Steve Harley, ‘Make Me Smile’ singer, dies at 73

Steve Harley, a 1970s British rock star who topped United Kingdom music charts with the single “Make Me Smile,” died Sunday. He was 73.

He died at his home, his family said on Facebook. No cause was given, but Harley had announced last month that he would step away from the stage to undergo treatment for cancer and previously canceled several concerts scheduled for this year.

Harley was the frontman of the band Cockney Rebel, which he formed in the early 1970s.

His biggest hit was the 1975 single “Make Me Smile,” in which Harley’s even-keeled vocals and melancholic lyrics cruise over instrumentals bearing the optimistic sound distinct to bands of the era. The song hit the top of the British charts in February of that year.

Cockney Rebel graced the British charts with other releases, including the 1974 single “Judy Teen,” which peaked at No. 5 on the charts that year, and a funky cover of “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles in 1976.

Other songs found success outside of Britain. “Sebastian,” a single featured on the band’s debut 1973 album, “The Human Menagerie,” wound up being a No. 1 hit in Belgium and the Netherlands, according to Harley’s website.

In 1986, Harley and singer Sarah Brightman recorded the original “Phantom of the Opera” for the musical of the same name by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Steve Harley was born Feb. 27, 1951, in London and was the second of five children, according to his online biography. His mother, who sang jazz and swing in the 1940s, offered Harley one of his earliest introductions to music.

“She sang around the house when we were kids,” he said in a 2022 interview for the Tim Quinn Youtube channel, comparing his mother’s voice to British vocalist Anne Shelton.

When he was a child, his mother would sing along to Buddy Holly and other 1950s pop singers who would play on the radio, he said in the interview.

A full list of survivors was not available. An illness and surgeries kept Harley rotating in and out of the hospital as a child. At age 12, while recovering from surgery, Harley found an affinity for the works of D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway and other authors, and took a liking to Bob Dylan’s music, according to his online biography.

These artists moved a young Harley to realize that his life would probably be “preoccupied with words and music,” his website said.