Barclay James Harvest – “HYMN”. “Hymn” is the first track on the Gone To Earth (1977) album. This was Barclay James Harvest‘s last album released during my tenure as manager and their best-selling with worldwide sales of over 1 million.
The band famously performed this song (along with other classics of theirs such as Child of the Universe) on 30th Aug 1980 at “Berlin – A Concert For The People” at the Reichstag in West Berlin. Some 250,000 people joined in, including 80,000 East Berliners on the other side of the Berlin Wall, which finally fell on 9th Nov 1989 as the Cold War began to thaw. See ‘Hymn’ performed live in Berlin . . . here.
For me a highpoint was Time Honoured Ghosts (1975), produced by Elliot Mazer, and whose title was conceived by my wife, Carole.
In this track listing, my personal favorites are the first track, “Titles” (a musical and lyrical homage to The Beatles), a magnificently cinematic and haunting penultimate track in, “Beyond the Grave“, with the final track, “One Night“, (a non-judgemental look at prostitution from the client’s perspective), paving the way to Octoberon‘s (1976), Suicide? 