Lyrically (I can't pretend that I'm comfortable with all the words, but I might be missing the point?) Musically. Harmonically. In my view, Dylanesque a la 'A Hard Rains...'

Expressionism to the nth degree.

Adler's TOTALITY. Jung's INDIVIDUATION.

The song is powerful and one of Harley's best musical compositions, a real tour de force.

My lay-fan view is that the musical power in the track, comes from that recurring scale. My lay-fan guess is that Harley may have started writing Cavaliers from his playing that scale. If so, he is more likely to have been sitting at the piano (if he had one or access to one, back then).

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28/10/25 - I've taken the link out. Even though it is not my account, I'm uncomfortable with leaving links in to material that use, in essence, the whole of the song that is available on record - unless the owner of the intellectual work gave express consent. In other words, I'm returning to the status quo as it was prior to 14 February 2005, when YouTube was created. All the best...

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08/05/25 Edit:

Thanx to all Allied service personnel who gave their lives in preventing the intended Nazi 1000 year Reich (not forgetting non service personnel forming various Resistance). Viva the 70 Allied personnel (plus others also still alive) that were part of tonight's celebration of 80 years since VE! Today, Viva Europe! Whether part of the EU or otherwise! Many European Nations have shared histories, if you look back far enough.


Continuing my views on CAVALIERS:

Harley informed his fans years ago that he had two albums worth of material ready (or almost so) at the time of the EMI signing. The first two albums contain a sound, a feel...Perhaps appropriate that the earliest Cockney Rebel worked on the opening albums because Crocker, Jeffreys and Reame-James had to have also influenced the sound to compliment Harley's earlier compositions. Elliott (a superb drummer) kept on, at the peak of the band.

Cavaliers almost seems to me to be from the same 'family' as Death Trip and Sebastian, for example. Strings were hugely important, for that feel...The drama is there every time one listens to those songs. Stuart Elliott easily had the versatility to transition with Steve, into the more commercial Cockney Rebel....

X

We've just come back from a pleasant day out...

Sasha, who saw/heard Harley with me in 1992 (Nottingham) and 2000 (Oxford) and I were discussing - rather I raised it with her - the lyrics to Cavaliers. The three words that I was least comfortable with - I've always loved the melody - the idea of the 'Cavaliers' (I've read quite a bit about the English Civil War, 1642-1649 - and finally ending in 1653 with the downfall of The Marquis of Montrose - who fought on in Scotland after Charles I was beheaded) - she's clarified for me in a jiffy.

Harley is making a cultural reference to Agatha Christie (from a work written, I think, in 1939). The specific novel changed it's title (I'm still uncomfortable with the change - equally as the original name), though the film production became, And Then There Were None.

We know Steve read extensively during his childhood illness and between operations.

This leaves only nine other words that I'm uncomfortable with in the song - but only because they are shocking - but here we're moving more towards 'A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall' (Dylan, B, 1962) imagery - certainly the way Bryan Ferry's (1973) video conveyed (this was hugely ahead of it's time).

Rod Stewart was right about Steve's lyric writing...he's one of the best writers that broke through in the 1970's...

Further, in my view, this song has the greatest top-line vocal, from my Top 35 Harley songs (Triptych Twenty Twenty Six thread, in the General Discussion Forum, refers).

No other of his songs allows his own singing to reach such sublime highs and lows. It is the Cavalier Cockney Rebel, in both 1974 and the year before. It wouldn't have fit in though, with 'The Human Menagerie of Cockney Rebel' album, it had to be on the follow up, 'The Psychomodo'.

An analogy (or metaphor, I'll let you decide which, if either, is more suitable), for me, in reaching this conclusion is resolved thinking about those films (also from 1973 and 1974 respectfully), starring David Essex - 'That'll Be The Day' and the sequel, 'Stardust'. The first, more optimistic, the concept, a lifestyle; the second, altogether darker.

The Cavalier Attitude, in both 1642 and 1972, the suits, the make-up, the clothes, the times, subversive and politically incorrect.

Cockney Rebel at their most powerful in a pop song. Whilst I am uncomfortable with some of the lyrics, it is those words that allow Harley to theatrically interpret a 'Big Bang' in a pop rock song. It is bipolar and a rage against all wrongs. I get it Steve, and we loved you. X


I've edited my comments in the 'Peer Group Recognition' thread, in the General Discussion Forum, accordingly.