“Here Comes the Sun” was released by EMI on 9 July 1976 as the lead single from Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel’s fifth studio album, Love’s a Prima Donna (1976). A cover of the 1969 song originally recorded by the Beatles, the song was written by George Harrison and was produced by Harley. It reached number 10 in the UK Singles Chart and would be the band’s last UK top 40 hit discounting later reissues of “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)”.
Background
“Here Comes the Sun” was the first cover version that Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel recorded. The band originally began performing the song live in early 1976 during their Timeless Flight tour. Harley chose to cover the song after he heard it on the radio while travelling by taxi in London. He interpreted the lyrics as referring to an “apocalypse”, “great awakening” and “massive change”, and, in response, later emphasised the use of musical accents in its recording.
The single was recorded and released before the band recorded the rest of the Love’s a Prima Donna album. It earned them another UK top 10 hit – their fourth in all. The single’s success coincided with an unusually hot British summer and a wave of nostalgia for the Beatles, as EMI was contractually free to promote and repackage their music without the former band members’ agreement.
Speaking to the Greenock Telegraph in 1977, Harley spoke of the mixed reaction to the band’s version and his decision to include it on the Love’s a Prima Donna album: “People have objected to our treatment of the song because George Harrison wrote it as a totally different song and he played it very delicately. My idea of it is totally different and I wanted it on the album because it has beautiful lyrics which I couldn’t write myself. Because I couldn’t write my version of it, I owned up and used someone else’s.”
In a 1982 interview with Larry Jaffee, Harley revealed the following about Harrison’s reaction to his version: “I didn’t speak to him personally about it. I’ve never actually met George Harrison, but I know of his comments that came back to people that work with me or know me that know him, and he loved it.” He told the Peterborough Evening Telegraph in 1996, “It is a wonderful, sublime, beautiful piece of music. When I did it I received criticism, particularly from Beatles fans, but George Harrison loved it.”
Speaking to the Mouth Magazine in 2019, Harley said of his version: “Love it or hate it, I made it my own. It’s nothing like the Beatles, it’s nothing like George’s version. We still play it live and I swear some people do think it’s actually my song. If you’re under 40 you might not know the Beatles’ version. The big thing about cover versions, for me, is that if you do a song you have to really really try and make it your own.”
Release
“Here Comes the Sun” was released by EMI Records on 7-inch vinyl in the UK, across Europe, the US, Canada, South Africa, Australasia, and Japan. The B-side, “Lay Me Down”, was written and produced by Harley, and has remained exclusive to the single ever since. In North America and Australia, the B-side was “All Men Are Hungry”, an album track from the band’s 1976 album Timeless Flight.
Speaking to Stewart Griffin’s Cockney Rebel Connections Show in 2023, Harley revealed the meaning of “Lay Me Down”, “It’s about losing religion. I lost it in ’73/’74, once the band began touring and we lived this hedonistic lifestyle. I was quite religious at school and then suddenly I wasn’t.” Harley later rediscovered religion and became involved with his local Anglican church in the 1980s. He frequently read the lesson during Sunday services and was a member of the parochial church council from 1989 to c. 2020. Harley performed the song live for the first time in 2023. He rediscovered the song by chance on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic and felt the song’s message resonated with him as he had lost his religion again during that period.
The single’s release was publicised by EMI in UK music magazines for being “the only song not from the pen of Steve Harley that he and Cockney Rebel have ever performed”, with the added statement: “If Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel hadn’t recorded it, you would never have believed it.”
Music video
The song’s music video was shot at Dunsoghly Castle in St. Margaret’s, County Dublin, Ireland. The shoot took six hours to complete in a single day during July 1976 and both the band and production team returned to London by plane later that evening. It was the band’s first and only visit to Ireland as they never played a concert there in the 1970s.
Promotion
The band made an appearance on the UK music show Top of the Pops to perform the song. Harley also performed the song on his own on the West German music television programme Musikladen, alongside “Too Much Tenderness”.
Critical reception
Upon its release as a single, Geoff Barton of Sounds considered “Here Comes the Sun” to be “one of the highlights of the recent SH&CR tour, but surprising to see as a single”. He continued, “An obvious contender for the summer sound market, jaunty and pleasant, but, overall, rather half-heartedly performed. Nicely surreptitious keyboard work, however.” Geoff Ward of the Worcester Evening News praised it as a “rewarding treatment of the George Harrison song by one of the most sincere and intelligent performers of the moment – a showstopper from the band’s stage act too”.
Sue Byrom of Record Mirror & Disc gave a somewhat negative review but noted the chart potential. She wrote, “Trouble is that Steve doesn’t really add more to the song or interpret it in any vastly different way. Production is a bit weak, and if the record does anything it’ll be because of the song rather than the singer.” Dianne Gibbons of the Staffordshire Evening Sentinel stated, “Though I like Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, I feel they have better original material available without turning to an old Beatles hit. Not one of their better performances.” Steve Clarke of the NME picked it as the “turkey of the week” and wrote, “Overkill is a barely adequate description for this treatment of Harri’s classic. Clumsily and overarranged and sun, Harley has completely destroyed the beguiling naivete of the original.”
In the US, Cash Box called it a “winner”, suited for “progressive FMs and wise AM programmers”. They wrote, “Harley takes the Beatles’ standard and really rocks it up, getting progressively tougher with each verse. By emphasizing the rhythm of the well-known riff, he accentuates a part of the song that has, until now, been well-hidden.” Record World noted that “Harrison’s ‘Abbey Road’ classic has been given a face lift and put into a new light with a synthesized undercurrent and a vocal that is pure Steve Harley”.
In a review of Love’s a Prima Donna, Geoff Barton of Sounds called it “entertaining but largely dispensable”. Paul Phillips of the National RockStar criticised it as the song’s “ugliest version to date”. He added that it has “all the hallmarks of the accomplished lyricist desperately attempting to become the acclaimed musician/arranger – mistaking clumsiness for cleverness and arrogance for art”. Rex Anderson, writing in the EMI Records Weekly News Magazine, noted that it was “very rare that an artist manages to add something to an original Beatle song”. In a 1977 review of Face to Face: A Live Recording, Sheila Prophet of Record Mirror called it “Harley’s worst ever misjudgment”.
Donald A. Guarisco of AllMusic retrospectively called it an “arty, synthesizer-laced cover of the Beatles’ classic”. In the book The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, author Colin Larkin noted the song saw Harley’s “limited but interesting vocal range put to the test”.
Live performances
The song has been a regular feature of the band’s set-list over the years. Speaking of performing the song live, Harley revealed in an interview at the Wickham Festival in 2015: “I’ve got the good fortune of having had a big hit with ‘Here Comes the Sun’, so most festivals I’ll open with that. We don’t [usually] play it on tour [these days], but I do it at festivals because if it’s pouring with rain, it comes across with a great sense of irony. And if it’s sunny, there’s a hint of truth about it, which is a bit of fun. It’s a wonderful song of George Harrison’s, and my version gets an audience with me right from the start.”
Live recordings of the song have appeared on a few releases over the years. It was featured as the opening track on the band’s 1977 live album Face to Face: A Live Recording. It was also the opening song at the band’s concert in London’s Camden Palace in 1984, which was filmed for TV broadcast and the Live from London VHS release, and at the Isle of Wight festival in 2004, which was released on DVD as the Live at the Isle of Wight Festival.
Track listing
7-inch single (UK, Europe, South Africa, New Zealand and Japan)
- “Here Comes the Sun” – 2:57
- “Lay Me Down” – 3:58
7-inch single (US, Canada and Australia)
- “Here Comes the Sun” – 2:40
- “All Men Are Hungry” – 4:48
Personnel
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel
- Steve Harley – vocals, guitar
- Jim Cregan – guitar, backing vocals
- Duncan Mackay – keyboards
- George Ford – bass, backing vocals
- Stuart Elliott – drums
- Lindsay Elliott – percussion
Additional musicians
- Jo Partridge – guitar, backing vocals
- Tony Rivers – backing vocals, backing vocal arrangement
- John G. Perry – backing vocals
- Stuart Calver – backing vocals
Production
- Steve Harley – production
- Tony Clark – sound engineer
- Pat Stapley – assistant sound engineer
- Ken Perry – mastering
Charts
Belgium (Ultratop 50 Wallonia): 49
Irish Singles Chart: 7
Netherlands (Single Top 100): 21
UK Singles Chart: 10
