When I think of or listen to Bill Nelson’s Dream Cities Of The Heart, I say sometimes aloud that it must be my favourite Bill Nelson song, and then I correct myself as I remember Moments Catch Fire On The Crest Of Waves. Lately, Will has been a favourite.
😲...I've never seen one of these before...TBH, I never even knew, or I've just completely forgotten, Between The Worlds was, at one point, going to be released as a single.
BE BOP DELUXE Between The Worlds (Rare 1975 UK 'A' label demonstration vinyl 7" for the withdrawn single release.
BE-BOP DELUXE Jet Silver (Rare 1974 UK 'A' label demonstration vinyl 7" for the single release...& release date of '7.6.74' on the label, also including Third Floor Heaven. (repro sleeve)
What a great interview. The part about some people working in record companies are actually into the music is interesting. (top right) I wonder if that is the same today?.
Where are all of the pubs and bars where bars where bands worked their trade. It's seems now, it's "The Voice" / manuafactured stuff. I'm getting more into a lot of modern orchestral music that seems to allow imaginative music innovation (and Bill of course)
My wife bought this for me from the Alexandra Palace Antiques And Collectors Fair, along with a few others. Looked like my record collection from 1979!
Cool...I've got a set of Bill's album cover coasters (possibly 8, or so), I bought from a Nelsonica (2009 or 2010, I think?)...But I really like these, very cool and spot-on for when your like minded music buddies call round...😎👍
James Dean Bradfield of the Manic Street Preachers just picked Bill in a programme on his favourite players on 6Music. The track he selected was the Metropolis version of Maid in Heaven.
This was recommended to me by YouTube, Bill, and I'd wondered if you might've seen it before . . .
Cosmic Voyage (1936)
Kosmicheskiy reys: Fantasticheskaya novella (known in English as Cosmic Voyage and The Space Voyage) is a 1936 Soviet science fiction film produced by Mosfilm.
Continue the phallic imagery - replace it with a model of a rocketship :)
Would also create some tension due to the conflict between his clothes/hairstyle and the rocketship - similar to BBD's retro-futurism from around Modern Music time.
@Geetar Homer that is so amazing. Nice card. I wonder if when Bill was recording at Abbey Road in the '70s in St. John's Wood if he thought of St. Johns, Wakefield.
It just dawned on me that Judge is an actual surname like Mike Judge.
Good point actually. Pre internet days, I hadn't seen Bill to Andy Clark with short hair and although I recognised Bill, I didn't recognise Andy, who looked like he'd lost an argument with a chain saw. I thought he was one of the Finger Printz guys at first.
Needless to say, mine was short a couple of weeks later.
I remember telling Andy that I'd come up from Jersey for the gig and he obviously thought we're all rich over here, because he said "lucky you could afford it" which I though was naff because I'd come up by boat and then drove from Portsmouth to London in the rain on the back of a 175CC bike. I stayed in room above a Wimpy somewhere after the gig before heading back.
Bill of course was the wonderful gentleman he always is and found time to chat with us before heading in for the sound check.
This Bank Holiday Monday brought a TV new item about seaside resorts getting visitors once more. One of the resorts featured was Skegness which apparently is doing a roaring trade in ice cream, fish n' chips and donkey rides. The news item showed Skegness pier which is about to undergo a renovation.
Now, back when I was only two or three years old, I went on holiday with my parents to Chaper St Leonards, just outside Skegness, where we stayed in a caravan. We would walk into Skegness and go on the same pier that was shown in the television news feature this morning. I suddenly remembered that I have a photograph of me walking with my mother on sand dunes on the edge of the beach at Skegness, with that same pier in the background. And that little tot is now in his 73rd year! Here's the photograph...
@Bill Nelson it’s such a great photograph and it looks like an advertisement. The horizontal stripes on your jumper remind me of your Jean Cocteau themed jumper.
@sotelosphere I remember reading that in I believe the Virgin Records outlet in North Berkeley, CA. Thought the pic was cool. I think I bought the mag as well.
Here's a really ancient photo' of Kirkgate in Wakefield. The street/road still exists today though you would now find it impossible to recognise from this photo'. Yet though it had changed even in the 1950s, there were elements, back then, that still resembled the photo'. And, in the late '50s, across the road, on the left hand side of the pic, was the Wakefield Music Centre where I stood and stared at guitars in the shop's window when I was a schoolboy...
Not sure where this pixilated photo' came from, I found it on Facebook, but it shows the members of Be Bop Deluxe by the swimming pool at The Manor studio during the recording of 'Drastic Plastic.' Simon is in the pool, Andy plays dead, Charlie gazes into the distance and I fiddle with the cine camera I used to create the footage for the the 'Be Bop Deluxe In The South Of France' video I put together many years later and which is available in the 'Essoldo Cinema' section of Dreamsville.
This is Ivy Estate, an annexe to Eastmoor Estate in Wakefield. The photo' shows Starbeck Road leading up from Ivy Lane.
Conistone Crescent, where I grew up, is just over the hill from the top of the image. But in the 1950s, when I was a boy, everything you see in the photograph was open fields, farmland, with no houses on it at all. Kids from Conistone Crescent would play in the fields, which we accessed via a gap in an old wall separating Conistone Crescent from the open land beyond. There was an ancient ruined building at the top of the field called, 'Ivy House', which was an abandoned annexe to a local mental hospital. This ruin was a popular haunt of kids from Conistone Crescent, it's surrounding trees providing ample opportunities for attaching rope swings.
Bronwyne Jackson, (the girl whose parents were immediate neighbours of my parents,) and who was a playmate of mine when we were just kids, used to make a 'den' in the bushes that ringed the fields, taking picnic lunches provided by our mothers to enjoy in the bushy green secrecy that the den provided. Jam sandwiches or potted meat sandwiches were the order of the day. Bronwyne would bring her little doll's tea set to pour out the drinks our mum's had packed for us, usually some variety of 'pop', Dandelion and Burdock and the like.
When we were only a wee bit older, we lost our den when the field was sold to the council and the building of Ivy Estate began. Bronwyne and I would ride our bikes around the newly built roads that were laid out first before the houses were constructed. We watched those houses grow, brick by brick, until they became the scene that you can see in this '60s photograph. And then, the new Starbeck Road hill became a sledge run in the winter snow for us kids to slide down, screaming and laughing and ending up in a pile on Ivy Lane.
73 years ago this coming December, I was born in the housing block known as Marriot's Buildings at Westgate End in Wakefield. There are only two photographs that I've ever found of my birthplace and this one is a crop and enlargement from a much wider shot which you may be more familiar with. This version, whilst pixilated due to homing in on the building more closely, does indicate it's nature and history which dates back to the 1800s. I lived in this place from birth to around three years old...
Two photo's of Warrengate in Wakefield, looking towards 'The Springs' and Cathedral. I would walk down this street into town in the 1960s from Eastmoor. The first pic was taken in 1900, the second pic I took in the 1980s or '90s. My pic is from a slightly more left position than the first.
A mystery photograph: I've no idea where this is, or who the person is that I am talking to. It looks as if it might have been in the grounds of Villa St George in Juan Les Pins, during Be Bop Deluxe's recording sessions there, but I'm not sure. Maybe the guy I'm speaking with was a technician who drove the Rolling Stones Mobile recording truck down to the South Of France, but, again, all recollection of the moment pictured has vanished from my mind. Any clues?
It does seem like a Rolling Stones-affiliated person who reminds me of both Bill Wyman and Keith Richards. The light, colour of the sky and the bathtub intrigue. You look like a hipster from either the future or past letting this person in on something not thought of. Great photo’. Has an album cover vibe.
It’s a wonderful photo’. Didn’t know until now that it was traditional Pentecostal that Shirley had been affiliated with. I had it in my head that it was more of a hippie cult 'based on' Pentecostal Christianity. Have also thought before that the song ‘Love’s A Way’ might’ve been written somewhat within the context of the religious faith that Shirley and you were affiliated with.
Alec, I 've always pursued a spiritual path of one kind or another, but was never a fan of evangelical dogma, whatever the flavour. I simply got dragged into the Pentecostal thing, briefly, as a result of my relationship with my first wife. I soon became disillusioned by its blinkered refusal to accept other faiths and belief systems as part of humanitiy's search for meaning and, as a result, was banished to the realms of 'heresy' by general, but unspoken, consensus. Religion is divisive, addictive and dangerous when taken to extremes. I'm not a follower or a 'disciple' of any one faith. I don't possess blind belief, try to embrace 'gnosis', knowledge, and the truly mystical.
Don't think I've posted this photo' before. It shows my brother Ian, my Dad and my Mum outside the Pentecostal Mission Chapel in Wrenthorpe on the occasion of my first marriage, (to Shirley Berry,) in , (if I remembe correctly,) 1969 or 1970. Shirley's family were Pentecostalists, hence the wedding location.
It's sad to think that all three people pictured here are no longer alive...
A bit of a change to the subject here, but this is something I just discovered going through photos to scan.......my son Zak and myself many years ago, with my painting from many years before - around 76/77 which was recently given to a member of Dreamsville .....a little indulgent to put on this thread, but it's a small slice
I've got this memory of a Creature from the Black Lagoon action figure that either one of my friends had or I had. I remember that Wolfman action figure as well.
@Alec Thanks Alec - Zak always liked Pink Buddha Blues at this young age, but it's now more usual to hear something like Futurama blasting from his room! He likes the instrumental albums such as Gleaming Without Lights also.
Bill, when listening to your song Silent Glides My Armstrong Siddeley, I think of motor cars that look like the one in the 1928 advertisement above, but being that the company was around between 1919 and 1960, the motor that you had in mind was likely more like this one?
Here's a pic of the three piece line up of Be Bop Deluxe before Andy joined on keyboards. Charlie, Simon and I actually did some shows as a three piece band and I performed 'Love With The Madman' live, playing an electric piano on stage whilst singing.
Must’ve been blinders those three-piece shows. I feel like I’ve only seen this and other photos from this session in black-and-white. The three of you fit together, image-wise, but something about you, Bill, reminds me of country music and/or jazz. It’s something about the way your hair is and the black shirt. Great photo’ and is that a bit of shag carpet?
@Alec I think the hairstyle was something of a mistake.😅 A bit '70s casino cruiser. It seemed cool at the time though. Bet everyone has dated fashion moments.. It's just that us folk in the 'public eye' get to be embarrassed by them more often than most. 😉
And it was in Abbey Road that I also met Hank Marvin and the Shadows. I've told this story elsewhere in Dreamsville but Hank surprised me by walking into the control room when I was in the middle of recording a guitar solo in the studio's live room. He leaned over the mixing desk and pressed the talkback button to speak to me. His voice came over my headphones, saying "Bill, you can't use echo, thats my gimmick!" Laughter all round.
I often reflect on the fact that a boy from Wakefield, learning to play guitar and with no pathway to the glamorous world of pop and rock stars, his bedroom wall covered with photo's of people whose records he'd bought, (such people as Duane Eddy, Hank Marvin, Paul McCartney, Marianne Faithful and so on,) would ever get to meet them in real life. They seemed distant, fantastic creatures, black and white super apparitions on the family's television set. The magic box in the corner of the living room contained them for a brief moment, then whisked them away..
But now, all these long years later, I've met and chatted with Hank and Duane, Marianne and Paul and so many more 'famous' musicians and artists, several of whom have become friends. How on earth did that happen? It blows my mind to this day because, under all the layers of 'maturity' I'm supposed to have accumulated during my 72 years, I'm still. at heart, that boy in his bedroom, gazing at photo's of Duane with his Gretsch and Hank with his Stratocaster and dreaming about what it might be like to actually meet them. Well, now I know...😉😃
Just last week, I was watching Bill Bailey's live show from 2016, 'Limboland'. He has a great routine about he and a friend meeting Paul McCartney - revolving around the complete inability to say anything coherent or intelligent when face-to-face with a childhood hero. It sounds as if you managed just a little better than he did, Bill!
Here's a photograph, (courtesy of my friend John Spence,) of the front door of Abbey Road's famous studio in St John's Wood, London. I walked through that door so many times in the 1970s to record tracks for Be Bop Deluxe albums. This was where I met co-producer John Leckie for the first time, who became a life-long friend as well as a musical buddy.
Late one night, after a long Be Bop Deluxe recording session, as I walked down those steps with a guitar case in hand and was about to get into a taxi to take me to the apartment I'd rented for the duration of the recording, a Mini with blacked out windows was parked just to the left of those stairs in the photo.'I'd just stowed my guitar case in the taxi and was about to climb in when the driver's window of the Mini was wound down and a voice said, "Hey man, how's it going?"
I turned around to see Paul McCartney sitting in the Mini and speaking to me through its now open window. Astonished, I walked over to Paul's cat and saw that Linda McCartney was sitting in the passenger seat and speaking to someone on an in-car telephone, a very unusual and expensive device in those days, long before mobile 'phones were invented. Paul looked up at me from the driver's seat and said that they had been listening to Be Bop Deluxe recording, listening just outside the door of our studio. Paul said it sounded 'great' and concluded by saying. "It's good fun this recording malarkey isn't it?"
I stammered something or other that I can't remember, completely knocked for six that I was speaking with an actual Beatle. We said goodnight, I got in my taxi and Paul drove away. A night I'll never forget...
I met you at one of your conventions and the same thing happened to me. I just came out with some dribble about how I'd got there from Hong where I was living at the time and went all blank after that. I don't think anything else came out, but you were the true gentleman and said "thanks for coming"
Really like that flier, Jeff. Nice style.The Monochrome Set I saw perform live on several occasions. I remember liking them and thought their name was so slick. The photographs in that link you provided appear to be from the same event at ‘The Warehouse’ in Leeds.
hmmm, I think the photos are from when Bill & Ian played Plan K
"The Plan K, opened in 1973, was a five stories high dismantled sugar refinery, turned into an arts centre, located at 21 Rue de Manchester, Brussels. In October 1979 Michel Duval and Annik Honoré started organising gigs and events there. Joy Division (gigging abroad for the first time), Cabaret Voltaire and William Burroughs performed at the duo's first night on October 16th 1979. They were later followed by many bands from the post-punk era, most of them British. Meanwhile renamed to "La Raffinerie", and not a concert venue anymore, Plan K saw another memorable event on 15 December 2007: A Factory Night (Once Again)."
Was thinking that same thing, Jeff, regarding Rue de Manchester. Great minds ☺️ as they say . . . I remember in my teens reading about Les Disques du Crépuscule, Factory Benelux and, of course, Annik Honoré. I felt a part of it all somehow. Nice photo’ of The (former) Plan K. That launch night must’ve been something else! The name “La Raffinerie” would appear to honour the original function of that interesting building.The name “Plan K” has that slightly sinister, military, sci-fi look to it, befitting the participants and the roster reminds me of ‘The Final Academy’ event organised by Genesis P-Orridge, David Dawson and Roger Ely a few years later . . . https://annebeanarchive.com/1982-wb-final-academy/
Those Anglo American Optical sunglasses were so cool. I remember looking everywhere for them and you informed me they were from a shop on Oxford street in London called The warehouse. Never looked that good on me!
A fan photo' of myself and my late friend Alan Quinn, performing as 'The Practical Dreamers' at 'The Warehouse' club in Leeds in the 1980s. Alan is playing my Aria bass which I'd lent him for those gigs. I'm playing the Yamaha SG 2000 that I originally bought to stand in for my Gibson 345 with late period Be Bop Deluxe. I sold that Yamaha when I was going through hard times in the early '90s. Wish I still had it.
The jacket I'm wearing was an old American marching band uniform which I'd bought from a shop in London's Covent Garden. I actually ended up in an argument with Annie Lennox about that jacket when I was espousing left wing socialist views and Annie said, "how can you be a socialist when you're wearing expensive clothes like that?" She was totally unaware that the jacket was second hand and had cost me next to nothing to buy. Goes to show, you don't need lots of money to be stylish, just a knack for putting the right pieces of clothing together, even if they're cheap, second hand clothes.
@Radium Girl Good idea but The Invisibility Exhibition tour was a later event - I saw it in Huddersfield as detailed above. By coincidence it also included the Yorkshire Actors Company.
Those of you who have read volume one of my autobiography will know that when I was four years old I contracted Scarlet Fever, which was a serious disease at that time. I was taken in an ambulance to Snapethorpe Hospital, in Wakefield, to an isolation ward. The disease was highly contagious and I had to stay there for a few weeks. It was a horrible experience as I'd never been away from my parents before and I became very upset and traumatised by it.
M y parents could visit but not enter the ward, they had to stand outside on a veranda and peer in at me through some large windows. They would bring little gifts for me but had to give them to the ward's matron who would then bring them into the ward to give to me. I remember one of these gifts being a little puzzle box where you had to get little silver balls into holes.
Seeing my parents in this way was deeply distressing as I couldn't hear what they were saying and they couldn't hear me. After a week or two I became so upset that my Dad collared the matron and doctor and insisted on taking me home. At first they refused but Dad got angry and they eventually let him take me. I spent another week or so in bed at home, my bedroom walls draped in sheets soaked in disinfectant. Eventually I recovered from the illness but never recovered from the trauma of being in hospital. To this day I have a fear of such places, even though in recent years I've needed to visit them regularly.
Anyway, here's a photo' I found of the veranda of Snapethorpe Hospital. Not sure who the man standing on it is but that's where my Mum and Dad had to stand to see me. My bed was behind one of the french windows on the left of the photo'.
When I was at Art School in the mid 1960s, we art students used to buy our paints and brushes and other art supplies from 'The Eagle Press' shop in Wakefield's Wood Street. The shop had a great selection of arts and craft materials as well as some model kits, stationary and so on. I sometimes bought plastic model 'planes from there but mainly art supplies.
The shop also carried a number of the 'Ian Allen' loco spotter books, which I'd bought from there in the 1950s when I was a pupil at Ings Road School. The main Wakefield to London line ran past the school's playing field so there was plenty of opportunity to spot different steam engines as they rolled past and mark them down in the loco spotter books.
The Eagle Press shop sadly no longer exists and I'm not sure if Wakefield even has an Art School anymore. But I loved browsing in The Eagle Press all those years ago and it's a shame it has disappeared. Here's a photo' of the shop as it was in the early 1960ss, and a later colour photo' of it, possibly in the late '80s.
Another window into days long gone: Here's an old aerial photograph of the Ings Road area of Wakefield, probably taken in the late 1940s or early '50s showing Ings Road School in the centre of the photo' and also George Lee's Textile Mill where my grandmother worked. I've indicated by the solid arrow the location of the school hall where I gave my first ever public performance when I was a schoolboy there. The broken arrow shows the textile Mill sheds where my grandmother was employed.
Im the 1950s, when I was a very young boy, my parents and younger brother Ian and myself, along with my grandmother, went to Dymchurch on the South Coast for a holiday. I've mentioned this elsewhere but as part of that holiday we went on a day trip to France, taking a ferry from Folkstone to Calais where a tour bus took us to see the war graves of English military servicemen killed during World War 2.
Before departing back to England we spent an hour on the beach at Le Toque, a coastal resort.
Recently, while sorting through my late mother's memorabilia, I found an old, out of focus photograph, only 2 inches square, of Ian and myself on that French beach. We're kneeling in the sand and in front of us is a young French boy who came over to play with us. He spoke no English and we spoke no French so communicating was not easy. I think you can tell how bemused we were by the expression on out faces.
I've scanned the tiny photograph and attempted to bring it into focus but it's still blurred. Nevertheless, I'll attach it to this post along with another photo' from the French day trip which shows my mother holding Ian, and me on the ferry as it was about to depart Folkstone for France. I've got a little 'box' brownie camera in a case hung from a strap around my neck.
@Bill Nelson That's a funny story from the beach at Le Toque, the mystery of what that child might've said, the look on your faces. Ian looking like Le Petit Prince and you looking like a French schoolboy, he'd probably assumed you both were French. 😁
Sometimes I forget what a great draftsman you are, Bill. Reckon you could’ve gone in the direction of architecture. Was that ever of any interest to you, architecture?I think I can match the building in the photo’ easiest with the last drawing What’s a hopper?I like the clouds in the middle one. The middle one reminds me a bit of Egon Schiele. Maybe the bottom one as well. The last one reminds me slightly of the sketches that were included in textbooks at school, but only because of the splashes of colour.
Thanks alec. Strangely enough, my grandson is studying architecture at university and his work is really impressive. He'll have a great career ahead of him I reckon.
By the way, not sure if 'hopper' is the correct term but I was indicating the device that loads things such as coal into a barge. It's the tower like object that protrudes over the river in my second sketch and has chutes that coal or other materials slide down into the barges to be carried off to whatever destination requires them.
@Bill Nelson I now clearly can see the hopper in both your drawing as well as the photograph. Also the 'John Hirst & Co.' signage can clearly be seen. Found a few Wakefield Waterfront photographs via a Google search of John Hirst & Co.
Further to my above post with the two sketches I made of Thrones Wharf when I was a teenager in the 1960s, here's a more recent photograph of the area which aligns a bit more with my first sketch. The John Hirst building still stands though its sign writing is now faded. But, from this angle, not a lot has changed since I made the sketch over 50 years ago...
Here's an old photograph of Thornes ~Wharf in Wakefield. The Hepworth Gallery was a long way in the future when this pic was taken but it would eventually be built on the left side of the river and a footbridge constructed from the right hand side spanning the river to the gallery on the left hand side.
In 1963 or '64, when I was an art student, I made two quick sketches of the area in the photograph from a slightly different angle. These were jotted down at the actual location with the idea of creating an oil painting from them later at the art school studio, (though I never got around to it.)
I've posted them here and I think you will recognise the 'hopper' just apearing on the left of the photo' and the large whitish building with 'Hirst' written on it. That building is one of the few buildings which still survive today.
Here are three photographs that relate to my own history.
The first one is from the late '50s and shows the Wakefield outdoor market being cleared in preparation for the building of shops on the site. That cleared area used to be filled with outside stalls in front of the old market hall, (which is out of shot to the right of the photograph. )
The row of buildings in the background line Westmorland Street and you can see that one of them carries a large sign stating that the building belongs to 'Walton's', a fish and chip cafe and fish shop.
Now, when I was a fourth year schoolboy at Ings Road Secondary School, we were allowed to walk into town from Ings Road at lunchtimes if we opted out of school dinners. School dinners were pretty awful so my pal Ian Parkin and myself would walk into town and get a fish n' chip lunch at Walton's cafe. The photo' shows exactly how it looked when we went there.
The good thing about Walton's cafe, (apart from the fish n' chips,) was that it had a jukebox in the dining room on the first floor. Ian Parkin and myself would always climb the stairs to that dining room to listen to the jukebox play as we ate our lunch. If we had a little money to spare, we'd feed the jukebox, selecting records by Duane Eddy or The Shadows. In those days, jukeboxes had several records by instrumentalists on them and there was always something good to hear. I remember how powerful the records sounded compared to our humble Dansette record players that we had at home. The bass was much more prominent and the whole thing sounded louder on the jukebox.
Sitting in that cafe, listening to The Shadow's 'Apache' or 'FBI', I had no idea that I would become a professional musician and have a long and prolific recording career. It was unimaginable that a kid from Wakefield could attain such a thing. Nor did I ever imagine that one day, in the seemingly far away 21st Century, I would be honoured with a Wakefield 'Star' award and that the award would be set into the pavement of Westmoreland Street, right outside the building that once housed Walton's cafe.
The second photo' is from an earlier period which shows a similar view to the first photo; but with the outside market stalls in place.
The third photo' is from the '50s and is taken from a position on Westmorland Street, looking the other way, towards the old Market Hall. Again the stalls are in place but it would not be long before they would be demolished and then the Market Hall too, giving way to a more modern '60s style Market Hall, (which now, in turn, has given way to a generic, sterile shopping centre.) Wakefield, sadly, no longer has a proper Market but I remember its once thriving, colourful bustle with great affection.
The cleared outside market area and Westmoreland Street with Walton's cafe.
Looking towards Westmoreland Street with the market stalls still occupying pride of place.
This photo' taken from a position on Westmoreland Street looking in the opposite direction to the other two photo's. Again, the stalls are still in place as is the old Victorian Market Hall. The 'cabin' shop on the corner in the foreground sold 'Tripe', a rather unpleasant looking food that was nothing more but the lining of a cow's stomach. My father loved 'Tripe' but I wouldn't go near it. This tripe shop can also be seen in the first photograph where it was awaiting the fate of the other demolished stalls.
Incredible. Where do you get this stuff. The announcer doesn’t sound very excited though. Sounds like he’s paid by the word.
Very Bill Nelson.…
First Spaceship on Venus (1960)
http://www.r-type.org/static/makemull.htm
Cool older interview possibly conducted by John Oates from Hall and Oates 😉Great analysis of how dysfunctional the music industry has always been.
I think he likes it 😅
When I think of or listen to Bill Nelson’s Dream Cities Of The Heart, I say sometimes aloud that it must be my favourite Bill Nelson song, and then I correct myself as I remember Moments Catch Fire On The Crest Of Waves. Lately, Will has been a favourite.
In Greek mythology, Hypnos and Thanatos are twin brothers, with Hypnos being the god of sleep and Thanatos being the personification of death.
He And Sleep Were Brothers
… The Tingalary Man And The Scarlet Fever Kid
😲...I've never seen one of these before...TBH, I never even knew, or I've just completely forgotten, Between The Worlds was, at one point, going to be released as a single.
BE BOP DELUXE Between The Worlds (Rare 1975 UK 'A' label demonstration vinyl 7" for the withdrawn single release.
...Apparently, £175 is the asking price
May 1978.
BE-BOP DELUXE Jet Silver (Rare 1974 UK 'A' label demonstration vinyl 7" for the single release...& release date of '7.6.74' on the label, also including Third Floor Heaven. (repro sleeve)
=50 years old next year!..😲
The child is innocent and lacks understanding of the greatness that surrounds him
1976 UK white label vinyl 7" test pressing for the single...(CTTS b-side)
..."Me? I've got enough music in me for a thousand years yet,
and that's all I care about"
😎
James Dean Bradfield of the Manic Street Preachers just picked Bill in a programme on his favourite players on 6Music. The track he selected was the Metropolis version of Maid in Heaven.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001n0jz
Jean Cocteau drawing in La.Villa.Santo.Sospir, 1952
@Bill Nelson indeed so Rockfield, near Monmouth, in Wales, then, is more likely. Some of us were wondering if the location might be San Francisco.
Was this photograph taken at Haddlesey?
Dreaming in Colour
https://bit.ly/3Bd4udU
Cadillac, 1959.
Reminded of Bill's 'Atom Blasted Cadillac' from Old Man Future Blows The Blues (Noise Candy)
A few minutes with Professor Tim Wilson on John Dee and Theosis . . .
This was recommended to me by YouTube, Bill, and I'd wondered if you might've seen it before . . .
Cosmic Voyage (1936)
Kosmicheskiy reys: Fantasticheskaya novella (known in English as Cosmic Voyage and The Space Voyage) is a 1936 Soviet science fiction film produced by Mosfilm.
The year Be Bop Deluxe entered the music industry in a formal, legal sense.
This reminds me of a pulp cover.
This image has long given me a BN vibe. I can't think of what to replace the gun with, though, ukulele?
Richard Strange talking about himself to John Robb. At around 27 minutes in through 30 minute, there’s much Bill Nelson. 👍
Bill, thought you might find this article of interest . . .
New Study Verifies Aztec Manufacture of John Dee’s Obsidian Spirit Mirror
From D.S.'s Instagram today 17 Sept, 2021
I see this still and I think of Bill Nelson . . .
[Nijinsky in "Danse siamoise" from the "Orientales"] by Eugène Druet
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Photography
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005 Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, NY Medium: Gelatin silver print
From the Waccanfeld Wakefield Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/The-historic-value-of-Wakefield-111415478943458/photos/g.1774390222877796/4047705248647775
But you've still got your Be Bop Deluxe hair!
..In fact you'd probably win a Simon Fox lookalike competition...😲
Only kidding mate..Great pic!!..😎
I found this picture of Bill and me outside of Drury Lane before the Red Noise sound check (I sneaked in for a listen)
This Bank Holiday Monday brought a TV new item about seaside resorts getting visitors once more. One of the resorts featured was Skegness which apparently is doing a roaring trade in ice cream, fish n' chips and donkey rides. The news item showed Skegness pier which is about to undergo a renovation.
Now, back when I was only two or three years old, I went on holiday with my parents to Chaper St Leonards, just outside Skegness, where we stayed in a caravan. We would walk into Skegness and go on the same pier that was shown in the television news feature this morning. I suddenly remembered that I have a photograph of me walking with my mother on sand dunes on the edge of the beach at Skegness, with that same pier in the background. And that little tot is now in his 73rd year! Here's the photograph...
Hope you all can read it...another blast from the past. Dyno-mite!
from a Jan/Feb 1987 issue of Option with Zappa on the cover...
Aah !......the decadent delights of GT Smiths ;-)
A slightly daft interview from the '80s.
An old advert for Be Bop Deluxe single 'Japan.'
An old '70s publicity photo' of myself...(possibly from 'Record Mirror' or 'Smash Hits' magazine.
The day we supported Robin Trower...😉
A review of
from Music Week magazine, back in the 1970s.
Here's a really ancient photo' of Kirkgate in Wakefield. The street/road still exists today though you would now find it impossible to recognise from this photo'. Yet though it had changed even in the 1950s, there were elements, back then, that still resembled the photo'. And, in the late '50s, across the road, on the left hand side of the pic, was the Wakefield Music Centre where I stood and stared at guitars in the shop's window when I was a schoolboy...
Not sure where this pixilated photo' came from, I found it on Facebook, but it shows the members of Be Bop Deluxe by the swimming pool at The Manor studio during the recording of 'Drastic Plastic.' Simon is in the pool, Andy plays dead, Charlie gazes into the distance and I fiddle with the cine camera I used to create the footage for the the 'Be Bop Deluxe In The South Of France' video I put together many years later and which is available in the 'Essoldo Cinema' section of Dreamsville.
This is Ivy Estate, an annexe to Eastmoor Estate in Wakefield. The photo' shows Starbeck Road leading up from Ivy Lane.
Conistone Crescent, where I grew up, is just over the hill from the top of the image. But in the 1950s, when I was a boy, everything you see in the photograph was open fields, farmland, with no houses on it at all. Kids from Conistone Crescent would play in the fields, which we accessed via a gap in an old wall separating Conistone Crescent from the open land beyond. There was an ancient ruined building at the top of the field called, 'Ivy House', which was an abandoned annexe to a local mental hospital. This ruin was a popular haunt of kids from Conistone Crescent, it's surrounding trees providing ample opportunities for attaching rope swings.
Bronwyne Jackson, (the girl whose parents were immediate neighbours of my parents,) and who was a playmate of mine when we were just kids, used to make a 'den' in the bushes that ringed the fields, taking picnic lunches provided by our mothers to enjoy in the bushy green secrecy that the den provided. Jam sandwiches or potted meat sandwiches were the order of the day. Bronwyne would bring her little doll's tea set to pour out the drinks our mum's had packed for us, usually some variety of 'pop', Dandelion and Burdock and the like.
When we were only a wee bit older, we lost our den when the field was sold to the council and the building of Ivy Estate began. Bronwyne and I would ride our bikes around the newly built roads that were laid out first before the houses were constructed. We watched those houses grow, brick by brick, until they became the scene that you can see in this '60s photograph. And then, the new Starbeck Road hill became a sledge run in the winter snow for us kids to slide down, screaming and laughing and ending up in a pile on Ivy Lane.
73 years ago this coming December, I was born in the housing block known as Marriot's Buildings at Westgate End in Wakefield. There are only two photographs that I've ever found of my birthplace and this one is a crop and enlargement from a much wider shot which you may be more familiar with. This version, whilst pixilated due to homing in on the building more closely, does indicate it's nature and history which dates back to the 1800s. I lived in this place from birth to around three years old...
Two photo's of Warrengate in Wakefield, looking towards 'The Springs' and Cathedral. I would walk down this street into town in the 1960s from Eastmoor. The first pic was taken in 1900, the second pic I took in the 1980s or '90s. My pic is from a slightly more left position than the first.
The Apple Watch looks like Bill's digital watch. Bill's very present-day in that photo'.
A french bathtub salesman ?
A mystery photograph: I've no idea where this is, or who the person is that I am talking to. It looks as if it might have been in the grounds of Villa St George in Juan Les Pins, during Be Bop Deluxe's recording sessions there, but I'm not sure. Maybe the guy I'm speaking with was a technician who drove the Rolling Stones Mobile recording truck down to the South Of France, but, again, all recollection of the moment pictured has vanished from my mind. Any clues?
It’s a wonderful photo’. Didn’t know until now that it was traditional Pentecostal that Shirley had been affiliated with. I had it in my head that it was more of a hippie cult 'based on' Pentecostal Christianity. Have also thought before that the song ‘Love’s A Way’ might’ve been written somewhat within the context of the religious faith that Shirley and you were affiliated with.
Don't think I've posted this photo' before. It shows my brother Ian, my Dad and my Mum outside the Pentecostal Mission Chapel in Wrenthorpe on the occasion of my first marriage, (to Shirley Berry,) in , (if I remembe correctly,) 1969 or 1970. Shirley's family were Pentecostalists, hence the wedding location.
It's sad to think that all three people pictured here are no longer alive...
A bit of a change to the subject here, but this is something I just discovered going through photos to scan.......my son Zak and myself many years ago, with my painting from many years before - around 76/77 which was recently given to a member of Dreamsville .....a little indulgent to put on this thread, but it's a small slice
of history so I'll chance my arm on it!
Bill, when listening to your song Silent Glides My Armstrong Siddeley, I think of motor cars that look like the one in the 1928 advertisement above, but being that the company was around between 1919 and 1960, the motor that you had in mind was likely more like this one?
Here's a pic of the three piece line up of Be Bop Deluxe before Andy joined on keyboards. Charlie, Simon and I actually did some shows as a three piece band and I performed 'Love With The Madman' live, playing an electric piano on stage whilst singing.
And it was in Abbey Road that I also met Hank Marvin and the Shadows. I've told this story elsewhere in Dreamsville but Hank surprised me by walking into the control room when I was in the middle of recording a guitar solo in the studio's live room. He leaned over the mixing desk and pressed the talkback button to speak to me. His voice came over my headphones, saying "Bill, you can't use echo, thats my gimmick!" Laughter all round.
I often reflect on the fact that a boy from Wakefield, learning to play guitar and with no pathway to the glamorous world of pop and rock stars, his bedroom wall covered with photo's of people whose records he'd bought, (such people as Duane Eddy, Hank Marvin, Paul McCartney, Marianne Faithful and so on,) would ever get to meet them in real life. They seemed distant, fantastic creatures, black and white super apparitions on the family's television set. The magic box in the corner of the living room contained them for a brief moment, then whisked them away..
But now, all these long years later, I've met and chatted with Hank and Duane, Marianne and Paul and so many more 'famous' musicians and artists, several of whom have become friends. How on earth did that happen? It blows my mind to this day because, under all the layers of 'maturity' I'm supposed to have accumulated during my 72 years, I'm still. at heart, that boy in his bedroom, gazing at photo's of Duane with his Gretsch and Hank with his Stratocaster and dreaming about what it might be like to actually meet them. Well, now I know...😉😃
Just last week, I was watching Bill Bailey's live show from 2016, 'Limboland'. He has a great routine about he and a friend meeting Paul McCartney - revolving around the complete inability to say anything coherent or intelligent when face-to-face with a childhood hero. It sounds as if you managed just a little better than he did, Bill!
Here's a photograph, (courtesy of my friend John Spence,) of the front door of Abbey Road's famous studio in St John's Wood, London. I walked through that door so many times in the 1970s to record tracks for Be Bop Deluxe albums. This was where I met co-producer John Leckie for the first time, who became a life-long friend as well as a musical buddy.
Late one night, after a long Be Bop Deluxe recording session, as I walked down those steps with a guitar case in hand and was about to get into a taxi to take me to the apartment I'd rented for the duration of the recording, a Mini with blacked out windows was parked just to the left of those stairs in the photo.'I'd just stowed my guitar case in the taxi and was about to climb in when the driver's window of the Mini was wound down and a voice said, "Hey man, how's it going?"
I turned around to see Paul McCartney sitting in the Mini and speaking to me through its now open window. Astonished, I walked over to Paul's cat and saw that Linda McCartney was sitting in the passenger seat and speaking to someone on an in-car telephone, a very unusual and expensive device in those days, long before mobile 'phones were invented. Paul looked up at me from the driver's seat and said that they had been listening to Be Bop Deluxe recording, listening just outside the door of our studio. Paul said it sounded 'great' and concluded by saying. "It's good fun this recording malarkey isn't it?"
I stammered something or other that I can't remember, completely knocked for six that I was speaking with an actual Beatle. We said goodnight, I got in my taxi and Paul drove away. A night I'll never forget...
More 80s
from Phillipe Carly's website
http://www.newwavephotos.com
Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe (1953) Marathon TV Series chapters 1-12
Those Anglo American Optical sunglasses were so cool. I remember looking everywhere for them and you informed me they were from a shop on Oxford street in London called The warehouse. Never looked that good on me!
A fan photo' of myself and my late friend Alan Quinn, performing as 'The Practical Dreamers' at 'The Warehouse' club in Leeds in the 1980s. Alan is playing my Aria bass which I'd lent him for those gigs. I'm playing the Yamaha SG 2000 that I originally bought to stand in for my Gibson 345 with late period Be Bop Deluxe. I sold that Yamaha when I was going through hard times in the early '90s. Wish I still had it.
The jacket I'm wearing was an old American marching band uniform which I'd bought from a shop in London's Covent Garden. I actually ended up in an argument with Annie Lennox about that jacket when I was espousing left wing socialist views and Annie said, "how can you be a socialist when you're wearing expensive clothes like that?" She was totally unaware that the jacket was second hand and had cost me next to nothing to buy. Goes to show, you don't need lots of money to be stylish, just a knack for putting the right pieces of clothing together, even if they're cheap, second hand clothes.
Those of you who have read volume one of my autobiography will know that when I was four years old I contracted Scarlet Fever, which was a serious disease at that time. I was taken in an ambulance to Snapethorpe Hospital, in Wakefield, to an isolation ward. The disease was highly contagious and I had to stay there for a few weeks. It was a horrible experience as I'd never been away from my parents before and I became very upset and traumatised by it.
M y parents could visit but not enter the ward, they had to stand outside on a veranda and peer in at me through some large windows. They would bring little gifts for me but had to give them to the ward's matron who would then bring them into the ward to give to me. I remember one of these gifts being a little puzzle box where you had to get little silver balls into holes.
Seeing my parents in this way was deeply distressing as I couldn't hear what they were saying and they couldn't hear me. After a week or two I became so upset that my Dad collared the matron and doctor and insisted on taking me home. At first they refused but Dad got angry and they eventually let him take me. I spent another week or so in bed at home, my bedroom walls draped in sheets soaked in disinfectant. Eventually I recovered from the illness but never recovered from the trauma of being in hospital. To this day I have a fear of such places, even though in recent years I've needed to visit them regularly.
Anyway, here's a photo' I found of the veranda of Snapethorpe Hospital. Not sure who the man standing on it is but that's where my Mum and Dad had to stand to see me. My bed was behind one of the french windows on the left of the photo'.
When I was at Art School in the mid 1960s, we art students used to buy our paints and brushes and other art supplies from 'The Eagle Press' shop in Wakefield's Wood Street. The shop had a great selection of arts and craft materials as well as some model kits, stationary and so on. I sometimes bought plastic model 'planes from there but mainly art supplies.
The shop also carried a number of the 'Ian Allen' loco spotter books, which I'd bought from there in the 1950s when I was a pupil at Ings Road School. The main Wakefield to London line ran past the school's playing field so there was plenty of opportunity to spot different steam engines as they rolled past and mark them down in the loco spotter books.
The Eagle Press shop sadly no longer exists and I'm not sure if Wakefield even has an Art School anymore. But I loved browsing in The Eagle Press all those years ago and it's a shame it has disappeared. Here's a photo' of the shop as it was in the early 1960ss, and a later colour photo' of it, possibly in the late '80s.
Another window into days long gone: Here's an old aerial photograph of the Ings Road area of Wakefield, probably taken in the late 1940s or early '50s showing Ings Road School in the centre of the photo' and also George Lee's Textile Mill where my grandmother worked. I've indicated by the solid arrow the location of the school hall where I gave my first ever public performance when I was a schoolboy there. The broken arrow shows the textile Mill sheds where my grandmother was employed.
Im the 1950s, when I was a very young boy, my parents and younger brother Ian and myself, along with my grandmother, went to Dymchurch on the South Coast for a holiday. I've mentioned this elsewhere but as part of that holiday we went on a day trip to France, taking a ferry from Folkstone to Calais where a tour bus took us to see the war graves of English military servicemen killed during World War 2.
Before departing back to England we spent an hour on the beach at Le Toque, a coastal resort.
Recently, while sorting through my late mother's memorabilia, I found an old, out of focus photograph, only 2 inches square, of Ian and myself on that French beach. We're kneeling in the sand and in front of us is a young French boy who came over to play with us. He spoke no English and we spoke no French so communicating was not easy. I think you can tell how bemused we were by the expression on out faces.
I've scanned the tiny photograph and attempted to bring it into focus but it's still blurred. Nevertheless, I'll attach it to this post along with another photo' from the French day trip which shows my mother holding Ian, and me on the ferry as it was about to depart Folkstone for France. I've got a little 'box' brownie camera in a case hung from a strap around my neck.
Sometimes I forget what a great draftsman you are, Bill. Reckon you could’ve gone in the direction of architecture. Was that ever of any interest to you, architecture? I think I can match the building in the photo’ easiest with the last drawing What’s a hopper? I like the clouds in the middle one. The middle one reminds me a bit of Egon Schiele. Maybe the bottom one as well. The last one reminds me slightly of the sketches that were included in textbooks at school, but only because of the splashes of colour.
Here's an old photograph of Thornes ~Wharf in Wakefield. The Hepworth Gallery was a long way in the future when this pic was taken but it would eventually be built on the left side of the river and a footbridge constructed from the right hand side spanning the river to the gallery on the left hand side.
In 1963 or '64, when I was an art student, I made two quick sketches of the area in the photograph from a slightly different angle. These were jotted down at the actual location with the idea of creating an oil painting from them later at the art school studio, (though I never got around to it.)
I've posted them here and I think you will recognise the 'hopper' just apearing on the left of the photo' and the large whitish building with 'Hirst' written on it. That building is one of the few buildings which still survive today.
Ghia’s Gilda show car, 1955
From the Internet Archive
The best flying saucer arrival in cinematic history - 1951
The derelict riverside mills shown in the video are currently being renovated as part of a development known as Tileyard North.
https://tileyard.co.uk/stories/tileyard-north-coming-soon/
Found this 15-minute clip from 2011 with lovely ambient sound when searching Westmorland Street, Wakefield ...
The City of Wakefield, West Yorkshire - 23rd April, 2011 ...
Here are three photographs that relate to my own history.
The first one is from the late '50s and shows the Wakefield outdoor market being cleared in preparation for the building of shops on the site. That cleared area used to be filled with outside stalls in front of the old market hall, (which is out of shot to the right of the photograph. )
The row of buildings in the background line Westmorland Street and you can see that one of them carries a large sign stating that the building belongs to 'Walton's', a fish and chip cafe and fish shop.
Now, when I was a fourth year schoolboy at Ings Road Secondary School, we were allowed to walk into town from Ings Road at lunchtimes if we opted out of school dinners. School dinners were pretty awful so my pal Ian Parkin and myself would walk into town and get a fish n' chip lunch at Walton's cafe. The photo' shows exactly how it looked when we went there.
The good thing about Walton's cafe, (apart from the fish n' chips,) was that it had a jukebox in the dining room on the first floor. Ian Parkin and myself would always climb the stairs to that dining room to listen to the jukebox play as we ate our lunch. If we had a little money to spare, we'd feed the jukebox, selecting records by Duane Eddy or The Shadows. In those days, jukeboxes had several records by instrumentalists on them and there was always something good to hear. I remember how powerful the records sounded compared to our humble Dansette record players that we had at home. The bass was much more prominent and the whole thing sounded louder on the jukebox.
Sitting in that cafe, listening to The Shadow's 'Apache' or 'FBI', I had no idea that I would become a professional musician and have a long and prolific recording career. It was unimaginable that a kid from Wakefield could attain such a thing. Nor did I ever imagine that one day, in the seemingly far away 21st Century, I would be honoured with a Wakefield 'Star' award and that the award would be set into the pavement of Westmoreland Street, right outside the building that once housed Walton's cafe.
The second photo' is from an earlier period which shows a similar view to the first photo; but with the outside market stalls in place.
The third photo' is from the '50s and is taken from a position on Westmorland Street, looking the other way, towards the old Market Hall. Again the stalls are in place but it would not be long before they would be demolished and then the Market Hall too, giving way to a more modern '60s style Market Hall, (which now, in turn, has given way to a generic, sterile shopping centre.) Wakefield, sadly, no longer has a proper Market but I remember its once thriving, colourful bustle with great affection.
The cleared outside market area and Westmoreland Street with Walton's cafe.
Looking towards Westmoreland Street with the market stalls still occupying pride of place.
This photo' taken from a position on Westmoreland Street looking in the opposite direction to the other two photo's. Again, the stalls are still in place as is the old Victorian Market Hall. The 'cabin' shop on the corner in the foreground sold 'Tripe', a rather unpleasant looking food that was nothing more but the lining of a cow's stomach. My father loved 'Tripe' but I wouldn't go near it. This tripe shop can also be seen in the first photograph where it was awaiting the fate of the other demolished stalls.