Стив Харли және Cockney Rebel тобының тарихы

British glam rock band

Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel were an English rock band who formed in the early 1970s in London. Their music covered a range of styles from pop to progressive rock. Over the years, they have had five albums on the UK Albums Chart and twelve singles on the UK Singles Chart.

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.

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 1973, 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. Although the album was not a commercial success, the band attracted a growing following in London. The album The Psychomodo followed. Reame James and Jeffreys formed the band Chartreuse in 1976. From then on, the band billed as Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel were a band in name only, being more or less a Harley solo project. Amongst the backing vocalists on the song was Tina Charles. 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. [[Bill Nelson (musician), for whose band Be Bop Deluxe Jeffreys and Reame James had departed, confirms this story. After 1975, Harley struggled to match the success of "Make Me Smile" and faded from fame, and Cockney Rebel eventually disbanded. In April 1990, after the success of the 1989 "Come Back, All Is Forgiven" tour, Harley and several members of that tour's line up reformed as Raffles United, and played four consecutive nights in a pub in Sudbury, London. These concerts were essentially used as Pop Idol style auditions for new band members, in particular a new bassist, lead guitarist, drummer, and violinist. Harley's brother, Ian Nice, who had played keyboards in 1989, remained on keyboards for both this show, and most of the band's tours in the 1990s. The band's line up that got finalised from these shows ended up debuting on June 5, 1990, at Doncaster Dome, and consisted of Harley, Ian Nice on keyboards, Nick Pynn on violin and guitar, Robbie Gladwell on lead guitar, Paul Francis on drums, and Billy Dyer on bass guitar. As of 2022, Gladwell continues to perform this role in the band, whereas Dyer has returned sporadically when the usual bassist for the band has been ill, most notably in 2014 (depping for Lincoln Anderson), and 2021 (depping for Kuma Harada). Harley has released several solo albums since – Yes You Can in 1992 (including the singles "Irresistible" and "Star for a Week (Dino)"), Poetic Justice in 1996, and most recently, The Quality of Mercy in 2005 (which included the singles "A Friend for Life" and "The Last Goodbye"), the first since the 1970s to be released with the Cockney Rebel name. He dubbed his touring band 'Cockney Rebel Mark III'.

In 2010, Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel began touring again setting concert dates for England, Ireland, and Northern Ireland. This was done following the release of the new studio album Stranger Comes to Town. In October 2012, the remastered four disc box set anthology compilation album Cavaliers: An Anthology 1973–1974 was released, chronicling the recording career of the original Cockney Rebel line up. On 24 November 2012 the band including the Orchestra of the Swan and a choir performed the band's first two albums The Human Menagerie and The Psychomodo in their entirety for the first time. A live double CD and DVD was released in October 2013 of this performance, titled Birmingham. In 2016, the newly reestablished Chrysalis Records, now owned by Blue Raincoat Music, announced that it had acquired the Cockney Rebel catalogue. Harley was one of the artists who appeared on the label's first release, a charity single of the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" credited to Friends of Jo Cox in tribute to Jo Cox, a Labour Party MP who had been assassinated earlier that year. In the aftermath of the COVID 19 Pandemic, Harley's live shows resumed in August 2021. The line up for the full rock band shows consisted of Harley, Wickens, Lascelles, Gladwell, Elliott, and Harada. The 2021 shows marked the first time this line up toured together (having only previously played festivals in 2016), as well as Gladwell's full time return to the band, having stood in sporadically for Paul Cuddeford on a handful of occasions between 2017 and 2020. The set lists for the 2021 shows featured many songs that had not been played live for many years, in particular from Harley's 1992 album Yes You Can.

After the success of 1998 and 1999's respective 'Stripped To The Bare Bones' and 'Stripped Again' tours, Harley would continue to tour in an acoustic format. Firstly with Jim Cregan and a selection of other members of Cockney Rebel, depending on the exact date of the show, in 2002. This format produced 2003's Acoustic and Pure: Live album. With the exception of the 2015 reunion, which was in the full band format, Cregan would next join Harley for 2 acoustic shows in March 2020, which otherwise featured Harley performing alone. In 2003 and 2004, the 5 piece acoustic line up that played 2004's Anytime! (A Live Set) album was put together, featuring Lascelles on percussion, Gladwell on lead guitar, Wickens on violin/guitar, and Anderson on double bass. In 2005 and 2006, this format was used in Holland and Belgium while promoting 2005's The Quality Of Mercy album, and these shows are notable for featuring significant rearrangements of some of the songs from the album, which were never played during concerts in England. These shows were played without Anderson. Between 2010 and 2019 these concerts were revived as a 3 man line up, with Harley alongside Wickens and Lascelles (this time on keyboards and percussion, as per his role in the full rock band shows). These shows were originally marketed as the '3 man acoustic show' before being renamed to 'Acoustic Trio' in 2016. The shows in 2010 were marketed as an 'Acoustic Set', as they were the first acoustic shows since 2004. This format was phased out in 2020 in order to promote Harley's new album Uncovered in favour of a revived 4 man line up, though with David Delarre on lead guitar, and Oli Hayhurst on double bass, with Harley and Wickens reprising their roles. The COVID 19 pandemic delayed most of the shows on this tour with only the first 9 played as planned. Two shows were however played in late September 2020, both in the acoustic trio format, though Hayhurst accompanied the trio on the second of these shows. In addition, Harley held an online Q and A session via Zoom Videoconferencing in mid December 2020.

Two of the bigger hits appeared in UK television advertisements in the 1990s: "Make Me Smile" for Carlsberg Lager in 1995, prompting the track's return to the UK Top 40; and "Mr Soft" for Trebor Softmints between 1987 and 1994. "Make Me Smile" was used again in a 2005 advertisement for Marks & Spencer. It was also used on the soundtrack of the 1997 film The Full Monty and the 1998 glam rock film Velvet Goldmine, in the latter's case being used in the end credits. From 1999 to 2008, Harley presented a show on BBC Radio 2 called Sounds of the 70s. In 2006, EMI released a CD box set compilation album spanning Harley's Cockney Rebel and solo work, titled The Cockney Rebel – A Steve Harley Anthology. On 25 July 2007, they performed in Warsaw, Poland, and on 28 July 2007 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in both cases opening the Rolling Stones' concerts. In 2007, the song "Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)" was used by the Norwegian national lottery Norsk Tipping in a popular TV commercial in Norway. In 2018, "Make Me Smile" was used again in an advert for Viagra, the first one of its kind to air on UK television. Harley often joked at his live concerts and in interviews that his 1974 single, "Mr Soft", may have been more appropriate, given the nature of the product. In 2020, however, the contract with Pfizer ended, and changed to BMW starting in April 2021. Harley had long driven the manufacturer's 7 Series model. Original keyboardist, Reame James, had since joined with James Staddon, Phil Beer and Robbie Johnson to create 'Banana Rebel', who have released a CD Top Banana, available from their website.