Why Has Nobody Heard of Harvey Andrews?
Image credit: Neil Howard via Flickr
It is 11.20am at Euston station. Swarms of people are positioned on their starting blocks in front of the announcement board. The 11.40 to Liverpool has already been called on platform 8, yet the 11.23 to Birmingham has still not been placed. There is a sense of tension in the air – then suddenly it appears on the monitor. Release gives way to mass pandemonium as a stampede of people push and jostle their way to platform 13.
We clutch our paper coffee cups with grim determination and lead the throng. This is the start of a four hour journey from London into the deepest Shropshire countryside. Our mission is to interview retired folk singer Harvey Andrews. This man has had a 50 year career touring, but still, few people have heard of him. It seems something is awry with this: he is a talented lyricist, tells genuinely human stories about blind great aunts and underdogs and, as we’re soon to find out, is extremely self-deprecating. In fact he embodies all those admirable qualities that ought to get applauded… but rarely do.
Andrews was born in Birmingham in 1943 and began gigging in 1964. Through the decades he has straddled unfathomable controversies, achieved limited chart success and earned lifetime fan devotion. He played a part in the great folk revival of the 60s, supported massive acts like Focus and the Kinks. And even wrote the music for Birmingham musical, ‘Go Play Up Your Own End’ starring Jasper Carrot. Some of his songs, like ‘Margarita’, sound like they ought to be ridiculously well known, but for whatever reason, they just aren’t.
As our first Virgin train hurtles North the landscape gradually changes. We take a headphone each and put the ‘Margarita Collection’ on the iPod. The light guitar strum begins, the voice opens: “They’re playing our song Margarita…” Whilst the sky turns slightly greyer, the fields fill with dazzling yellow rapeseed. Oh yes, this is clearly a trip into the Midlands.
We manage to swap trains at Brummagem, despite delays. We reach picturesque Shrewsbury late and hunt down our anxious taxi driver, who takes a detour round to his house to collect the sat nav. This is necessary it seems to navigate the winding road closures. Eventually we’re deposited outside an isolated pub somewhere in the middle of the countryside. Nonplussed, we knock on a couple of doors and are pointed up the hill to a bungalow on the right. It is a lovely spot with stunning views of very Welsh-looking greenery. The door bursts open with smiles and warm hospitality from Harvey Andrews and his wife, Wendy.
“I never wanted to be famous,” says Harvey Andrews, comfortably seated at the far side of his living room facing the beautiful scenery. It is a light, spacious room and we are offered much needed cans of beer and the even more gratefully accepted offer of a lift back to the station later. “I wanted the songs to be famous [of course]. My dream was to be able to sit somewhere in a pub and hear someone put one of my songs on the jukebox, and not know that I was there and I was the guy that had written them, and that it was number one.”
“I kept that dream until about five years ago,” he continues matter-of-factly. “I always hoped that that might happen. That one of my songs would become like Ralph [McTell’s] ‘Streets of London’. I don’t have a ‘Streets of London’. I have sixteen albums. I have a body of work, but not one of them has impacted on the general public and that’s the one thing of all the things.”
Why is ‘Margarita’ not More Well Known?
In a lot of ways this all seems incredibly arbitrary, ‘Margarita’ especially, has everything that should make for a slow burn, folk hit: the voice is clean, the melody is haunting and the story, as always, is intensely human. It tells the tale of Andrews’ great aunt, Annie Pearce, who lost her love in World War I, and as she aged and gradually went blind the photo of her dead fiancé faded to nothing in the intense sunlight on the wall. Nobody told her, so even eight year-old Harvey knew he must say the man looked the same whenever she asked: yes, he was tall, young, smiling.
Poignant and pertinent; this could be an anthem for this World War I centenary. It shows the boys who had no idea what was about to hit them on the ‘Somme’. It paints of the girls who were left behind with nobody to marry, and highlights a world that changed irrevocably. It is not anywhere near as panoramic as ‘Streets of London’, but in the way only certain music can, it provides a small haunting slice of time, which illuminates a far bigger picture.
Searchlight Magazine
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Blogger: I have seen this guy live four times over the decades and even though he is a godless leftie - so much of his work is simply excellent - a competent guitarist, a captivating voice and sublime lyricist who grasps how hard it is to write a truly simple song and makes all the requisite compensations.
Have a listen to Margarita sung live
https://youtu.be/t55xoP7DK08 it tugs at the heartstrings without ever getting anywhere close to base sentimentality.
Go through his catalogue and if you can't find twenty songs to love ... oh dear!
(Just put the leftist and atheistic rubbish to one side.)
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