88 SAHB Story Tomorrow Belongs to Me 89 charm. He was a master showman, a thorough professional, and his stage persona managed to be alternately intimidating and avuncular, and sometimes both at once. At one point he actually delivered a brief chiding lecture – I can’t think of a more appropriate way to describe it – in the course of which he told the audience we were “very lucky boys and girls” to be living in the USA. My overall impression was that he genuinely cared about the audience on some level. He was in loco parentis, doing his part to help us shape up. The show was one of the most cleverly theatrical rock performances I’ve seen – Alex Harvey was right up there with Bowie – and Ian Anderson – as a consummate showman.’ Alex’s ‘chiding lecture’ on this tour was based around the idea of America as a young nation: ‘You’re barely 200 years old and you have every ethnic group under the sun here,’ he’d say; then, depending on how the show was going, he’d finish with, ‘Don’t fuck it up’ or ‘And you’re acting like a bunch of babies’. In the middle of the tour Mountain released the version of Delilah recorded at Hammersmith. It was probably an attempt to resolve the continuing business issue of representing the band on a single; but the recording had never been planned for release. An eight-digit calculator with memory cost £12.95 and bargain wigs started at £2.50. Billy Connolly raised a court action against a shop calling itself ‘The Big Yins’ but the judge pointed out other people in Glasgow could be called ‘Big Yin’, recalling the phrase from a Dave Willis song. Muhammad Ali announced he’d defend his world boxing title against Jean-Pierre Coopman. And SAHB made the top ten with Delilah. TED: We got a telegram from Bill saying, congratulations. I didn’t know it was even being released. We were surprised it had been, and they did it while we were on tour. It did always go down well live... ZAL: We got stamped with it, though – in a lot of ways it was a bad song to have a hit with. If you Alex encouraging the audience while recording Delilah at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1975 didn’t know what the band was about it gave you a certain message. Although to be fair it actually Bang, Framed and Anthem. Delilah, a rip of the Tom Jones hit, quickly became a fans’ favourite, was a fair example of what the band was about... if you knew what you were talking about. complete as it was with Zal and Chris in another SAHB dance routine. CHRIS: Oh, aye, it stamped us alright. The next congratulatory telegram was from Les Reid and Barry Mason, who wrote Delilah, saying, well done on CHRIS: Delilah was chosen purely so we could do a dance, with the aim of replacing Runaway, your hit and here’s the sheet music for She’s A Lady, Tom which had been overplayed because we gigged so much. God help us if one of us got the dance Jones’ next single, if we wanted to do that... wrong, though – because the other one would kick him up the arse... Zal was an awful one for EDDIE: But everybody loves success, and Alex had an changing it – as soon as we got it right he’d get it wrong, so I thought I was getting it wrong, then ego the size of Glasgow... he loved glory. I don’t know we’d get it right again and he’d change it. It was just a good laugh. why it is, but when people from Glasgow make it they The Tull tour really didn’t work at all – it was a profile thing. I think their music is incompatible with enjoy it all the more. I think it’s because you’re not almost anyone else – it’s not a slight, but I can’t imagine who your second-favourite band is if expected to make it. Everyone who knew Alex, friends they’re your favourite... and family, all basked in the reflected glory. ZAL: Financially it made no difference at all... I don’t Tull fan Danny McMillin agrees. ‘I saw SAHB open for Jethro Tull in Seattle, Washington. I remember a big difference. There was a lot of momentum never heard of them before or since. They were the absolute without-a-doubt worst band I’ve ever at the time. We were constantly working, touring, had the squirming misfortune to see and hear. During the middle of the set, a kilted Alex ripped off recording. But we were getting nearer the front page. his shirt, took a can of spray paint and wrote ‘Vambo Rules!’ on a fake wall. I’d have to say that was Occasionally we’d be on the front page. the high point of their musical abilities... After a concert of boos and yells to get off, Alex profaned CHRIS: And they went, look, we’ve put it in a picture sleeve. Oh, that’s great, the first 10,000 have the uneducated American audience in an extended colloquy, before leaving the stage after about a picture of the band on it – but what they didn’t say was you lose a point of profit for a picture 20 minutes of “music.” I guess we just didn’t get it.’ sleeve! And you lose a point when they do a gatefold sleeve for you – they never told you these Alabama DJ Lee Moore did get it, though: ‘I was at least partly prepared for the experience, things. And now we had a pressure we’d never had before. The record company wanted a follow- being a big fan of the band on record. But nothing could have prepared me for Harvey’s enormous up hit straight away. 90 SAHB Story Tomorrow Belongs to Me 91 SAHB were rushed back to the UK to make an appearance on Top of the Pops. It wasn’t a scanned it closely. These were those guys, huh? I still remember the thing that hit me hardest was moment too soon – because all their gear, and the truck it was stowed in, had been stolen in the spreadeagle photo of Zal on the back. I thought, these guys have got to be cool. Miami, two dates before the end of the Tull tour. ‘So I got it home. Fanfare came on... uh-oh: horns! For a moment I was afraid this was a big mistake – I wanted rock. Horns don’t rock. But then, of course, Faith Healer started up – and there CHRIS: Alex’s jeans were ripped up the middle, and sometimes he’d hang out of them – you could was my rock. God, the impact of that song for the first time still resonates after fuckin’ decades! see the front row going, oooooh.... We came off after a show and everyone’s body temperature is in The spooky throbbing intro – never heard anything like it – that opening riff, Alex’s incantation, the hundreds – and I’m like, has someone fuckin’ shat themselves? And Alex goes, it might be me... more spook, Ted’s double drum roll... and then Zal hit that two-string-chord riff for the first time. and the inside of his jeans is all full of shite. And I knew true awe! The next morning our truck was gone – the mafia stole our guitars. That’s when we had to fly ‘I hung amazed on every note for the rest of the song. Hugh was the first rock keyboardist I’d back for Delilah being in the charts. But we had to fly to New York first to get new guitars. So for heard who was actually an asset to the band. Alex’s performance was chilling. I was in the presence once we were travelling first-class via Delhi to London. In those days it was £1200 a ticket. I woke of an instant classic and I knew it! The rest of the album grabbed damn near as hard, and I got a up in a drunken stupour on first class, and I opened the window shutter and saw this beautiful feel for the unique story-music world of SAHB. This band was powerful, accomplished, inimitable, sunrise. But the stewardess closed it again, and I’m like, twelve hundred fuckin’ quid? I’ll fuckin’ entertaining and inspiring in a way no rock band was before or since. Chef was strange and epic, have my sunrise... Then the senior stewardess comes up and says, sir, you can’t do that – there’s Delilah and Framed were hilarious. I played the album nonstop for days afterward. I lucked out the Indian Ambassador sitting opposite you. I say, fuck him, he pays the same as me... So they big-time finding it.’ gave me the entire upstairs bar to myself to get rid of me! By this time SAHB were back in the US of A again, on a tour that included two dates with Tear Gas idol Frank Zappa – an idol Zal was too scared to meet. With Delilah peaking at Number 6, it was inevitable that the rest of the show was released, and the Live album came out in October. It only featured six tracks (not including the fanfare): Faith CHRIS: Alex and I spent half an hour in his dressing room. He was great. He talked about the most Healer, Tomahawk Kid, Vambo, Chef, Delilah and Framed – subsequent bootlegs of the whole mundane things and the most interesting things.