2 ALEX
TIME marched on, and despite the constant work, Alex didn’t achieve the ambition set out in his NAHB press release. The faithful continued to follow, but that’s who they were – people who’d become Alex fans during the SAHB years. Towards the end of 1981, Alex had completed work on a new album, The Soldier On The Wall, with a mainly-Welsh outfit called the Electric Cowboys. He began another tour, again appealing to the old faithful crowds – but many of them were to wish they hadn’t made it to the shows.
One of those was Mike Kendall, who’d never managed to catch the Sensational band, but had high hopes for Alex’s new one. ‘They were due on stage at around 11pm – but they finally surfaced at 1am and Alex was out of it. He could barely walk, let alone operate equipment. Fortunately there were only 75 people remaining in the club. The band started up but kept repeating the first few bars because Alex was all over the place. He broke the microphone stand and when the roadies couldn’t fix it he started demolishing parts of the stage and curtains with the remainder. He called for a member of the audience to hold the mic for him but there was a general reluctance – and I remember him shouting, “I’ve played better fuckin’ places than this you know…” And the band are still playing those opening bars again and again.
‘Finally someone went up to hold his mic and he tried to sing, but it was incomprehensible – and before long he started another tirade of abuse. None of the crew knew what to do. They were all looking on in disbelief. I left soon afterwards, and to this day I wish I’d never gone.’
Old pal Ray Conn had been brought on board to help look after him – he defines his role as ‘a kind of good influence to keep the bad influences away’. Sadly it wasn’t easy, or particularly successful. Nevertheless, Alex could still shine, as Ray remembers fondly.
‘We did a Glasgow date and some of the press reports were very cruel about Alex. He was very upset – cried his eyes out. And because we were in Glasgow he went home to stay with his parents for a couple of days. We went to collect him to go to Newcastle but he was in a very bad way – his dad said he’d been like that since he arrived. We got him into the bed on the tour bus and he lay there the whole time.
‘He was unconscious when we arrived at Newcastle, but we went ahead with setting up the gig and all that. Five minutes before the show was meant to start we were finally getting ready to pull it, when Alex jumped up, took a shot of brandy, pulled a handstand and went on to do the best gig I’ve ever seen in my life. It goes to show how fit he was – but the danger of that is some people who are very fit have no reserve left after that.’
Ray has no doubt that the legal wrangles after Bill died had a lot to do with Alex’s downward spiral. ‘He had a lot of success in life, but he had some quite major disappointments too – other people let him down. That took its toll.’
Stefan Pawlata was at one of Alex’s last shows, in Vienna; a show which happened to be filmed by a bootlegger and supports his bittersweet view of the evening. ‘What fascinated and at the same time shocked me most was Alex’s appearance and behaviour,’ he says. ‘I hadn’t heard the stories about his health but it seemed obvious he wasn’t in the best physical state.
‘At some points he was singing and shouting, full of enthusiasm, but at others he seemed to be in a trance, standing still, smiling to himself and looking as if his thoughts were far away. He would get tired and lean against the amps – and every time he started looking hazy there was a guy just offstage wearing a Roland top who seemed to be watching him intently, shouting and trying to encourage him to keep going.
‘I still remember one of those old Alex moments. He wanted us to sing something like ‘Freedom’ for him. The response wasn’t good enough, and he got really wild: ‘I want more, louder, sing it for me, because this is my band!’ You could see the passion and really feel his enthusiasm! At the end of this song he invited all the boys and girls to come on stage to sing and dance with him. This became a real happening – the band disappeared among the audience.’
A few weeks later, with the tour at and end, the band were waiting for their ferry home at Zeebrugge. Alex suffered a heart attack, and on the way to the hospital suffered a second, fatal, one.
It was February 1982. A marine archaeologist claimed there were monsters in lochs all over Scotland, and Prince Charles asked to see his filmed evidence. Dee Hepburn was named British Film Actress of the year for her role in Gregory’s Girl. Billy Bremner won £100,000 in damages after being cleared of match-fixing. Norman Tebbit’s union-curbing legislation threatened a general strike, Glasgow University students campaigned to ban topless models on newspapers’ Page Threes, and the SFA wanted Scotland The Brave to be the World Cup anthem while the fans wanted Flower of Scotland. The Stranglers were top of the charts with Golden Brown, and The Model (Kraftwerk), Dead Ringer For Love (Meat Loaf) and Town Called Malice (The Jam) were in the top ten. And for Alex Harvey, the years of pushing, believing, encouraging and enjoying stacked up on the night before his 47th birthday, and it was all finally over.
TED: I got a call from a friend of mine: have you heard? Alex is dead. I put the phone down and I sat down on the bed in a daze. The phone rang again and it was a guy I knew on talk radio who asked if I’d do a phone-in. I just said, I’m not surprised, but I’m sad. Alex lived it to the edge.
ZAL: I was in Henley village hall, working on stuff with Tandoori Cassette – there was some really good stuff, stuff I wish I could conjure up now… Barry came in, white-faced, and told us it had been on the radio. The four of us just downed tools and sat there… Fuckin’ell… In a way it seemed like some kind closure. Dying before your time is a very teenage idol thing.
CHRIS: I was in the flat in Highbury I shared with Michael Schenker. Cozy Powell had heard and he came to tell me because he didn’t want me hearing from anyone else. It was just incredibly sad. I got very drunk and don’t remember the next couple of days.
HUGH: I was in London with my parents to visit my sister, and I was going to sign a deal with Ray Conn, who gave me £1000 for four songs. While I was down I arranged with Ted and Matthew to have a jam. But that day there was a phone call while I was out, and when I came back everyone knew Alex had died, and Alex’s father had asked if I would play at the funeral. My only concern was I might be nervous and screw it up, but I didn’t… I played the theme from Anthem, and my right knee started shaking and I was thinking, that’s him doing that, from beyond the grave. I don’t know if it was, but I wouldn’t put it by him…
Richard O’Brien was at the funeral too. ‘Alex’s dad met me when I arrived. He wasn’t well at the time, on a couple of sticks, and he said, no tears, Richard, no tears… And I said, You’re absolutely right, Dad, Alex wouldn’t like it – let’s keep it together today.” Then this lone piper struck up and we both just wept. Ah well, seemed like a good idea at the time…
TED: After the funeral we all went back to Alan Mair’s house, and a few of Alex’s mates were in one room, and our generation were in another. I went to the older guys and said, let’s sing the Gallowa’ Hills for Alex… They struck into a song I hardly recognised, all up-tempo and almost like a ditty, not the version we used to do. And that’s when I realised Alex had done to that song what he did to everything. He’d taken it and changed it until it became really powerful. It’s the only song I ever sing. I’ve sung it in my local, I sang it at my dear friend’s daughter’s funeral after she was murdered… But I thought about the song, and how many times we’d done it, and all the emotion of the moments in my life it had come up, and every moment said: Alex Harvey.