The Best Years of Our Lives (Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel song)
| "The Best Years of Our Lives" | |
|---|---|
| Song by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel | |
| from the album The Best Years of Our Lives | |
| Released | March 1975 |
| Genre | Pop-rock |
| Length | 5:46 |
| Label | EMI |
| Songwriter(s) | Steve Harley |
| Producer(s) | Steve Harley, Alan Parsons |
| "The Best Years of Our Lives" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Single by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel | ||||
| from the album Face to Face: A Live Recording | ||||
| B-side | "Tumbling Down" | |||
| Released | 12 August 1977 | |||
| Format | 7", 12" | |||
| Genre | Pop-rock | |||
| Length | 5:00 | |||
| Label | EMI Records | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Steve Harley | |||
| Producer(s) | Steve Harley | |||
| Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel singles chronology | ||||
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"The Best Years of Our Lives" is a song by the British rock band Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, released in 1975 as the title track from the band's third studio album The Best Years of Our Lives. In 1977, a live version of the song was released as a single from the album Face to Face: A Live Recording.
Following the split of the original Cockney Rebel line-up in July 1974, Harley assembled a new line-up later in the year and renamed the band Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel. In November-December 1974, the new band recorded The Best Years of Our Lives album at Abbey Road Studios and Air Studios in London. In 2014, Harley recalled of the song's recording: "We played it live in the studio, all sat round together. There were no overdubs, and we all wanted to get the feel of the song on record." When the band performed the song live at the Hammersmith Odeon on 14 April 1975, Harley announced the track as "the most serious song I've ever wrote in my life". Since then, the song has consistently been a popular inclusion at Harley and the band's concerts.
In 2014, EMI released a definitive edition of the album as a four CD + DVD box-set. On disc one, a previously unreleased acoustic demo of "The Best Years of Our Lives" was included. In an online diary entry, Harley said of the demo:
""The Best Years Of Our Years" acoustic demo (why do I allow this to reach your ears? WHY?) is proof if needed that all songs start and finish as just that, as a song – not productions, not records. The song comes first. On this original, I attempted to invert the "tragic" and "magic" or was I just tired? That demo was played just to Alan and our tape operator in the early hours when the long day and night had been wrapped. I just told Alan I had something new for tomorrow but didn't fancy going home yet (I would have been alone at Landward Court, Marble Arch, and was slightly Martini-ed up)."
Upon release, Record & Popswap Mirror reviewed The Best Years of Our Lives album and said: "Each song has a distinct character, culminating in the personal message - the title track." In the liner notes of the 2014 definitive edition, Geoff Barton wrote: "The album closes with the title song, Harley reprising the hard-bitten troubadour persona he adopted on Cockney Rebel's first two albums. The track somehow manages to be both triumphant and mournful at the same time."
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