John Wesley Harding

Englishman in New York

Early on, singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding (born Wesley Stace in Sussex, England) was drawn to American music -- particularly to Bob Dylan and his contemporaries and protégés from the 1960s and early 70s. Americans are attracted to Harding’s unabashedly English music that, since his late 1980s debut, has been far more popular in the States than in his native land. Small wonder, then, that he relocated to the U.S. years ago.

A onetime doctoral candidate at Cambridge University, Harding left the world of academia to devote himself to his music career in 1987. He still views himself, however, as "basically, a scholar of literature making pop music." (He’s more than just a scholar –- his first novel, Misfortune, will be issued under the name Wesley Stace by Little, Brown & Company in 2005) His latest album, Adam’s Apple (DRT Records), like Harding’s previous releases is filled with wit, literary allusions and mastery of language. What’s different about this project, says Harding, is that "it’s the best pop album I have made -– it is cleaner and more streamlined than anything I’ve done." He credits former Mammoth Records President Rob Seidenberg (Harding was a Mammoth artist before the label was shut down) and producers Julian Raymond (who enjoyed major success with Fastball) and Ed Kupper. "Julian’s guiding light as a producer," explains Harding, "is ‘Don’t let anything get in the way of the song or lyric.’"

Harding is particularly proud of the album’s most un-pop track, "Sussex Ghost Story," a fictional story-song of love and murder which is a collaboration with renowned British post-modern composer Gavin Bryars.

Harding grew up in a family in which music was prevalent -- his father played piano and organ, his mother was a singer of Schubert and his two sisters are, respectively, a star of British musical theater and a singer-songwriter. Harding’s own musical interests were initially stirred by pop acts like ABBA and art-rockers like David Bowie and Roxy Music. A turning point for the teen-aged Wesley Stace was coming upon Bob Dylan’s Live at Budokan set in a record shop and seeing the printed lyrics, which, says Harding, "I thought were incredible." Not much later he bought a Bob Dylan songbook and began playing along. "But," he explains, "I never wanted to write my own songs until I decided to look past Bob Dylan and was buying albums by John Prine, Loudon Wainwright, Eric von Schmidt, Phil Ochs and Tim Hardin. Hearing them, as opposed to Dylan, made me feel I could do it myself. And so I became the weird kid only interested in the folk section and only interested in American singer-songwriters."

Years later, the folk fanatic revisited his pop side as he prepared to record his first album. "For the very first time," says Harding, "I began to think about how my songs might sound with a band and I went back to pop and rock things I liked long before, like ABBA, Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Lovin’ Spoonful." And though his listening tastes now embrace jazz, progressive rock and virtually every other genre, Harding remains very much the solo troubadour as a performer. "I’m always ready to go out there with just a guitar," he says. "I don’t have to argue with anyone, and there are no democratic decisions to make. In fact, I’m still around because I’m a solo artist -- the folkie upbringing is very good preparation for whatever pitfalls the music business may throw your way, because you can still play the acoustic guitar."

- JIM STEINBLATT