Universal Music pay tribute to the short but prolific musical life of enigmatic Glasgow blues-rocker Alex Harvey with the biggest-ever, career-spanning, cross-label collection of his work. A total of 217 fully remastered tracks (with much of the material from the original master tapes) includes 21 that are previously unreleased, and a further 59 that are appearing officially on CD for the first time.
Alexander James "Alex" Harvey (5 February 1935 – 4 February 1982) was a Scottish blues/rock musician. Although Harvey's career spanned almost three decades he is best remembered as the frontman of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, with whom he built a reputation as an exciting live performer during the era of glam rock in the 1970s.
Alexander James Harvey was a Scottish rock and blues musician. Although his career spanned almost three decades, he is best remembered as the frontman of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, with whom he built a reputation as an exciting live performer during the era of glam rock in the 1970s. Their first two albums, Framed (1972) and Next (1973), didn't sell, but in the fall of 1974 The Impossible Dream became Harvey's first chart record in the U.K. (It briefly made the American charts in March 1975.) Tomorrow Belongs to Me followed in the spring of 1975, hitting the Top Ten along with the Top Ten singles placing of Harvey's flamboyant cover of the Tom Jones hit "Delilah."
Joker Is Wild was the second album and created by Alex Harvey after the Soul Band. The album was released in 1972. Some time after 1972 the album Joker Is Wild was reissued and repackaged, the album song listings stayed the same, but the album was credited as being made by "The Sensational Alex Harvey Band" even though Alex Harvey wasn't with this band at the time, and the title was changed from Joker Is Wild to This Is.
This 1979 outing saw Alex Harvey returning to the rock music world for what would be his final album. It's no big surprise that The Mafia Stole My Guitar sounds a lot like the Sensational Alex Harvey Band: the music remains the same unusual but intriguing blend of prog ambition and punk energy and it also contains a few of Harvey's trademark oddball cover versions (example: his surprisingly straight-faced cabaret version of "Just A Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody"). What is a surprise is how consistent The Mafia Stole My Guitar is, especially in light of the uneven final albums of his last band.
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band was one of the most unconventional bands that were part of the 1970s glam rock era. Fronted by Alex Harvey accompanied by Zal Cleminson on guitar, bassist Chris Glen, keyboard player Hugh McKenna and drummer Ted McKenna, their music veered from glam rock to experimental jazz, around a core of experimental and avant-garde rock, dealing with themes from environmentalism to chinese take away food…
After making an impressive and promising debut with Framed, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band perfected their unique, glam-inspired fusion of hard rock and cabaret styles on Next. It also happens to be their best-sounding album, thanks to the efforts of Phil Wainman, a producer best known for his work as a bubblegum-pop svengali to the likes of Sweet and the Bay City Rollers. Wainman puts the band's sound over the top by adding a sense of studio polish that fleshes out their odd combination of styles without taking away from the music's sense of rock & roll power. The result is an album that has all the muscle of a good hard-rock recording but tempers its bombast with a sense of big-production depth and clarity that brings outs the band's tight musicianship.
By the time they recorded Tomorrow Belongs To Me, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band had perfected a totally unique trademark sound, an audacious and often surreal witches' brew of heavy metal thunder, glam artsiness, prog complexity, and all sorts of left-field cabaret and big-band elements. This album does not break any new ground for this oddball synthesis, but it is a solid and high-powered outing that will please anyone who enjoyed Framed or The Impossible Dream.