Tony Hooper obit

Tony Hooper, co-founder of folk-rockers the Strawbs who left the band on brink of stardom – obituary

Weary of touring and musical differences, he left the band he had helped to form as a Twickenham schoolboy to embrace simple pleasures 

He was not on the list.

From Bob Dylan to Marc Bolan, acoustic folk musicians have plugged in and “gone electric” to become rock stars, but the very idea was anathema to Tony Hooper.

By 1972 he had been the angelic-voiced singer and acoustic guitarist with the Strawbs on half a dozen albums that had established the band as one of the finest products of the English folk revival, rivalled only by Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span.

Their most recent album Grave New World had risen to No 11 in the charts, and a film of the same name featuring the band was playing to enthusiastic cinema audiences in a double bill with Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Under pressure to build on this growing commercial success, Hooper feared the rock in the Strawbs’ folk-rock was in danger of drowning out the folk. With pop stardom beckoning, he decided it was time to bail out.

Six months later he sat at home watching the band he had co-founded sing Part of the Union on Top of the Pops, as the song rose to No 2 in the charts, kept from the top spot by Sweet’s glam-rock stomper Block Buster!

Yet he had no regrets. “The early albums were successful, we were the best at what we did and I believed there was room to develop along those lines,” he explained. “But there was pressure to succeed in America, and that entailed a move towards rock.”

He put his guitar in the attic and took a job in the electronics industry. His old bandmates enjoyed their flirtation with pop fame but by 1980 their moment had passed and the Strawbs broke up.

Three years later Hooper received a phone call from Rick Wakeman, who had played keyboards in the Strawbs in the early 1970s. Wakeman was by then presenting a music show on the newly launched Channel 4 and wanted the Strawbs to re-form for a one-off TV appearance. Hooper agreed, taking a week off work to rehearse and soaking his fingertips in surgical spirit to harden the skin so he could play the guitar again. The appearance went so well that the Strawbs were then invited to headline the Cambridge Folk Festival. Content that the band had returned to its folk origins, Hooper stayed for another decade before embarking on a new career in publishing, working as an editor, authoring a series of educational titles for schoolchildren on subjects ranging from genetics to electricity and designing book jackets. He made his final appearance with the group at a 30th anniversary concert in 1998.

“One of the greatest pleasures in my life was being involved with the music business,” he said. “But it is very anti-social because you are never there for those you love.” Hooper’s marriage to Jane Hunter, whom he met in 1972 at a Melody Maker party, ended in divorce. He is survived by their son, Nicholas, an artist and musician, and daughter, Colette, a TV producer. He is also survived by a daughter, Alex Grace, from an earlier relationship, whose existence he discovered late in life; she became a comedy producer.

Anthony Hooper was born in Eastry, Kent, in 1939, the eldest of three children, to Jack Hooper, a Royal Marine, and Betty (née Hayes), who served in the WRNS. After the war the family settled in west London, and at Thames Valley Grammar he played the lead in school plays. A friend, Dave Cousins, sold him a second-hand guitar and they formed a skiffle group called the Gin Bottle Four. Together the pair cycled regularly to central London to visit Cecil Sharp House, home of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, and to buy records from Dobell’s, the specialist folk and blues shop on Charing Cross Road. Hooper’s mother, who regarded Cousins as a thoroughly bad influence, was much relieved when the friends went to different universities. With a degree in engineering from Brunel, Hooper went to work for BAC until he was made redundant when a round of defence cuts scrapped the project on which he was employed.

However, Cousins had stayed in touch and persuaded him to join a new band called the Strawberry Hill Boys, soon to be shortened to the Strawbs. The enterprise was almost sunk — literally — before they got off the ground. The group’s transportation consisted of an old Land Rover, which Hooper and Cousins attempted to drive on to an island in the Thames at low tide to win a bet. The vehicle stuck fast in the mud and was soon submerged. A crane was required to retrieve it, but astonishingly there was no lasting damage and the Land Rover returned to duty.

He became an electronics engineer again until he resigned in protest over a contract from the Ministry of Defence to work on enhancing the blast pattern of shells. “Helping to kill people more effectively”, as he put it, was not why he had taken up engineering.

Tony Hooper, folk musician, was born on September 14, 1939. He died of cancer on November 18, 2020, aged 81