STRANGER IN TOWN: Welcome Back Steve Harley
MAKE ME SMILE: THE STEVE HARLEY STORY
`How do I relax? I don’t!` Steve Harley was once asked how he coped with the pressures of Cockney Rebel. He revealed he was always wired up and ready for action. That was back in the days when `Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)’ was a massive hit for the singer/songwriter in the Seventies. It was also the first time we interviewed Steve and he still remembers the questions we asked then. `It’s funny to look back on those days’ he says. `And now I’m back and touring again!’
This summer Repertoire is proud to present Steve Harley’s latest album ‘Stranger Comes Town’ as well as his 1996 classic ‘Poetic Justice’ and ‘The Quality Of Mercy’ from 2005. And we were able to catch up with Steve in the midst of his recent UK tour with Cockney Rebel, when he performed many of the songs from all his albums.
From the UK he went on to Denmark and Norway with his eight piece band and was scheduled to appear at the Glastonbury Festival (June 26) on his return to England. In October 2010 he will embark on a major tour of Germany. So, as Steve explains he still doesn’t have much time to relax even after 35 years in the music business.
SOUTH LONDON BOY
Steve Harley was raised in South London and remains is friends with such local stars as Glen Tilbrook of Squeeze and Danny Bowes of Thunder. He had a career mapped out as a journalist and writer but soon realised that pop music in all its forms was the main attraction in his life. His teenage dreams came true when his group Cockney Rebel hit the charts with the self penned ‘Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)’ their Number One UK smash in 1975.
Yet it wasn’t all fun and fantasy when Steve was a youngster. There came a blow to his health as a child that remains a cause for concern to this day. It is against this background that one can understand Harley the ambitious, restless and driven man who confesses he still finds it hard to relax.
Steve was born Stephen Malcolm Ronald Nice in Deptford, London, England on February 27, 1951. His agent Danny Bowes, former singer with heavy rock group Thunder, is also from South London. Says Steve: “Danny is a Greenwich boy and my dad was his milkman. Isn’t it a small world?’”(Note: Since this interview Danny has left The Agency and is planning a fresh start in the music business).
Steve was stricken with polio as a child and spent four years in hospital up the age of 16. It was in hospital that he first heard Bob Dylan’s records that inspired him to become a writer, singer and performer. He’d already been given his first guitar at the age of 10 and also played violin with his school orchestra, an experience that would serve him well in the future.
In 1968 at the age of 17 Harley left Haberdashers’ Aske’s College to begin work as an accountant on the Daily Express in Fleet Street.
FRONT PAGE NEWS
From there he began work as a local newspaper reporter with the Essex County Standard and once a month had to proof read copy at QB Printers in Colchester, a facility shared by Melody Maker and New Musical Express. “I was in awe of the music press guys who arrived to read the proofs. I was always playing the guitar and I’d be thinking ‘Bloody hell – that guy writes for Melody Maker!’”
Steve remains proud of his days as a reporter and especially having a by-line as ‘Steve Nice’ in the first issue of the newly launched Colchester Evening Gazette. He later served on the East London Advertiser, a much tougher assignment. “That was Kray Twins land. I went there in 1971 and the Krays had only just ‘gone away’ (to prison).
When I left and gave it all up Richard Madeley got my job. (Richard later became a one half of the ‘Richard & Judy’ TV journalist team).
When Steve and Richard met many years later at an Ivor Novello Awards ceremony Harley was hosting in London. Richard enthused to Steve about he had given him his opportunity to get into the media.
Harley: ‘But we didn’t overlap working on the Advertiser because I got the sack! In fact I wanted to leave and get out of journalism. It was hurting people when I had to write stories about 55 year old women being arrested for shop lifting. I didn’t like that aspect of the job. It was just not fair. The women had families and grand children and there was no need to print that rubbish. But the editor used to insist on those stories being covered.”
When announced he wanted to leave his union representative Ivan Waterman (who later worked on Today and the News of the World) advised that if he resigned he wouldn’t get any unemployment benefit. But he would if the editor sacked him. “So I stopped wearing a tie, grew my hair really long and in the end the boss said: ‘I’m going to have to let you go.’”
HUMAN MENAGERIE
Harley went straight on the dole and began busking in Marble Arch in London’s West end and wrote the songs that eventually appeared on his debut album ‘The Human Menagerie’ in 1973. Cockney Rebel then included Jean-Paul Crocker, Paul Jeffreys, Milton Reame-James and Stuart Elliott and were famed for their glammy image and white satin trousers.
Steve: “When we started out we were given a Sunday night residency at the Speakeasy Club. Fans used to queue around the block. That’s how I got my first record deal. Dave Most came in with a blank cheque and gave me a publishing deal with Rak and EMI sent a scout and their A&R man signed us for three albums. They gave us a chance to develop, y’know?”
COCKNEY REBELS
The band enjoyed a debut hit with ‘Judy Teen’ a Harley composition that got to Number 5 in the UK charts in May 1974. This was followed by ‘Mr. Soft’ a Number 8 hit in August that year. Cockney Rebel’s second album ‘Psychomodo’ was released in 1974. Then came the big one. ‘Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)’ was a Number One hit single in February 1975 and the spot light fell on the young singer.
Cockney Rebel continued to hit the charts with such songs as ‘Mr. Raffles (Man It Was Mean)’ in 1975 and a cover of George Harrison’s ‘Here Comes The Sun’ was a surprise hit for Steve when it got to Number 10 in the UK charts in 1976. Then the Punk rock began to destroy the UK music scene’s credibility in the late Seventies and many talented musicians either fled the scene or retired. Cockney Rebel broke up, Steve went to live in America for a few years.
Harley returned to the U.K. charts in1983 with ‘Ballerina (Prima Donna)’. He later duetted with Sarah Brightman in the title song from ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’ a hit in 1986 and finally returned to the UK Top 50 with a re-released version of ‘Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me’).
In 1996 he released album ‘Poetic Justice’ now due out on Repertoire. It presents Steve in fine voice on a selection of original songs together with some intriguing ‘covers’. It was recorded with acoustic musicians at a country studio in Sussex. As well as ‘originals’ they tried out a few welcome cover versions of such favourites as ‘What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted’ (by Jimmy Ruffin), ‘Crazy Love’ (Van Morrison) and ‘Love Minus Zero’ (Bob Dylan). Steve recorded the latter as a tribute to the artist who was such an inspiration.
In the studio he played ten harmonica tracks, one on top of each other. “I didn’t listen to anyone of them in my headphones. I did ten independent ‘takes’ and then put all of them on one track. “This was deliberate to produce a cacophony of Dylan-esque harmonica. It’s like an orchestral cacophony of harmonicas. But I was being too subtle and no one ever gets it! But I do love that Dylan track.”
HEY MR.DYLAN
Steve eventually got to meet his hero, three years after the album was released. He was visiting a pop festival in Stratford starring Dylan and Van Morrison. “I wasn’t actually performing but my guitar player Alan Derby was playing for Van Morrison who was on the show before Dylan. So I got an ‘Access All Areas’ pass from Alan and watched the show from wings. I was right next to the mixing desk watching Dylan and his band.”
After the show Steve shared in the same hospitality tent as Dylan and his bandsmen. “An hour later they were still there and as they passed by on their way out, I just knew I had to introduce myself. I’d been listening to him since he changed my life when I was 12 years old. I’d got to stand up and say ‘hello.’ So I put my hand out and said: ‘Bob…Steve Harley.’ And he said ‘Oh, yeah, hey, ah, um…’Love Minus Zero.’
“He’d heard my version on the album! Then he sat down with me and we were all alone, no bodyguards, no one except my friend Alan Derby and myself sitting at a table with Bob. Alan is tongue tied and Dylan doesn’t talk. So after five minutes of me telling him how I liked his set and loved the songs, he just sort of grunted replies.”
The one sided conversation was running out of steam when the rain falling heavily on the roof of the tent suddenly stopped. Dylan stood up, took Steve by the hand and finally spoke. “He looked at me and said ‘The weather….the weather…’
Steve had tried to be as intellectually challenging as possible but all Bob wanted to talk about was the weather. Or maybe not. The world will never really know. But it was a brief encounter to be treasured.
As it happened Steve just missed meeting Van Morrison at the same festival. Even though he’d recorded a version of Van’s ‘Crazy Love’ on ‘Poetic Justice’ it was probably just as well they didn’t meet. Van might have been even less communicative on the subject of ‘covers’ than Bob.
STRANGER IN TOWN
Steve: “I love ‘Poetic Justice’ as an album but then I love ‘em all. I don’t make many albums nowadays and writing songs gets harder and harder. It took me three years to write my latest album ‘Stranger Comes To Town’ (2010). In terms of inspiration I pick up a lot from my travels and I do like travelling and having a ticket in my bag. I get on planes and just disappear for a while. If the weather is depressing in England I take my guitar and go off into the sun for a few days and do some recording and sit and write songs in the sunshine in a posh hotel with a swimming pool.”
In Spring 2010 Steve began his UK tour and says: “It was a huge thing for me and it still excites the hell out of me to perform ‘live’. On tour I call it ‘Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel’ because it lets the public and promoters know it’s a big rock band. I also tour quite a lot acoustically with a three piece outfit.”
Steve confesses the effects of his childhood polio still haunt him. “As you know, I’m never going to run the marathon. I can’t walk very far these days and have to go at my own pace. Joni Mitchell won’t fly anywhere and that’s because she too had polio. One of her legs was affected. She said ten years ago that there’s something called ‘secondary polio’ and that kind of depressed me.
As I’m getting older I don’t feel any worse but I can’t walk as well as I did ten years ago. It doesn’t stop me going on stage but when the weather is bad I just can’t walk in the snow and ice because I’m afraid of slipping. What I most enjoy is going on the road and performing with the band which has my old Cockney Rebel pal Stuart Elliott on drums. It’s just like the old days.”
Monday, June 21st, 2010 in Spotlight On Artists.
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