FYI: As we likely have some Bill Nelson/Be Bop Deluxe fans in the group, I made some notes on the highlights of his career, spawned by my personal fascination and admiration for his 1971 debut LP Northern Dream and the release of his very innovative 1999 Sound - On - Sound album, under the Red Noise moniker. Bill Nelsons Northern Dream, which I would consider to be a classic psychedelic folk-rock landmark and is a rare and much sought after album with poetic songwriting and masterful guitar playing, laying the ground floor for the heights he would accomplish in his career in the following decades . Released initially with an extremely limited run of 250 copies, on Bills imprint Smile Records which was not run as a proper label and was financed and sold exclusively by the Record Bar in Wakefield, England. It came with a lavish booklet and some of the copies had lyric sheets. Bill never received any royalties from the record sales, up until the most recent CD/LP reissues were released by an Esoteric subsidiary, Bill Nelsons own record label, which he started in 1981 with his then-manager Mark Rye, Cocteau Discs. Bill never received royalties for the Be Bop Deluxe albums in the 70s from the EMI label either. See notes below. The album was re-released in a limited run of 1000 copies by Ken and Betty Bromby, owners of the Record Bar unbeknownst to the artist shortly after the An edition remastered from original tapes was released on CD by Cocteau Discs, an imprint of Esoteric Recordings as well as a limited vinyl run of of 250 copies (as was the case with the initial private pressing), presented as a reproduction of the original 1971 Smile Records issue, hand packed in heavy duty PVC wallet, with 12 x 12 booklet, photostat lyric sheet and signed postcard! One of the first truly independently produced albums to be released in Britain, the album featured wonderful compositions such as Everyone’s Hero, End of the Seasons, Love’s a Way and Smiles. 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. But alas, Bill had moved on to form a group initially doing gigs under the name Flagship, soon becoming Be Bop Deluxe, who were the main vessel that sparked his prolific career, in the form of more bands, doing collaborative work with other artists, as well as solo work. Nelson estimates that the total number of albums that he has released so far, whether under his own name, or with BeBop DeLuxe, Red Noise or Orchestra Arcana, also totals about 50. And whereas the frequency of his output became a little bit erratic in the middle of all the crises that hit him in the early 90s, once hed found his feet, freedom, tapes and a new wife (he married Emiko, former wife of YMOs Yukihiro Takahashi), his output was soon as prolific as it had ever been. As a member of the band Channel Light Vessel he played a central role in the making of their two albums Automatic (1994) and Excellent Spirits (1997), also featuring Roger Eno, Laraaji and Kate St. John. Other notable works are: Bill Nelson’s classic 4 disc ambient boxed set TRIAL BY INTIMACY (The Book of Splendours), comprising some eighty pieces of music, the set was a fine example of Bill Nelson’s grasp of Ambient music and has subsequently been hailed as a ground-breaking work. Long deleted, the set is made available once more with this newly re-mastered Cocteau Discs edition. His project Red Noise released an amazing album (and two singles) Sound - On - Sound which was a fluid, expert document that demonstrated Nelsons ability to experiment, though at the cost of jarring both the audience and the record company. EMI dropped Nelson at this point, one of the major reason being that he refused to play Be Bop Deluxe material during his live shows. A second Red Noise album had been finished, but was never released in its original form. Also of utmost interest are his full length ambient and soundtrack companion pieces that came as bonus LPs with a a couple of his solo releases: Abandoning the Red Noise experiment, Nelson reworked the album and released Quit Dreaming and Get On the Beam via Mercury Records. In its original format, the album came with a bonus disc -- a full-length album of ambient sketches recorded in his home studio, released as Sounding the Ritual Echo (the album has subsequently been issued by itself). Quit Dreaming and Get On the Beam went into the Top Ten in the U.K. This was repeated with The Love That Whirls (Diary of a Thinking Heart), which also included a bonus album (this time La Belle Et La Bete, a theatre soundtrack recording) and the single Flaming Desire. This period proved to be the commercial peak of Nelsons career To find out more about the EMI royalties, in Bills own words, see the following link: jagshouse/music/billnelson.html Bill Nelson FAQ: billnelson/usarchives/other/faq.htm
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 22:05:12 +0000
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