Alex Harvey - Anthem Ever since I was a kid this particular song has taken me on an emotional journey many times that I cant quite explain or put my finger on... from the lyrics (which are a bit abstract really) to the drums & pipes and the beauty of the chorus to Zals haunting guitar licks it gives me goosebumps every… single… time. It would honestly be hard for me to explain how much of an impact this mans music has had in my life… From a very young age my mother had always expounded how our family was Scottish and I needed to be proud of that, but it wasnt until I heard The Sensational Alex Harvey Band that I somehow through his music understood that and embraced it… a bit odd in hindsight really as apart from the occasional use of the bagpipes there really isnt anything in his music that is indigenously Scottish… perhaps it was a certain attitude that I picked up on. I do recall when the Framed LP came out that I would stare at the inside sleeve… the picture of Alex and the boys playing cards and drinking beer with a backdrop of graffiti Let Glasgow Free and the rubble of urban squalor surrounding and I would feel what it was like to be Scottish. I still have that exact LP (as well as all the others) in my collection to this day Actually my very first act of teenage rebellion was partly Alexs fault… with an inability and desire to locate a proper poster in the heartland of America I decided one day… while Mom was at work… to paint one wall of my bedroom a huge stenciled SAHB logo that I likened to the one on the cover of the Next LP in orange, black and white. What I wouldnt do to see a picture of that wall now… I only got to see the band live once and it was a bittersweet moment… third on a bill with Aerosmith and The Edgar Winter Group and the show was running late… REALLY late and the audience was getting painfully antsy. In fact they were already booing by the time Alex hit the stage. As for me, I had wrestled my way to the very front and somewhere along the way had my glasses broken. I used the one remaining lens to focus on my heroes as they arrived. The crowd continued to boo and in the end the lights came up during the third song… this one Anthem I bawled like a baby when I opened up a copy of Creem magazine in 1982 and read that he had died waiting for a ferry in Belgium… had always hoped I would have one more chance to see them live… perhaps meet the man himself but it was not to be. My first trip to the UK many years later demanded that the first stop be Glasgow… and the following morning a walk over the River Clyde to the area that Alex grew up in and as expected I developed a love affair with that city that continues to this day When my mother passed away five years ago and we were planning the memorial it was obvious what the final moment should be. I hired a bagpiper from Anchorage to learn Anthem and it was to be played as we scattered her ashes out to see. What I hadnt planned on was the female bagpiper showing up completely drunk and most of the ashes being blown back into our faces on that cold February Alaska night but it was perfect… oh so perfect The lesson in all this? Music… it truly can transcend everything in so many ways and on this day I just felt the need to try and put things into words that truly can never really be put into words. RIP Alex Harvey
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 01:40:11 +0000
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