Although his career spanned almost three decades, he is best remembered as the frontman of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, with whom he built a reputation as an exciting live performer during the era of glam rock in the 1970s.

Harvey was born and raised in the working-class Kinning Park district of Glasgow (also reported as the Gorbals in the 2009 STV show The Greatest Scot).

[1] By his own account, he worked in a number of jobs, from carpentry to being a waiter at a restaurant to carving gravestones,[2] before finding success in music.

[1] On Friday, 20 May 1960, at the Town Hall in Alloa, Alex Harvey and his Big Beat Band opened for Johnny Gentle and His Group, "His Group" being the Beatles (John, Paul, George, Stuart Sutcliffe and Tommy Moore), on this the opening night – and biggest audience – of the Beatles' seven-date tour of Scotland with Gentle.

From 1958 until 1965, he was the leader of Alex Harvey's Big Soul Band, playing blues and rock and roll songs and spending considerable time touring in the United Kingdom and Germany.

[4] This band recorded the live album Hair Rave Up, which contained Harvey originals and other songs not from the stage show.

In 1970, Harvey formed Rock Workshop with Ray Russell; their first, self-titled album contained an early version of "Hole in Her Stocking",[5] later to appear on Framed.

The band never achieved acclaim in the United States the way it did in Great Britain, but it had a cult following in certain US cities, especially Cleveland, where the group first played at the Agora Ballroom in December 1974.