Alex Harvey (rock musician)
| The Sensational Alex Harvey Band | |
|---|---|
| General information | |
| Genre (s) | Rock 'n' Roll , Rock , Rhythm and Blues |
| founding | 1972, 1993 as the Sensational Alex Harvey Band |
| resolution | 1977 |
| Website | sahbofficial.co.uk |
| Founding members | |
| Alex Harvey (until 1977) | |
guitar |
Zal Cleminson |
| Chris Glen | |
| Hugh McKenna | |
| Ted McKenna | |
| Current occupation | |
singing |
Max Maxwell (since 2006) |
guitar |
Zal Cleminson |
bass |
Chris Glen |
Keyboards |
Hugh McKenna |
Drums, percussion |
Ted McKenna (died, January 19, 2019) |
| former members | |
Keyboard |
Tommy Eyre (1976-1977) |
singing |
Stevie Doherty (1993) |
Vocals, guitar |
Dean Ford (2003) |
Alex Harvey (born February 5, 1935 in Glasgow , Scotland , † February 4, 1982 in Zeebrugge , Belgium ) was a Scottish rock musician from Glasgow. With his Sensational Alex Harvey Band ( SAHB ) he was a successful stage star in Europe in the 1970s.
biography
The early years
Harvey had his musical roots in rock 'n' roll and American folk music, which was popular in Great Britain in the 1950s . As an amateur trumpeter, he also devoted himself to traditional jazz at times . He won a competition looking for "Scotland's Answer to Tommy Steele ". Harvey prevailed against 600 competitors with his version of "Hound Dog".
In 1959 Harvey had his own band, Alex Harvey's Big Soul Band , which played rhythm and blues , rock 'n' roll and soul with quite good success and was able to complete a very successful permanent engagement in Hamburg's Top Ten Club . The live music market in Scotland at the time was all but dried up as the advent of television kept the audience in question at home. When interest in Hamburg subsided, Harvey broke up the “Big Soul Band” for financial reasons and instead fulfilled his record deal for Polydor with the minimally orchestrated album “The Blues”, which he recorded together with his then 16-year-old brother Les Harvey. Back in Glasgow in 1966, Harvey jammed in the Dennistoun Palais with different line-ups in an unnamed band. The need to earn money drove him back to London in 1967, where he met his old friend Chas Chandler from the Animals in a club in Soho . He confronted him with the music of Jimi Hendrix , whereupon Harvey realized that he had to change fundamentally musically. Under the influence of the Incredible String Band , he probably joined a short-lived psychedelic folk group called Giant Moth , which recorded two singles for the then very popular Decca label. He then played the guitar in the London production of the musical Hair for three years and spent a very happy time with his wife Trudy and their younger son Tyro, especially in family terms. Musically, it was rather productive boredom, which led Mr. Harvey to join a progressive formation called Rock Workshop in 1969 , which consisted in part of Hair musicians. Trombonist Derek Wadsworth was also the director and arranger of the London Hair Ensemble. Ashton Tootle was a flutist, baritone saxophonist and electronics tinkerer all rolled into one. Alex Harvey profited immensely from his acquaintances, as one could see benevolently on the lavishly produced album Roman Wall Blues . Soul and rhythm and blues, as well as country rock and pounding beats like The Kinks or The Move dominated here . But Harvey's image was still too vague to be recognized by the general public.
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
In 1972, at the instigation of the New Musical Express and Mountain Management, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band (SAHB) was created as part of a free concert . In addition to Harvey, there were Zal Cleminson (guitar), Chris Glen (bass) and cousins Ted (drums) and Hugh McKenna (keyboards), who had previously played together under the name "Tear Gas" and whose sound was also loud and complex. It was with this group that Harvey had his greatest musical and commercial success. The breakthrough came during a tour as the opening act for the then very popular rock band Slade . The tour began on May 31, 1973 in Green's Playhouse, later the Apollo Theater in Glasgow . The connection with Slade ensured a brisk influx from the glam rock scene after fans of Mott the Hoople had shown interest at the beginning of the year .
In October 1973 the first tour as a headliner in Great Britain took place. The bizarrely theatrical Harvey Band first experienced continental Europe in the sideline of Status Quo . In 1974 the headstrong Scots had the first version of their album "The Impossible Dream" destroyed because there were serious doubts about the quality of the recordings. After a long and in vain search they were able to win their live mixer David Batchelor as a new producer. He had previously been on stage as the front vocalist for "Tear Gas". For three years, the SAHB surrounded itself with a wild demon cult around a mystical figure called “Vambo” who had broken out of a parallel world called “Vibrania” in order to divert humanity from its wrong ways. Also Musical - interpretations included in the SAHB to stage standard. In addition, there were repeated excursions into the world of hard rock , blues rock and space rock , some of which already had the character of world music , as elements from black African and Arabic music were also taken over. A nice example of this is the Hugh McKenna composition "Sirocco", which makes this humid, humid desert wind almost physically noticeable. The sensitive keyboardist was the first in the group to fall victim to the constant tour stress and the pressure of constant PR appointments. In the late spring of 1976 he sat down with the audience at a concert in Bristol and listened to the music, oblivious to himself, without being able to establish a relationship between himself and the group. Tommy Eyre was hired as a substitute, but after a few relaxing weeks in the sanatorium, Hugh McKenna felt fit for concerts again, but was not considered to be very resilient.
Alex Harvey, at the peak of his success, increasingly suffered from depression, back pain, and the effects of excessive pain medication and alcoholism. His younger brother Leslie died of an electric shock in 1972 during a concert rehearsal for the Scottish band Stone the Crows . Manager and friend Bill Fehilly was the victim of a plane crash on July 28, 1976, whereupon the entire business structure of the SAHB collapsed. Although they still worked through all the booked appearances - after all, they were back in the British Top 15 with the single "Boston Tea Party" - but the success with audiences and music critics did not correspond to black numbers. The band made consistent losses despite millions in sales. As early as 1975, after an appearance in the opening act of Jethro Tull in Miami, all the equipment was missing. Painkillers and antidepressants unfolded their destructive effects as whiskey consumption soared . In the fall of 1976, the previously agile front man fell asleep at the microphone at the opening of a concert in Malmö / Sweden. Later he had largely forgotten the once familiar text of "Delilah". Rumors of an unhealed liver and kidney disease made the rounds. Alex Harvey obviously needed a break, which he used to write a report about the Loch Ness monster for K-Tel . Shortly before the official publication, K-Tel filed for bankruptcy, but a few hundred copies were still sold in souvenir shops. The SAHB toured meanwhile with little success without him and even recorded an album called "Fourplay". In the spring of 1977 the master seemed to be restored and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band successfully completed several festivals, albeit without Hugh McKenna, who had left the group completely unnerved after a punctuality quarrel with Chief Alex. Since Tommy Eyre was in constant readiness after McKenna's dropout in Bristol anyway, this departure was not threatening to exist. Nobody suspected that the '77 performance in Reading would be the last. At the end of the show , Harvey, dressed up as Jesus , threw a giant paper mache cross into the crowd to the sound of "Framed" and hit DJ Alan Freeman head-on in the head. The English music press tried to name Alex Harvey as the head of the newly emerging punk rock movement, which resulted in the band even visiting punk rock clubs with their founder. The result was spitting orgies on the part of the punk rock audience and an unbridgeable dissent about the future musical direction. SAHB broke up at the end of October 1977 on the eve of a major European tour. Zal Cleminson moved to Nazareth and later drove a taxi for a few months in the 1980s. Ted McKenna stayed with Rory Gallagher for a few years and then formed the rhythm section with Chris Glen at the Michael Schenker Group and Gillan . Also Womack & Womack took his talent temporarily to complete. His use on the "Internal Exile" album by ex-Marillion singer Fish is also worth mentioning.
His most successful song with the SAHB was The Faith Healer on the second album "Next" in 1973. Hugh McKenna simulated a bass sequencer for the first time with a newly developed rhythm generator called "Tootalbug Drone", which makes this voodoo rock number a rather avant-garde Added touch. According to the band, the inventor of the device was Ashton Tootle, the flautist of Hair . At first hardly noticed, "The Faith Healer" later quickly became a kind of signature song. The track was covered by several bands, including The Cult and The Bollock Brothers as well as Helloween . Harvey also had great success with the cover version of the Tom Jones hit "Delilah", which rose to number 7 in the British charts.
Alex Harvey - The New Band (NAHB)
After Alex Harvey canceled the Rock Drill Tour out of the blue, he faced massive penalties and claims for damages. As early as March 1978 he had rounded up a new band with the keyboardist and arranger Tommy Eyre who had been left over from the rock drill sessions . They gave a very elaborate and expensive concert in the London Palladium, which received mixed reactions from the critics. At the same time, the impression solidified that the alleged “Godfather Of Punk”, who had “Anarchy In the UK” arranged as a slow waltz especially for this concert , had lost touch with financial reality. Where did the money suddenly come from for the highland drummers, the bagpipers, the string and brass sections, the dance girls and the star guests? The line-up of the NAHB turned out to be less constant, as Tommy Eyre had to work through many appointments with Gerry Rafferty's band at the same time . He and Hugh McKenna, who was struggling with drug problems, kept taking turns on keyboards. It was not until December 1978 that the line-up was established again, when Alex Harvey, who was at times rather drunk, recorded the album The Mafia Stole My Guitar with Matthew Cang, Simon Chatterton, Tommy Eyre, Gordon Sellar and Don Weller , and the sometimes unfocused, downright howling vocals Missed chance for a bigger comeback. A home game in the Glaswegian Apollo in January 1979 only had 200 paying spectators and 1,000 free guests. The NAHB was a welcome, but ultimately unpaid, guest at the Rock Against Racism festivals .
The Electric Cowboys
Alex Harvey could no longer pay his NAHB due to the lack of success and had to let the musicians go. The successor ensemble "Electric Cowboys" was mainly recruited from talented young Welsh musicians who wanted to make a name for themselves alongside the old rocker. As if by a miracle, a new LP was ready towards the end of 1981, but the long-awaited record deal was a long time coming. Harvey's health fluctuated between comatose and wide awake. One or the other concert ended after the opening chords with total amnesia of the front man, who also showed traits of rage . The audience numbers often fell below the 100 mark. One of his last concerts in Vienna in January 1982 was characterized by enthusiasm and a state of exhaustion, during which he liked to lean against his amplifier tower for a long time.
Alex Harvey died of a double heart attack while on tour in Belgium the day before his 47th birthday. The obituary in the New Musical Express by Charles Maar Murray, entitled "The Faith Healer", once again featured the projection of Alex Harvey as the "Godfather Of Punk". In 1977, however, in a press statement on the dissolution of the SAHB, he said: “I just thought about the essentials. There's nothing worse than beating an old horse to death. ... I found to my surprise that after all these years at the helm and selling millions of records, I am currently in debt. But that doesn't affect my decision to leave the business. All I get these days is requests to do punk rock stuff, but ... I grew out of it. I'm not angry with anyone but myself. I shouldn't have let it go that long. I never wanted to be a superstar ... "
Discography
Albums
|
Chart positions Explanation of the data |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Albums | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| year | Interpreter | title | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1964 | Alex Harvey | Live in the Top Ten Club /
Alex Harvey and His Soul Band |
Live recording from the Top Ten Club in Hamburg
with Kingsize Taylor & The Dominos (October 1963) |
| The blues | with Les Harvey | ||
| 1967 | Hair Pit Band | Hair rave-up | Live from the Shaftsbury Theater |
| 1969 | Alex Harvey | Roman Wall Blues | with Rock Workshop and Les Harvey |
| 1970 | Rock workshop | Rock workshop | with Ray Russell |
| 1972 | Alex Harvey | The Joker Is Wild | Re-release under SAHB (1975):
"This Is the Sensational Alex Harvey Band" |
| SAHB | Framed | ||
| 1973 | Next | ||
| 1974 | The Impossible Dream | ||
| 1975 | Tomorrow Belongs to Me | ||
| live | Live album | ||
| 1976 | The Penthouse Tapes | contains almost exclusively cover versions | |
| SAHB Stories | |||
| 1977 | Alex Harvey | Presents the Loch Ness Monster | Report / radio play |
| 1978 | SAHB | Rock drill | |
| 1979 | NAHB | The Mafia Stole My Guitar | |
| 1983 | Alex Harvey | The Soldier on the Wall | with the Electric Cowboys |
| 1991 | SAHB | BBC Radio 1 Live in Concert | BBC recordings from 1972-1973 |
| 1994 | Live on the test | Live recordings from 1973-1977 | |
| Live in Glasgow 1993 | SAHB Revival with Steve Dougherty | ||
| 2005 | British Tour '76 | Live album | |
| 2006 | US tour 74 | Live album | |
| 2009 | Hot City The 1974 Unreleased Album | earlier version of The Impossible Dream | |
| Live at the BBC | BBC recordings from 1972-1977 | ||
| 2013 | Delilah - The Best Of | UK:  silver (2016)
|
Singles
|
Chart positions Explanation of the data |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Singles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| year | tape | title |
|---|---|---|
| 1967 | Giant
Moth |
The Sunday Song / Horizons |
| Maybe Some Day / Curtains for My Baby | ||
| 1972 | SAHB | There's No Lights on the Christmas Tree, Mother… / The Harp |
| Jungle Jenny / Buff's Bar Blues | ||
| 1974 | The Faith Healer / St. Anthony | |
| Sergeant Fury / Gang Bang | ||
| Anthem / Anthem (long version) | ||
| 1975 | Delilah / Soul in Chains | |
| Gamblin 'Bar Room Blues / Shake That Thing | ||
| 1976 | Runaway / Snake Bite | |
| Boston Tea Party / Sultan's Choice | ||
| Amos Moses / Satchel and the Scalp Hunter | ||
| 1977 | Mrs. Blackhouse / Engine Room Boogie | |
| 1979 | NAHB | Shakin 'All Over / Wake Up Davis' |
| 1980 | Big Tree (Small Ax) / The Whalers (Thar She Blows) |
SAHB without Alex Harvey
| year | title | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| 1977 | Fourplay | |
| Pick It Up and Kick It / Smouldering | single | |
| 2006 | Zalvation: Live In The 21st Century | Live album |
literature
- Martin Kielty: SAHB Story - The Tale Of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. Wilson, Glasgow 2004, ISBN 1-903238-77-3 .
Web links
- Alex Harvey at Allmusic (English)
- Alex Harvey's website
- Fansite (english)
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Harvey, Alex |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Scottish rock musician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 5, 1935 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Glasgow , Scotland |
| DATE OF DEATH | 4th February 1982 |
| Place of death | Zeebrugge , Belgium |