Barclay James Harvest

Barclay James Harvest was, for many years, one of the most hard-luck outfits in progressive rock. A quartet of solid rock musicians -- John Lees, guitar, vocals; Les Holroyd, bass, vocals; Stuart "Woolly" Wolstenholme, keyboards, vocals; and Mel Pritchard, drums -- with a knack for writing hook-laden songs built on pretty melodies, they harmonized like the Beatles and wrote extended songs with more of a beat than the Moody Blues. They were signed to EMI at the same time as Pink Floyd, and both bands moved over to the company's progressive rock-oriented Harvest imprint at the same time, yet somehow, they never managed to connect with the public for a major hit in England, much less America. The group was formed in September of 1966 in Oldham, Lancashire. Lees and Wolstenholme were classmates who played together in a band called the Blues Keepers; that group soon merged with a band called the Wickeds, which included Holroyd and Pritchard. They became Barclay James Harvest in June of 1967 and began rehearsing at an 18th century farmhouse in Lancashire. The psychedelic era was in full swing, and the era of progressive rock about to begin -- the Moody Blues, in particular, were beginning to cut an international swathe across the music world. BJH cut a series of demos late in the year, and by the spring of 1968 they were signed to EMI's Parlophone label; in April they issued their first single, a folky, faux-classical song called "Early Morning." The group got caught up a year later in a corporate change at EMI, and it was decided to move the more progressive sounding groups on the label onto a new label -- Harvest, taken from BJH's name. Their first release on the new label was the single "Brother Thrush." In 1970, they released their first album, Barclay James Harvest,...