I Never Met Bill Nelson...pt1 by enrique che pelligro

Hand me my costume

Please won't you pass me my mask

I have arrangements that I must keep with the past

Bring on the cabaret we can all have a laugh

I've made the theatre of the absurd, at last

Drink up and let's go home

The demon is on the phone

He's playing a dialling tone

So drink up and let's go home

Orchestrations of a different nature

Arrangements that I've made to end it all

Years and years of love all turned to paper

Dancing at the old musician's ball

And these beauty secrets that I've kept so long

Have slightly faded like my old blue jeans

But read them now because before too long

They could fall apart at every seam

Bill Nelson

...i never met my guitar hero Bill Nelson, but i did manage to play, produce, and write songs with his brother Ian's band, Bolt From the Blue, a jazzy blues based outfit popular in the Cleck-Hudders-Fax area, as close to your heroes as it is advisable to get, apparently.

My love for the madman began with the Sunburst Finish album, his band Be Bop Deluxe's third album, and the one that skyrocketed them into the charts (Ships in the Night, featuring a sax solo from young Ian, 17 at the time and only 2 weeks into his mastery of the instrument) and into international acclaim, touring Europe, America and Asia to rave reviews and obsessive fans everywhere they went. I'd been given the album as a birthday present by my brother, in a tradition we had of buying each other albums that we liked ourselves, but which the recipient hadn't heard before, with the knowledge that should it not be satisfactory to the giftee, at least it can find a good home with the gifter, but this was definitely a keeper! From the warm, sensuous cover of a naked lady brandishing a burning guitar, through the progressive grooves on vinyl, to the picture of the group on the back cover, looking smooth in 70's fashions, this boy was hooked.

After that, i eagerly searched for every album i could find, their stunning debut Axe Victim, where they're coming on all Bowie-esque on the back cover, the follow-up Futurama produced by Queen's producer Roy Thomas Baker finds them stripped back to a 3 piece, Bill handling all the keyboards as well as a million guitar overdubs, epic! Then there's the fourth album, Modern Music, heavily influenced by their globetrotting especially stateside, it's a wildly eclectic collection dominated by a suite of songs on the second side. Finally there is Drastic Plastic, their last studio album for EMI, a contractual obligation sounding album if ever i heard one, it's got the progressive touches still, but there's a new element creeping in of experimentalism and angular punkiness pointing the way for Bill's post Be-Bop catalogue. Bill Nelson's Red Noise is the next album, it's 1979 and while most of the 70's rock dinosaurs are suffering the punk onslaught, Bill seems to be leading the way, there's a frenetic energy pervading every track, some of which are barely 2 minutes long but still densely arranged. If all this wasn't enough, then Bill moves fully into his solo career with possibly his finest album to date, Quit Dreaming and Get on the Beam, featuring the single which seemed to have heavy rotation on the Whistle Test, Do You Dream in Colour?  (see below) a Devo meets the future Franz Ferdinand in a dark alley slice of perfect pop which should have been huge but was largely ignored, a pattern that was to be repeated for many years as Bill put out album after album to the general indifference of the public at large, but eagerly consumed by his rabidly loyal fanbase.

Cut to a few years later, where me and my band at the time - Want 'n' Abuse (terrible name, great t-shirts) were rehearsing at an old mungo shoddy mill twixt river and canal down Horbury Bridge. This particular night, when we arrived, our usual room was busy and we were asked to return in a couple of hours, because Bill Nelson was over-running his slot showcasing a new Be Bop line-up to some recording executive up from the big smoke...PAUSE! REWIND! "you say Bill Nelson is here? in our rehearsal room? right now? of course we'll wait, we'll wait right here and I can meet him and press a demo in his hands!" but I was outvoted, and we left for a couple of beers planning to return before he left. Of course he left early, and I eagerly sniffed round the room, looking for clues or a keepsake (i got a pick from Gerry Marsden in the same room, but that's another story). I found nothing, but felt I had his scent and was on his trail.

In the intervening years, I'd learnt that Bill was a local hero, born and raised just a few miles away and now living in a large manse, where he recorded his endless catalogue released on his own label, but this was big news! back with a band again, which means, back on stage again!

As it happened though, the mooted return of Be Bop never occurred, but soon after that I found a faded poster of a gig I'd missed by a band called Bolt from the Blue "featuring Bill Nelson" it said, so I logged the name as a further clue on the hunt. By this time I'd started working at the studio where I'd just missed Bill, pestering the studio owner for any more clues about Bill, he'd shown me a 4CD collection of songs Bill had given him, an outpouring of  songs in the aftermath of the breakdown of his marriage to Jan, his number one muse as far as i understood. I somehow felt that working at this studio would bring me closer to my goal, and I worked there and hung around there more and more, eventually having the keys and opening up on a morning, soundchecking all the rooms and making all the tea/coffee. Payment for this came in the form of free rehearsal space and recording time on the new/old Akai 12 track machine Iain had picked up for free at some other studio, and which we were building a control room and live room for. Meanwhile, I kept my ear to the ground for another tenuous lead on my hero.

Lo and behold, my next lead came via my errant drummer Pedro Vasquez, who had answered an advert for a blues band who were holding auditions at the studio where I worked! Checking the bookings, I found a listing for, you guessed it, Bolt from the Blue, and made sure I was there that day. They turned up suitably tardy, and no Bill sadly, but I did manage to finagle my way into a job driving their van whilst my friend got the drumming job, result! Especially good for my mission was the fact that the sax player in the band was Bill's brother Ian! and the leader of the band Chris Cooper, turned out to be an excellent raconteur, filling the van with endless rock 'n' roll road stories from the 60's right up to the present with all the latest news on Bill and his adventures in this Yorkshire landscape.