Poetic Justice (Steve Harley album)

Background

Since 1989, Harley made a return to regular touring with Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, and also released the solo album, Yes You Can, in 1992. During the middle of the decade, Harley began recording a new solo album at Berry House Studios in Ardingly, Sussex. In August 1996, Poetic Justice was released on Transatlantic Records. Featuring new songs, three covers and a re-recording of "Riding the Waves (For Virginia Woolf)", most of the new songs had been written by Harley during the band's touring schedule.

The album's three covers consisted of the Jimmy Ruffin's 1966 song "What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted?", the Bob Dylan's 1965 song "Love Minus Zero-No Limit" and the Van Morrison's 1970 song "Crazy Love". In a May 1997 interview with Smiler magazine's John Gray, Harley commented: "There's a lot of people who are quite unhappy with the covers that I've done on my new album, so I'm thinking I won't bother doing any again. My audience think I've run out of ideas if I only write eight out of eleven." For the album, "Riding the Waves" was re-recorded live in the studio. It had originally appeared on Harley's 1978 debut solo album Hobo with a Grin.

No singles were released to promote the album, despite Harley's interest in releasing "That's My Life in Your Hands" and "The Last Time I Saw You". Additionally, Harley had recorded "What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted?" as a potential single. In his interview for Smiler magazine, Harley commented:

"They should have released "The Last Time I Saw You" or "That's My Life in Your Hands" – they would have got a lot of air play – not Radio One – but a good plugger these days gets people like me on all those "gold" stations or Virgin – they'll all play it, and even if it was only a turntable hit, I'd have liked that, but record companies now are run by accountants. It's hard to get anyone to talk sense."

Speaking of Robson & Jerome reaching the UK number one spot with their own 1996 version of "What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted?", Harley added: "I'd recorded it long before they turned up. We were saying to the record company, I'd done this as a single, and they hadn't got a bloody clue. Three months later it was being played by them."

Later in 2002, Harley spoke of Poetic Justice in an interview with the online music magazine Perfect Sound Forever. He said:

"Songwriting is one of the few jobs even in the world of creative art that we do where you don't get better with age. It's also true perhaps with novelists: that their best work is often left behind in their twenties and up to their mid thirties, when you're truly inspired and think you can rule the world. In '96, I released "Poetic Justice" and I do five or six songs from that most nights on tour and I would say they might just be the best songs I've ever written and they touch people as though they're the best songs I've ever written and they go down as though they were big hits."

Song information

"That's My Life in Your Hands" was written by Harley and Hugh Nicholson. Harley recalled in 2015: "Hugh had written another song, same chords, different words and title. I asked permission to change the lyrics and produce my own version. I wrote all the lyrics." The original song was titled "Starlight Jingles", which was recorded by Nicholson's band Blue, during their sessions at Los Angeles between 1979-82. A live version of the song would later appear as one of two bonus tracks on the 2000 CD release of Harley's Hobo with a Grin album.

On 29 April 1994, "The Last Time I Saw You" received its debut live performance at the Mick Ronson Memorial Concert, which was held at the Hammersmith Odeon in London. This live version, along with Harley's performance of "Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)" at the same concert, would appear on the 2001 two-disc CD compilation The Mick Ronson Memorial Concert.

On Harley's 2001 single "A Friend for Life", a live version of "Safe" was added as one of two bonus tracks. It had been recorded live at The Blomsbury Theatre in London during the spring of 2000. "Two Damn'd Lies", "All in a Life's Work" and "The Last Time I Saw You" would all later appear on the 2003 live album Acoustic and Pure Live, which featured ex-Cockney Rebel guitarist Jim Cregan.

Release

The album was released on CD by the independent label Transatlantic Records in the UK. The label was a division of Castle Communications Plc. On 7 October 2002, Castle Music Ltd. re-issued the album on CD. Later, on 20 September 2010, Repertoire Records, under license from Comeuppance Ltd., re-issued the album as a digi-pack CD. For this re-issue, the album's back cover was re-worked, featuring a dark shot of a hill and the sky, instead of the original cover of a distant woodland in the dark. In 2010–11, Sanctuary Fontana made the album available as a digital download on sites such as iTunes.

Critical reception

In a 1996 issue of the American magazine High Fidelity, a review of the album commented: "Something about Harley has him classified, historically, with rock's assholes, but this latest solo almost redeems him. His first in five years contains a cluster of originals and three seemingly out-of-place covers which actually work in the context of his own songs."

Thom Jurek of AllMusic retrospectively reviewed the album, and commented: "The 1996 album "Poetic Justice" is actually a very solid and subdued set for Steve Harley. He's in fine voice here, and his own songs are pretty much top of the heap for having been some "20 years past his prime" as some jive Brit journo called him. It's nonsense, of course, since Harley may not have had the hits in the '90s, but certainly had the requisite taste, musicianship and elegance to put a collection of songs together like this one. His covers of Bob Dylan's "Love Minus Zero/No Limit," and Van Morrison's "Crazy Love" both put on offer his roots as a musician and his own, dare we say it, pedigree. "Poetic Justice" is fine work top to bottom, and should be owned by any fan, or investigated by the curious." Additionally, out of the eleven songs on the album, Jurek highlighted "What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted?", "Two Damn'd Lies" and Crazy Love" as album highlights by labelling them AMG Pick Tracks.

In the 2001 BGO Records re-issue of the Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel album The Best Years of Our Lives, Alan Clayson spoke of Poetic Justice in the liner notes. He commented that Poetic Justice was "an album that was equal of 1975's better-known "The Best Years of Our Lives"."

In the 2007 Italian book 24.000 Dischi (24,000 Discs), written by Riccardo Bertoncelli and Cris Thellung, a review of the album stated: "In the first new album since 1979 Harley confirms a vein intimate, melancholic, introverted but of great emotional and poetic lyricism. It is another disc gone unnoticed but beautiful and deeply felt, which stand out the cover of "Live Minus Zero" (Dylan) and "Crazy Love" (Van Morrison) and stunning reinterpretation of "Last Time I Saw You" and "Riding the Waves" (dedicated to Virginia Woolf)."

Personnel