The Sensational Alex Harvey (Paperback)

By the author's own admission it is not a wholly definitive study of the life and work of Harvey and relies heavily on previously published material and interviews with those who knew Harvey, some of whom struggled understandably to recall details from so long ago.

However, Munro does paint a vivid and sympathetic picture of one of Scotland's most prolific and charismatic musical and stage talents and his book will go down well with avid SAHB fans.

It chronicles Harvey's life from its humble beginnings in a tough impoverished district of south Glasgow in the 1930s to his home of nearly twenty years in London until his untimely and tragic death on 4 February 1982 - one day short of his 47th birthday.

There is little in the book that details his formative years in Glasgow and any such information is derived mainly from media interviews given by Harvey himself. Sometimes prone to exaggerated story telling, Harvey even insisted implausibly that one of his previous jobs was as a lion tamer!

With only a few paragraphs covering his schooling and early employment, we nevertheless get a flavour of his upbringing and early background and at least are made aware of his socialist and pacifist roots.

However, the book comes into its own when describing Harvey the musician covering the time from his initial dabbling with jazz, blues and early rock 'n' roll in 1950s Glasgow to eventual rock stardom on the international stage in the mid '70s.

It depicts Harvey's first break after winning a Scotland's answer to Tommy Steele competition in 1957, his several year stint into the mid '60s with the Big Soul Band and his Beatles-like experience in Hamburg, where two of his four pre-SAHB albums were cut. Incidentally, it is told that the 'Fab Four' themselves had played second billing to Harvey at a concert at Grangemouth town hall around 1960 when they were known as the Silver Beatles!

The remainder of the '60s and turn of the '70s saw little progress in Harvey's musical ambitions, although a 5-year long playing part in the controversial West End hit musical 'Hair' at least helped keep those ambitions simmering - as well as putting food on the table!

By now the dedicated SAHB fan will have started to piece together what would eventually shape Harvey's role, style and repertoire in the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, formed from the West of Scotland based Tear Gas in 1972. This would be the turning point in Harvey's fortunes and the start of his most successful period musically.

Mainly due to the abundance of press coverage and witness accounts of concerts during the SAHB years, half the book is dedicated to this period.

The reader is treated to a detailed and often anecdotal rendering of the band's punishing schedule over the next 5 years, producing no less than 7 studio albums, 15 singles, several TV appearances and numerous UK, European and US tours.

By 1975, both the album 'Tomorrow Belongs To Me' and single 'Delilah' were top 10 UK hits. And with the now legendary Christmas concerts at the Glasgow Apollo in the same year, Alex Harvey, aged 40yrs, was at the height of his powers, with SAHB acclaimed by many as Britain's greatest live rock band.

Of course, it is Harvey the consummate entertainer that he will best be remembered. With his vaudeville-like stage shows, fans were often mesmerised with Harvey's experimental approach when combining theatre and music, which provided him with the perfect medium to play out his boyhood fantasies of comic book characters and street gang heroes, such as his ultra ego, Vambo. Who else would think of blacking-up as Al Johnson in the Deep South to advocate racial harmony or appear as Hitler on stage in Germany to preach against the dangers of fascism! Always one with an opinion on most subjects, Harvey would like nothing else that to lecture, both on and off stage, on the evils of violence and drugs and looking after the environment.

But within two short years it was all over. Beset with health, alcohol and financial problems, Harvey seemed to be losing his creative edge and artistic drive. Moreover, the death of SAHB's influential manager and live-long friend, Bill Fehilly, and the departure of Hugh McKenna, the talented keyboards player credited with co-writing 59 of the band's songs, sought only to accelerate the decline and eventual split.

Ironically, for someone who was highly distrustful of the established music industry and regarded by some as the original British punk rocker, it was the up and coming punk era of the late '70s which now regarded Harvey as part of the old guard it was rebelling against.

However, despite years of overwork, exhaustion, periods of depression and threats of litigation, Harvey soldiered on relentlessly for a further 5 years producing his final two albums - the first with the newly formed jazz-based The New Band and the second with the band's name now changed to The Alex Harvey Band. With his new musicians and material, Harvey continued to tour but performances were patchy and his original fan base was melting away. Sales of his penultimate album 'The Mafia Stole My Guitar' were disappointing and Harvey was seen as increasingly irrelevant by many in the business.

Yet, critically, the 'Mafia' album was well regarded and viewed as a further turning point for Harvey. Moreover, his recently completed final album 'Soldier On The Wall', which was posthumously released in 1983, provided the impetus for a European tour. But it was on his return from that tour in 1982 that Alex Harvey collapsed and died of a heart attack in Belgium.

The book's final chapter is dedicated to affectionate tributes paid to Harvey at the time, and more recently, by his family, friends and colleagues in the music business and media.

A postscript from the author sums up Harvey's life and career with comparison with the title of his most successful album 'Tomorrow Belongs To Me'.

He is sorely missed.

Alex looms large in my early musical influences, and in the era before Amazon, I spent a lot of time combing used record stores for Alex Harvey Albums. I still have a couple on vinyl.

You Brits who heard Alex when he was still alive probably have a legitimate gripe with the content of this book, but for those of us who heard him after the fact, it answers a lot of questions.

So, to John Neil Munro (any relation to the other Neil Munro?) March on!