The Sensational Alex Harvey Band: Tomorrow belongs to me LP 1975 Gatefold. Vertigo Swirl & Spaceship Labels. Check the exclusive video, showing the vinyl for sale! Scottish Rock titans. Check audio (whole album, all songs) + a band documentary + a double video review of the album

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Check the exclusive video, showing the vinyl for sale! 

Check the exclusive video, showing the vinyl for sale!


Alex Harvey

Kitted out in his trademark black-and-white striped top, Alex Harvey came to glam rock via Hamburg’s beat clubs and the slums of his native Glasgow’s Gorbals, and he injected the 70s with an air of menace and theatricality that was his and his alone. Though a showman first and foremost, Harvey’s charismatic, thickly-accented voice lent itself to material ranging from the hard-rocking ‘Swampsnake’ to a Vaudevillian cover of Jacques Brel’s ‘Next’. He died in 1982, but has been cited as influence by John Lydon and Nick Cave, while Slade’s Noddy Holder astutely described his music as “decadent rock burlesque”.


Check this double review of the album:

Category : very underrated

If you’re a casual music fan you might never have heard of this band, but The Sensational Alex Harvey Band (often simply abbreviated to SAHB) were voted the fifth greatest Scottish band of all time in a 2005 survey that had 15,000 participants, reaching higher up the list than NazarethTexas and Primal Scream.

SAHB was a 70’s Glam Rock band led by singer Alex Harvey. They got quite a lot of respect and their albums were for the most part well received by critics.


BBC Scotland ‘Ex:S’  tribute to Alex Harvey. In two parts


GATEFOLD COVER.UK PRESS VERTIGO 9102 003 LAMINATED COVER
…STEREO…SPACE SHIP VERTIGO

Vertigo Swirl & Spaceship Labels

2ND HAND RECORD. PLAYS OK, SOME WEAR ON THE P/S and the VINYL
Matrix Nos: 9102003 1Y// 2 E 1 1, 9102003 2Y//2 E 1 4 8

Label: Vertigo ‎– 9102 003
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Gatefold
Country: UK
Released:  1975
Genre: Rock & Roll, Glam
A1 Action Strasse 3:15
Backing Vocals – Barry St. John, Liza Strike, Vicki BrownWritten-By – A Harvey*, H McKenna*, A Cleminson*
A2 Snake Bite 3:55
Written-By – A Harvey*
A3 Soul In Chains 3:55
Backing Vocals – Barry St. John, Liza Strike, Vicki BrownWritten-By – A Harvey*, D Batchelor*, H McKenna*, A Cleminson*
A4 The Tale Of The Giant Stone Eater 7:20
Written-By – A Harvey*, H McKenna*
A5 Ribs And Balls 1:51
Written-By – A Harvey*, C Glen*
B1 Give My Compliments To The Chef 5:36
Written-By – A Harvey*, H McKenna*, A Cleminson*
B2 Sharks Teeth 5:54
Written-By – A Harvey*, A Cleminson*
B3 Shake That Thing 3:20
Written-By – A Harvey*
B4 Tomorrow Belongs To Me 4:14
Written-By – F Ebb*, J Kander*
B5 To Be Continued 0:50
Written-By – A Harvey*, A Cleminson*

Marketed By – Phonogram
Phonographic Copyright (p) – Phonogram Ltd.
Copyright (c) – Eiger
Copyright (c) – Panache Music Ltd.
Made By – Howards Printers (Slough) Ltd.
Printed By – Howards Printers (Slough) Ltd.
Recorded At – Scorpio Studios
Mixed At – Scorpio Studios
Produced For – Mountain Records
Pressed By – Phonodisc Ltd.

Arranged By [Strings, Horns] – Derek Wadsworth
Bass, Backing Vocals – Chris Glen
Drums, Backing Vocals – Ted McKenna
Engineer – Dennis Weinreich, Ray Hendriksen
Guitar, Backing Vocals – Zal Cleminson
Illustration [Sleeve] – Dave Field
Keyboards, Synthesizer, Backing Vocals – Hugh McKenna
Lead Vocals, Guitar, Harmonica – Alex Harvey
Photography – HEIWA
Producer – David Batchelor
Recorded By [Extra Recording And Mixing] – Peter Swettenham
Gatefold jacket
Made in England [on labels and inner]


Check audio (whole album, all songs):


FINALLY!!!!!!!!
Yes, I’ll order it! Do you have any idea how long I have waited? “Give My Compliments to the Chef” is a great number, “Sharks Teeth” is hilarious, “The Tale of The Giant Stone Eater” is a frighteningly prophetic song about the USA – one of the best he ever wrote. And the ending of “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” and “To Be Continued…” breath taking. Most of Alex Harvey is boring compared to the performances in this LP, this is by far his best studio work. Crazed, artistic and very well done.


The 1975 release marks the apex of Alex Harveys artistic vision for the band and a peek into a project that never made it to CD.


The central track is the eco-epic The Tale of the Giant Stone Eater, which is a depressing gaze into a ravaged environment and the excavation (permanent loss) of archeological history. Complete with vocal parts for three characters – commentator, girl, man – Harvey powerfully delivers a timeless, but disturbing, message that is void of the tongue-in-cheek hi-jinks found on a large portion of his songwriting.


Action Strasse, Give My Compliments to the Chef, Sharks Teeth and the title track (from the stage show Cabaret) is solid performance art, with the band – Zal Cleminson (g), Chris Glen (b), Hugh McKenna (k), Ted McKenna (d) – in full flight. To Be Continued…(Hail Vibrania!) is a glance into the Vibrania/Vambo rock opera that Harvey had hinted at during gigs and in interviews for a number of years.


SAHB was stretching their boundaries musically while maintaining a hefty touring schedule. Tomorrow was today for the group, as Harvey successfully demonstrated that the band could capture the incredible live energy in the studio.


‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’: Alex Harvey Embraces The Future

After years of toil, the Scottish frontman and his band were en route to the UK album top ten.

Tomorrow Belongs To Me Alex Harvey

Alex Harvey travelled a long and arduous road to his mid-1970s chart success in the UK. In May 1975, he was en route to his first-ever appearance in the album top ten with his Sensational Alex Harvey Band line-up. No wonder the record was called Tomorrow Belongs To Me.

Sensational since ’72

The group had been recording under the SAHB banner since 1972 with the Framed album, which contained mainly Harvey compositions but was named after the Jerry Leiber-Mike Stoller gem they covered on it. It also showed their blues roots with a version of Willie Dixon’s ‘I Just Want To Make Love To You.’

The first UK album chart appearance by the group came in October 1974, with the album The Impossible Dream, which debuted and peaked at No. 16. This was in the days before Harvey and co had their big crossover singles success. That didn’t arrive until the summer of ’75, when their idiosyncratic reading of Tom Jones’ ‘Delilah’ hit the top ten.

But their album audience was well enough established that on the chart of 10 May 1975, the quirky rock stylings of their Tomorrow Belongs To Me album entered at No. 18. A week later, it was in the top ten, at No. 9. By now, the band were almost entirely self-contained, co-producing the album with David Batchelor and writing nearly all their own material.

The album’s eclectic, often theatrical song structures recalled everyone from Frank Zappa to The Who to Procol Harum, and the album further established the Sensational Alex Harvey Band as one of Britain’s most distinctive acts of the mid-1970s. Singles buyers would learn of their charms later that year. For a while at least, tomorrow did indeed belong to Alex Harvey.


Sensational Alex Harvey Band

The glam rock band from Glasgow were fronted by Alex Harvey and known for their topical songwriting.

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band photo by Jorgen Angel and Redferns

Glaswegian blues and rock musician Alex Harvey was a veteran of the music scene long before he brushed shoulders with fame. A gifted interpreter, innovator and a highly distinctive band leader and songwriter, his 1970s variation on glam rook with The Sensational Alex Harvey Band employed a tough but tongue in cheek take on theatrical presentation with cheerful props and a wildly exciting stage image enhanced by his ability to step into character while his lead guitar foil Zal Cleminson chewed the scenery alongside him. Alex released two accomplished blues discs in the mid-sixties – Alex Harvey and His Soul Band and an album simply called The Blues; both on Polydor and well worth tracking down. They remain big sellers in Germany where the SAHB would also thrive. As a unit the group were perhaps more successful on the boards, their natural milieu, than they were in the studio. The albums were terrific, forces of nature all, but stick Alex and company in a theatre or a club and everything made weird sense.

Harvey enjoyed life and accomplished a great deal before being taken from us far too young in 1982, the day before his 47th birthday. Revered in his native Scotland, Harvey spent more time living in London where he recorded excellent albums like Joker Is WildFramedNextThe Impossible Dream – all of them receiving considerable and justified critical acclaim. His albums are available via the Universal reissue programme, often as 2 on 1 packages and decent compilations are available for swift discovery.

Born in the working class district of Kinning Park, Glasgow. Alexander James Harvey was an early practitioner of the peculiarly British skiffle music though he was also interested in R&B and Dixieland jazz, the other traditional go-to form of the era. In 1960 Alex Harvey and his Big Beat Band opened for Johnny Gentle and His Group – historians will recall that His Group was actually the very early Beatles (JohnPaulGeorge, Stuart Sutcliffe and Tommy Moore). If the significance of this event didn’t register at the time Alex would relate his reminiscences later on with considerable glee. “All at once Elvis and Little Richard burst into the charts. . . and you were either a believer or an outcast,” he told me in 1976. A true believer, Alex began by playing songs by Muddy WatersChuck Berry and Big Bill Broonzy.

In the 1960s his blues, folk and rock and roll apprenticeship continued but by 1967 he was part of the underground scene and played in the pit orchestra in the original London cast stage production of the hippy musical Hair at the Cambridge Theatre where he stayed for five years.

In 1972 Harvey caught the new progressive bug and formed The Sensational Alex Harvey Band (aka SAHB) with Cleminson, bassist Chris Glen (ex Tear Gas) and Hugh and Ted McKenna on keyboards and drums (also ex Tear Gas). But before they made it to vinyl Alex camped out at Regent Sound Studios and recorded the mostly-demo form album The Joker Is Wild, helmed by Paul Murphy, featuring his brother Les (Stone the Crows) on lead guitar.

The official SAHB debut is Framed, a combination of fine electric blues and originals committed to tape with Morgan Studios genius engineer Mike Bobak capturing the results, including a raunchy take on Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make to You” and the warped folk suite “Isobel Goudie”.

Next (1973), with the cover art depicting Alex in his trademark striped shirt, is the first of the band’s out and out hard rockers with eclectic material – originals in the main plus the title cut being a Jacques Brel/Mort Shuman composition. Having built a solid reputation as a live act The Impossible Dream turned that good will into chart accomplishment. Engineered by Martin Rushent (Fleetwood Mac, T. Rex, Yes et al) this fusion of incendiary rock and cartoon imagery (Harvey appropriating the “Sergeant Fury” guise) appealed to those with a penchant for Alice Cooper and US comic book culture. They refined the act for Tomorrow Belongs to Me that includes their classics “Snake Bite”, “Action Strasse” and “Give My Compliments To The Chef”.

The Live album (recorded at Hammersmith Odeon in 1975) is the pinnacle disc. It contains their Top Ten hit, a cover of the murder ballad “Delilah”, now given a Scottish reboot, as opposed to Tom Jones’ power ballad. Adding synths and BJ. Cole’s pedal steel to the mix the Live album can be obtained as the 2 in 1 disc with The Penthouse Tapes, another eccentric set that covers Cooper’s “School’s Out”, the Osmond’s “Crazy Horses”, Irving Berlin’s “Cheek to Cheek” and Del Shannon’s 1961 smash “Runaway”. Hats off to Harvey for that one.

The semi-punning SAHB Stories is a cult favourite thanks to “Boston Tea Party” and “$25 For a Massage”, just some of the tunes that had an obvious influence on AC/DC whose Bon Scott surely borrowed the Alex vocal roar, and why not? Incidentally SAHB had a good following in Oz. Nick Cave is another fan.

Confusingly the Fourplay album, 1977, doesn’t include Harvey who had decided to take a sabbatical and make his own project Alex Harvey Presents: The Loch Ness Monster.

The Sarge was back for Rock Drill (1978) with Tommy Eyre taking over keyboards duties on what is now viewed as an album for diehards. The title track is as hard as they ever got and “Water Beastie” sees them spinning off into funk and reggae grooves with success.

By his own admission Harvey was suffering from road fatigue and associated physical problems due to his love affair with alcohol allied to chronic back pain. In fact the SAHB made their last emotional appearance at the Reading Festival in August 1977 and blew the place apart.

The main man recovered his mojo to make The Mafia Stole My Guitar and Soldier On The Wall, released shortly before his death in Zeebrugge, Belgium to a fatal heart attack. One of the great front men his passing left a sizable hole in the British rock scene and made many realise that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone. The self-styled Sheik of Tomorrow and King of the Cowboys was a one-off for sure, an agreeable philosopher, raconteur and a highly knowledgeable musicologist. In a career that took him from Glasgow’s Gorbals to Hamburg’s strip clubs to London’s hipster scene and Cleveland’s hard core rock arena one was always guaranteed showmanship, flair and fun from him. He remains sorely missed.

Additional information

Weight 0.25 kg

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