Woolly Wolstenholme
 
Short biography:
Stuart "Woolly" Wolstenholme, born 15 april 1947 in Oldham, was the (very sympathetic) keyboard player of Barclay James Harvest from 1967 until 1979. Before BJH he played with John Lees in The Sorcerers and The Keepers. Woolly was the one responsible for the bombastic sound of BJH in the early years, and the "thick carpeted corridor"-feeling, which he created with his abundant use of mellotrons. Impressive are especially his orchestral songs, such as Moonwater, his "magnum opus" from 1972. In the early years of the band, Woolly used to be the main singer, but on later albums Lees, Holroyd and Wolstenholme usually sang their own songs. As he got dissatisfied with the musical direction of BJH at the end of the seventies, he decided to leave the band, and persue a solo career.
In 1980 Woolly released his solo album "Mæstoso". The music on "Mæstoso" has many reminiscences of his work with BJH, but it also has a very surprising modern sound, with which Woolly was breaking grounds for the "progrock" sound that became popular in the eighties with bands like Marillion. He did a few small tours with his own band, that he had christened Mæstoso and that consisted of musicians with whom he had worked on Davy Rohl's project Mandalaband. Unfortunately, the band wasn't very successful. In the years that followed he wrote a few scores for Cosgrove/Hall animated movies and TV series, together with Davy Rohl (who had also produced Gone to earth, XII en Mæstoso). He finally decided to leave the music business altogether and set up an ecological farm (bless him!). In 1989 Keith Domone of the English fanclub released a few of Woolly's previously unreleased songs on cassette, Too late, and thanks to Keith, Woolly got involved in some of the projects to reissue his music on CD. In 1994 the recordings that he had made for a second solo album were released as "Songs from the black box". Woolly and Keith started the Brimstone label, which was responsible for the rerelease of Early morning onwards, the BJH-sampler from 1972. In the meantime John Lees and Les Holroyd had decided to go separate ways for the time being, because of disappointing sale figures of the latest BJH releases and musical disagreements. To everyone's surprise John teamed up again with Woolly. The result of this new collaboration is Nexus, which contains some unreleased songs by BJH and some fine adaptations of BJH classics such as Mocking Bird and Titles. Extended and successful tours through Germany, Switzerland and the UK followed the release of Nexus. Both CD and tours showed that Woolly had lost neither his sense of humour nor his mellotron!
John and Woolly made preparations for a sequel to Nexus, entitled North, but the project was abandoned when John Lees was hesitant about the direction it was going. As Woolly was bursting with a new found creativity, he decided to go solo again. Together with former Maestoso-musicians he recorded the impressive album One drop in a dry world. This album was presented at a one-off great gig in London, at the Mean Mellotroner, eh...., Fiddler on 12 May 2004. Recordings of this concert were released shortly afterwards as 'Fiddling Meanly'. Both the refound collaboration with the other musicians and the support from the Eclectic label gave Woolly lots of new energy. In 2005 he releases his most [eingezinnig] en probably best album to date, 'Grim'. In the meantime, John Lees showed a renewed interest in working with Woolly again under the moniker John Lees' Barclay James Harvest...
 

Discography:
 
Barclay James Harvest: Solo:
Barclay James Harvest (1970) 
Once again (1971) 
...And other short stories (1971) 
Baby James Harvest (1972)
Early morning onwards (1972)
Everyone is everybody else (1974) 
Live (1974) 
Time honoured ghosts (1975) 
Octoberon (1976) 
Gone to earth (1977) 
Live tapes (1978) 
XII (1978) 
The Harvest years (1991) 
Endless dream (1996)
Nexus (1999)
The origin of pieces (1999)
Revival (2000) 		Mæstoso (1980) 
Too late (1989) 
Songs from the black box (1994)
Strangely mixed (2000) 
Black Box recovered (2003)
One drop in a dry world (2004)
Fiddling Meanly (2004)
Grim (2005)

Film/TV: 
The Talking Parcel 
Cinderella 
The pied piper of Hamelin 
Cockleshell Bay 

Other: 
Mandalaband: Eye of Wendor (1978) 
Rime of the ancient sampler: The mellotron album (1993) 
 
 


Notable compositions:
The iron maiden (Barclay James Harvest)
Ursula (...And other short stories)
Moonwater (Baby James Harvest)
Mæstoso (original on Endless dream, solo on Mæstoso)
Ra (Octoberon)
Sea of tranquility (Gone to earth)
In search of England (XII)
A prospect of Whitby (Mæstoso)
Deceiver's all (Too late & Songs from the black box)
Why remain (Black Box Recovered)
Blood & bones (One drop in a dry world)
Souk (One drop in a dry world)
Explorers (One drop in a dry world)
Hebden bridge (Grim)
 
 
 
 
 
 

Personal note:

Some of Woolly's CD's contain photo's that I took at some of his concerts in Amsterdam (1982) and London (2004).
 

Other webpages about Woolly:

The WWWebsite
The original Barclay James Harvest website
Mandalaband
Mellotron archives U.K.
 
 

Photo's: promotional card for Mæstoso; cover of cassette "Too late"; Mæstoso live in Paradiso,
Amsterdam, 20-02-1982; poster announcing that same gig.