Sensational Alex Harvey Band – Delilah

The Cover The Record Company Forced Them To Make

Released in July 1975, “Delilah” rocketed to number seven on the UK Singles Chart, giving The Sensational Alex Harvey Band their first and only top ten hit. The live recording spent twelve weeks on the chart and became one of the year’s most distinctive singles. Guitarist Zal Cleminson later admitted he hated the song, calling it commercial nonsense thrust upon them by record executives desperate to get SAHB onto Top of the Pops. The band had spent years building a reputation as theatrical hard rockers, and suddenly they were being told to cover Tom Jones.

The track outperformed some of the year’s biggest names, spending longer on the charts than Mud’s “Oh Boy” and competing alongside hits from 10cc, The Bay City Rollers, and David Bowie. It peaked at number seven while T. Rex’s “New York City” sat at number fifteen and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” was still months away from its November release. In the United States, the single reached number 63 on the Billboard Hot 100, giving SAHB one of their few American chart entries. The song helped propel their Live album to widespread attention across Britain and continental Europe, where the band had already cultivated a devoted following.

Tom Jones had taken the Barry Mason and Les Reed composition to number two in the UK back in 1968, losing the top spot to The Beatles’ “Hey Jude”. The murder ballad won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically that year. P.J. Proby actually recorded it first in November 1967, but hated the track so much he refused to release it, thinking it sounded like a German beer hall tune. His version sat in the vault for over forty years. Alex Harvey, however, saw something in the melodrama that fit his theatrical persona perfectly. He liked playing misunderstood characters, wrongly convicted men, good guys who did bad things.

The performance was captured live at the Hammersmith Odeon in London on May 24, 1975, along with the rest of the Live album. Producer David Batchelor oversaw the recording for Mountain Records, a Phonogram subsidiary. The band transformed the Welsh crooner’s power ballad into aggressive Glaswegian street theatre, complete with a choreographed dance routine. Bassist Chris Glen later explained that Harvey had learned from his years in the Hair musical pit band to give audiences focal points throughout a show. Hugh McKenna’s keyboards gave it a music hall flavor, while Zal Cleminson’s guitar riffs added pantomime menace. The single version ran 4:06, though the label mistakenly listed it as 3:28.

“Delilah” appeared on the band’s Live album, released in September 1975. The double album became their biggest seller and captured SAHB at their theatrical peak, documenting performances of “Faith Healer”, “Framed”, and “Next” alongside the Tom Jones cover. The band followed up with another hit in 1976, “The Boston Tea Party”, which reached number thirteen. That track appeared on SAHB Stories, an album that influenced both AC/DC’s Bon Scott and a young Nick Cave, who told Bobby Gillespie in 2018 that his first band was basically an Alex Harvey cover band.

The song has been covered dozens of times in multiple languages, from Chinese to Hebrew to Czech. It appeared on television shows and became a staple at sporting events, though SAHB’s version never achieved the ubiquity of the Tom Jones original. Robert Smith of The Cure, who saw SAHB numerous times as a teenager, told Rolling Stone Australia that Harvey was the true forerunner of the punk movement in Britain, not Iggy Pop. The Old Grey Whistle Test performance from May 1975 remains a cult favorite, showcasing Harvey’s ability to inhabit each song like an actor taking on a role.

Despite Cleminson’s initial resistance, “Delilah” became SAHB’s signature hit and remains their most recognized recording four decades later. Harvey died of a heart attack on February 4, 1982, in Belgium, one day before his 47th birthday, while waiting to board a ferry after a gig. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band were voted the fifth greatest Scottish band of all time in a 2005 survey. Chris Glen summed up their approach to the song in a 2021 interview, explaining that it was just a feature, light relief in a show that otherwise dealt in heavy rock and theatrical darkness. They gave the people what they wanted, even if they hated doing it, and somehow made a Tom Jones murder ballad sound like it belonged in a Glasgow back alley.