February 27, 1951 – March 17, 2024
Classic Rock’s Dave Ling looks back at the life and music of the Cockney Rebel.
Steve Harley, the lead singer and songwriter for Cockney Rebel, has died of cancer. The 73-year-old, one of the more colourful rock stars of the 70s and beyond, passed away at his home in Suffolk one month after pausing his latest run of live shows in order to be treated for the condition. A post on Harley’s website at the time read: “Due to ongoing treatment for cancer, Steve cannot commit to any concerts in 2024. Steve is hoping next year will be altogether different. He appreciates all your kind words and good wishes. Team SH.”
In a statement, Harley’s daughter Greta said: “We are devastated to announce that our wonderful Husband and Father has passed away peacefully at home, with his family by his side. The birdsong from his woodland that he loved so much was singing for him. His home has been filled with the sounds and laughter of his four grandchildren.
“Stephen. Steve. Dad. Grandad. Steve Harley. Whoever you know him as, his heart exuded only core elements. Passion, kindness, generosity. And much more, in abundance.”
It concluded: “We know he will be desperately missed by people all over the world, and we ask that you respectfully allow us privacy to grieve.”
The second of five children, Stephen Malcolm Ronald Nice was born in Deptford, South London. A fascinating, self-confident and wily character, he predicted success in his very first interview, hatching carefully calculated plans to stardom. The youngster had plenty of time in which to plot; between the ages of two and a half and 16, after contracting the highly contagious infection polio, he was hospitalised multiple times.
“I had a couple of long stretches, plus there were loads of threeand one-month periods,” he told Classic Rock’s Geoff Barton in 2004. “In those days if you needed physiotherapy they kept you in for months. [In total] I spent four years of my life in Queen Mary’s Hospital For Children in Carshalton Beeches, Surrey.”
It was during those long periods spent largely alone, getting stuck into the music of Bob Dylan and a pile of books by DH Lawrence and Ernest Hemingway, that Harley developed a fictional character who he named ‘Little Steve’. Back in 2004, Harley admitted that despite the intervening decades, Little Steve would make sporadic return visits to his consciousness. “Increasingly I find myself thinking about Little Steve, and how he was affected by those years of… solitary confinement, almost,” Harley said.
He received an acoustic guitar from his parents when he was 10, and also took violin lessons from age nine to 15 and played in the school orchestra.
Leaving school at 17 without taking his A Levels, he
