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Indlæser... The Sensational Alex Harveyaf John Neil Munro
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Glasgow-born Alex Harvey's career began in the 1950s when he won a competition to become Scotland's answer to Tommy Steele (he dubbed himself 'Last of the Teenage Idols'). He was a devoted family man but in front of an audience he became an unforgettable entertainer - courageous, provocative and intense. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band eventually became one of the most exciting live acts of the 1970s, taking in Jacques Brel, rock and vaudeville.But Harvey's life offstage was beset by tragedy and alcoholism: his younger brother, Les, was electrocuted on stage; his manager and friend Billy Fehilly was killed in a plane crash; eventually, with his band in tatters, Alex sank into a sea of alcohol, finally succumbing to a fatal heart attack while waiting for a ferry home from Belgium in 1982, the day before his 47th birthday. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)782.42166The arts Music Vocal music Secular Forms of vocal music Secular songs General principles and musical forms Song genres Rock songsLC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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The Sensational Alex Harvey Band (SAHB to devotees and there were many) were something special in seventies rock music. They fused theatrical flair and musical eclecticism and mixed music hall with menace. Patrolling the playpen of glam they added a street-edge that presaged punk. As a performer Harvey, born and raised in the tenements of Glasgow, exuded a dangerous glamour. He was the oldest punk in town but, in his pugnacious way, preached peace and love.
His repertoire mocks the word ‘eclectic’; he must be the only artist who has covered both Jacques Brel’s Next and Crazy Horses by the Osmonds. As a reimaginer of other people’s songs he merits comparison with Nina Simone. Harvey didn’t sing songs he became them. He could take a song like Delilah, the tediously melodramatic Tom Jones number, and expertly subvert it, transplanting and transforming it from cabaret kitsch to darkly comic Gorbals nightmare in one foul swoop.
Until I came across this in a charity bookshop in Edinburgh recently I had no idea a biography of Harvey existed. Munro’s book evokes adjectives like ‘solid’, ‘well-researched’ and ‘workmanlike’ rather than ‘insightful or ‘inspired’. He doesn’t quite get to the heart of this charismatic and enigmatic man who became an overnight success when pushing forty after serving an apprenticeship of some twenty years in the business they call show.
Still, there’s plenty of interesting and informative stuff here, particularly on Harvey’s long pre-SAHB career, of which I knew little. It was certainly a varied one, encompassing Hamburg in the early sixties and West End musical theatre (he played guitar in the pit band in Hair) at the end of that decade, upmarket cabaret clubs and rock ‘n’ roll dives. All this experience and musical eclecticism finally found focus in SAHB. I hadn’t realised how much of the core SAHB repertoire had been performed and even recorded by Alex in other and earlier contexts. And I certainly didn’t know that in 1970 Harvey and Mike Oldfield were briefly in a band together. Now there’s a pairing to boggle the mind. ( )