Mark Hodkinson meets the Intrepid Art Rocker


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Cabaret, caricature, blandness and self-parody all beckon the vetern rock performer, and there are few single-minded enough to shun these four evils.  Bill Nelson, guitar hero and dream disciple, is one of the precious few.  He has created eclectic, cutting-edge music for the past three decades and his story embraces - either in passing or in closeup - an array of rock legends.

While Nelson is famed chiefly for his stunning guitar work with Be Bop Deluxe in the 70s, this period forms less than one-sixth of his overall output.  He has released more than 40 solo LPs in various guises and almost 1000 songs bear the Nelson trademark.

Such extraordinary dyamism has seen an occasional dip in quality control, but Nelson has recently returned to form, particularly on his collaberative work with Culturemix and Channel Light Vessel.  This activity coincided with a two-CD Be Bop Deluxe retrospective, "Air Age Anthology"' and next year sees the arrival of a collection by Red Noise, the band formed by Nelson in th post-punk late '70's.

Interest remains high chiefly because Nelson is an intriguing personality who infuses a strange charisma into his music.  He is a servant of reverie, tied to a Yorkshire landscape but sharing at the stars.  His is a world where childhood is perpetual, with its comic books, dusty corners, soapnox rockets - a place where whimsy meets the profound.

BALLADS

Both in professional and personal circles, Bill's life has been something of a rollercoaster, spanning extremes of success and failure, happiness and stress.  In the early 1980s, his opulent lifestyle ran to a Rolls Royce and a Porsche, while he resided at the luxurious Haddlesey Hall in Yorkshire, with its banqueting hall, stained glass windows and ornamental ponds.  But a huge tax demand in the mid-80s and an obligatory court case with an ex-manager meant that Bill was forced to live at his mother's house for a period - and his current lifestyle is modest.

Wakefield, 1965.  Bill Nelson is 17 years old and performing at a local working men's club with the Teenagers.  He is, in fact, the only teenager in the group; the rest are approaching thirty.  They play evergreens, covers of ballads made famous by artists like Emile Ford.  By their fourth set of the evening, the mood changes when they run through some of Nelson's favourite tracks - the Who's "My Generation", Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley.

The son of Walter Nelson, a semi-rofessional saxophone player, Nelson's entry into Wakefield Art College saw him shun cabaret and embrace more innovative elements.  He bought Moby Grape records and scoured second-hand stores for colourful, crazy clothing.  He organized Wakefield's "Happenings" where, along with other students, he took over venues and staged multi-media events - balsa wood sculptures, crazy-foam spraying sessions, and the odd piece of experimental music.

He played guitar with various ad hoc bands, performing what he calls "psychedelic blues music". Names changed constantly; after a spell as Purple Tangerine Snowflake, the trio of Nelson, Allan Quinn (bass) and Bryan Holden became Global Village.  They covered songs by Cream and the Doors, until Nelson began writing his own - like "Flag", a typical bluesy protest song, and "My Mouse", a whimsical msuing about a pet buried in Wakefield Cemetary by an eccentric local family.

Days spent sifting through the racks of the Wakefield record shop, the Record Bar, saw Nelson build up a friendship with its owners, Ken and Betty Bromby.  She offered to cut an acetate of Global Village's recordings.  The songs were recorded in autumn 1968 at a two-track studio called Holyground, run by Mike Levon and Dave Wood from a bedroom in Wakefield.  "They were two friends of mine," says Nelson, "living in a place like a hippie commune, and i used to visit them a lot.  We did everything on two-track mono equipment."

The Global Village acetate featured covers of Fleetwood Mac's "Long Grey Mare", John Mayall's "You Don't Love Me Baby" and Traffic's "Dear Mr. Fantasy", on which they accidentally included the radio conversations of passing taxi drivers as well as extracts of Russian poetry!  Just three 7"s were cut - one for each band member.  Bill still owns his copy - "It sounds like an old 78", he admits.  (The Traffic cover later appeared on Holyground's "Loose Routes" compilation as "Global Fantasy", together with assorted other jams that featured Bill.)

ANARCHISTS

Holyground was a meeting place for Wakefield's beat scene, and Nelson was invited to play on records released by the studio's own label, also called Holyground.  He played guitar on a track on the 1971 album, "A-Austr", a titled culled from an encyclopaedia reference.  He also performed on three songs on "Astral Navigations", a similar LP assembled by the Holyground collective, together with Preston heavy rock band Thundermother.  The albums were sold through the Record Bar, but their tiny pressing runs led to them fetching huge sums on the progressive rock market by the mid-1980's.  Both have since been reissued, albeit again in limited quantities.

Global Village continued to appear at venues around West Yorkshire, once supporting soul stalwart Geno Washington.  "We saw ourselves as psychedelic anarchists," reckons Bill, "trying to wake people up.  We would run through twenty-minute improvisations and everything would be feeding back".

Nelson then joined a band who were the antithesis of Global Village.  Recently married to a Pentecostal Christian, he became converted himself for a couple of years, and joined a church group called the Messengers, whom he persuaded to adopt the more bohemian name of Gentle Revolution.  Nelson's hippie rhetoric merged with Christian fundamenalism, and he took his acoustic-based songs to church meetings, borstals and hospitals.

Gentle Revolution evolved into a vehicle for multi-media ideas which later became a prominent feature of Nelson's work.  The sixpiece held a concert in Wakefield, and Nelson showed his 8mm film, Prelude To Humanity.  They also staged dramas, mime sequences and poetry readings.  'The whole thing was just an excuse for me to have a bit of fun,' he says.

Nelson then returned to Holyground to record a solo album, 'Northern Dream'. He granted permission for Betty and Ken Bromby to make 250 individually-numbered copies, pressed on Bill's new Smile label and sold through their shop.  This initial batch came with a lavish booklet (and some also had lyric sheets).  Later repressings were made without Bill's knowledge.  These lack the booklet but retain the (amended) gatefold sleeve.

Gentle Revolution's keyboardist/drummer Richard Brown played on the record, as did two local musicians, Gareth Elledge and Leom Arthurs, who played bass on one track each.  Nelson himself played the other instruments.

'There was a lot of woolly mysticism in the air', Bill concedes.  He was struggling to interpret Christianity and some of this confusion was reflected in his drawing for the cover.  On first inspection, it depicts a child's bedroom, with the chimneys of urban Yorkshire and its terraced houses framed in the window above the bed.  On top of the cupboards are rows of books, and next to The Beano and Rupert annuals are texts on Buddhism, The Story Of Krishna and Flying Saucer Manual.

In Nelson's view, "Northern Dream' is a 'lazy sort of album'.  The dreamy acoustic pieces contained only fleeting glimpses of the intricate lead work for which he was later renowned.  That said, its rustic, poetical charm made it an intriguing badge of arrival.  John Peel played the LP on his Top Gear programme, prompting EMI to ask Nelson to re-record the songs on better equipment.

Meanwhile, Nelson formed a new band around a nucleus of himself and Richard Brown, with Robert Bryan on bass, Nicholas Chatterton-Dew on drums, and old school friend Ian Parkin on rhythm guitar.  After a few concerts as Flagship, they became Be-Bop Deluxe, a name lifted from a book into which Bill put 'daft names that came into my head'.

The band's first regular concerts were at the Duke Of Cumberland pub ('played badly at the Duke to almost no applause...' - 'Axe Victim') at North Ferriby, near Hull.  The jeans-and-T-shirt esprit of the early '70s had by now been replaced by glam rock and, as always, Nelson was keen to embrace the new.  Despite the wholly inappropriate setting, the band took the stage at the Duke covered in poster paints and outlandish clothes.  'God, we looked a set of . . . I don't know,' he laughs.  'The New York Dolls had nothing on us. At first it was just a laugh, but it caught on and gradually became more sophisticated.'

While EMI procrastinated over the rerelease of 'Northern Dream", Be-Bop Deluxe made a record to sell at concerts.  Pressed on Smile in a run of just a thousand, 'Teenage Archangel/Jets At Dawn" was recorded at Box Studios in nearby Heckmondwike (the latter was then reworked for their debut album, "Axe Victim').

The newly-married Richard Brown left Be-Bop Deluxe after just fourteen concerts, feeling unable to commit himself to the group.  EMI finally signed Be-Bop Deluxe after a rapturous reception supporting String Driven Thing at the Marquee.  Nelson wrote all the tracks on Be-Bop's debut album, apart from 'Rocket Cathedrals", a space-age rock'n'roll number written and sung by bassist Rob Bryan.  This track opened the second side of "Axe Victim", preceded by a short backward message, thought to be one of the first on a record - "automatic destruction will now commence on the mother planet".

Released in summer'74 on EMI's progressive label Harvest, "Axe Victim" established several musical and lyrical themes that became Nelson trademarks: blistering guitar runs; an obsession with his native Yorkshire; a deep interest in French film director and writer Jean Cocteau (one of his quotes was reprinted on the sleeve); and the analysing of his own status as a 'victim" of his art/axe.  This last element was suggested by the cover painting, by John Holmes, of a skull incorporated into the shape of a guitar body.

FRIENDS

After Be-Bop Deluxe played a support slot with Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, EMI expressed concern about the playing ability of the other band members, prompting Nelson to disband the "Axe Victim" line-up in August 1975.  "It's very hard for me to talk about it because they were close to me as friends," says Bill.  'But things weren't working out in the studio.  It was taking too long at times and I was having to work things out for them."

Coincidentally, Steve Harley was also re-shaping the Cockney Rebel line-up, and Nelson took on its former members, keyboard player Milton Reame-James and bassist Paul Jeffreys.  He also added Simon Fox, a session drummer who'd previously played with Hackensack.  But the new-look Be-Bop Deluxe would play just ten dates before Nelson again decided the personnel wasn't right.  "The shows were pretty disastrous," he recalls.  "There were too many stylistic differences.  Simon and me clicked perfectly, but it wasn't working with the other two.  We stayed friends with Paul and Milton, but itjust wasn't working out musically." Tragically, Jeffreys died in December 1988 in the Lockerbie air disaster.

Charlie Tumahai, a New Zealander of Tahitian and Moari parents, joined Be-Bop Deluxe on bass soon after he arrived in England with the successful Australian band, Mississippi.  After a fruitless search to find a keyboard player, Nelson resolved to play keyboards himself on the band's next album, "Futurama', a name used for cheap Fender Stratocaster copies during the 1960s.

Nelson wrote most of the songs for "Futurama" on a piano at his home in Wakefield, just a few yards from the area's imposing prison.  The fluent new line-up allowed for greater musical flexibility and the arrangements of the songs were more complex than before.  By this time, Bill's first marriage had ended, and he was in love with Janice Monks, later to become his second wife.  Tracks like "Maid In Heaven" and "Sister Seagull" revealed his new mood of euphoria, and became celebrated Be-Bop anthems.

Andy (real name Simon) Clark completed the line-up on keyboards in January 1975, having previously been with Mother's Pride, who'd supported Be-Bop Deluxe on northern dates.  A new version of the LP track, "Between The Worlds", was recorded as BeBop Deluxe's second Harvest single.  However, just a few copies made the shops before being withdrawn - "it was produced by Nick Mobbs and we weren't very happy with the sound," explains Bill.  It was then replaced by 'Maid In Heaven", produced by Roy Thomas-Baker, who later worked extensively with Queen.

For Be-Bop's third album, "Sunburst Finish', Nelson wanted to produce himself, and teamed up with John Leckie, who had worked on "Axe Victim" (and, more recently, the Stone Roses and Kula Shaker) as his engineer.  Released at the start of 1976, the LP yielded the band's most successful single, "Ships In The Night" - which led to their only appearance on Top Of The Pops.

The album's cover artwork, featuring a naked girl holding a burning Gibson guitar, was carried over to the tie-in tour.  The band would cram themselves into perspex tubes et la Spinal Tap - and Nelson would set his guitar alight after performing "Blazing Apostles".  "Sunburst Finish" was also the group's first official release in the United States and marked the beginning of two hectic years touring that vast country.

DISILLUSIONMENT

The result was "Modern Music", written on the road in America as a summary of Nelson's disillusionment with the country he had dreamed of visiting since boyhood, while also reflecting his filxation with science fiction.  The band were often in ponderous, showy mood on the album, though not on the precise and dreamy pop of the title track.  'Modern Music" was preceded by a single; "Kiss Of Light', back by a non-LP track credited verbosely to Funky Phaser & His Unearthly Merchandise.  "That happened because Charlie was back in New Zealand," laughs Bill.  'We were in Abbey Road jamming and came up with 'Shine'.  We just called it that because it wasn't the full band.'

A welcome break from Be-Bop's busy recording schedule was plugged by an inconcert album, "Live!  In The Air Age".  The tracks were originally recorded for inclusion on their next album, which had been expected to be a double.  However, the band were pleased with the mixes and decided to release a live collection in its own right.

"Drastic Plastic', Be-Bop Deluxe's fifth LP, was laid down over a six-week period using the Rolling Stones' mobile studio amid the hush of Chateau Saint Georges in the south of France.  Bill's showy guitar runs were less in evidence; it was clear he was trying to assimilate the electronic age into his writing, using instruments like the synth guitar.

In fact, Bill felt Be-Bop Deluxe had completed its natural lifespan and wished to credit the record under a new guise, Red Noise.  In the short term, his management persuaded him otherwise, and "Drastic Plastic" acted as Be-Bop Deluxe's swansong.

Nelson finally got to work as Red Noise (or, as EMI preferred, Bill Nelson's Red Noise) on his next album, 'Sound-On-Sound".  The LP was well received; it seemed Nelson had finally made the confident, modem step forward he had been trying to achieve for a while.  Andy Clark was the only survivor from the old group, Nelson having employed his younger brother Ian on saxophone and former Fairport Convention drummer Dave Mattacks.
 

Some fans were disappointed with the album's dearth of guitar solos, but Bill's rhythm work was better than ever before.  Clearly, his style had evolved from the earlier tonal guitar gymnastics and Red Noise was a vehicle through which he could re-define his music.  "A lot of the record was intentionally kitsch,' he explains, 'trying out new ideas.  It wasn't meant to be some big statement."

Which was just as well.  EMI had a major shake-up in 1979, and Nelson, like many other artists, was dropped.  Undeterred, he formed his own label, Cocteau, and almost enjoyed a surprise solo hit early in 1981 with "Do You Dream In Colour'.  Sadly, a technicians' strike thwarted an appearance on Top Of The Pops - and the record duly stalled at No. 52.

However, the single's quirky pop appeal caught the attention of Mercury/Phonogram, who signed Bill as a solo artist.  His first LP under the new deal was "Quit Dreaming And Get On The Beam", issued in May '81. Early copies came as a double set with a free album, "Sounding The Ritual Echo (Atmospheres For Dreaming)'.  Drawn from a five-hour body of work taped in his home studio, it presented another facet of the Nelson canon: there were no vocals, little guitar and no recognisable song structure or format.  As Bill wrote in the sleeve notes, the music felt to him like "a personal exorcism".

Nelson's work continued for a while on two distinct levels - punchy electronic pop and introspective keyboard-based pieces.  In 1981, he was asked by the Yorkshire Actors Company to provide the soundtrack for The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari, a theatrical version of the classic 1919 silent film.  A year later, he provided the score for a theatrical production of Jean Cocteau's 1946 film, La Belle Et La Bette (The Beauty And The Beast).

COMMERCIAL

Meanwhile, Nelson maintained a more commercial approach on the six-track 'Chimera" in 1983 (and like other Mercury projects, it later reappeared on Cocteau).  Another miniLP, "Savage Gestures For Charm's Sake', comprised tracks recorded at the same sessions as his previous two 'rock" albums.
Nelson's early 1980s discography was further complicated by several records on indie labels.  In America, PVC Records issued a 12" single, "Flaming Desire And Other Passions', while the Benelux-based Les Disques Du Crepuscule coupled "Room With Brittle Views' and "Dada Guitare".  Throughout the 80s, Nelson also released limited edition EPs through his fan club.  He is unsure of numbers pressed, but none exceeded 5,000.  Cocteau was also behind records by bands that Nelson either produced or "discovered", including A Flock Of Seagulls and Fiat Lux.
 

Early 1985 saw the release of a mammoth body of new work - four albums boasting 83 pieces of music.  'Trial By Intimacy (The Book Of Splendours)" was a boxed set including a 52-page book of photographs and a collection of postcards.  "I have often found a painter's sketch pad and his finished work to be of equal interest,' Nelson says.  The four albums in the set were: "The Summer of Gods Piano", "The Chamber of Dreams", "Pavilions Of The Heart And Soul" and 'A Catalogue Of Obsessions".

In May of that year, Nelson went undercover, crediting 'Sex-Psych-Etc" - an EP featuring loops of orchestral and choral sounds and cut-up vocal extracts - to Orchestra Arcana.  In late 1986, he expanded the project with the "Iconography" LP, following it two years later with another, "Optimism".  "I wanted to distance myself a little from the music, make it less obviously myself It was like putting a new slant on it," he says.

Many of Nelson's records are, for various reasons, doomed to relative obscurity.  But "Chameleon", recorded in 1986 for KPM, is perhaps his ultimate long playing rarity.  This library disc was produced solely for use by television and audio visual companies.  Similarly, the "Map Of Dreams" album was the soundtrack to a four-part series shown on Channel 4 in January 1987.  Bill also co-wrote the music for another Channel 4 series, Brond; two extracts, "Secret Ceremony" and 'Wiping A Tear From The All Seeing Eye", were released as a single under the guise of Scala.

Nelson's more traditional fare continued with the LP, "Getting The Holy Ghost Across', retitled 'On A Blue Wing" in North America for an edition which included two extra songs.  And in 1988, Cocteau released the instrumental double album, "Chance Encounters In The Garden Of Lights", divided into two halves.

Bill's voracious appetite for recording continued throughout 1989 with another four album boxed set, 'Demonstrations Of Affection'.  Two compilations also appeared: the double-disc 'Duplex"; and "The Strangest Things", a collection of obscure odds and ends, issued by Enigma in the United States.

After recording "Luminous' in 1991 for cult indie label Imaginary (who also lured Bill onto a Velvet Underground tribute LP), Nelson found himself briefly back on a major label.  Virgin released "Blue Moons And Laughing Guitars", ostensibly consisting of demos recorded at the same time as "Luminous".  Meanwhile, "Simplex" was an LP which Bill feels contains some of his best instrumental pieces --though- it was sold by mail-order without Nelson's blessing.

After producing Roger Eno's album, "The Familiar", Bill played with him and ubiquitous oboeist Kate St. John in Japan.  The trio also formed an occasional group, Channel Light Vessel, releasing two fine albums, combining ambient and world music: 'Automatic' in 1994 and 'Excellent Spirits" last year.  He also worked with the Japanese band Culturemix on their eponymous album.

Bill Nelson's solo canon continues on the Resurgence label, via his own imprint, Populuxe, which will shortly reissue material originally on Cocteau.  Nelson's output is still prolific, and in the past three years he has released no fewer than nine albums.  These include two boxed sets, "My Secret Studio" and 'Confessions Of A Hyper Dreamer".

HUBBUB

1995's "Crimsworth" album, meanwhile, comprised two meditative pieces used to complement an art installation in Nottingham and Leeds.  Last year's "After The Satellite Sings" (recorded in early '95), was a valiant attempt to fuse rock and jungle - a step taken to considerably more hubbub by David Bowie on "Earthling".  Indeed, Reeves Gabrels, Bowie's co-writer on seven of the nine tracks on "Earthling", is a fan of Nelson's, inviting him to concerts and buying his LPs - including "After The Satellite Sings"!

Bill is currently working on a trilogy of LPs based loosely around a theme of childhood; indeed, 1995's "Practically Wired" was the first in this series.  And he has recorded demos for a project with American Mitchell Froom, husband of Suzanne Vega.  "He's the only really interesting producer I've heard," says Bill.  "I got into him through a Los Lobos LP, "Colossal Head" and by Cibo Matto.

Nelson has a complex, occasionally frustrating body of work (for collectors, at least!).  But it is diverse, imaginative and touched by a charisma that is all Nelson's own.  Pushed to explain what has driven him over the years, Bill has this to say:

"In essence, the music is a tool for understanding myself, a mirror for figuring out who I am, a method of self-exploration.  Music is striving towards some point of beauty, a sense of search. eventually to a point that's transcendant."  Let's hope he gets there.

A Holy Racket

John Reed talks to Holyground's Mike Levon about Bill Nelson's earliest recordings.
 

How did we first meet Bill?  We went to see him at the flat of drummer Bryan Holden.  He'd not selected the name Global Village - they had a whole list of names to pick from.  Bill was younger than us - he was late teens/early 20s.  Then we invited him down to our Holyground studio that I'd just built.
It was a bedroom, twelve feet by twelve.  For a while, I actually slept there as well!  The first thing we recorded was an acetate EP in autumn 1968, the first electric recording I'd made.  Bill booked the studio.  The most significant track was a reworking of Traffic's "Dear Mr. Fantasy".  It wasn't just that Bill experimented with the guitar.  He played the most superb fluid, melodic solo: he bent it from a low bass note to a high, sustained scream.  There was some distortion which tested my equipment to the limit.

In typical Holyground style, students from the nearby college piled into the room and it tailed into the "na na na na" chorus from the Beatles' 'Hey Jude".  It's on the 'Loose Routes" compilation as "Global Fantasy" - the two songs welded together.  Al Quinn was singing, Bill joined in with the chorus.  Ian Parkin was on keyboard - he was later in Be-Bop Deluxe.  We added our own noises and picked up whatever we had and played them - toy squeakers, you name it.  There was a radio on as well, plus a bloke reciting poems, who walked around.  Bill was quite happy with that novel stuff - he came from an arts background.  The two blues tracks were quite ordinary in comparison.

Global Village played a lot of gigs, typically very bluesy, with extended solos and thrashing drums.  We recorded them live in Clarence Park in Wakefield in 1969.  You can hear samples on 'Loose Routes", Global Village in full jam mode.  Bill played on several tracks on 'Loose Routes".  Essentially, the album starts in 1965 and runs through to 1975 when Holyground stopped.

The Bill Nelson stuff comes on Side 2: 'Global Fantasy", a couple of tracks from A To Austr, including an alternative version of "It's Alright" that may feature Bill; and two snatches of jams I gave titles to, '598 Rundown' and "Stanley Blues Tale'.  That's a reference to the Stanley Working Men's Club.  We went onstage there when Bill was performing, dressed outlandishly in Indian costumes with girlfriends/wives.  Chris Coombs, who was recording A To Austr with us, constructed a wooden thing on stage while they were playing 'Dear Mr. Fantasy".  The audience couldn't hack all these hippies.

The next thing was a couple of tracks we'd started to record in 1968 for A To Austr, which were eventually abandoned and redone.  A To Austr was recorded in September '69 through until early 1970.  Bill was on one track, "Hawaiian War Chant", playing bottleneck  guitar but it sounds Hawaiian.  It's short, about a minute long.  He may also have been on acoustic guitar on 'It's Alright", which followed.  It was expensive to do photography on covers but it was quite easy to use screen prints so the A To Austr covers were all handscreened.

Bill then recorded some actual songs.  There's one lovely piece of guitar where I discovered that if you moved headphones back and forwards in front of a microphone, you made a phasing sound.  So we fed Bill's guitar through that.  That instrumental appears on 'Loose Routes" as "Untitled Yet".  Then there's "Country Seasons", recorded in 1969 - Al Quinn on vocals, Bill Nelson, myself playing matchbox.  And "Country Mouse" - Bill played flute on that.  Bill features on the front cover, holding up his guitar above his head - my brother had taken some photographs in the yard outside the studio.

Having finished A To Austr and not even being able to give it away, which is ironic knowing how much originals are worth, we decided to record another LP.  We'd met a heavy Preston band, Thundermother, who recorded lots of stuff with us between 1970 and early 1971.  That led to the Astral Navigations.  There are three sections to Astral Navigations: separate sessions from Thundermother and tracks I wrote with Brian Calvert.  Bill doesn't feature on either but he plays on all three of Chris Coombs' tracks - a suite, "Yesterday", 'Today" and "Tomorrow (Buffalo)".  The middle song is a reworking of "North Country Cinderella" from an earlier album, 'Number Nine Bread Street".

On "Yesterday", there's a heavy presence of Bill playing twin guitar through reverb - incredibly heavy distortion.  In the heavily edited solo, the chord breaks at the end, which was me taking a razor blade and slicing silence in between the sound.  It's actually a conga and features a stylophone plugged into a bass stack.  That goes into "Today', which is more electric than the earlier version.  Bill plays a violin-bowed electric guitar.  The last track was a straightforward rock thing with a reggae beat, which Bill introduced with some chopping rhythm guitar - and he did some background vocals.

Astral Navigations was well received locally.  People actually liked it whereas they didn't understand A To Austr.  It was sold in Yorkshire, Newcastle and London, and "Boogie Music" and "Yesterday' were played on Radio 1 by John Peel and Pete Drummond - Bill's first national radio airing.  Pete Drummond couldn't understand why we'd issue an album ourselves - were we crazy?!  One side was credited to Lightyears Away, which was the title rather than the band - our bands didn't have names.

There's a film about Astral Navigations, mimed because of the difficulty of synchronising sound.  My brother Kevin was at college in London, training to be a photographer, and had to make a film as an assignment.  He brought along some very professional equipment and made a 16mm film of this restaged session.  That languished for a long time until we transferred it to video fairly recently.  A few copies were made and sold - it's only short and we added some daft credits.

The Gagalactyca LP was material that didn't make it to Astral. That was only acetated until finally released in 1989.  The only track I think Bill's on is Chris Coombs' 'Cold, Tired And Hungry (And Ain't Got No Coat, Yeah)".  He wanted Bill to play heavy guitar it's lovely and bluesy, and Bill plays just about everything.

There must have been a gap when I hadn't seen Bill, but I went to his flat.  He played me some songs and I was really impressed ' I said we should do an album but I couldn't afford it.  It shows how poor we must have been because we were only talking L15.  He then got funding from the local record shop.  They had put a big display in their window of A To Austr, with polystyrene cut-out figures.

So we started on "Northern Dream", though it was still untitled.  Almost every week through 1971, we were recording, with a lot of double-tracking.  Bill made a lot up as he went along and I added production touches.  Because tape was expensive, we'd rub off stuff we didn't like and I'd started to wipe a guitar solo he didn't like.  In fact, it was superb.  He heard it the following day and said, I like that, let's keep it.  I said, well, you can't, it just goes click at the end and the beginning was ropy.  So we added the toilet flushing downstairs, people walking upstairs, teacups being put down and somebody going "1, 2, 3, 4', tacked on the beginning.  At the end, a couple of people in the studio laughed when the guitar stopped, so it seemed there was some reason.  Bill played all the guitars and a bit of flute and keyboards.  He had a variety of drummers.  Some of Gentle Revolution did bits and pieces, and we introduced him to Nick Chatterton-Dew, later the first drummer in Be-Bop Deluxe.

On the last night, when the LP was ready and edited in order, panic stations!  I played the first track, 'Photograph', and all this garbage came out.  I realised I'd not only thrown away the actual track in the bin - it was only about 45 seconds - but I'd screwed it up. So I fished it out, and flattened it to take out the creases.  You can actually hear a flutter.

Then the people from the shop came up to listen and said it was great.  How much do you want, Mike?  The tapes were fifteen quid - so I asked for fifteen quid.  Can you just sign this?  Their attitude then changed, because I went up the following day and asked to borrow the tapes to make a copy.  And they said no - so our relationship soured.  I was so angry about that.  The last I heard, the album's now sold in the region of 400,000 copies worldwide, with all the re-releases.

Bill typed out all the lyrics and gestetnered, stapled and tucked them into the album.  He had been gigging with Gentle Revolution, a Christian band, and the music wasn't Bill's best stuff.  The worst tracks on "Northern Dream", I thought, were those from that period.  The second track, "Everyone's Hero", was actually played by John Peel on Radio 1. He said we were from Burnley instead of Wakefield!
 
Bill came back from '72 to '74-ish and did a few tracks.  I've got a really good cassette version of "Jet Silver And The Dolls Of Venus".  He'd record acoustic stuff with us - in fact, he'd plug in his electric guitar and play as if it was acoustic - leading up to Be-Bop Deluxe.  The band came down to see us one Saturday morning without any instruments.  We'd got a harmonium in the studio and a few drums and we co-wrote this silly song - the only time I ever recorded Bill being funny.  We went into these rhymes, 'don't spifflicate my donkey/don't trafflicate my honky".

That may have been Be-Bop Deluxe's first recording.  We did several sessions.  The tracks we finished were "Night Creatures' and another that didn't make it to the first album.  They went down immediately after that to record "Axe Victim".  They should appear on this Bill Nelson album I've been compiling, "Electrotype", which has everything of Bill's that I ever recorded.  I'd like to consult with Bill and see what he thinks about it.
 
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