Rolf Harris - Music and Art

Music and Art

See also: Rolf Harris discography

Harris moved to England as an art student at City and Guilds Art School, Kennington, South London, at the age of 22, getting into television with the BBC in 1953, performing a regular ten-minute cartoon drawing section with a puppet called "Fuzz", made and operated on the show by magician Robert Harbin. He illustrated Robert Harbin's Paper Magic (1956). He also had a few acting roles in British television programmes and films, as Harry in The Vise, and as Pte Proudfoot in the 1955 Tommy Trinder film You Lucky People.

When commercial television started in 1956, Harris was the only entertainer to work on both BBC and ITV, performing on BBC with his own creation, "Willoughby", a specially made board on which he drew Willoughby (voiced and operated by Peter Hawkins). The character would then come to life and hold a comedic dialogue with Harris as he drew cartoons of Willoughby's antics.

On Associated Rediffusion he invented a character called Oliver Polip the Octopus which he drew on the back of his hand and animated, as well as illustrating Oliver's adventures with cartoons on huge sheets of card.

He had drifted away from art school as a slightly disillusioned student and had luckily met his longtime hero, Australian impressionist painter Hayward Veal, who took Harris under his wing and became his mentor, teaching him the rudiments of impressionism and showing him how it could help with his portrait painting.

At the same time Harris was entertaining with his piano accordion every Thursday night at a club called the Down Under, a haunt for homesick Australians and New Zealanders. Here, over the next several years, he honed his entertainment skills, eventually writing the song which was later to become his theme song, "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport". He also appeared regularly at Clement Freud's Royal Court Theatre Club in Sloane Square, where he sat at the piano and entertained débutantes and their escorts.

Harris was headhunted to return to Perth when television was introduced there in 1960. There he produced and starred in five half-hour children's shows a week, as well as starring in his own weekly evening variety show. During 1960 he recorded the original version of the song that he had written for the Down Under Club in London, "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" in the TVW studios in Perth, Western Australia with four local backing musicians. It was released by EMI Australia and became his first recording and his first number one. It also repeated that success in the UK. At the end of 1960 he toured Australia for Dulux paints, singing his hit song and doing huge paintings on stage with Dulux emulsion paint. While painting on stage, one of his catchphrases was, "Can you tell what it is yet?"

He and his wife Alwen went to Vancouver in Canada by mistake, and had huge success there, working two shows a night at the Arctic Club, where he was held over for 31 weeks until the club accidentally burnt down on Christmas Eve, 1961. He was immediately transferred to the huge "Cave" theatre restaurant to great critical acclaim.

He returned to the United Kingdom early in 1962 and was introduced to George Martin, who re-recorded all Harris's songs the following year, including a remake of "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" which became a huge hit in the US, and "Sun Arise", an Aboriginal-type song Harris had written with Perth naturalist Harry Butler. The song went to number two in the UK charts, losing the number one spot to Elvis Presley. He met and worked with The Beatles when they started recording with George Martin, and compèred their Christmas show in Finsbury Park Empire in 1963.

He and his wife have lived permanently in the United Kingdom since 1962, and he has regularly returned to Vancouver to entertain ever since. He has also regularly returned to Perth over the years for family visits and to the rest of Australia where he has spent as much as four months every year touring with his band.

In 1973 Harris performed the very first concert in the Concert Hall of the newly completed Sydney Opera House, to huge acclaim.

Since the late 1960s Harris had been performing top-rated variety television shows on the BBC in London, shows which were also shown in Australia and New Zealand, creating great support for his many tours in both countries as well as in South Africa.

Harris has been credited with inventing a simple homemade instrument called the wobble board. This discovery was accidentally made in the course of his work when he attempted to dry a freshly painted hardboard with added heat, from hearing the sound made by the board as he shook it by the short edges to cool it off. He suggests the effect can best be obtained through faint bouncing of a tempered hardboard or a thinner MDF board between the palms of one's hands.

In 1960 he worked on TVW-7's first locally produced show Spotlight. During his time at TVW he recorded his hit "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport". The song was recorded on a single microphone placed above him in the television studio. The song was sent to record company EMI in Sydney and it was soon released as a record. Harris offered four unknown backing musicians 10% of the royalties for the song, but they decided to take a recording fee of ₤7 each because they thought the song would be a flop. The novelty song was originally titled "Kangalypso" and featured the distinctive sound of the "wobble board", which was played by bouncing it up and down.

The original 1960 single release recording of the song issued in Australia was considered controversial by some listeners because of the lyrics of the fourth verse. The verse appears to refer to Aboriginal servitude and captivity in a whimsically approving manner. In addition, the word "abo" was beginning to be seen as a term of abuse at the time. Most of the rest of the song refers to pet Australian animals.

The offending verse did not feature in later versions of the song. In 2006, four decades after the song's release, Harris expressed his regret about that original lyric. Harris also performed this song in 2000 with Australia's children's supergroup The Wiggles.

Harris sang "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" (with The Beatles singing backing vocals) in the first edition of the From Us to You BBC radio shows, in December 1963. Harris completely customized the original lyrics to a version that was specially written for The Beatles:

Cut yer hair once a year boys, (repeat), If it covers your ears you can't hear boys, so (repeat first line).

Don't ill-treat me pet dingo, Ringo, (repeat). He can't understand your lingo, Ringo, so (repeat first line).

George’s guitar's on the blink, I think, (repeat), It shouldn't go plinkety plink, no, (repeat first line).

Prop me up by the wall, Paul, (repeat), 'Cause if you don't I might fall, Paul, so (repeat first line).

Keep the hits coming on, John, (repeat), 'Til long long after I've gone, John, just (repeat first line).

It was after this recording that Harris gave Ringo his first Wobble board of which Starr now has the largest collection outside Australia.

As well as his trademark beatboxing, similar to eefing, Harris went on to use an array of unusual instruments in his music, including the didgeridoo (the sound of which was imitated on Sun Arise by four double basses), Jew's harp and, later, the stylophone (for which he also lent his name and likeness for advertising). Harris has played the didgeridoo on two albums by English pop singer Kate Bush, 1982's The Dreaming and 2005's Aerial. Harris went on to create one of his most famous roles in the 1960s, Jake the Peg but his biggest hit was in 1969 with his rendering of the American Civil War song "Two Little Boys", written in 1902. It was only recently that Harris discovered a personal poignancy to the song because the story bears such a resemblance to the First World War experiences of his father Crom and Crom's beloved younger brother Carl, who died at the age of 19 after being wounded in battle in France, just two weeks before the Armistice of November 1918. Two Little Boys was the Christmas Number One song in the UK charts for six weeks in 1969. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.

In 2000 Harris, along with Steve Lima, released a dance track called "Fine Day" which entered the top 30 in the UK charts at that time. A "Killie-themed" version was recorded and scheduled for release in March 2007 to coincide with the Scottish football club Kilmarnock's appearance in the Scottish League Cup final after the song was adopted by the fans in 2003. One of the lyrics referred to the hypothetical situation in which Kilmarnock could be 5-0 down, which ironically was similar to the final score of 5-1.

In November and December 2002, under Charles Saumarez Smith's direction, London's National Gallery exhibited a collection of Harris's art. He was also commissioned to paint a portrait of HM Queen Elizabeth II for her 80th birthday, which was unveiled by Rolf Harris on 19 December 2005 at Buckingham Palace. In his words, it is an impressionistic rather than photographic depiction. Some commentators found it to be offensive and unbecoming of the Queen, but the Queen herself expressed her approval at the painting after her final sitting, particularly with the way in which Harris had painted her smile. The story of the painting featured as a special edition of Rolf on Art. The special, called The Queen by Rolf, was broadcast on BBC One on 1 January 2006. In his painting of the portrait of the Queen, Harris was following a family tradition — Harris's grandfather painted a portrait of the Queen's grandfather, King George V (in which the King was inspecting the troops). The portrait was exhibited in the Australian National Portrait Gallery in Canberra for six months, after Harris gave the prestigious annual lecture there in 2008.

In 2005 Harris played the didgeridoo on Kate Bush's album Aerial, contributing vocals to the songs "An Architect's Dream" and "The Painter's Link". In the late 1980s he was touring in Australia and was asked to sing his own comedy version of "Stairway to Heaven" on a television programme "The Money or the Gun". He did this with his own small group and had great success. Several years later it was released as a single in the UK and went to number seven in the charts, causing a great furore among "Led Zeppelin" fans, and great enjoyment for everyone else. As a result of this success he appeared at the Glastonbury Festival in 1993 and was later named the best entertainer ever to have appeared at Glastonbury. He has since appeared four more times at subsequent Glastonbury festivals and most recently appeared there on 27 June 2009 on the Jazz World Stage to a packed crowd.

In September 2010 Harris appeared at the Bestival Festival on the Isle of Wight, and played on the pyramid stage at Glastonbury Festival on Friday 25 June 2010, during the festival's 40th birthday.

On 5 August 2011 Harris played at Wickham Festival in Hampshire.

Harris also appeared on The Wiggles 2011 DVD release Ukelele Baby performing the song Good Ship Fabulous Flea with his wobbleboard and taking lead vocals on the song and The Wiggles playing the roles of the mice and background vocals.

In December 2011 a portrait of Bonnie Tyler by Harris was valued at an estimated £50,000 on BBC’s The Antiques Roadshow.

In 2011 Rolf Harris was awarded the title Best Selling Published Artist 2011 by the Fine Art Trade Guild

From 19 May 2012 to 12 August 2012 a major retrospective of Rolf's paintings entitled 'Rolf Harris: Can You Tell What It Is Yet?' was exhibited at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. The opening day yielded the busiest Saturday on record with visitor figures peaking at 3,632