and psyche that you feel compelled to listen to it over and over again, if only in an attempt to understand the deep message contained within its very wide boundaries.
The line is this: “…so please leave this world as clean as when you came…”. A simple and heartfelt plea from the great Roy Harper. The song is The Game and the album is HQ.

Roy described the song thus: “The Game is another look at human politics through the wide-angle lens of long ages.” The almost 14 minutes just fly-by, leaving the sense that you have listened to something profound and timeless and which seems all too brief. Multiple listens? I have played it at least once a year since 1975.
Incidentally, Harper had a great band at the time – Trigger – with Bill Bruford (drums), Chris Spedding (guitars) and Dave Cochran (bass). Other musicians on the album are Steve Broughton, Dave Gilmour and John Paul Jones.

I shall now take HQ out of its sleeve and place it carefully on the deck with the volume on high. The whole album is great but it just so happens to include my all-time favourite Harper song – the ethereal and mesmerizing jazz of Hallucinating Light, which really does need to be played loud. Sorry neighbours.