The “magical” talent that Robert Smith wanted to be: “He never really got anywhere”
As an easily impressed teenager, like The Cure’s Robert Smith once was, musical figures seem like they can walk on water, and it doesn’t matter whether they are a world-famous star or ten rungs down the ladder playing the local town hall.
There’s something more human about seeing someone in an intimate venue, which can forge a connection that far outweighs reading about a superstar in a magazine or watching them through a television screen. They might be ordinary people, from day to day, who have to deal with the inane realities of life, but they become superheroes upon standing upon the stage.
Initially, Jimi Hendrix was the catalyst for Smith’s love of music, once telling The Guardian, “Hendrix was the first person I had come across who seemed completely free, and when you’re nine or ten, your life is entirely dominated by adults. So he represented this thing that I wanted to be.”
David Bowie was another key figure, but again, there was an unattainableness attached to ‘The Starman’ by this period, which made him an impossible act to follow around the country as a teenager.
Thankfully, he also loved the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, a group led by Alex Harvey that proved much easier to watch in concert regularly than Bowie. In the eyes of Smith, Harvey had those same magic credentials that it takes to become on the same level as a Bowie or Hendrix, but sadly, it wasn’t to be.
Smith once said of his hero: “Alex Harvey was the physical manifestation of what I thought I could be. I was 14 when I first went to see him, and then I followed him around to all the shows.”
Reflecting on Harvey’s nearly man career, he conceded, He never really got anywhere, even though he had something so magical when he performed – he had the persona of a victim, and you just sided with him against all that was going wrong.”
There was a connection he felt with Harvey that went beyond music that was brought on by the vulnerability that he embedded into everything he did, with Smith admitting, “I would have died to have had Alex Harvey as an uncle.”
As much as the Sensational Alex Harvey Band did gain some moderate success, including a top ten single with their cover of Tom Jones’ ‘Delilah’, their story remains one of what could have been if things had turned out differently.
Despite things, from the outside, looking like they were on the right track, Harvey departed the band at the end of 1976. They temporarily continued, as SAHB (Without Alex), before he returned in 1978 to release their final album, Rock Drill, and by this time, the music world had moved on to new things.
He did attempt a solo career and formed a new band, the Electric Cowboys, but was suffering from health issues that impacted his ability to perform. According to Louder Sound, Harvey’s final hometown show in Glasgow was so poorly attended that tickets were offered out to strangers on the streets despite selling the venue out only a few years prior.
With the Electric Cowboys, Harvey embarked on his final tour in 1982, which saw them embark on a tour around Europe, where Harvey struggled his way through and failed to make it home. Tragically, his health issues became all too much, and he suffered a cardiac arrest in Belgium while returning to the UK.
During an interview with Sounds in 1987, Smith proudly said of Harvey: “He was the only person that made me think, it must be fucking brilliant to be Alex Harvey. It was just like believing in a creature, a myth that was presented to you onstage.”
Despite the glossy veneer that Harvey presented to wide-eyed kids like Smith, he was struggling on the inside. His tale is a heartbreaking, common music industry story of exhaustion, burning the candle too hard at both ends and wasted potential.
