Biggest hit was aimed at his band
AFTER Steve Harley contracted polio at the age of two he spent four years in and out of hospitals. At one point the future rock star stopped breathing and doctors warned his parents he would die. “My dad wouldn’t accept it and insisted, ‘Keep going, keep going’,” Harley told the Daily Express in 2013.
Once Harley had returned home on crutches, his father dispensed a tough love that proved pivotal. “The local council tried to send me to a special school but my dad said, ‘You can’t wrap him in cotton wool’ and that was life-enhancing,” he said.
This resilience helped him weather challenges as the founding frontman of glam rockers Cockney Rebel. His sublime 1975 chart-topper Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me) was his greatest hit but its upbeat melody served as a “fingerpointing piece of vengeful poetry” against former bandmates.
Months earlier, Harley had dispensed with the original lineup after they asked to contribute their own songs to the third album. The singer refused and recruited new musicians to join him under the newlynamed Steve Harley And Cockney Rebel. Make Me Smile went on to sell more than 1.5 million copies and has been covered more than 120 times. The band also had hits with Judy Teen, Mr Soft and Here Comes The Sun.
Harley was born Stephen Malcolm Ronald Nice in Deptford, south London to Ronald, a milkman and part-time Brighton & Hove Albion football player, and Joyce, who sang in a jazz band.
Bedbound for long periods as a child, the star sought pleasure from the lyrics and poetry of his musical and literary heroes: Bob Dylan, TS Eliot, DH Lawrence, John Steinbeck and Virginia Woolf.
Harley, who left grammar school aged 17, and wanted to write for a newspaper. He became a trainee accountant at the Daily Express, “paying expenses to journalists whose bylines I’d long admired”.
He hoped it would lead to a career in journalism and he went on to become a reporter with the East London Advertiser.
After tiring of writing “mundane stories”, he left to make music. His job went to fledgling journalist, now successful TV presenter and Express columnist, Richard Madeley.
Harley spent 18 months busking his own songs before forming Cockney Rebel. He performed live shows for decades and presented Sounds Of The Seventies on Radio 2 for nine years.
He married air hostess Dorothy Crombie in 1981 after meeting her on a flight.
She survives him along with their two children. Harley died following a short battle with cancer.
Steve Harley Singer-songwriter BORN FEBRUARY 27, 1951 – DIED MARCH 17, 2024, AGED 73