Cockney Rebel - Biography
Cockney Rebel, whether by design or by arrogation, was essentially a vehicle for the ambitions of one person, Steve Harley. Though the band’s sound fell between decadent glam, pompous prog and sneering punk, they never truly fit into any one scene. As musical oddities, their audience would prove too small to carry the band to the commercial heights that Harley so eagerly aspired to (although loyal fans sometimes nicknamed themselves after the characters of Cockney Rebel songs). Although “the Rebel” scored one massive hit, their music is echoed only in a small group of like-minded musical alchemists who followed similar paths, such as Kate Bush, Magazine, The Church and — their most obvious heirs — The Doctors of Madness.
Steven Nice was born in Deptford, London on February 27th, 1951. He grew up in nearby Fairlawn Mansions, New Cross, Sarf London. In 1953 he was struck with Polio. Consequently, he spent much of his childhood in Queen Mary’s Hospital for Children, first undergoing major surgery in 1963. All told, from the age of three to sixteen, he spent four combined years hospitalized. As a result of his isolation he had few friends and turned instead to the modernist works of D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and T.S. Eliot. Nice’s main childhood interest besides literature was music. His mother had been a jazz singer and encouraged him to take violin lessons from nine to fifteen. At ten he received a Spanish guitar from his parents. While recovering from his first major surgery, he heard Bob Dylan for the first time and he would become an indelible influence on Harley’s own compositions.
Once recovered, Harley finished school without a single A-level. As well-read as he may have become in hospital, he apparently lacked the framework that would have allowed him to succeed in academically. It may have also contributed to the common perception of Harley as a pretentious, difficult, name-dropping little shit. Then again, this may have been the defensive result of insecurity and social retardation resulting from his isolation rather than unbridled egomania — and, truth be told, the annals of rock are filled with self-aggrandizing megalomaniacs.
In 1968, he worked as an accountant for the Daily Express before going on to report for various papers until 1971, when he began augmenting his career by busking (as “Steve Harley”) in Notting Hill, the Underground and in folk clubs alongside the likes of John Martyn, Julie Felix, Martin Carthy and Ralph McTell. He next joined the band Odin on rhythm guitar. Whilst with them, he met fellow folkie Jean-Paul Crocker with whom he began to collaborate and the two decided to form a band.
In 1972, Harley and Cocker were joined by drummer Stuart Elliot and formed Cockney Rebel. Paul Jeffreys joined on bass and Milton Reame-James on keyboards. Their sound was difficult to peg. Conspicuously ambitious like Genesis, arty and detached like Roxy Music, Cockney Rebel nonetheless had a sound of their own. Harley’s reedy, sing-speaking strained to hit notes of his Kinks-inspired character studies and impressionistic tone poems. In one of Harley’s first attention-getting claims, he declared the guitar was dead and so the violin and keyboards took the lead on songs that veered from cabaret to folk to lounge, with bits of reggae and doo wop tossed in just because.
After playing only five shows, Cockney Rebel signed to EMI. The following August, they released their debut single, the grandiose and inscrutable epic, “Sebastian.” Whilst number one in Belgium and the Netherlands for several weeks, it failed to chart in the UK. It did attract a small cult of fans, some of whom went as far as donning trench coats, derbies and false eyelashes on one eye, in imitation of the band’s Clockwork Orange-inspired style.
Their debut album, The Human Menagerie (1974 EMI), reached number eight. The songs’ lyrics — obtuse and self-serious — attracted scrutiny from fans and detractors alike, who either rated Harley as either a genius or charlatan. Even if the lyrics were complete nonsense, Thomas Baker’s lush orchestration added a sense of gravity to the proceedings. Some critics criticized the band as jumping on the Glam bandwagon to fill the void left by the genre’s pioneers, who’d moved on. The band protested that they weren’t Glam but posing feyly, clutching pastel parasols and tarted up like street walkers on the album cover wasn’t the best way of making their claim. Nor was singing about Marc Bolan, as Harley did in “Mirror Freak.” Thus began Harley’s contentious relationship with a segment of the music press.
Right away, Harley annoyed many with his constant proclamations of his own genius. He even spoke of his bandmates as expendable sidemen, merely hired to carry out his singular vision. In performances, he mugged, sneered and generally projected a degree of smugness unrivalled until Paul Weller came onto the scene a few years later. But, whatever Harley’s apparent personality deficiencies and under-appreciation of his bandmates, their music was amazing and seems to exist out of time, unlike that of most of their mid ‘70s contemporaries.
In 1974, “Judy Teen” reached number five. The Psychomodo (1975 EMI) followed. “Mr. Soft” reached number eight. The album was similar to the debut, if even heavier, loaded with majestic, passionately nonsensical numbers like “Ritz,” “Cavaliers” and “Tumbling Down.” John Peel invited them to do a session for his program. During their tour in support of the album, all the members (except Elliot) abandoned Harley. When they appeared on Top of the Pops, it was with Curved Air's Francis Monkman and session musician/songwriter B.A. Robertson standing in for the departed members. Harley released a solo single, “Big Big Deal” in the fall, but withdrew it quickly thereafter and assembled a new band in time for their performance at Reading.
Jean-Paul Crocker went on to become a session musician. Paul Jeffreys and Milton Reame-James were briefly members of Be Bop Deluxe before forming their own band, Chartreuse in 1976. Jeffreys ultimately died in the Pan Am Flight 103 Lockerbie air disaster with his wife whilst on honeymoon. Reame-James later formed Banana Rebel.
As if to ensure that no one mistook Cockney Rebel for a democracy, The Best Years of Our Lives (1975 EMI) was credited to Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel and Harley’s the only member pictured on the cover. The new band added Duncan MacKay (keyboards), George Ford (bass) and Jim Cregan (guitar). Its sarcastic riposte to his former bandmates, “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)” was an enormous hit, reaching number one. It has since been covered over 100 times and appeared in over twenty commercials and soundtracks. It briefly seemed that Harley had been right about his vision. But the new band’s success was short-lived. The excellent “Mr. Raffles (Man it Was Mean),” only made it to thirteen and marked the beginning of the Rebel’s downward commercial slide. The attendant album traded in the mysteriousness of the previous two for more straightforward, commercial rock.
The albums that followed were patchy whilst still displaying an attempt at adventurousness — if not always gracefully — relying more on craft and studio trickery than inventiveness or songcraft. And yet they all have their fans who generally disagree on what are the highs and lows of the period from 1975-1979, when Harley admits he spent most of his money on cocaine and Remy Martin with his constant friend Marc Bolan (whose own coke-addled, creatively fallow period corresponded to Harely’s).
Timeless Flight (1976 EMI) was slick, slightly quirky pop comparable to the likes of 10cc, Steely Dan, Be Bop Deluxe, Supertramp, Jimmy Buffet or any of the stuff that Ween parodied on their White Pepper album. “Black or White (And Step on It)” was an epic as big and empty as any Baz Luhrman or Bollywood film — and as enjoyable for those so inclined. “Red is a Mean, Mean Colour” seemed to express paranoia about Communism threatening Harley’s Evelyn Waugh and Henry James-fuelled classicist fantasy world. The half-inspired disco rock of “White White Dove” was the single, however. That year they appeared on Musikladen with Harley wearing messianic white robes. That summer, they toured opening for The Kinks in the US.
Love’s a Prima Donna (1976 EMI) reached 28, buoyed by the catchy (if insincere-sounding) “(I Believe) Love’s a Prima Donna,” a then-popular cover of the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” (fleshed out with cheesy synth) and a Tinto Brass-esque cover. Harely’s relocation to Beverly Hills said more than his lyrics ever could. Before releasing a live album, Face to Face (1977 EMI), Harley dismissed his bandmates and proceeded as a solo artist.
Alone, and back in the UK, Harley released Hobo with a Grin (1978 EMI) and The Candidate (1979 EMI). In an interview that year he expressed his admiration for the spirit of punk but admitted (at the ripe old age of 28) to not being able to understand where the 18-year-olds were coming from. He moved back to America and disappeared from the public eye for a while. Back in the UK, he returned to the stage playing fellow New Crosser, Christopher Marlowe in Marlowe. He recorded a synth-rock duet of “The Phantom of the Opera” with Sarah Brightman but, after three months of rehearsals, was replaced by Michael Crawford.
In 1995, Live at the BBC (1995 ROIR) - comprised of Cockney Rebel’s 1992 and 1974 sessions - was released. In 1998, “Sebastian,” “Tumbling Down,” “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)” were included in Velvet Goldmine, Todd Hayne’s tale of a self-absorbed glam rocker undone by excess and bad decisions in his career and personal life.
From 1999 to 2008, Harley presented Sounds of the Seventies on BBC Radio. In 2005, he released The Quality of Mercy (2005 Gott Discs) under the resurrected Cockney Rebel name, with Suart Elliot again reprising his role as drummer, on an album mostly made up of mid-tempo numbers that fall stylistically somewhere between late-period Dire Straits, Sting and Peter Gabriel. In 2007, the reconstituted Cockney Rebel opened for The Rolling Stones in Warszawa and Sankt-Peterburg.
So Cockney Rebel’s story is one of initial brilliance derailed by band tensions, drug abuse and a combative music press. Though Cockney Rebel made brilliantly varied music and Harley possessed a rare talent for tongue-twisting lyrics (crammed with ostentatious literary and historical references), his inability (or unwillingness) to get along with the press (or his bandmates) resulted in Cockney Rebel being relegated to a mere footnote of the glam era.