His early musical influences were traditional jazz. He flirted with the trumpet as part of Glasgow's Dixieland revival but switched to guitar and vocal to become a life-long rocker. He started out covering Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry and Big Bill Broonzy. He became a Teddy Boy but despite the new look was heralded in the Daily Record in 1957 as being "Scotland’s Tommy Steele" after he won a talent competition run by the newspaper.
Extracts from the accompanying The Greatest Scot television programme are being added to these biographical notes as the programme is broadcast between November 9 and 13. If you live outside the UK, you will not be able to see these, but you may enjoy other videos about some of the subjects which are available via links in the text.
In 1959 he formed the blues and soul influenced Alex Harvey Soul Band, and then found more success as part of the pit band for iconic musical Hair before forming The Sensational Alex Harvey Band in 1972. That same year his brother Leslie was electrocuted and died on stage when sound-checking for his band Stone the Crows, with the tragedy, some believe fuelling the rich period of creativity which followed.
37 years old when he formed SAHB, the group - bassist Chris Glen, guitarist Zal Cleminson, Ted McKenna and cousin Hugh McKenna on keyboards and drums - went on to release 7 LPs between 1972 and 1976, touring constantly the rest of the time.
Their first album, Framed (1972) was recorded in just 6 days but it was live performances that really defined the band, with Alex encouraging the other band members to be as theatrical and extrovert as possible.
This eclecticism and eccentricity soon became the band’s talking point with Harvey drawing on in all kinds of musical theatre and vaudeville influences. In a period when glam rock was taking off, this was glam with purpose and intellect.
1973 album Next featured the first song about Vambo - Alex’s Scottish comic book super hero, who in Alex’s words is “…between Santa Claus and Captain Marvel, coming to the rescue.” The name started to appear on brick walls all over the UK, especially in Glasgow.
Meanwhile the live shows were getting wilder. At a festival in Oslo, the stage was at the top of an old ski-slope with a lake at the bottom and Harvey, stark naked on the far shore of the lake save for a swimming cap fashioned from a plastic bag, proceed to swim across make his way up the ski-slope and through the crowd and when he reached the stage pulled on his T-shirt and jeans to introduce "The Sensational. . . Alex. . . Harvey. . . Band".
The prank made the front pages all over Norway the next day. Harvey was no stranger to shock tactics - in Hamburg gigging with the Alex Harvey Soul Band the singer had dressed up as Hitler on stage.
In 1975 SAHB finally made it onto Top Of The Pops with a cover version of Delilah. In 1982, while on European tour with his new band, The Electric Cowboys, Alex collapsed in Belgium and died of a heart attack. It was February 4 1982 - one day before his 47th birthday.
