ROCKING EVEREST IN MEMORY OF MUM

Singer/guitarist Nick Harper launches the Frome Festival this Friday, but his most challenging gig this year is the one he'll perform on Everest in memory of his mother.

When the Wiltshire singer/songwriter Nick Harper - son of folk-rock legend Roy Harper - takes up his guitar this October, he'll be playing in a very special and, for him, emotional gig.For Nick will be taking part in an acoustic concert at base camp Mount Everest, having first trekked there through Nepal with about 40 musicians, mountaineers, cancer survivors and people whose lives have been affected by the disease.

The 14-day trek and Everest Rocks gig is for the Love Hope Strength Foundation, a cancer charity which was set up by leukaemia survivor Mike Peters of Welsh band The Alarm to provide a global support network for survivors of the disease.

Nick will be taking part in memory of his mother, Monica Weston, who died in 2000 after a four- year battle against breast cancer.

"Mike phoned me here at home in Marlborough to ask me if I'd like to take part and quite by chance he phoned me on mum's birthday. She's buried here in the garden with a little sarsen stone marking the spot, so it was a very poignant phone call," recalls Nick.

"It's a great feeling to be given the chance to do something useful; cancer is a terrible disease."

A minor preview of the Everest Rocks event took place about 10 days ago with a gig on Snowdon, and it was quite an emotional occasion, says Nick.

"We had Welsh Guards carrying our gear and a little PA up there, and there were about 150 people," recalls the 42-year-old.

"Halfway up we had a minute's silence and for the first time in my life, it wasn't just a matter of remote respect; this time it was for my mum, and it was really quite moving and probably the closest I've been to her in the last couple of years."

He's going to try to sing during the Everest gig, although he'll be battling the breathlessness caused by high altitude.

"I'll probably take a prayer flag for her too," he says. The Everest Rocks event, which will be filmed for MTV and the BBC, will end in a grand finale rock concert in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu.

Monica, who was headmistress at St Peter's Junior School in Marlborough, was 56 when she died, having been given the all-clear less than a year before the cancer was found to have returned.

"I didn't really believe she was dying until the day she died," says Nick, who was 35 at the time. "Looking back now it seems silly, but I think it was a defence mechanism and part of the grieving process.

"She was an inspiring figure both locally and internationally.

"She used to go to the Gambia to work on irrigation and community projects, and we still get people from the Gambia here in the garden paying their respects to her."

Nick still lives in the Marlborough home where he grew up.

He and his partner, Jackie Marsh, now have two children of their own, Lily, 11, and Harvey, four, but he says it doesn't matter how old you are when your mother dies: it doesn't hurt any less.

Although she was just three when Monica died, Lily still remembers her grandmother with great fondness.

"She often asks me how grandma would have done something," Nick says.

"It's such a shame that I can't ask her. You don't exactly forget but for a split second you think, 'oh, I'll just ask mum'."

His mother essentially raised him while his father toured the world playing gigs. Roy Harper was "a bit of a traveller" in more ways than one, and Nick also has two half-brothers who live in London and Los Angeles.

Despite this, Nick, who was also very fond of Monica's husband of 27 years, Paul Weston, forged a close relationship with his father, which took a new direction when they started playing together.

"We then had a totally separate relationship musically in which we communicate quite deeply and emotionally," he says. "He's a great man and I love his music, and I love making my own music."

With his heritage, it was perhaps inevitable that Nick would become a musician; as well as his father's influence, he spent his childhood surrounded by the likes of Keith Moon, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and David Gilmour.

He recently released a new album, Miracles For Beginners, and is delighted by the fact that the download single Blue Sky Thinking (released on May 28) reached number one on the iTunes Folk chart, as proceeds are being donated to the Love Hope Strength Foundation.

"Me and mum walked up the garden path in 1969 when I was three, and a few years ago me and my daughter walked up the same path, when she was three, so it's come full circle. It's been quite an emotionally charged few years," says Nick.

NICK HARPER
www.harperspace.com