The captivating master of ceremonies, a million contradictions within a million contradictions and gloriously unpredictable for it. The unorthodox mindset and flamboyant theatrical performance style shall forever live on in the back catalogue that survives him. His intuitiveness for creating music was as flawless as the insight it must first begin from. He was Glasgow’s first real rock & roll legend, a verbal wit with philosophical depth, novelistic charisma and a rough edged working class honesty.
His music career began when he joined a skiffle band in 1955 later evolving into the Alex Harvey Big Soul Band. He recorded his first album ‘Alex Harvey And His Soul Band‘ in Hamburg in 1963 followed by second release ‘The Blues‘ in 1964. Alex Harvey left the Big Soul Band to concentrate on building a solo career, but it failed to develop into anything substantial and achieved very little success. Failure was only his temporary companion and in 1967 he joined the band of musicians of the London stage production of ‘Hair’ where he remained for 5 years during which the band recorded live album ‘Hair Rave Up‘ which contained songs written by Alex.
In 1972 along with guitarist Zal Cleminson, bassist Chris Glen. keyboard player Hugh McKenna and drummer Ted McKenna he formed The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. Merging heavy rock with a blues/garage/glam hybrid unravelled a perfectly formed soundscape for Alex Harvey’s eccentricities to roam freely across the breadth of its surface building his helter skelter symphonies of anguished wailing, frenzied spoken recitals or some juiced-up reworking of someone else’s song. Debut album ‘Framed‘ was a driving rock and blues juggernaut packed with skilled musicianship and depth. Standout tracks are the epic ‘Isobel Goudie‘ the rock fuelled ‘Midnight Moses‘ self explanatory ‘Buff’s Bar Blues‘ and a cover of ‘I Just Wanna Make Love To You‘. Follow up album ‘Next‘ with it’s big sound and glam rock vibe is a much better record than debut ‘Framed‘ and brims with so many great things..like ‘Swampsnake‘ with it’s boogie woogie piano and backyard harmonica…or catchy foot-tapping orgy anthem ‘Gang Bang‘….or the Jaques Brel cover delivered with menacing Glaswegian eloquence…..or throbbing groove pulsing atmospheric masterpiece ‘Faith Healer‘……and ‘Vambo Marble Eye‘ …as examples
Further releases like ‘The Impossible Dream‘ with layers of operatic sawdust rock is a rollicking album of pretentious idealism that manages to remain unceromoniously vulgar, musically, with it’s garage fused indifference. The band also scored top 40 chart
hits with a stunning re-worked cover of the Tom Jones song ‘Delilah‘ and 1976 single ‘Boston Tea Party‘ Alex Harvey left the band later that year re-joining them for 1978 album ‘Rock Drill‘ before quitting again.
On Feb 4th 1982 Alex Harvey suffered a massive heart attack while waiting on a ferry in Zeebrugge, Belgium. On the way to hospital by ambulance he had another heart attack and sadly died. It was the day before his 47th birthday. An ending that came far too soon, too unexpectedly soon, too sudden for goodbye, too immediate for understanding and too unforeseen to prepare for.
*Published In Subba Cultcha*
No comments:
Post a Comment