Timeless Flight is the fourth studio album by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, which was released by EMI in 1976. It was written and produced by Steve Harley.
Background
Harley began writing material for Timeless Flight while Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel were touring to promote their 1975 album The Best Years of Our Lives. The band recorded Timeless Flight during the summer of 1975 at Trident Studios, Abbey Road Studios and Scorpio Sound Studio. The album was created in a more relaxed environment in comparison with The Best Years of Our Lives, which had been recorded quickly under considerable pressure. In 2003, Harley recalled, "It was a sweltering summer. It was incredibly hot. The songs, many of them being semi acoustic or laid back, I think stemmed as much from that as anything else. It made me a little lethargic." On the album, guitarist Jim Cregan used various guitars, including a Martin D18, 1956 Fender Telecaster, Gibson SG Standard and an Ovation acoustic with a built-in pick-up.
In a 1975 interview with Record Mirror & Disc, Harley described the album as "irreverent" and one which saw Cockney Rebel take a "huge leap forward". He said, "We're a real group now. It's taken us a year to get there but we've done it. Cockney Rebel are not just something I look on as my backing group. We're all in it together and I'm proud to be part of such a group. I really love those musicians." In a 1976 interview with Record Mirror & Disc, Harley added, "[The album] took about three months altogether and so much hard work went into it that as far as I'm concerned, it has to be the best I've done so far."
Years after its release, Harley revealed that Timeless Flight to be a personal favourite from his career. Speaking to The Leader in 2016, he said, "I call it the naughty child that became a favourite. It was slightly experimental. I was only 25 in 1976 and I just did what I wanted to do at that age and we thought it was going to be a monster hit and even though it wasn't, I'm still very proud of that album." In a 2004 interview with the fan site Harley Fanzone, Harley revealed,
Song information
"Red is a Mean, Mean Colour" is an anti-Communism song. Harley told Record Mirror & Disc in 1976, "I haven't achieved what I set out to do with that one. People say it's a long-winded lyric, but really I was explicit as I could be. When it started out, it had 10 verses and I edited it down drastically. It's about the concept of a communist and you can't sum up a man in one sentence for Christsakes." "Understand" was recorded by Patricia Paay for her 1975 album Beam of Light, which was produced by Harley, who at the time was in a relationship with Paay's sister, Yvonne Keeley. Harley later described the song as "a touch of the jazz world". The song has an improvised solo, played on a Mini-Moog synthesizer, which was performed in one take by keyboardist Duncan Mackay.
"All Men Are Hungry" was inspired by a trip Harley took to Belgrade. In his 2004 interview for the Harley Fanzone, he recalled, "Not everybody was in Belgrade and not everybody can see exactly what I saw that morning but everyone can reflect on the idea that everyone has a need and not everybody is fulfilled. Everybody needs space and time and that's what the song is about." In one of the song's verses, Harley refers to Ernest Hemingway's 1932 book Death in the Afternoon. "Nothing is Sacred" was written by Harley after he visited the banks of the Danube in Belgrade. In 2003, he commented, "It's the true story of three of us staying up 'til dawn and partaking of the hedonism that one did in the Seventies." The song was recorded in the studio after most of Cockney Rebel and the recording crew had gone home. Harley wanted to try out the song in the studio and he ended up recording it with the band's second drummer Lindsay Elliott, bassist George Ford and guitarist Jim Cregan.
Release
Preceding the release of the album was the single "Black or White", which was released in November 1975. Despite the chart success of "Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)" and "Mr. Raffles (Man, It Was Mean)" earlier in the year, "Black or White" failed to make an appearance in the UK Singles Chart. It did however reach number two in the UK Star Breakers Chart on 29 November 1975.