Singer-songwriter, while not quite managing to elbow David Bowie aside, produced well-crafted hits topped by Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)
Steve Harley was many things, but a man crippled by modesty was not among them.
In his first big music press interview – before the appearance of Cockney Rebel’s debut album, when all they had released was a solitary single that featured a 40-piece orchestra, which had failed to make the UK charts – he proclaimed his band “a musical force that others will follow” and pitted himself squarely against the biggest names in British pop. Cockney Rebel, he suggested, would kick David Bowie “up the arse”: “he’ll say ‘I’ve got to step on it to stay at the top’.”
