[4][5] The lack of UK success for Cockney Rebel left their label, EMI, feeling the band had yet to record a potential hit single.

In response, Harley went away and reworked his unrecorded song "Judy Teen", which was released in March 1974 and became a UK Top 5 hit.

[11][12] In a March 1974 interview with Melody Maker, Harley compared the album to The Human Menagerie, "The difference is in feel.

"[13] Speaking to Record & Popswop Mirror in November 1974, Harley spoke of The Psychomodo in relation to his songwriting for the next Cockney Rebel album, The Best Years of Our Lives, "I find that I'm not writing in such a surrealistic way anymore.

In similarity to "Sebastian" and "Death Trip" from The Human Menagerie, a large symphony orchestra and choir was used on "Tumbling Down", with orchestral arrangements conducted by Andrew Powell.

"[5] In a 1974 interview with Music Scene, violinist Jean-Paul Crocker expressed his opinion that The Psychomodo was a much stronger album than The Human Menagerie.

We wanted the first album to be heavier than it was, but it turned out quite weak, and we sounded like a bleedin' folk group most of the time.

After completing the poem, which he described as a "sustained metaphor", Harley believed the overall theme was similar to that in "All Along the Watchtower", except he was "saying it entirely differently".

[17] Harley had to form two impromptu line-ups of Cockney Rebel in order to perform the song on Top of the Pops.

EMI did not release The Psychomodo in the US until January 1975 (under the new band name, Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel), with "Tumbling Down" also being issued there as a promotional single.

[18] Harley was frustrated by the length of time it took to release the album in the US and told Rock Scene in 1975, "There was over six months lag for Psychomodo.

[22] On 24 November 2012, Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, supported by an orchestra and chamber choir, performed The Human Menagerie and The Psychomodo albums in their entirety live at the Birmingham Symphony Hall.

[24] On its release, Jeff Ward of Melody Maker noted that The Psychomodo is "intrepid manic music, lashed by an obsessive creative drive and wonderfully defiant of accepted forms".

"[28] Bob Scallon of the Acton Gazette wrote, "On the plus side, Harley is gifted with an unusual and distinctive voice, and is a very original songwriter.

On the minus side, however, I don't think he has quite licked the band into shape yet and the demanding arrangements on several of the tracks of The Psychomodo sometimes seem a bit beyond them musically.

"[30] Dave Thompson of AllMusic retrospectively said, "If The Human Menagerie was a journey into the bowels of decadent cabaret, The Psychomodo is like a trip to the circus.

Such twists on innocent childhood imagery have transfixed authors from Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, but Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel were the first band to set that same dread to music, and the only ones to make it work.