Tim Hardin - Reason To Believe - The Real Tim Hardin (2005) Album Artist/Composer Tim Hardin Format CD-R or FLAC Length 56:52 Track List 01 Reason To Believe - The Real Tim Hardin 56:52 Notes BBC Radio 2 REASON TO BELIEVE: THE REAL TIM HARDIN 2130 - 2230 Saturday 5 February 2005 Bob Harris reveals the complex character of singer/songwriter Tim Hardin. Many will know his songs like "Reason To Believe", made famous in the UK by Rod Stewart in the early 1970's and "If I Were A Carpenter", an international hit for Bobby Darin in the 1960's. Apart from the hundreds of cover versions of Tim Hardin's songs, this programme will chart his own troubled career and his battle with drug addiction which resulted in his death in 1980, aged just 39. Through interviews with friends and fellow musicians, like Donovan, Janis Ian, Elvis Costello, and The Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian the true story of this enigmatic figure unfolds. We learn that many of the contradictory versions of events surrounding Hardin stemmed from Hardin himself who was prone to exaggerating, but school friends Phil Freeman and Richard Tucker describe an energetic Hardin at school appearing in school plays. We learn how, in the early sixties, after moving from his home in Oregon to New York and joining up with the Greenwich Village music scene, his flirtation with drugs soon took a hold and that his addiction was to effect him for the rest of his short life. His first producer/manager Erik Jacobsen talks about the excitement of discovering this incredible talent for the first time, but also the torment of dealing with a junkie. Hardin's friendship with Lenny Bruce influenced not only musically, writing his songs in Bruce's flat but also socially through their shared heroin habit, this is documented here. Hardin's first album's "Tim Hardin 1 and 2" contain the bulk of the classic catalogue which allegedly earned him around $423 million, although as we discover in the programme, Hardin didn't see much of it. In fact at the time of his death he had sold his precious catalogue of songs and still owed the taxman hundreds of thousands of dollars. Using an archive interview with Hardin himself he reveals the bitterness he felt about his financial situation. John Sebastian and Erik Jacobsen also clear up the mystery of his fourth album "Tim Hardin IV". In contradiction to what appears on the sleeve stating it is a live recording, they reveal that his managers and record label at the time were fed up with Hardin's lack of new material because of his addiction. They released a set of early demos, passing them off as new recordings, which explains his well documented surprising change in direction at that time! But it's as an inspirational songwriter that Hardin is remembered by musicians like Elvis Costello, Janis Ian, and Donovan, who reveals how he used the basis of one of Hardin's songs "Green Rocky Road" to create his own version "London Road". Archive interviews with Bobby Darin and Tim Hardin describe Darin's massive hit of "If I Were A Carpenter" and how Tim physically showed Bobby in the studio how to sing it his way. A drug overdose was the cause of his death, and Erik Jacobsen will reveal for the first time that Hardin's death was due to an extra strong dose of heroin mixed with lighter substances. This heavier and ultra strong heroin worked its way to the bottom of the bag, killing those few last people who took doses from the bottom of the bag - Tim Hardin was one. Bob Harris charts the turbulent life of Tim Hardin, his up and down love affair with wife Susan, putting the records straight on some murky periods of his life, but most of all celebrates one of the finest, and often overlooked, songwriters of the last century.