Upstarts:
Alex Harvey Band -- Rock Shimmies West

Alex Harvey is practically old enough to be your father -- thirty-eight years of rock 'n' roll soul, to be exact. Of course he isn't necessarily the oldest man in rock 'n' roll with Elvis Presley, Ian Hunter and Leon Russell being very secretive about their gray hairs (and Ray Manzarek's a good 35 years). But you'd expect a veteran like Alex to have a nice, safe, respectable blues outfit a la John Mayall -- after all, he's not a kid anymore.

Guess again, readers, because Alex Harvey's rock 'n' roll band is one of the scariest, most exciting and dynamic outfits ever to come out of the British Empire. If you thought Alice gave horror movies a run for their money, Bowie put a bit of theater into his show, and Slade's concerts were beginning to resemble a football game ... well, let's just say that Alex Harvey's visual presentation combines all of these with the thrill of a three-ring circus, an aerial acrobat show, and burlesque follies all rolled into one. You don't believe it's true. Well, you can hear it for yourself on "The Impossible Dream" (on Mercury Records),The Sensational Alex Harvey Band's most recent vinyl offering.

Top of the beat: Harvey's been singing for an awful long time -- since 1958, in small clubs, large clubs, or anyplace that would put up with his somewhat less loony first group, Alex Harvey and the Soul Band. Harvey's repertoire began as a collection of fairly conventional rhythm and blues standards like "I Just Want to Make Love to You." But as time wore on and the band tightened up, the songs began to expand outside the "typical" category. "I found out that if you could supply that beat you could virtually get away with anything," Harvey said, "you could sing anything as long as it was on top of that beat. It got so that the groups could sing almost anything, the most ridiculous things, swearing and any really obscene songs." In fact, some of the less conventional tunes that the Soul Band was performing ten years ago have been beefed up with bawdiness and are still used in the Sensational Alex Harvey Band's raucous presentation.

Alex Havey found himself deserted in the late Sixties by his Soul Band and left with nowhere to run. Yet he managed to wangle a deal with an obscure record label as a solo artist. Unfortunately, what he hadn't counted on was they wanted to make him appealing to the Tom Jones/Engelbert Humperdinck set, and when he stepped into the studio to record his first solo album, "The Joker is Wild," he found songs waiting for him like "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother." After putting up with such pop tunes he finally convinced his producer to let him record an original tune or two, and laid down a biting, potent version of Frank Zappa's "Willie the Pimp" and it was the only representation of the true artist in Harvey on that bland, otherwise dismal album which Harvey himself calls a heap of mush.

Alex got various odd jobs playing guitar in the London production of "Hair" and searched all over to find suitable musical companions, finally stumbling on a group called Tear Gas that wasn't going anywhere fast. He took the lads under his wing and The Sensational Alex Harvey Band was born. His guitarist was a skinny little fellow with a comical face born Zal Cleminson. But due to his amazing ability to contort his face in hilarious and gruesome mockery onstage, Zal became known as the Rubberman. Chris Glen came in to play bass guitar, and the brothers McKenna handled piano and drums (Hugh and Eddie respectively). [Transcriptionist's Note: Obviously, the writer didn't have all his facts straight.--T] Webmaven's Note: Hugh and Ted (Eddie) McKenna are cousins, not brothers.

The sermon begins here: Today, onstage, Harvey reads from a mock bible as the band charges through "The Vambo Suite." Cleminson looks like the little kid who presses his face against the plate glass window, every feature on his mug distorted in ludicrous delight. Alex Harvey charges out from a platform behind the drums to run amuck with the old blues standard, "Framed," title track from his first album with his current band. Pulling a nylon net stocking over his face, he cries out "They asked me if my name was Alexander/I said 'Sure'/Well, you're just the fellow we've been looking for/And I was FRAMED!!!"

Why go to such lengths to be theatrical at a rock 'n' roll show? "Being flash is the story of rock 'n' roll. Rock 'n' roll is flash, when you think about it. You see, the people who are in entertainment are flash, including Ravi Shankar -- he's flash. Even this bit about being humble and all that -- that's flash, saying 'I'm close to God' with McLaughlin. I mean, that's really flash -- God's up there shouting 'Carry on son.' As soon as you say 'I'm different from you' that's being flash, you're saying 'Look at me.' "

Alex Harvey's original material is quite stunning and compelling, but his versions of other people's songs are quite different from anybody else's. He will take an old blues song like "Framed" and twist it into a primal gasp/scream; he'll juice up an old rock 'n' roll tune like "Giddy Up A Ding Dong" until it reeks with rhythm and excitement; or he'll dig up a Jaques Brel tour-de-force called "Next" (the title track of his second album with the Sensational Band) and put it to a cabaret setting. He's had enough experience arranging tunes that he's got his technique down pat -- all he has to do is let his perverse imagination run wild and he'll come up with a bonafide winner. "I like everything," he admits, "I mean I like Gene Autrey. It don't matter to me, either it's there or it's not there. A lot of the time groups get knocked because people say they can't play but to me that's always been a sign that they've got something -- they said that about the Stones, the Beatles, Presley. Rock 'n' roll is entertainment and it doesn't matter what anybody says, it's got to be entertainment when it comes down to it."

Alex is very much the performer, rather than just a singer. He acts out his songs, but unlike many of his predecessors he makes up his stage directions as he goes along. He has the freedom as a member of the band to work with the band, rather than having the entire act scored for him and the band separately. He'll take a leap across the stage and the band will provide the crescendo which fits -- and he'll let Al Cleminson step right up to the front of the stage when his solo comes up. Says Alex, "Maybe the stomp will always be here when it's live ... and it'll be two different things. But for instance the Pink Floyd come to mind when I think this ... I've seen them a couple of times and although they're in show business and perform a show, they're quite ethereal and they're almost not there. They themselves aren't really the show anymore. They don't really work within the traditions and yet the do use up front things, they use robots, mechanical means, and that's great, that's right up my alley. I can dig that."

Unfortunately, the Alex Harvey Band have not brought their Sensationalism to America in the live form, so as a concert act they are still somewhat of a questionable entity in this country. However, they've generated some interest through a television appearance that was stunning, and Alex is a great believer in television. Says he, "I like television, I think it can help solve a lot of our problems. Television is young -- it's not twenty years old yet. In fact, it was only at the end of the Fifties and the beginning of the Sixties that people had TV sets." But can a group ever get across their persona fully on television, and can TV replace the live concert? "It could if the world had changed and evolved, maybe if we had lost all the atmosphere off the planet and we all lived in gasmasks."

Article from the December 1974 issue of Circus Raves; reproduced without permission

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