#sahb

Alex Harvey

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: Next (1973)

It took me long enough, but I’ve officially joined the cult of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band (they have no fans, really, just cult members), whose indefinable fusion of glam, prog, heavy rock and R&B with cabaret, vaudeville and British music hall ingredients set them apart from ... everyone!

Powered by Scotsman Alex’s inimitable pipes and larger-than-life, twice-as-fucked charisma, this is what happens when a veteran journeyman (Harvey was in a skiffle band by the mid ‘50s, in the London production of Hair by the end of the ‘60s) takes over a struggling Glaswegian prog rock band called Tear Gas.

More specifically, 1972’s jaw-dropping, head-scratching back-alley opera, Framed, happened; and ‘73’s follow-up, Next, showed nothing but growing confidence and fearlessness to match the added polish applied by producer Phil Wainman (The Sweet, Bay City Rollers, etc.).

All this, along with the Sensational Band members’ confrontational chutzpah (including guitarist Zal Cleminson’s mime-like rictus) lent a touch of the surreal to verbose misadventures like the barrelhouse rabble-rouser “Swampsnake,” Slade send-up “Giddy-Up-a-Ding Dong,” and foot-stomping funk of “Vambo Marble Eye,” based around Harvey’s slum-kid alter ego.

And these are just the easiest songs to unpack, so strap in and hold tight, cos the ride’s about to get even wilder from here on out!

“Gang Bang” is a lascivious brothel ditty that obviously inspired countless AC/DC songs, chiefly “Whole Lotta Rosie” (“She was a woman who was twice my size”), while “The Last of the Teenage Idols” is a semi-biographical epic worthy of Meat Loaf: encompassing pomp rock, big band soul, and even doo-wop.

“The Faith Healer” tells the foreboding, slow-boiling story of a religious con man and clearly ties back to Framed’s haunting “Midnight Moses,” which means that the song’s genius largely hinges on Harvey’s empathy with lowlife characters and his superhuman feel for tension and release between the verses. 

And the title track offers a positively harrowing, tango-like arrangement on a Jacques Brel composition, over which Harvey wails, howls, mewls, bellows and croons like a man possessed (*) for a tour de force of such power and controlled multiplicity, you won’t hear its like this side of Bowie, Buckley or Beefheart. 

Except you’ll have to imagine that sort of emotional range and vocal cord elasticity from a musical persona subsequently mimicked to perfection by Bon Scott -- oh, hell, just LISTEN!

Now I’m really starting to sound like a cult member, so it’s time to still my frantic fingers and tormented search for hyperbole (don’t get me started on the injustice of Alex’s 1982 passing in virtual obscurity, before I was even “musically awake”) so you can go spin this album yourself.

* When he bawls “I really would have liked a little bit of tenderness; Maybe a word, maybe a smile, maybe some happiness, but Next! Next!” it’s all so pitiful even the violins come out!