SAHB have since been consigned to memory´s dumper, but Alex is still playing the martyr.
"This is costin´ me a lorra f----- money, so youse berra shurrup an´ lissen" he casually informed (at the top of his voice) the audience that had so loyally gathered on Sunday at the London Palladium to witness the first performance of the New Sensational, etc.
He wasn´t joking either. The production found the new - and predominantly very young - quartet augmented by a string section, a brass section, Highland drummers, pipers, dry ice, the cast of Camelot, Richard O´Brien, author of The Rocky Horror Show (he shared with Alex a duet on "Dinner For One Please James"), and a troupe of dancing girls who raced across the stage whenever Alex announced "Big Spender" and joined him for a touching rendition of "Cheek To Cheek", the Fred Astaire favourite.
It was an extraordinary evening, as you might have guessed, which began with Alex inviting immediate comparisons between his new band and his old by performing "Vambo", "Midnight Moses" and "Framed" - three songs indelibly associated with the old mob.
That the revised versions of these songs survived the scrutiny of the audience (who demanded frequently the presence of Zal), was a tribute to the ferocity of Alex´s stage presence and his utterly intimidating manner with hecklers, and the quality of the band, who overcame their obvious stage fright with commendable determination; they may have looked, in their satin and tat, like a cabaret band, but by the wonderfully rousing encore, "We´re Gonna Rock, We´re Gonna Rule", they were already licked into shape by Alex, who constantly forced them forward to meet the audience head-on and any cynics who might have been hoping for the failure of the enterprise.
The evening had been advertised as the premiere of "Vibrania", the concept piece that Alex has been preparing for the last three years; we heard not a note of it, however.
Mountain Management - the company from which Alex split when he deserted SAHB - had, he told us emotionally and with no little bitterness in his adress, taken out an injunction preventing him from playing any new material.
So we had, instead, the group and orchestra tearing holes in the ceiling with a furious arrangement of the theme from King Kong, and an unlikely, but truly inspired, reworking of "Anarchy In The UK", slowed down to a waltz tempo and embellished by Tommy Eyre´s keyboard flourishes.
The inclusion here of the Highland pipers and drummers recalled SAHB´s vintage "Anthem", which dealt with the war in Ulster, and it is likely that "RWB" will assume a similiar role in Alex´s new repertoire.
He delivered the piece with characteristic passion, slightly crazed with that lunatic grin cracking a face that looks as if it once had a cricket bat beaten across it. Someone from the audience shouted at about this point that it was good to have him back.
"Ah ain´t everr bin awae, bebby" he replied.
