‘I’ll make you a deal,’ said a hoarse Steve Harley. ‘I won’t forget you, if you don’t forget me.’ He was on stage bellowing above a chanting crowd at Hammersmith Odeon on a Monday night in April 1975.
(Pulling those numbers together and writing down that year makes me realise how ancient we are, those of us who remember it, and how alien it is to those born years afterwards who take little from it. If they return to that era, as trends in music and fashion tend to, it’s to the following year, when the outlook of a rebellious rising generation changed. Anyone could be in a band, and anyone could look as though they were.) The previous month, during which Harley celebrated his 24th birthday, the single from his then current album, propelled him into the stratosphere by reaching the Number One slot in the UK for a fortnight. Harley and his band Cockney Rebel were at a hotel in Los Angeles. They jumped into the pool, fully clothed, on hearing the n…