Cult heroes - Interview with UK Subs' Charlie Harper - The Peter Pan of Punk

The UK Subs frontman, who will be 80 in May, is one of Britain's musical cult heroes and is fast becoming a national treasure.

Charlie was born in London but moved to the Sussex countryside when he was eight years old. Harper attended a "radical secondary school" where he was the Chairman of the Young Farmer's Club. He left school at the age of 15 to start a hairdressing apprenticeship. Following the apprenticeship, Harper began busking and playing the guitar and harmonica. In 1970, Harper got married and began working as a hairdresser at his sister-in-law's shop.

He first started making music in London’s R&B scene in the 60s: he chatted to the Stones at their gigs and was taught to play harmonica by Rod Stewart. His first band in 1964 was named Charlie Harper Free Press Band.

Before performing as the UK Subs, (they were formed in 1977) he was the frontman and founder of The Marauders which was a pub rock band. After seeing a couple of punk rock shows at The Roxy, the band changed their name to the Subversives and started playing punk rock. The name was eventually shortened to the U.K. Subs.

In 1980 his solo single release "Barmy London Army" spent one week at #68 in the UK Singles Chart. He has also recorded with his side project The Urban Dogs and released a solo album entitled Stolen Property and a second solo single "Freaked". As well as singing he also plays the harmonica and bass, he played rhythm guitar on the UK Subs album Diminished Responsibility. He still typically performs between 150 and 200 gigs per year with the UK Subs.

His band scored four top 20 albums and seven consecutive top 40 singles (Stranglehold, Tomorrows Girls, She’s Not There, Warhead, Teenage, Party in Paris and Keep on Running) between 1979 and 1981 and have long outlasted most of their punk peers.

Charlie and his band to this day remain one of Britain’s best-loved punk bands.

Biography of the Subs.
The UK Subs is a band hailing from London, England that formed in 1976. For nearly forty years they have remained one of the most respected British punk bands of all time, and have released over 20 studio albums since their debut in 1979.

Originally formed under the name U.K Subversives, lead singer Charlie Harper wanted his band to bridge a divide that Harper felt shouldn’t be there. A rhythm & blues singer by trade, he nonetheless felt a strong kinship with the up-and-coming punk rock movement. In his mind, it shared too many similarities with the thriving, blues-influenced pub-rock scene to be separate from it. So in 1976, he put together the first line-up of what would later become the U.K Subs to act as a bridge between the two scenes. Despite the line-up of the band changing frequently at first, the band scored their first session on Radio 1 legend John Peel’s radio show in 1977 and would go on to have several more in the next two years. These sessions were vital to the success of the band, and as a direct result of them, they scored a record deal with GEM Records in 1979.

They released their debut album “Another Kind Of Blues” the very same year, and both the album and it is lead single “Stranglehold” were top 30 hits on the albums and singles charts. Between 79’ and 81’ the band was hailed as one of the last true punk bands to see mainstream success, with their 1980 album “Crash Course” rocketing into the top ten at number eight. However, they were not able to maintain this kind of success, especially as straight punk rock was becoming increasingly passé in the face of the much cooler New Wave movement. However, Harper and the Subs were far stronger than fashion, and the band kept on going stronger than they ever were, releasing album after album and touring with the likes of The Ramones and Agent Orange all throughout the 1980s.