“Are you going? Are you going to the tea party?”
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band were always their own type of party. In the mid Seventies they were the number one live draw, with a highly theatrical stage show. Yes, they played covers (they had a hit with a wicked parody of Tom Jones' Delilah), but sources ranged eclectically from Jaques Brel to Lieber and Stoller. Their rock theatrics drew from an older vaudevillian tradition. Guitarist Zal Cleminson's pierrot facepaint has been as influential as his riffs. Maybe they were too varied. Their original songs in many ways are precursors to modern alternative rock and metal. A more focussed approach could have established them better in the market. Instead they found their particular niche by falling between stools.
Boston Tea Party took them in to the charts and on to Top Of The Pops. It's an unlikely hit, bizarrely a favourite of Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York. And almost certainly the only record to refer to George Washington's (mythical) wooden dentures.
"Fire in the mountains, flames upon the heath
As the President spits out the news, he's biting them wooden teeth".
Part of their appeal to me is that underlying breadth of interest. Alex might look like Dennis the Menace's disreputable uncle but there's intelligence and hard-knock experience. Alex and Zal were a unique double act, a mix of menace and mischief with a dynamic no one else has emulated.
For many of us Boston Tea Party was our invitation to their world. Musically, it's insidious rather than outright catchy. The verse pedals above a throbbing C# - the bass note stays the same while the chords change above it. For the chorus the pedal note drops two whole tones to A. I haven't found another song anywhere that uses quite that move.
If you're new to the Sensational Alex Harvey Band get a flavour of them here:
For a taste of where they could have gone had circumstances been kinder search out ‘Anthem’. It's on their third album, but there's a live performance on YouTube that, despite murky video quality, still thrills the heart.