The Unknown Soldier (album)

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Professional reviews
The Unknown Soldier

Studio album by Roy Harper
Released	1980
Recorded	England
Genre	Rock
Label	Harvest SHVL 820, Science Friction HUCD031 (Current release)
Producer(s)	Roy Harper, Peter Jenner
All Music Guide link
Roy Harper chronology
Harper 1970-1975 (1978)	The Unknown Soldier (1980)	Work of Heart (1982)

1 History
2 Miscellanea
3 Track listing
4 Personnel
5 External links

[edit] History

The Unknown Soldier is a 1980 album by Roy Harper and was his last on EMI's Harvest Records label.[1].

The album was originally released on EMI's Harvest Records label (SHVL820) in 1980 (also Harvest ST6474 (CAN) and Electrola 1C06407259 (FRG)). In 1998 the album was reissued on Harpers Science Friction label (HUCD031).

[edit] Miscellanea

Whilst duets are not commonplace on Roy Harper albums, Kate Bush accompanies Harper on the song "You" to great effect. The song "Short and Sweet" features David Gilmour on guitar and is also found on Gilmour's first solo album, David Gilmour. In fact, Gilmour plays guitar on most of the songs and co-wrote five of the album's ten songs, Harper providing the lyrics and Gilmour the music.[2].

The original versions of "I'm In Love With You", "Ten Years Ago" and "The Flycatcher", were to be released on Harper's album Commercial Breaks in 1977. However, a dispute between Harper and EMI meant the album was not released in its entirety and under its original name, until 1994. The versions of those songs that appear on this album are different, having been re-recorded.

"Perhaps the most remarkable moment in...the making of this record was the trip...to the battlefield at Verdun in France to take the pictures for the sleeve...disembarking at Boulogne in an undrivable hired Rover with an arse-end three miles in the air and a steering wheel on the wrong side. We hurtled down France for half a day...at the end of which we walked, stoned and soaked, into a Pension and I asked for a room for the night in my schoolboy French. "Avez vous une chambre ce soir....... etc. And a lizard woman looked us up and down....."

"What we saw the following day brought me to tears...A sea of graves, surmounted by a monument the like of which I'd never seen anywhere. In style, it is pure Art Deco, in deference it is Egyptian, and in effect it is devastating. And it is full of the bones of hundreds of thousands of men; visible through the windows of the basement around the building. We took the pictures, even though it seemed like a sacrilege. And isn't that the nature of our beast?...I can't remember the journey home, except for its silence..." Roy Harper.[3]