Album Review: Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - The Best Years Of Our Lives (Definitive Edition)

It’s an album, with the one song the world knows – in this case, the still often-covered Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me) – but probably worthy of the reissue revisiting as a mid-‘70s period piece with its glam-rock flash colliding with some more high falutin’ musical intentions. It was actually the band’s third album, after a couple of  middling European and UK hits, but the first with Harley giving himself top billing – mostly as he’d already given most of the original line-up the shove. As a friend and collaborator of Bowie and T.Rex’s Marc Bolan – the latter playing and singing uncredited on this record – Harley’s excess-fuelled ego was probably thinking he was the next one due for fame.

Make Me Smile is, of course, near-perfect: the singer’s beckoning sneer in the story, Jim Cregan’s flamenco-esque plucked guitar solo. But it sits among rambling near-prog like Back To The Farm and dubious second single, Mr Raffles (Man, It Was Mean), with its squelchy synth sound of the time and way too white would-be reggae stylings.

Bonuses on this updating include the original demo of the hit – a neat little pop strum obviously turned into something else, not the least due to producer (Beatles engineer, and later of his own eponymous Project) Alan Parsons’ input; and a Hammersmith Odeon concert showing the contemporary version of the band equally knew their way around a pop tune and meandering guitar jamming. It’s an interesting document of its time.