Into a new era. The band collapses in July and Steve quickly regroups to form the next version of Cockney Rebel. The band thereafter were known as 'Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel'.
It was a little strange for me as I was friends with all the guys from the old band, especially JC. Within a month of the split, JC and Fiona got married. Check out the wedding day picture, and yours truly as best man all scrubbed up.
Because the band had split up, pretty soon after the second album 'Psychomodo' was finished, when it came to put out the new single 'Mr Soft', the band had to quickly record a new version. The original of course had a violin solo, but in this Top of the Pops episode that you can see at the top here, you can hear that the violin solo has now turned into a keyboard version. Almost every track had a new feel to it now that JC had left the band.
As the band reformed into another version, I was in an odd place, being part of both the old band and the new at the same time. This was just before my dear friend John Crocker got married to Fiona (F as I affectionally call her). Fiona, Shirley and Elaine were three of the four girls that JC & I had shared a house in Hampton Court with for the past year. We had met them at a disco in Kingston Polytechnic and over the next year had created a friendship that lasts to the present day. So if you can picture a house, all mod cons, two guys and four girls, it was the closest thing to the TV show 'Friends" you will ever get to.....
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We had so little time once the second version of the band was assembled. Aylesbury Friars produced a space at short notice for the band to play live for the first time, as the following night we were to play in front of 30,000 people at the Reading Festival, and oh my god, how truly amazing the festival show went down. Really moving to watch 30,000 people singing "Tumbling Down". It still remains in my head as an extraordinary event, all the more so because it was only the second gig the band had played together.
Here's a link to the posters and flyers for the festival - for some reason SH & Cockney Rebel are not on them, maybe it was a late booking? We were definately there tho' - there's a photo of Steve on stage.....not sure if anyone can enlighten me on this?
https://www.ukrockfestivals.com/reading-74.html
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This logo links to a great history website of this glorious venue. I spent a lot of time here over the years and in 1979 hired the place for two weeks for rehearsals of the Kate Bush Tour.
Rick Burton runs the site. Rick used to be the stage manager at the Rainbow and has created a great memory to the rock and roll venue it once was and we thank you Rick.
Now to your left is a typical Trigram Itinerary of the times. Trevor Beeton, the band's manager, used to type these one pagers for me to use, and they were duplicated with carbon paper so I always made sure I had the original or the one below, as the fourth copy was pretty illegible. Of course we had neither photo copying or printers in those days, that's why for the most part I used a diary to capture and retain important information, addresses and phone numbers in particular.
At the end of October we got to do some shows in Germany supporting Wishbone Ash in quite large venues. It was a new experience for me and I got to know the tour manager - Mel Baister, the manager - Miles Copeland, and my life long friend Kevin Harrington, who looked after the band. Little did I know that within 2 weeks I would be asked to join them and take over Kevin's gig and fly off to America for the rest of the year.
Looking at my datesheet, I remember going to Oxford and seeing 10cc in concert. They were, to date, the tightest band I'd ever seen live. They were just perfection. Check them out on these clips both from 1974.
Just as an aside, I just looked up on a Band Name Origins list, where this band got their name from......apparently it's the amount of ejaculate of the average man.......new one on me!
