Roy Harper's 1971 album Stormcock was a bold four-track concept record that his label largely ignored on release, yet the album has endured and grown in stature over the decades. Prog magazine revisited its origins in 2011, exploring how the singer-songwriter, shaped by a turbulent early life including homelessness, imprisonment and time in a mental institution, produced a work that broke sharply from folk convention despite receiving little commercial backing at the time.

Harper emerged from London's 1960s folk scene but never fitted neatly into it, using his music to challenge authority and champion individual freedom rather than follow the era's more conventional protest themes. Stormcock, with its ambitious, poetry-infused compositions, was seen by some as a career-defining record, but a lack of label support meant it failed to achieve the recognition many felt it deserved at the time, even as its reputation has since grown among fans and critics.