Barclay James Harvest Memorabilia
Barclay James Harvest Badges
Badges have been a staple of pop and rock merchandising since loon pants were the last word in fashion. The styles have changed over the years, echoing the changing trends in the music itself – in the seventies, when rock dinosaurs ruled the earth, badges were big. Then the upstart punks began to gain the upper hand, and button badges with small, deliberately amateurish-looking designs were cool. The eighties gave us synth pop and mirror badges, whilst the nineties bring us back to where we came in – guitar bands are big again, and so are badges…The badges produced to promote Barclay James Harvest show that even they have not been immune to the vagaries of fashion. Here we take a look at some examples of the merchandisers’ art, from the tasteful to the tacky.
We’ve been able to track down badges sold on BJH tours from around 1972 to 1987, from which point the items sold at the back of concert halls tended to be limited to T-shirts and sundry items of clothing – the fashion police will cast a jaundiced eye over a selection of these in a later article. The first badges follow the same pattern, being large and circular, with designs taken from details of the appropriate album artwork.
By the beginning of the eighties, the manufacturers have evidently realised that size isn’t everything, and the 1980 Eyes Of The Universe tour badge is perhaps the most pleasing of all the designs produced for BJH – discreet and very tasteful, in enamel with a blue butterfly on a silver field and the band’s name in a ring around it.
1981’s Turn Of The Tide badge reverted to a more conventional style, whilst for the 1982 European Tour fans had the choice of two on which to spend their hard-earned Francs and Marks. One featured, for the first and last time, a picture of the band members on a round tin badge, whilst the other was a rectangular blue badge harking back to the perennial favourite “winged woman” artwork.
A rectangular oblong badge was produced in 1982 to promote the release of the Berlin album:
When Ring Of Changes came out in 1983 without the traditional tour to raise awareness of the release, Polydor spent a lot of money on assorted promotional-only items for radio stations and the press, including this enamel badge cut in the shape of the atom design from the album cover.
This badge also formed part of a boxed set sent to journalists to promote the album. On the 1984 and 1987 tours similar enamel badges were on sale, first in the shape of the clown from Victims Of Circumstance, then in 1987 an oblong with just the “BJH” logo from the Face To Face sleeve.
Keith Domone
[Adapted from an article which originally appeared in issues 46 of the fan club magazine, Nova Lepidoptera, in September 1999.]