Search & Destroy: Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel

First two records are really quite special. The Psychomodo works very well as an album album. First one a bit more up and down. Wheels start to come off w Best Years of Our Lives (really high highs though!). Timeless Flight and Love's a Prima Donna are quite odd. Maybe not great, but worth a gander. Timeless Flight can be a bit boring, but it's also deeply strange, so there's that. The first three tracks of LaPD are a real trip.
The records that I got after that felt pretty terrible to me. The live album and Hobo with a Grin... big yuck. Getting very muso and proggy and recorded in LA with Toto (in a bad way) at that point.

I think I checked them out because the UK press would always mention Harley when writing about Brett Anderson's voice (typically meant as an insult, if I recall correctly).
Around the same time, I found this on vinyl for like $5. Great introduction to what they do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Closer_Look_(Steve_Harley_%26_Cockney_Rebel_album)

RIP Steve Harley. I’m so saddened by this. Fuck cancer.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/mar/17/steve-harley-cockney-rebel-frontman-dies

Listened to the first two Cockney Rebel albums for the first time ever. I'll have to listen to "Psychomodo" again though before I make my mind up about it.

The first album wasn't really what I expected. I thought it would be a lot artier but most of the tracks are kind of lightweight 70s pop rock. The lack of a prominent guitar and Harley's vocals I suppose add to a sense of novelty, it's quite likeable but there's nothing as catchy as "Judy Teen".

The arty part of the album is restricted to "Sebastian" and "Death Trip", both of which are good songs but are overpowered by ludicrously bombastic orchestral arrangements. It works somewhat in "Sebastian", which is campily overwrought by design but not on "Death Trip" which is otherwise the best song on the album.

"The Psychomodo" is much more assured and fuller sounding - not sure that the songwriting has necessarily improved to match though. Also not sure why Harley spends so much of the record disguised as Ian Hunter. "Ritz" is a total banger.

I was enjoying those first two albums the last time I visited them and this thread but didn't listen long enough for them to really sink in.

Also still reeling a bit from learning that bassist Paul Jeffreys and his wife died at Lockerbie on their honeymoon flight.

Those two albums were hugely influential on young me. I can still sing along pretty much word for ridiculous word. I tried to convert all my friends but, as with Roxy Music and Sparks, getting past the vocals was a tough sell.

It’s weird that the debut can be simultaneously thinly produced and ludicrously bombastic, but both are true. (I love the orchestrations though.) The wiki entry has some good tidbits. The violinist recalls: "The orchestra we used mucked it up as well. I've only played violin for about three years, but I was quite a bit better than a lot of those blokes, and they've been playing donkeys years. They had the technical ability, but they had no feel."

Second album is better produced, but I miss some ofthe shorter, poppier songs like “Hideaway.”

Note: if you’re listening on Spotify or similar you miss that the end of “Ritz” trails off into a locked groove at the end of the vinyl. Spotify did just play me the b-side “Such a Dream,” which I had never heard. What a bizarre song.

Thanks for chiming in Tom D.!

I have a classic case of loving "the wrong album" (not that I don't love the right ones) but I had always seen the name Cockney Rebel and found Timeless Flight at a used record store once and bought it.

It really got it's hooks into me, from what I read it was not as well loved, but it hit some kind of middle ground between Countdown to Ecstasy and Hunky Dory that just hits me right.

I think I sounded a bit more critical than I meant to. Both albums are definitely worth listening to. I'd only ever heard the singles.

Timeless Flight is supposedly Harley’s favorite of his records. I love it too. I was amazed long ago to move into a shared roommate situation with a guy I didn’t know, and he had a cassette with that on one side and Dark Side of the Moon on the other. Maybe the Alan Parsons connection? Although Harley self produced Timeless Flight.

The overblown orchestration on "Death Trip" is probably my favorite part of that whole album!

it hit some kind of middle ground between Countdown to Ecstasy and Hunky Dory that just hits me right.

Whoa, I should listen to Timeless Flight.

I don’t know if I hear Steely Dan in it, but it’s lower key and less weird than the preceding records.

“Death Trip” is so amazing, that folky (for lack of a better term) middle section reminds me of The Incredible String Band. And it made me look up ipomoea.

We'll grow sweet Ipomoea to make us feel much freer
Then take a pinch of Schemeland and turn it into Dreamland

Funny you should say that but I kept thinking of Malcolm Le Maistre's songs for the Incredible String Band when I was listening to these albums.

Harley came from a busking and folkie background, so it’s not surprising that ISB is within that Venn diagram.

Harley came from a busking and folkie background, so it’s not surprising that ISB is within that Venn diagram.

He said, twice

Played this clip (not quite the original, I don't think, but close enough, and it's got lyrics) for a 2/3 class today. The fact that he died was interesting to them, so they listened intently. Right place at the right time: they were saved from a life of never having heard this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU6D6ef0prw

I never thought this was a great idea even when I was at the height of my Harley fandom.

What was a good idea?

Or rather not a great idea

Covering “Here Comes The Sun.”

Oh, yeah. Was that video “Here Comes the Sun”? Doesn’t look like it

I thought you might mean ISB center of “Death Trip”

Gah, I’m a dork. Clemenza’s vid was “Make Me Smile.” Which I do like a lot.

Heh. It happens

Listening to The Human Menagerie deluxe again now. It’s on the verge of sounding too thin and twee for me and yet, and yet I really dig it for some reason.

Maybe you were looking at the video for “Here Comes the Sun” that I posted at the end of last year, which prompted the following response from one ILX0r:

I'm sure it made perfect sense in the scorching 76 summer heat, cute Moog warbles like scorching pavements, a nostalgic Beatles compilation and some huge Wings songs in the charts.

i love make me smile and it always makes me think that robyn hitchcock must have been a big fan.

Onto The Psychomodo. "Ritz" seems to quote the stereotypical Morricone Spaghetti Western hook.

This conversation prompted me to pull out Stripped to the Bare Bones. If you find those early records too twee, this is a good antidote. The songs hold up, and it really brings out the Dylanisms. I would have given anything to have experienced one of these live shows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stripped_to_the_Bare_Bones

Looks great, thanks. Hard to access a streaming copy easily though.

The Human Menagerie and The Psychomodo are big favourites of mine, the latter in particular an easy all-time favourite. Spent the last few days playing his 70s stuff endlessly. Even though I still think the dissolution of the original band was a really big loss - as SH&CR his excels at individual songs on somewhat patchy albums, rather than excellent albums where my favourites always change.

Me and a friend were actually talking about all the unexpected future connections you can draw. Vampire Weekend in "Singular Band" and "Judy Teen", say, with the nimble off-centre rhythms, hearty indie-pop melodies and depth of space. Steel drums (and lyrics) aside I do hear later day Beautiful South in "Muriel the Actor" (that's not meant to put anyone off!) (The first time I heard the 'oh I'm a reminder' part in LCD Soundsystem's "Tonite" it made me think of the message flashing in the sky bit in "Sling It!", which is so trivial even by this message's standards I've had to stick it in parentheses). Plus there's the more typical Magazine, Adam and the Ants etc. comparisons to be made.

Good post!

Thanks! I also think of Japan's "Nightporter" as sharing some of its impressionistic DNA with "Sebastian".

have always heard a bit of Harley's snarled "destroyed" (in fantastic OTT Dylan mode) in Psychodromo in Rotten's "destroy" at the end of Anarchy