{"id":46487,"date":"2024-03-18T02:29:42","date_gmt":"2024-03-18T02:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/steve-harley-make-me-smile-singer-dies-at-73\/"},"modified":"2024-03-18T02:29:42","modified_gmt":"2024-03-18T02:29:42","slug":"steve-harley-make-me-smile-singer-dies-at-73","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/steve-harley-make-me-smile-singer-dies-at-73\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Harley, \u2018Make Me Smile\u2019 Singer, Dies at 73"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Steve Harley, the 1970s British rock star who topped U.K. music charts with the single \u201cMake Me Smile,\u201d died on Sunday. He was 73.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He died at his home, his family said on Facebook. No cause was given but Mr. Harley had announced last month that he would step away from the stage to undergo treatment for cancer and previously canceled several concerts scheduled for this year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Harley was the frontman of the band Cockney Rebel, which he formed in the early 1970s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">His biggest hit was the 1975 single \u201cMake Me Smile,\u201d in which Mr. Harley\u2019s even-keeled vocals and melancholic lyrics cruise over instrumentals bearing the optimistic sound distinct to bands of the era. The song hit the top of the British charts in February of that year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Other songs found success outside of Britain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cSebastian,\u201d a single featured on the band\u2019s debut 1973 album, \u201cThe Human Menagerie,\u201d wound up being a No. 1 hit in Belgium and the Netherlands, according to Mr. Harley\u2019s website.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In 1986, Mr. Harley and the singer Sarah Brightman recorded the original \u201cPhantom of the Opera\u201d for the musical of the same name by Andrew Lloyd Webber.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Steve Harley was born on Feb. 27, 1951, in London and was the second of five children, according to his online biography. His mother, who sang jazz and swing in the 1940s, offered Mr. Harley one of his earliest introductions to music.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cShe sang around the house when we were kids,\u201d he said in a 2022 interview for the Tim Quinn YouTube channel, comparing his mother\u2019s voice to the British vocalist Anne Shelton.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">When he was a child, his mother would sing along to Buddy Holly and other 1950s pop singers who would play on the radio, he said in the interview.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A full list of survivors was not immediately available.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">An illness and surgeries kept Mr. Harley rotating in and out of the hospital as a child. At age 12, while recovering from surgery, Mr. Harley found an affinity for the works of D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway and other authors and took a liking to Bob Dylan\u2019s music, according to his online biography.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">These artists moved a young Mr. Harley to realize that his life would likely be \u201cpreoccupied with words and music,\u201d his website said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He indeed became preoccupied with words in the late 1960s and early 1970s as he pursued a career in journalism, working for several daily newspapers in the U.K.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Around the same time, his life as a singer was born in London nightclubs where he would perform free and met his eventual Cockney Rebel bandmates, with whom he struck the band\u2019s first record deal in 1972.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A prolific performer, Mr. Harley\u2019s singing days stretched into his final years. He took the stage as recently as 2023.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steve Harley, the 1970s British rock star who topped U.K. music charts with the single \u201cMake Me Smile,\u201d died on Sunday. He was 73. He died at his home, his family said on Facebook. No cause was given but Mr. Harley had announced last month that he would step away from the stage to undergo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}