Steve Harley [Phantom]

[The Khanum]

Though he never actually performed as the Phantom on Broadway, Steve Harley provided the first voice for him in the recording of the Phantom theme song with Sarah Brightman. For those of you with the 2-disc version of Phantom 2004, he is featured in the "Behind the Mask" documentary about the origins of Erik. Steve was the lead singer in the "Cockny Rebels," an English rock band in the 80's. Though his voice is no where near up to par to Michael Crawford's and even Gerry Butler's voice, I think his interpretation is one of the most original I've ever heard.

My favorite aspect of his performance is at the very end of the song while Sarah!Christine is wailing away at the top of the register. While both Gerry and Michael only say, "Sing for me, sing my Angel of Music, etc," Steve shouts, "The Phantom of the Opera is now your mastermind...I am there, inside you mind! I am everywhere! Sing my Angel of Music!"

[Countess Cain]

Steve Harley's voice did not fit the character at all, in my opinion. How could anyone ever believe he was the Angel of Music?

But you're right, he was original. Just not in a good way. I can understand why they threw him out when they found good old MC.

[The Khanum]

I know...not exactly the kind of voice that puts you under a spell...

But I just find it so entertaining...I'm so weird, I know, but I love listening to that version on my Andrew Lloyd Webebr Collection CD. I have to laugh everytime I hear it... He's no Erik, but I give him props for being so unique.

[IamErik771]

I didn't like his portrayal at all. I agree that he is unique, but not in a good way. That video is so extremely cheesy that I laugh every time I see it. :D I did like the harmonizing thing on verses 3 and 4, where Steve is singing a third higher than Sarah. Why didn't they do that in the play?

[The Khanum]

THE MUSIC VIDEO! ::Glomps:: Pure, unadulterated genius, I say! You have to love the skull with dreadlocks on the gondola...and the Egyptian Christine...and the cheesy blood dripping down the screen...and the best part of all, the mullet-fied Raoul! In all its incredible stupidity, you have to love that music video.

[Opera Ghost]

Is this the Australian guy? If so, I don't think he's at all the right person for the Phantom. His voice doesn't match the personality and strength of his character. I saw the clip on the DVD - in my opinion, he was too weedy and soft, not the dangerous beast that the Phantom is supposed to be. And the accent didn't help ;)

[cinty]

Originally posted by Opera Ghost
Is this the Australian guy? If so, I don't think he's at all the right person for the Phantom. His voice doesn't match the personality and strength of his character. I saw the clip on the DVD - in my opinion, he was too weedy and soft, not the dangerous beast that the Phantom is supposed to be. And the accent didn't help ;)
I don't believe Steve Harley is Australian. I am Australian and he is never spoken of here. I'm pretty sure he is English. Australian phantoms have been Anthony Warlow and Rob Guest, both of whom were wonderful.
Boy, I detest Steve Harley on that video clip. Although I am a huge Sarah fan, they were really and truly awful. Steve's face was terrible and not at all phantom like. Thank goodness they found my angel, Michael Crawford. :D

[Wishing]

Thank goodness they found my angel, Michael Crawford. :D

I second that! He would not cut it as a Phantom. Ick. It's funny to listen to him with Sarah Brightman, but Michael Crawford is 100 times better.

[IamErik771]

Originally posted by Little Lotte
I second that! He would not cut it as a Phantom. Ick. It's funny to listen to him with Sarah Brightman, but Michael Crawford is 100 times better.
I agree. I keep the Harley/Brightman video on my computer purely for comedy value. MC is tied with two other Phantoms (Peter Karrie and Hugh Panaro) as my favorite actor ever to perform the role. Their voices and acting are simply phenomenal. :)

[cinty]

Originally posted by IamErik771
I agree. I keep the Harley/Brightman video on my computer purely for comedy value. MC is tied with two other Phantoms (Peter Karrie and Hugh Panaro) as my favorite actor ever to perform the role. Their voices and acting are simply phenomenal. :)
Hugh Panaro awes me. I've never seen him live but have heard his Music of the Night and several other things, and on the whole, so many glowing descriptions of his performance that I am floored. He really seems to be up there among the best! Much better than that Steve Harley guy...

[The Khanum]

Originally posted by IamErik771
I keep the Harley/Brightman video on my computer purely for comedy value.

::Grins:: It is quite hysterical, is it not? And may I ask where you got the complete video? I've only been able to find the few clips on the bonus Phantom DVD.

[IamErik771]

Somebody showed me a website where it was posted, but that site was shut down a few days later. Well, if you can imagine something 10,000 times cheesier than "Rocky Horror," you'll have a pretty good idea what the rest of the video is like. "Behind the Mask" showed what i think are the least ridiculous parts. :D Oh, but if you buy the ALW "Premire Collection" on DVD, it comes with this vid and many others from all of ALW's shows except for "Woman in White."

Sarah Brightman's eyes seriously scare me in this vid. It must be painful to keep them open that wide! :eek:

[Night feather]

What have you guys in the us only got clips of the promo videos????

Wow that's wild, we have the whole stretch of them all on the danish dvd.

Oh well we didn't get the sing along... :-(

[The_Persian]

Steve Harley's voice is defenitly not what I thought Erik would sound like- he is supposed to have an angelic voice, not a voice like a rockstar.

[Night feather]

yeah Erik is supposed to have an angerl's voice, but the stageshow is not the same as the books. And Andrew Lloyd webber himself has said he always wanted a rock and roll sound to the phantoms voice to express the danger about him....

[Christine Daaé]

Steve Harley was hilarious. I love his portrayal, not because he's a good Phantom, but because he's a bad one.

And Egyptian Sarah! I think the idea was that they were performing Aida.

Mullet Raoul! Ha ha.

Okay, enough of my rambling on. Back to Steve Harley. Did anyone else notice how attached he seemed to Hal Prince? Talking about how great he was and how he missed working with him and stuff?

~ Zelda

[IamErik771]

Aye. And especially after he found out Michael Crawford was replacing him, he seemed quite disappointed that he wouldn't be working with Hal any more. I also noticed that he hinted about some recordings that he has of himself singing MOTN, AIAOY, and some others. I wonder if there's any way to listen to them? After all, quite a few Phantoms don't really sound too great on the title song, but are excellent in most of the others.

[operafreak84]

Yeah, Harley's man-crush was rather amusing.:rolleyes:

[The Khanum]

Heh...man-crush. ::Giggles::

Yes, I'm quite interested in seeing his other recordings... MOTN would be...entertaining, to say the least. Those promo videos are brilliance incarnate, I swear... (Props to James for the vid! ::Glomps:: )

Has anybody else seen the pics from AIAOY? Man, SB and What's-His-Face...Steve Barton?...Was he in the promo?... I was ready to break out the bongos and dreadlocks after seeing the screencaps. Dancing around a Jamaican beach...great stuff, there.

Back to Steve...

Has anybody else seen his little dance in the background of the promo? Sheer brilliance, I tell you. He looked like he was doing the freakin' macarena or something.

WOOT for S.H!

[operafreak84]

Originally posted by The Khanum
Heh...man-crush. ::Giggles::



Has anybody else seen the pics from AIAOY? Man, SB and What's-His-Face...Steve Barton?...Was he in the promo?... I was ready to break out the bongos and dreadlocks after seeing the screencaps. Dancing around a Jamaican beach...great stuff, there.



No, it was Cliff Richard. I could never picture Steve Barton being in one of those....music videos. *shivers*

[Ange de Musique]

Ugh, Steve Harley is FOR SURE not a good candidate for the Phantom/Angel of Music. He did an okay job on the music video. I loved the whole Egyptian thing too...He just didn't have the physical presence or voice that Michael Crawford and Gerry Butler do.

I have to say I felt sorry for him, getting aced like that. I can only imagine his disappointment at the time, and now after the POTO show was so incredibly popular.

Laura

[The Countess]

Ick, do not like him at all. Whenever I hear him, the whole toad scene in POTO flashes in my mind. "Perhaps it is he who is the toad!" I hate his mask too, it's so ridiculous looking! I though the point was to mask his deformify, not make if look sillier! Okay no more bashing Viktoria...

[Ingenuous Soprano]

Don't worry, I thought the same thing.

I don't like Steve Harley, but he had guts to do it the way he did for the first time it was recorded for a music video.

[tiannangel]

God, I swear, I couldn't stop myself from full collapsing in laughter when he started cutting the rope with what looked like a butter knife! :D:D

One of the most hilarious things I've ever seen.

I agree he was original, but definitely doesn't match up to Micheal's voice, or even Gerry's.

[MllePaula]

Well, if we really want to be historically accurate...Colm Wilkinson was the original original...he played the Phantom at the first Sydmonton workshop well before the Steve Harley video was filmed. Complete with a sparkling mask and really suggestive lyrics for "The Music of the Night."

And who doesn't love the Butter Knife of DOOM?

[Madame le Courayer]

I am glad Steve got the boot. Not that he isn't talented...he's just not Phantom material. It takes a certain X-plus to be able to act with a mask on.
Lon Chaney could. Michael Crawford could. Gerard Butler could.
Steve Harley could not! :rolleyes:
And yes, the mask WAS atrocious! But it was an imaginative attempt.

[tiannangel]

I must say, the mask was pretty weird. It made Steve look slightly cross-eyed.
And not to mention it made his head look a bit flat too.
It was pretty imaginative, but I don't think it suited.
And I just realised I'm probably the only who actually thinks about stuff like that :D
Slightly saddening.

[Ingenuous Soprano]

Complete with a sparkling mask and really suggestive lyrics for "The Music of the Night."


OMG, Paula, I actually have those lyrics!:eek:
I save all of the Sydmonton lyrics I can find.

[The Countess]

Sweet! Mind sharing, my love? :D

The sparkling mask actually reminds me of Charles Dance's in the 1990 version.

[masquerading rose]

Steve Harley.... One word, yuck. In my opinion, he is the worst phantom ever. He sounds a little like the preist from the Princess Bride and I'm afraid his nose will fall off from over-use. That's just my two cents... maybe three.

[The Countess]

I hated the way his mouth moved too. I know he was lip singing, but it looked like he was going to bite you or something!

The video itself was interesting, but, obviously, Steve kind of ruined it.

[masquerading rose]

Have you ever put your tounge over your bottom teeth and tried to talk, much less sing? Put that with notes coming purely from your nose and you can pracically replicate this man's voice! Not that that's a particularly good thing to be proud of, but that's what it sounds like. I'm very glad he was replaced with Michael Crawford.

[Bricabrac]

.... I'm very glad he was replaced with Michael Crawford.


Steve Harley From the UK documentary Behind the Mask
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harley auditioned and they told him he had the job. He worked on the music and recorded some of it. Several months passed. The producers were negotiating with his agent but had not announced his casting publicly.

“Privately, the bosses were having a change of heart.

Cameron McIntosh: “He wasn’t that experienced an actor. It became obvious to me and to the others (ALW and Hal Prince) .”

All came to the same conclusion. Harley wasn’t the right decision for the show.

“They decided they needed a big actor with a big stage presence and a big voice. Lloyd Webber had the perfect man in mind...”

(Michael Crawford)



Steve Harley, as far as I know, never sang the role on a stage before an audience, and Colm Wilkinson sang only the songs in ACT 1, once, at the Sydmonton Festival. That's why Crawford, who with Hal Prince, developed the character of the Phantom as we have known him since 1986 is considered the first Phantom.

[angelgirl]

This is the first video/song I listen to when I get on the internet everyday and I watch it sometimes just to laugh at how cheesy it is.
Several things I noticed:
1. Christine is wearing the wedding dress at the beginning. I thought that was a little weird.
2. There were snakes and gravestones in his lair. That was a little creepy. (I don't like snakes.)
3. Steve's mask. I almost busted out laughing when I saw it. It looks like a Mardi Gras mask.
4. Phantom cutting the chandlier with a butter knife. Hilarious!
5. The chandelier kills Raoul at the end! At least that's what is looks like.
And last,
Sarah's scream at the end. WOW! She can really hit that note!
A.G.