Cambridge Evening News has issued the following report:

After 40 years on the road, folk singer Roy Harper is about ready to hang up his boots - but not before a tour which has something of a valedictory feel to it.

When he arrives at the Junction next Thursday it's the last we're likely to see of him for some time.

"I'm thinking that this is probably the last tour because I want to write," he tells Scene. "Performing is going backwards. I'm quite good at it but it's a bit like being a performing seal. It puts you in front of people and that's good for sales but it's not always the best of my angles."

While never quite making it as a household name, Harper has always been in the midst of the UK's musical fire pit.

A close association with JIMMY PAGE was the inspiration for LED ZEPPELIN to record 'Hats Off To (Roy) Harper' as a mark of their respect for an artist who never sold out his principles. He cropped up on PINK FLOYD's Wish You Were Here, taking vocals on the track 'Have A Cigar'. His recordings over the years have included Keith Moon on drums, PAUL MCCARTNEY on backing vocals and KATE BUSH on duet duties.

But while the live music renaissance continues apace and concert ticket sales are rising just as fast as album sales are dropping, he has decided to step off the ride and rediscover the joy of writing.

"I can't write anything on tour, I'm in charge of a menagerie. I have to have 99 reference books in front of me to write anything. Touring is counter productive. If I was a member of Led Zeppelin it would be a different thing altogether, I would be offered ten million to do a tour. But on the level that I do it it is a slog.

"I do enjoy it once I get onto a stage but it takes about three or four months rehearsing people, getting the logistics together and arranging the tour and that's three or four months that I could be writing."

And with the number of ideas bubbling around in his head at the moment, finding inspiration for that writing is never going to be difficult.

He's never been one to ignore what going on the world around him - his last single 'The Death Of Godwas' a 13-minute criticism of the Iraq War.

He now plans to record an album of ancient myths brought up to date in which the legend of Pan is mixed with eroticism and environmentalism.

"I'm still learning and exploring the angles I've developed over the years. What I want to do - and I'm already three songs down the road - is discuss the origins of myth and put some of the stories into a modern context without taking them too far from the ancient one.

"Two of them are Hellenistic. One is Pan and another is called the Man in the Moon which comes from Endymion by John Keats, which has always inspired me.

There's also a story of Voltaire's.

"I'm trying to capture a modern sense of where these stories may have ended up if they had originated in the 20th Century. Pan is essentially a song about global warming.

It's a bawdy one that one. But the whole of ancient Greece is founded on sex really."

Roy is at the Junction Shed next Thursday.

Tickets are £16.50. Call (01223) 511511.