Quezi

Rolf Harris street art, Melbourne (photo by Toots Fontaine - CC-BY)

Rolf Harris is a versatile multi-talented performer, born in Perth, Australia, on 30 March 1930. In 1952 he came to England to study art and, apart from brief stints in Australia and Canada between 1959 and 1962, has lived in England since.

His early television break was as a children’s entertainer, and he continued that line of work on-and-off over the decades, along with other television shows covering variety, comedy, nature and animals.

He developed his art and became an accomplished painter with oils, with Queen Elizabeth II amongst his subjects. He also did novelty work such as marker drawings (“can you guess what it is yet?”) and artworks painted with the large paintbrushes used by house-painters. For a while he toured, sponsored by Dulux paints for whom this style of painting was great advertising.

Rolf’s commercial singing career took him by surprise. He had been singing and playing piano accordion in a club in Fulham (London) in the 1950s when he heard a Harry Belafonte calypso song with the line “Don’t tie me donkey down there” which became an inspiration for a new song for an Aussie audience: Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport. This song was booed at its first performance. Rolf, lacking in confidence as he often did, hadn’t even announced it as his own work. The song only took off after his friend John Lattimer encouraged him to try it again.

Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport included a reference to “abos” (indigenous Australian aborigines) which Rolf later acknowledged as racist and said that he regretted including it in the song.

Rolf’s songwriting and recording career took off after that, with successful novelty numbers such as Jake The Peg, and also sensitive haunting songs like Carra Barra Wirra Canna.

One funny incident was when Rolf Harris performed Stairway To Heaven by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, which Led Zeppelin performed in their distinctive style on their 1971 album Led Zeppelin IV. Remarkably, Harris had never heard the song performed before, so he played it straight from the sheet music. Not surprisingly it sounded entirely different from the Led Zeppelin version. Ridiculed but undeterred, he released a remarkable album of his interpretations of famous songs that he’d never heard before, with accompaniment from didgeridoo and wobble-board.

Rolf is a sensitive kind of guy, and describes in his autobiography his battles with depression. He found it hard to take when his role as gentlemanly presenter of children’s cartoons on the BBC was axed in favor of young and rude replacements.

I saw him perform once at the Sidmouth Folk Festival, and his lack of self-confidence showed. His support act, The Roo Band, were sent out with strict instructions to warm up the audience until there was sufficient “clappage”. This wasn’t easy, because the audience had come to see Rolf Harris and were not inclined to wear out their hands clapping The Roo Band. However as soon as Rolf came out the audience became very warm and wildly supportive.

By this time he was well into his seventies. Many performers of that age milk their former career, playing the same old songs over and over again, sounding like they’ve “done it all hundreds of times before” which of course they have. Not Rolf. Even at this age he had prepared new material and new arrangements just for this show.

During the previous performance his piano accordion had burst into flame on stage. The case of older accordions is made from highly-flammable celluloid, and it had been put down too close to the stage lighting. As a result he was using a borrowed accordoin with which he was not so familiar, and he muffed a note or two.

He gave gracious acknowledgement to the spirited performances from his backing band, and at one point re-performed a chorus because he had accidentally drowned out a solo phrase by of one of the members of the backing band.

As of 2009 he’s still performing occasionally. Details can be found on the Rolf Harris website. The FAQ at that site gives an address from which you can get a free signed photo. Rolf, being Australian-born, doesn’t go for the stuffy English reserve about names, and he pleads that you include your first name. He says he’d much rather write “To Sue, from Rolf” than “To S. Richardson”.