Alex Harvey

  Alex Harvey's Cross

By the mid-1970s, audiences knew that an Alex Harvey concert wasn't just a rock show. 

It was theater. One night he might appear as a gangster. Another night as a circus ringmaster. You never quite knew what would come walking onto the stage.

At England's Reading Festival in 1974, Harvey decided to make one of his boldest entrances. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band began playing the slow, ominous opening of "Framed." The crowd recognized the song immediately, but something was different. The band stretched the introduction until the anticipation became almost unbearable.

Then Harvey appeared. He was dressed as Jesus Christ. Over his shoulder he carried a large cross. The audience watched in stunned silence as he slowly made his way toward center stage, looking every bit like a scene from a biblical epic rather than a rock festival.

Just as the tension reached its peak, Harvey shouted the song's opening line: "I was framed!" Then, with perfect comic timing, he hurled the cross into the pit in front of the stage. Instead of landing harmlessly on the ground, the lightweight polystyrene prop struck BBC Radio 1 DJ Alan "Fluff" Freeman squarely on the head.

The crowd erupted. Fortunately, Freeman wasn't injured, and the cross was only a stage prop, but it instantly became one of those unforgettable festival moments that people talked about long after the amplifiers had gone silent.

The incident perfectly captured what made Alex Harvey unique. Most frontmen wanted to look like rock stars. Harvey wanted to tell stories. Every costume, every entrance, and every exaggerated gesture was part of the performance. While other artists were helping define theatrical rock, Harvey carved out his own style, blending music hall, vaudeville, and street theater into something unmistakably his own.

A flying cross wasn't part of anyone's script that day. But for a man who built his career on the unexpected, it somehow felt entirely appropriate.

With Alex Harvey, you didn't simply watch a concert. You wondered what was going to come flying off the stage next. 

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