You will find Steve Harley's five latest diary entries on this page, and all previous entries can be viewed in the Archive section.

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Click here for DIARY ENTRY 21/06/09

Click here for DIARY ENTRY 10/06/09

Click here for DIARY ENTRY 29/05/09

Click here for DIARY ENTRY 17/03/09

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DIARY 26/06/09

Now Michael Jackson has been taken, probably at the hands of careless Californian physicians of low morals and expensive habits.

Where were we? Oh yes. Flawed genius.

DIARY 21/06/09

Looking For Eric. Flawed genius. Flawed expression. Every Genius is flawed. And all genius is flawed. By its very nature, the wayward mind, the extraordinary imagination of the greatest artists, entrepreneurs, inventors and sportsmen, is flawed. It cannot be anything else: not ordinary; never stable, and impossibly exasperating. Read Eliot and take your time. Research the allegories and the allusions to obscure, arcane Greek literature and myth. Cantona, Zidane, Best and Maradonna. Michelangelo, Picasso, Stubbs and Turner; Darwin, Einstein, Gates and Hawking; Fosse, Prince, Rogers and Hart; Bernstein, Epstein, Faraday and Wilde; Lawrence, Shakespeare, Steinbeck and Hemingway. Think Hemingway’s rare gift for story-telling in the narrative. Think the shortest short story to grace literature’s annals: For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn. Charlie Scribner prize winner. Saw this quoted recently in a broadsheet. Misquoted, actually. After each pair of words, Hemingway carefully, meticulously, pedantically, placed a point. Not a comma, as in the paper’s poor quote. But a full stop. Each pair represents a third of the story. It had, according to Scribner’s rules, to have a beginning, a middle and an end. So points it was. Full stops. Hemingway was a Genius. But he blew his head off once he realised he’d never find the ultimate answer. Flawed, then. Not superman, merely a Genius. Such a gift must be a burden.

Joined Robbie Gladwell for an Age Concern charity fund-raiser at a village church in north Essex. Sang a half-hour set with Adam Houghton on drums and Lincoln Anderson on bass, with Robbie on guitar. Before I played, two sisters played and sang. Inspirational. Doesn’t happen very often. Special. Unique. You won’t read that word in these pages very often. But they were. The younger (maybe 18, 19?) played open D-tune guitar like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Thunderous, passionate; beautiful and pastoral. Her sister then sang with poise and beauty, poetry in voice filling the tiny 11th century church and making it seem like a cathedral. They had told me earlier in the evening that they had seen me in concert, when young, and I had picked them out with the line “couldn’t mum and dad afford a babysitter?” Dad was there then and was there with his beautiful and talented daughters on Saturday. Small world. Looking for genius. Never know what’ll grab you if you keep looking, exploring, hoping. Britain’s got talent; it’s just that the real talent ain’t on the tv. But it’s there, waiting to be discovered. The sisters can join us when next we tour the UK, if they fancy. I will investigate tomorrow and get the right spelling of their names before I tell more. Sounded like latte, as in frothy coffee. But it must be some different spelling. They are enigmatic. Not frothy.

DIARY 10/06/09

ChildLine Rocks rocked. Jon Lord is a friendly chap. A cool and unaffected sort of guy. He played a clever set with Steve Balsami singing to the Lord Hammond B3. They travel to European cities, just the two of them, and meet there with a full orchestra and rock band, comprised of local players, rehearse for a day and then play big cross-over concerts to 3,000 or so people. I thought it all sounded a little nerve-wracking, like arriving to find your backside has gone south for the winter, as the leader calls the first beats. Jon Lord is made of the sort of stuff that makes a man a man, for all tha’. No, he said, it’s exciting. And I understood: the adventure, the gamble, the risks all make it worthwhile. And it probably seldom, if ever, fails to score. Thunder played like the virtuosi of aol rock that they are. My new agent, Danny Bowes, has an amazing vocal range. I hope he proves to be as convincing and sensational an agent as he is singer. To Bury St Edmunds (not praise it.....), for Battle Of The Bands, held in the Abbey grounds. Gave up a place in a box at Epsom Downs for the Derby. Giving back, I guess it’s known as! Some school/college age fellows played (no females in any of the 5 bands) 15 minute sets, and all, ALL, thrashed it with electric guitars, riffing like the 60s their own dads can only barely remember. It shocked me. I wanted melody and harmony, and I got unison thrash. I expected and hoped for Coldplay, The Killers, Elbow. I got Uriah Heep and The Edgar Broughton Band in short trousers.

I enjoyed the youngsters and their playing immensely. They offered, some of them, good repartee, too. But don’t they listen to the radio?

There was a winner (it was a battle after all), and they get a free day’s recording at The Leeder Studio, a residential place in Norfolk. Lucky them. It’s a fabulous studio, and I think we’ll arrange a sojourn ourselves soon.

Tomorrow (Thursday), I’m due to sit for a portrait, painted by the brothers Bingham, Tim and David, in Shropshire. The great Mike Callow gets 20 minutes of my fidgeting in order to capture a decent shot with his camera. The immortal Mick Rock might squeeze half-an-hour out of me with a bit of flannel. I get bored so readily with the posing. But the Binghams want 3 to 4 hours! That’s half-a-day, for Chrissakes. Will they let me sit with The Telegraph crossword while they etch, sketch and daub, I wonder? They plan an exhibition in London later in the year. I feel privileged, of course, but apprehensive. What to wear for this frame of posterity? And how to endure? They must keep the strong tea coming, and allow for regular loo breaks. I don’t want to look like my own backside has gone south for the winter when this canvas is exhibited.
And the young have fledged around the garden. Baby blackbirds of, so far, indeterminate gender; baby starlings, so far of stripeless plumage; baby great tits, and a pair of jays showing off like they have confidence few jays can baost. They sit in the open for at least a minute, whereas the usual jay’s span won’t go beyond a few seconds. It’s been a sweet and sunny spring so far in East Anglia. The blossoms have come and gone, and now the fruit starts to take tangible form. I see apples, I see cherries, I see plums, all in embryo. The woods are alive. And at a metre high now, even the singing nettles don’t faze me. All part of nature, I keep telling myself. And it works.

DIARY 29/05/09

This website has been up for a few years now. Met with Webmaster Andy Fearon recently, and a complete (and I mean complete!) re-vamp has begun. Andy reckons the new site, all inter-action and bells and whistles, should be ready for unveiling later in the summer. I am something of a technophobe, but Andy made it all sound very swish, elaborate and more than a little exciting, even to me. To Spain, to visit the old dad. Found a cool restaurant with good, serious cuisine. Always thought nobody would move to Spain for the food. Best meals I’ve had when out with family there have been Indonesian or Bulgarian (maybe Croatian, certainly east Euro). Finally found the decent one - in the Costa Blanca town where they live, at least. Great night with my brother Nigel, who my sister calls my “little buddy”. Can’t see why really, he’s a big ole boy. But my buddy, nonetheless. Proud to say so. His partner, Derek, is one of the best companions, too. They like a bit of banter, exchanges of opinion, without taking the Nice umbrage, common among my family. I like debate, banter and even argument, but a lifetime travelling with musicians who take no prisoners makes it the only way to get by. Greta missed the trip (the boy and his fab partner came with us); she’d already got a week at Boot Camp in Norfolk in the diary. Tough week, that. Very tough. But she completed and we are proud of her. She’s a softie at heart, so maybe Boot Camp and its RSM style routines have made a bit of a man of her (just kidding, girls).

Got back to watch racing channel, and my hurdler Vacario winning by 6 lengths at Worcester. At last. Charlie Mann has always insisted he’s a good racehorse. Couldn’t get over there from East Anglia; next morning left early for The Ivors in London. I pushed for The Leisure Society to collect the gong, as Elbow were likely to pick up first prize in Contemporary Song (and they did - ours was Best Song Musically And Lyrically). Then met the Elbow guys who were originally called Mr Soft after my song. So I felt guilty. They had won our vote. Nice guys. The talented ones usually are. Then, later, Billy Elliot. Fabulous work. Planning Broadway trip to see the NY cast, where the dancing should be exemplary, whereas in London it was just good, especially for a young boy. But not exemplary. Fabulous show anyway. Land Hawk ran fifth again, for the 6th time, if I’m counting right. We will get a win out this decent racehorse, but we definitely need to go back to the drawing-board, heads down in a huddle. Fourth at Newmarket would have been much better. Each-way first 4. Sizeable losses then, coming fifth by half a length. I don’t talk through my pocket. Been betting too long for that. But fourth would have prevented the long face my family all commented on. Shame on me.

Got a new agent. Will miss Paul Charles at Asgard, and will sorely miss his assistant Christina. But now I am to be represented by Neil Warnock’s big firm, The Agency Group. My man may well be Danny Bowes, who plans to retire from his proper job thus far, which is singer in Thunder, to be full-time agent at The Agency. Good to feel wanted, I must confess. Danny and I will (by coincidence) be on the same stage as each other on Monday night at the Indigo2: ChildLine Rocks, charity event in aid of the kiddie’s emergency helpline formed way back by Esther Rantzen. Bob Harris will compere, and his lovely wife Trudy is the main organiser. Writing songs, too. Seriously. Maybe all I needed was to feel wanted. And who knows, unexpected extra dates later this year? Maybe. Not up to me, but if it were.....

DIARY 17/03/09

Sunshine in East Anglia at last. Been months since I last made a proper assault on the woods. Coppiced hazel and stacked logs in the woodshed, passing a calm, solitary few hours. The notes are there, in notebooks and on scraps of mini-disc. Tunes and couplets, simple rhymes and deeper thoughts all jumbled, randomly acquired and noted over the past few years. There is only one way I will collate it all into coherent songs, and that is by booking a recording studio. Plan to call Pat at Gemini later today, and then contact the band. I know that if the room is held, the band is assembled, and serious money will be changing hands, then I will deliver. It’s the old journalist in me: never miss a deadline, but always get oh-so-close. Cheltenham worked out pretty well, even though I didn’t get there. If you backed Psychomodo in the festival’s last race, the Grand Annual, you must accept defeat through gritted teeth: he was going well, seemed relaxed and confident in the van for the first mile, then went backwards quicker than the ebb tide. Burst blood vessels, nothing worse, but it meant he had to be pulled up. Gary and his co-owners will have felt a hollowness in their stomachs for a while, but most owners and serious betting folk are decent losers, always seeing the bigger picture and believing in tomorrow. Amused me to read about one website reader who made good money backing Vicario, a gelding trained in the north by Don McCain, thinking in all innocence that it was Vacario, part-owned by me, trained in Lambourne by Charlie Mann. Only one letter in it, but it meant a good profit for one lucky punter. Ours will be out later this month probably. Forget his first hurdle race, trailing in last. He was given a good schooling round by Noel Fehilly once he realised the young horse was jumping too big and wasting energy. Charlie will get him right. We have faith in this horse. That’s enough of this. Tea and toast beside the keyboard, now back to the hazel. Reed buntings, four males, on the lawn. Some people don’t get it at all, the thrill of seeing a rare visitor for the first time. But they mix with a flock of yellowhammers (they, too, are buntings) and ignore the bullying robins and blackbirds, and it’s a great sight. If you get it.....