John Wesley Harding Biography

Overview

Biography

Songs

CDs

Here Comes The Groom / The Name Above The Title

Trad Arr Jones

Awake [Bonus Tracks]

Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

It Happened One Night/ It Never Happened At All

Wesley Harding Stace, 22 October 1965, Hastings, East Sussex, England. A self-styled renegade folk musician, Harding is a sharply observant and witty English songwriter who has had to battle critical carping over his vocal similarities to Elvis Costello. He decided to pursue a musical career after studying for a PhD in political and social theory at Cambridge University. Harding’s debut album was a recording of a solo acoustic live set, and contained the barbed critique of Live Aid, ‘July 13th 1985’. He then re-read Madonna’s ‘Like A Prayer’ as a folk song on The Christmas EP, which also contained a surreal collaboration with Viv Stanshall. Harding’s first studio effort, 1990’s Here Comes The Groom, was a superior collection showcasing Harding’s confrontational style and acerbic wit, and featured the Attractions’ Pete Thomas (drums) and Bruce Thomas (bass), giving the album musical depth but also presenting an easy target for the Costello copyist critics. Ironically, the follow-up The Name Above The Title then displayed the same over-contrived faults that have crept into Costello’s recent work. Why We Fight and the delayed minor label follow-up John Wesley Harding’s New Deal marked a return to form. Harding’s ‘folk noir’ songwriting reached new heights on ‘Where The Bodies Are’ (from Why We Fight) and ‘The Triumph Of Trash’ (from New Deal), while the latter’s ‘In Paradise’ was a perceptive update of the Kinks’ ‘Waterloo Sunset’. The same year, Harding released the first in his ongoing Dynablob series of albums, sold only through his website. Trad Arr Jones was a collection of traditional folk songs as originally arranged by Nic Jones. Harding subsequently signed to US independent Mammoth Records, debuting for the label in September 2000 with the lavishly produced power pop collection The Confessions Of St. Ace. The closure of Mammoth in April 2002 delayed the release of Harding’s new album.

Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.