Roy Harper

Roy Harper could reasonably be called “the most influential guitarist named Roy you’ve never heard of”, though he might have to fend off Roy Buchanan in a cage match for the title.

Not only is he the sole real person Led Zeppelin actually named a song after—“Hats off to Roy Harper”—but along with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, he has been explicitly cited as an influence by Pete Townshend of The Who, Kate Bush, Pink Floyd, and Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull.

Harper, a fingerstyle folk guitarist, writes complex, lengthy, meaningful songs that don’t have much mainstream draw, but enormous appeal to artists who grow up to write songs that do.

As of the second decade of the 3rd millennium, Harper was still performing and recording, outlasting some of those artists whose careers he’d enriched.