Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel

A group appeared amidst the Glam Rock craze that didn't really fit in: Poppier than Bowie, more theatrical than T. Rex, campy in the right way, and with stream of consciousness lyrics that would make Dylan proud. They were Cockney Rebel, and their heart was Steve Harley.

Steve Harley was born on February 27, 1951, as Stephen Nice, and grew up in south-east London, sharing a bedroom with two of his four brothers and sisters. His father was a milkman and semi-professional footballer while his mother gave up a career as a Jazz singer “to have five babies; her own football team”. When he was three, he contracted polio and spent a total of four years in hospital on and off, until he was 15.

“Some of my sojourns were a year long but I never spent Christmas in hospital,” he says. He has fond memories of this period. “It was a fantastic place, Queen Mary’s Hospital for Children in Carshalton Beeches. Hundreds of sunny acres to get pushed around in a wheelchair.”

The wooden cabinet by his hospital bed contained his whole life. There, he would keep his books, notebooks and pens. “I was always reading and writing. I wrote poetry from the age of 12.” He doesn’t recall the pain of polio but does remember being with his grandmother and “breaking down in floods of tears” when he was 15, following his second round of major surgery. “I let it all out,” he says.

It was at Queen Mary’s that Harley first heard the Beatles. He took the circuitous route to Pop stardom, though: leaving school halfway through his A-levels, he went to work at the Daily Express in the accounts department. “I didn’t just want to be a reporter,” he says. “I had to be.”

He did his training, including a year at the East London Advertiser, before preying on petty miscreants and old lady shoplifters got too much. So he grew his hair long (it was 1972) and was asked by the editor to leave.

Harley started out playing in bars and clubs in the early 1970s, mainly at Folk venues on open-mike nights. Harley also busked around London on the Underground and in Portobello Road. In 1971 he auditioned for the Folk band Odin as rhythm guitarist and co-singer, which was where he met John Crocker, who would become the first Cockney Rebel violinist (professionally known, at the time, as Jean-Paul Crocker). The Folk scene proved not to be Harley's preference, and in the midst of writing songs, he formed the band Cockney Rebel, named after an essay he wrote at school, as a vehicle for his own work, in late 1972. Through the band Harley first met drummer Stuart Elliott, who has continued to record and tour with Harley on occasion to date.

The original Cockney Rebel consisted of Harley, Crocker, Elliott, bassist Paul Jeffreys and guitarist Nick Jones. Jones was replaced by Pete Newnham, however Harley felt the band did not need an electric guitar and they settled on the combination of Crocker's electric violin and the Fender Rhodes piano of keyboardist Milton Reame-James, who soon joined the group. The line up of Harley, Crocker, Elliott, Jeffreys and Reame-James made up the Cockney Rebel line-up who were signed to EMI Records for a guaranteed three-album deal in 1972. During June and July 1973 the band recorded their debut album, The Human Menagerie, which was released in late 1973.

The album received at the time mostly negative critical appraisal from the "trend-setting" publications and flopped commercially. It has since be vastly re-appraised and for many it's now considered an art-glam masterpiece. In 2004, Andrew Thomas of The Westmorland Gazette reviewed the album, and wrote: "Cockney Rebel were big news in the early 1970s. Songwriter and lead singer Steve Harley's distinctive vocal delivery, the choice of electric violin rather than electric guitar and Milton Reame-James' inspired keyboards made for an inventive and new sound. The Human Menagerie was released in 1973 when glam and glitter rock was at its height. It includes two Harley epics - Sebastian and Death Trip - both of which feature a 50-plus piece orchestra alongside the band. One of the best things about Cockney Rebel songs is Harley's lyrics, which are often rather opaque but always intriguing. The album is real mixture of light and dark. What Ruthy Said and Muriel the Actor are bright Pop songs, for example, while the epics' are loaded with hidden depths, both musically and emotionally."

Dave Thompson of AllMusic retrospectively reviewed the album and wrote: "Indulging for the first time in Cockney Rebel's debut album is like waking up from a really weird dream, and discovering that reality is weirder still. A handful of Human Menagerie's songs are slight, even forced, and certainly indicative of the group's inexperience. But others - the labyrinthine Sebastian, the loquacious Death Trip in particular - possess confidence, arrogance, and a doomed, decadent madness which astounds. Subject to ruthless dissection, Steve Harley's lyrics were essentially nonsense. But what could have been perceived as a weakness is actually their strength. Few of the songs are about anything in particular. But with the sub-orchestral production driving strings and things to unimaginable heights, and Cockney Rebel's own unique instrumentation - no lead guitar, but a killer violin - pursuing its own twisted journey, those images gel more solidly than the best constructed story. The Human Menagerie is a dark cabaret - the darkest."

I was one of those who were sold to the album from the start; it's among my all-time favorites. It opened with amazing Hideaway:

The second track was the fun number What Ruthy Said:

... Then came Loretta's Tale:

The closing track of the album's A-side was a queer masterpiece called Sebastian. Described by Harley as a "Gothic love song", the song features a 50-plus piece orchestra and choir alongside the band.

In August 1973, Sebastian was released as the band's debut single, preceding the album, which was released in November. Sebastian failed to find success in the UK, and did not enter the UK Top 50. However, in continental Europe, the song performed much better and became a big hit in various countries. It peaked at #2 in both Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as #30 in Germany. These are some of the song's lyrics:

Your Persian eyes sparkle; your lips, ruby blue, never speak a sound
And you, oh so gay, with Parisian demands, you can run-around
And your view of society screws up my mind like you'll never know
Lead me away, come inside, see my mind in Kaleidoscope

Somebody called me Sebastian
Somebody called me Sebastian
Mangle my mind, love me sublime, do it in style,
So we all know, oh yeah!

You're not gonna run, babe, we only just begun, babe, to compromise
Slagged in a Bowery saloon, love's a story we'll serialize
Pale angel face; green eye-shadow, the glitter is outasight
No courtesan could begin to decipher your beam of light

Now, here's the song with my favorite title of all-time: the runners-up are The Sensational Alex Harvey Band with There's No Lights On The Christmas Tree Mother, They're Burning Big Louie Tonight and Mott The Hoople with Death May Be Your Santa Claus. This, however, is the best: My Only Vice (Is The Fantastic Prices I Charge For Being Eaten Alive):

Muriel the Actor is another gem of a Pop song:

... Then comes short'n'sweet Chameleon:

... Which serves as a prologue to the album's second masterpiece (after Sebastian), the monumental Death Trip:

The band's failure to produce any charting songs in the UK led EMI Records to feel that Harley had yet to record a potential hit single. In response, Harley went away and re-worked an unrecorded song of his called Judy Teen, which became a UK Top 5 hit for the band in June 1974.

The follow-up album was called The Psychomodo and this time it was a hit, peaking at #8 in the UK. The reviews at the time were mixed, but, as with the first album, it was later re-appraised: Dave Thompson of AllMusic wrote: "If The Human Menagerie was a journey into the bowels of decadent cabaret, The Psychomodo is like a trip to the circus. Except the clowns were more sickly perverted than clowns normally are, and the fun house was filled with rattlesnakes and spiders. Such twists on innocent childhood imagery have transfixed authors from Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, but Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel were the first band to set that same dread to music, and the only ones to make it work. The Psychomodo was also the band's breakthrough album. Harley's themes remained essentially the same as last time out - fey, fractured alienation; studied, splintered melancholia, and shattered shards of imagery which mean more in the mind than they ever could on paper."

In a 2012 review Uncut magazine stated: "...still, 1974's The Psychomodo is anything but effete. Ritz and Cavaliers fathom its For Your Pleasure-era Roxy Music depths, and Harley signs off in style on Tumbling Down, with the John Cale-ish screams in the big pay-off line "Oh dear, look what they've done to the blues" a barbed combination of anti-Ten Years After harangue and self-reverential gloating."

Here's the title track:

This album produced a hit single in the UK: Mr Soft. peaked at #8 in the UK and at #16 in Ireland. Mr Soft succeeds primarily on the strength of the arrangement, a kind of modified Brechtian cabaret vamp of the kind that Bowie tackled on Time. What makes this one work is a '50s doo-wop backing vocal.

Ritz is a majestic song. Harley wanders the mirrored corridors of his phantom hotel, and the elegant, mournful violin collides with its own dark side before the whole things erupts into a nightmare party sequence.

Cavaliers was another epic Harley Pop melodrama:

Sling It, was a lighter, but quite infectuous tune:

... Which led to the album's chef d'oeuvre, the closing track, called Tumbling Down. Since its release, it has become a staple at Harley's concerts, usually being the closing number.

In the 3 December 1976 issue of The Miami News, music critic Jon Marlowe mentioned Tumbling Down, writing: "For those not familiar with Harley's previous musical accomplishments, suffice to say he's only written two all-time classic songs Cavaliers and Tumbling Down; and to hear him lead the audience in a rousing sing-along of "Oh dear look what they've done to the blues" is nothing short of a musical miracle."

By this time the problems within the band had already reached a head, and all the musicians, with the exception of Elliott, quit at the end of a successful UK tour. Crocker continued to write songs and perform, forming a duet with his brother. After a brief period with Be-Bop Deluxe in 1974, Reame-James and Jeffreys formed the band Chartreuse in 1976.

From then on, the band was a band in name only, being more or less a Harley solo project. In 1974, a further album, The Best Years of Our Lives was released, produced by The Beatles' recording engineer, Alan Parsons. The opening track was The Mad, Mad Moonlight:

Joining Harley and Elliott in the new line-up were Jim Cregan (guitar) George Ford (bass), and Duncan Mackay (keys). The title track was another gem:

The first single off the album was the band's biggest hit ever. Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me) peaked at the top of the UK charts for 2 weeks. It also made #1 in France and Ireland, #5 in the Netherlands, #7 in Belgium, #15 in South Africa, #17 in Australia, and #20 in Germany. More than 120 cover versions of the song have been recorded by other artists, most notably by Duran Duran and Erasure, and the song as of 2015, has sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide. The song pairs Harley's clever wordplay with an infectuous Pop tune that boasts an inventive stop-start arrangement and a lovely flamenco-styled acoustic guitar solo.

My favorite song of the album however is the second and final single, Mr. Raffles (Man, It Was Mean). Mr. Raffles is a surreal yet romanticized portrait of a convention-flaunting outlaw. The odd lyrics work thanks to the phenomenal tune backing them up, which contrasts gentle verses built on piano and acoustic guitar with choruses that work in a surprising but slickly integrated reggae beat. Also, his diction: the way he sings the line "and then you shot that Spanish Dancer", especially "shot" and "Spanish". Wow!

Timeless Flight was a good album, but it suffered in comparison to The Best Years of Our Lives, the band's most successful album. No big hit singles came from this album. There were good songs though. Here's the opening track, Red is a Mean Mean Colour:

Understand was a lovely ballad:

The two singles that failed to penetrate the upper reaches of the charts were; first came Black or White:

Then came White, White Dove:

I had bought the album at the time, as I did the previous ones, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. A pity it wasn't a hit.

Love's a Prima Donna is the fifth studio album by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, released in 1976. It was produced by Harley, and would be the band's last album before splitting in 1977. The title track almost made the Top 40 (#41) in the UK:

(Love) Compared with You was a US-only single:

The band had one last big hit, a surprise one at that. A good cover version of George Harrison's Here Comes The Sun made #7 in Ireland and #10 in the UK:

Harley went on to make a handful of solo albums, not very commercially successful, I'm afraid. From Hobo with a Grin (1978), here's Roll The Dice:

From The Candidate (1979), a rather good album, here's Freedom's Prisoner:

In late 1985, producer Mike Batt recommended Harley sing the title track of the upcoming The Phantom of the Opera musical. Agreeing to audition, Harley was given the job by Andrew Lloyd Webber and soon recorded the promotional single with Sarah Brightman, which went to #7 in the UK charts in January 1986. A music video was created with Harley as the Phantom in the effort to promote the upcoming musical. A prime candidate for the role, Harley was soon selected to play the Phantom in the musical, following his successful audition. He spent five months working on the role, including rehearsal with producer Hal Prince. Despite this, Harley was never publicly announced as the Phantom, and was surprised when he ended up being replaced by Michael Crawford. Later that year, Harley did star as the 16th-century playwright Christopher Marlowe, in the musical-drama Marlowe, which ran off-Broadway and in London. Harley's performance was described by one leading critic as "a major and moving performance."

Yes You Can (1992) contained Star for a Week (Dino), about a Greek boy in England who became an outlaw "to be someone":

Poetic Justice (1996) included Riding the Waves (For Virginia Woolf):

... As well as a good cover of Van Morrison's Crazy Love:

A Friend for Life was a non-album single from 2001:

In 2005 he released the album The Quality of Mercy. It contained Journey's End (A Father's Promise):

His last studio album so far, Stranger Comes to Town, was released in 2010. It contained No Bleeding Hearts:

Steve Harley is presumably not gay. He did however, especially with his early albums and stage persona, deliver songs that spoke directly to the sensibility of his gay listeners. He's also quite a unique and remarkable artist. For all that, I considered him worth presenting in our blog. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I did.