‘PASSION, KINDNESS, GENEROSITY’

Steve Harley, Rocker Frontman of Cockney Rebel, Dies at 73

The singer-songwriter, best known for the 1975 single “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me),” announced last year that he was undergoing treatment for cancer.

Steve Harley, the singer-songwriter best known as the frontman of the glam rock band Cockney Rebel, died in Suffolk, England, on Sunday morning. He was 73. “We are devastated to announce that our wonderful husband and father has passed away peacefully at home, with his family by his side,” his family said in a statement to The Guardian. “The birdsong from his woodland that he loved so much was singing for him. His home has been filled with the sounds and laughter of his four grandchildren. Whoever you know him as, his heart exuded only core elements. Passion, kindness, generosity. And much more, in abundance.” The London-born rocker revealed that he was undergoing treatment for a “nasty” cancer last October, canceling a spate of live shows that had been scheduled earlier this year. “It’s tiresome, and tiring,” he said. “But the fight is on.” Harley formed Cockney Rebel in 1972, a year before their debut LP hit shelves. The group had fractured by 1974, with Harley scrambling to assemble a new line-up, with whom he cut his biggest and most enduring song, “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me).” A chart-topping hit and “a finger-pointing piece of vengeful poetry” aimed at his former bandmates, as Harley explained in 2010, the single has sold more than a million copies to date.