With more than 40 years at the top of the music business, Steve Harley reminisces about his south London childhood
By Ben West
Celebrated Deptford-born musician Steve Harley loves playing around the Greenwich and Blackheath area, not least because the area brings childhood memories flooding back.
“My dad Ron was the youngest of 10 children, living in a two-up two-down house in Deptford where the Pepys Estate is now. He left school at 13. He’s the only one of them left alive now, aged 90,” he says.
“He was a milkman. He delivered to about 600 homes in Greenwich South Street and Greenwich High Road with his horse and milk cart. My brothers and sisters would help out on Saturdays, but my Saturday job was instead washing all the other milk floats in New Cross.”
Steve’s early life was challenging, in that he spent four years in hospital from the age of three to 16, suffering from polio. At the age of 12 he was drawn to the works of John Steinbeck, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot, as well as Bob Dylan, paving the way for careers in writing and music.
Unsurprisingly, south London inspired many of Steve’s early songs.
“The first two Cockney Rebel albums were written before I got my record deal with EMI. Both were packed with surreal imagery from south London, various characters I’d met in Blackheath and New Cross.”
Many landmark stages of Steve’s life were in south east London, from playing the folk clubs of the local pubs at the start of his career (on nights that featured the likes of Julie Felix, John Martyn and Ralph McTell) to his daughter Greta’s birth in Greenwich Hospital in 1985.
“Talking about all this, you’re reminding me of my childhood,” says the lifelong Millwall fan, whose birth name was Stephen Nice. “I went to Haberdasher’s Aske’s, it was a really good grammar school, I had a wonderful time there.
“I’m five years into writing my autobiography. The Beeb recently took me back to places that matter and coming back to where I grew up touched me – it rang bells.”
Steve started out as a journalist, leaving school in the middle of the upper sixth [Year 13] without completing his A Levels. He trained with Essex County Newspapers and then ended up at the East London Advertiser before leaving for a career in music – being replaced by tv presenter Richard Madeley.
Was it easy giving up journalism for music?
“My dad was furious, it broke his heart,” Steve says. “He couldn’t believe I was giving up a good job. I was on the dole for nine months. Two years later, after I’d had success, he couldn’t stop boasting about it!
“I’d collected loads of experiences as a journalist. I’d seen the police scraping people off roads after car crashes, I’d have to confront grieving parents of dead teenagers. I have striking memories of my days in journalism, but music was pulling me in another direction. In those days you could leave one job and get another, unlike today.”
Some of the journalists he met during those times remain some of his best friends to this day.
“One of them trained with me at Essex Papers, then worked on Record Mirror in the 70s, and then was an EMI press officer – working on my records, strangely – and here we still are. I had lunch with him in Canary Wharf just last week.”
Despite his affection for south east London, Steve moved to Suffolk in the late 1980s.
“At that time I wasn’t playing many concerts, I was on a sabattical. We decided to move to the countryside. We lived off Lee Road, Blackheath, a splendid house with 15 rooms. We loved it. We had a decent garden there, but not land. I wanted more space and fresh air for my kids. But if someone told me to live anywhere in London again it’d definitely be here, Greenwich, Blackheath Village…”
He never tires of touring.
“I like travelling, I like having air tickets in my desk and things to look forward to. I never get tired of discovering new places. I spend any free time on tour in galleries, walking along the river, not just hanging around in the dressing room or the hotel. I’m lucky that I have guys in the band like me who have the same attitude and we often explore together.
“I’ve seen many great cities, but ultimately I’m really proud of being a Londoner. London’s right up there.”
When he plays, he’s sure to perform his hit ‘Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)’. Released in 1975, it remains one of the most played singles ever and has been covered by more than 100 artists in seven languages. However, the rest of the set may not be decided until just before a show.
“Sometimes I decide on the set list just five minutes beforehand, as I can’t make up my mind,” Steve says. “But it’s ok, as my band know a five-hour set in total.”
Whatever he decides to play on the night, with his exemplary extensive repertoire, it sure promises to be a great night of music.
This article appeared in Black + Green Magazine in 2016
