Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel are a British glam rock band from the early 1970s from London. Their music covers a range of styles from pop to progressive rock. Over the years they have had five albums in the UK Albums Chart and twelve singles in the UK Singles Chart.
Career
Steve Harley grew up in London's New Cross area and attended Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham Boys' School. His musical career began in the late 1960s when he was busking (with John Crocker aka Jean-Paul Crocker) and performing his own songs, some of which were later recorded by him and the band.
The original Cockney Rebel
After an initial stint as a music journalist, Harley hooked up with his former folk music partner, Crocker (fiddle / mandolin / guitar) in 1972 to form the original Cockney Rebel. Crocker had just finished a short stint with Trees and they advertised and auditioned drummer Stuart Elliott, bassist Paul Jeffreys, and guitarist Nick Jones. This line-up played one of the band's first gigs at the Roundhouse, Chalk Farm, London on 23 July 1972, supporting The Jeff Beck Group. Nick was soon replaced by guitarist Pete Newnham but Steve felt that the Cockney Rebel sound 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 to share the lead. The band was signed to EMI after playing five gigs. Their first single, "Sebastian", was an immediate success in Europe, although it failed to score in the UK Singles Chart. Their debut album, The Human Menagerie, was released in 1973. Although the album was not a commercial success, the band attracted a growing following in London.
Harley himself was much written about in the musical press, and the other members began to consider themselves regarded and treated as sidemen rather than co-equals, so there was tension in the band even as they were having a big hit with their second single, "Judy Teen". In May 1974, the British music magazine, NME reported that Cockney Rebel were to undertake their first British tour, with the highlight of the itinerary being a gig at London's Victoria Palace Theatre on 23 June. There then followed the album The Psychomodo. A Live at the BBC album from 1995 included material recorded during a 1974 BBC Radio 1 broadcast. Following the European single "Psychomodo", a second single from the album, "Mr. Soft", was also a hit. "Tumbling Down" was also issued in America as a promotional single. 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, leaving the band to become session musicians. The original keyboardist, Milton Reame-James, recalled in 2010 that the original band 'said goodbye on the steps of Abbey Road studios and were never to meet up again.' 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.
Regrouping
Harley's next appearance on BBC Television's Top of the Pops was supported by session musicians and Francis Monkman, and B. A. Robertson. The band's single "Big Big Deal" was issued in 1974 and was almost immediately withdrawn.
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. This included the track "Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)" which would go on to be a UK number one single in February 1975, and the band's biggest selling hit. It sold over one million copies globally. Amongst the backing vocalists on the act's only No. 1 was the future chart-topper, Tina Charles. Changing the band name from Cockney Rebel to Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel for the No. 1 hit, the degeneration was rapid. In a television interview recorded in 2002, Harley described how the lyrics are vindictively directed at the former band members who, he felt, had abandoned him – a fact not obvious in the apparently happy chorus. , for whose band Jeffreys and had departed, confirms this story.