Armed conflict has long served as inspiration for contemporary popular music in America. Country singer Johnny Horton detailed life as a Confederate soldier during the Civil War in the 1959 song “Johnny Reb”, for example, and Poco dedicated an entire album to the conflict with Blue and Gray, which was released in 1981 on MCA Records.
Both John Fogerty and Neil Young took to song to address the Vietnam War with “Fortunate Son” (1969) and “Ohio” (1979), respectively, and Country Joe McDonald’s 1965 composition “The ‘Fish’ Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” became an anthem for the anti-war counterculture when he performed the call-and-response singalong at Woodstock. His inspired rendition earned him a spot in the festival’s Oscar-winning documentary film, directed by Michael Wadleigh, and on its accompanying soundtrack.
One historical wartime period that musicians have largely ignored, however, is the American Revolution. At least that was the case until 1976. That’s when a Scottish quintet from Glasgow delivered what is undoubtedly rock ‘n’ roll’s only hit single about the Boston Tea Party, a watershed moment in American history and a precursor to the Revolutionary War.
The song is based on the events of 16 December 1773, when American colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded British ships and tossed 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. The act was a protest against a tea tax levied by the British Parliament and the East India Co.’s monopoly. Less than two years later, on April 19, 1775, the Revolutionary War officially commenced with the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
The incident remains one of the most important in the country’s history and continues to permeate popular culture. The Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum opened in Boston in 2012, for instance, and the protest has been portrayed in movies and television series for years, e.g., Walt Disney’s Johnny Tremain (1957) and, more recently, a four-part documentary called Liberty or Death: Boston Tea Party (2023).
Musically, however, the Boston Tea Party remains mostly untouched. There was a group from Burbank, California, that assumed the name the Boston Tea Party for a 1968 album on Flick-Disc, a subsidiary of MGM Records, although the band’s brand of pop-flavored psychedelia has little to do with the Revolutionary War. The same can be said for a similarly styled 1960s-era group that called itself the American Revolution. That all changed when the Sensational Alex Harvey Band released a nearly five-minute hard rock song called “Boston Tea Party”, a singularly unique take on 18th-century Colonial America.
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s Not So Revolutionary History
Formed by its namesake and lead vocalist in 1972, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band sought to breathe new life into a handful of stalled musical careers. Harvey’s solo recordings for both the Polydor and Fontana labels failed to chart, while guitarist Zal Cleminson, bassist Chris Glen, and cousins Hugh and Ted McKenna (keyboards and drums, respectively) emerged from an obscure, short-lived two-record progressive hard-rock band called Tear Gas.
The group’s first handful of albums for Vertigo Records did little commercially. In 1975, however, the band scored a UK Top 10 hit with a live rendition of “Delilah”, a song made famous by Tom Jones. Looking to capitalize on its newfound success, the quintet continued to write its own material and penned “Boston Tea Party.”
Released in 1976 — perhaps not coincidentally during the year of the American Bicentennial — “Boston Tea Party” was the first single from SAHB Stories, the band’s sixth studio album and first for Mountain Records (home to a handful of heavy rock outfits, including the Baker-Gurvitz Army, Krazy Kat, and Nazareth).
Dave Thompson of AllMusic describes the song this way: “… the twisted history of ‘Boston Tea Party’ — quite likely the only UK hit to mention George Washington’s wooden teeth — is set to a pounding tomahawk guitar riff, and an extraordinarily contagious chorus.”
The chorus Thompson describes is catchy (albeit repetitive):
Are you going to the party?
Going to the Boston Tea Party
Going to the party
Going to the Boston Tea Party
Going to the party
Going to the Boston Tea Party
Going to the party
Going to the Boston Tea Party
The song briefly recaps the events of that historic day in the late fall of 1773 — as seen through the eyes of a Scottish rock band — in three verses:
Redcoats in the village and there’s fighting in the streets
Indians and the mountain men are talking when they meet
The king has said he’s going put a tax on tea
And that’s the reason y’all Americans drink coffee
Fire in the mountains, flames upon the heath
And the president spits out the news, he’s biting them wooden teeth
Them children of the colonies got a different tale to tell
I’m going to the city, tell my folks I’m doing well
Bringing back the buffalo to the long prairie
Bringing back the fishes swimming in the sea
The children of them colonies got a different tale to tell
Going down to the city, tell my folks I’m doing well
Despite a couple of glaring historical inaccuracies (George Washington didn’t become president until well after the Boston Tea Party, of course, and his supposed wooden teeth are the stuff of urban legend), the song became an unlikely hit, peaking at #13 on the UK singles chart (it did not chart in the States). The band promoted the song with performances on the British television show Top of the Pops and spent the year touring in support of SAHB Stories.
Despite its unusual subject matter, the song found new life almost two decades after its initial release; former Marillion vocalist Fish (also Scottish) included a version of the track on his 1993 covers album Songs from the Mirror. Years later, in 2010, Def Leppard vocalist Joe Elliott paid tribute to the song by performing it with the surviving members of the band at an awards ceremony in Glasgow.
They Were Great, Once
“Boston Tea Party” marked the Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s last taste of commercial success; the group never charted again. They released two more albums (Fourplay was recorded without Harvey) before calling it quits in 1978. Harvey toured as a solo artist while his bandmates reconvened for the occasional reunion show.
Singing about the Boston Tea Party wasn’t the only oddity of Harvey’s career. In 1977 — on break from the Sensational Alex Harvey Band — he recorded an album called Alex Harvey Presents the Loch Ness Monster, a largely spoken-word record featuring interviews with purported eyewitnesses of the famed mythical creature (the lone musical number is a less than one-minute-long song entitled “I Love Monsters Too”). The 17-track limited-edition album was reissued on compact disc in 2009.
Still, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s legacy lives on. In early 2026, Madfish Records, a UK-based reissue label, released Good Evening, Boys and Girls!, an enormous 21-CD box set featuring numerous live performances recorded during the band’s 1973 to 1977 heyday. The collection also features a 144-page hardback book and a replica tour program.
In 2005, a survey sponsored by The List, a Scottish magazine, in conjunction with BBC Radio Scotland, found the Sensational Alex Harvey Band to be the fifth greatest Scottish band of all time, besting the likes of the Average White Band, the Bay City Rollers, Big Country, the Incredible String Band, and Simple Minds. Sadly, Alex Harvey wasn’t here to celebrate; he died of a heart attack in 1982 at the age of 46.
Resource
American Battlefield Trust. “The Boston Tea Party”. 10 June 2024.