Bill Nelson And His Modern Music

Plugging in where his historical perspective in Zigzag 56 left off, Trevor Gardiner re-opens the Be-Bop file

It came as an unexpected, though pleasant surprise to see Be-Bop Deluxe on Top Of The Pops earlier this year, and I must say that I for one was really pleased that ‘Ships In The Night' (Harvest HAR 5104), the single taken from their last album ‘Sunburst Finish' (SHSP 4053), did as well as it did. Not that singles are the be all and end all of everything, but in Be-Bop's case it proved useful In providing them with a considerable amount of extra exposure and in giving the album a hefty boot up the charts. Recorded towards the end of 1975 at Abbey Road and Air Studios, Sunburst Finish was co-produced by Bill Nelson and John Leckie, an engineer who first worked with Bill on the Abbey Road sessions for ^‘Axe Victim'. The partnership obviously proved the most successful so far and they’ve now got together again to produce the band’s fourth album ‘Modern Music' (SHSP 4058).

Sunburst Finish was a typical Nelson flight of imagination, a superb collage of humour, science fiction, romance and more personal subjects, masked behind lyrics which range from the blatantly obvious to the curiously obscure. Modern Music continues along these lines, delightfully ambiguous in places and once again liberally sprinkled with romantic imagery. Not surprisingly, the musical texture of the two albums are similar, the furious guitar passages of 'Futurama’ having now given way to a more melodic approach which, nevertheless, still retains enough aggression to keep the adrenalin flowing.

As far back as late ‘75, when Be-Bop were still living the nocturnal life at Abbey Road, recording ‘Sunburst Finish', Bill was already thinking ahead to the next album. He has a characteristic dislike of the machinations of the music business, and possibly, he said, they'd do something which would tell the life-story of the band. This would give him ample opportunity to have his say, although if, as he suggested, he’d mentioned all the people who’ve ripped him off in the past, he’d probably end up on the wrong end of a libel suit. Then there was the idea, already started with ‘Adventures In A Yorkshire Landscape’ from ‘Axe Victim', of devoting maybe half an album to various impressions of his native Yorkshire.

As it happens, neither of these have materialized. Instead the concept format has almost, though not entirely, been disregarded in favour of a more flexible mixture of songs. There is, however, one pervading influence on side two of the album, and that is Bill's not altogether starry-eyed impressions of America, from where they’d just returned after their first tour. The omnipresent accessibility ₀f standard US rocklife temptations — groupies, cocaine and all-night parties — don't really hold much of an attraction for him, and the greeting which one young American offered him on arrival in the country - "Hi Bill, d’ya want some quaaludes?" - seemed to set the tone for the tour. Not that all his impressions were bad, but as far as the aspects he was closest to were concerned, i.e. the music biz, it wasn’t exactly heaven. His attitude may sound a bit sour, but a first American tour for a virtually unknown band is no holiday, and having to pose at receptions and parties for the press in every city isn't really his cup of tea anyway. At one grand reception in their honour, where everybody was seated at a long table draped with a white tablecloth, nobody even bothered to come and speak to them. The band responded by drawing caricatures of the people around them on the tablecloth, while the dumbfounded leeches, between mouthful $ of food and expensive booze, tried to figure out what was going on, When the band left, everyone rushed over to see what they'd been doing.

While the accompanying formalities may have been a bit too much for Bill though, the audiences were great. Be—Bop appeared to have a fairly sizeable following in the States, particularly around the West Coast, and when I spoke to him recently he seemed well pleased with the receptions they’d received.

"Yes, the gigs were great. They’re so kind of alive the audiences over there, they don't just sit and politely applaud after every number, I'd read all the reports of how Cockney Rebel had really bombed there, and before we went people told us not to be frightened if we got booed off, and I was getting really worried about what to do if that happened. I was thinking of all these quick asides and witty things to say to the hecklers, which I no doubt would have forgotten when I got up on stage. But it didn't happen once, in fact we went down a storm even when there were really strong headliners on, like Johnny Winter.

"The Los Angeles gig was the best one, at the Santa Monica Civic, supporting Golden Earring. We were very nervous, because all the Capitol Records people (Be-Bop's US label) and all the media people were there, and we were all trying to keep calm and pretend it wasn’t a prestige gig, although obviously it was. It was really good though - when we walked on stage the whole audience stood up and gave us an ovation before we'd even played a note, and afterwards they did the whole thing where they light matches and you see nothing but all these little burning matches in the darkness".

The success of the tour was encouraging and as a result they ended up extending it by another three weeks, supporting a number of top American acts, including the superbly bizarre Tubes, who we'll hopefully be seeing over here soon. They also performed a number of gigs with that goddess of the Bowery, Patti Smith. Like Bill's, her lyrics have come in for some pretty close examination from rock ‘critics’, so maybe Bill felt some kind of affinity with her in the way that they both attach at least equal importance to the poetic construction of their lyrics as they do to the music.

"Well, when I first saw her perform, we all thought she was a good performer. We couldn’t really hear much of what she was doing, it was difficult to pick out words, but her whole stage presence was pretty strong. But then I sat back and looked at it afterwards and I thought well, how durable is it in terms of a lasting experience? And it isn't — it’s a very temporary thing. It's kind of almost the thing to be doing at the moment. As for her lyrics, I’ve not gone into them that much, so I suppose it’s not really fair to judge, but I’ve seen her do Improvisational things, and I don't like it that much. I've not heard anything that's convinced me that she’s what she’s cracked up to be. But then I might be saying that because she slated us! She made some really horrible comment in Melody Maker about us being clinical Hendrix copies or something, which shows she's deaf for a start.

"I think a lot of people have said good things about her and really they aren't quite aware what it's about. It's sure a lot of people who say they like her lyrics don't really know what her lyrics are about, or even what she says half the time, you know, she just wails it all out. It's just a whole kind of event that She puts on at a gig. There's a definite rapport there with the audience, but it's a rather decadent, sort of sad thing".

Did he think, I wondered, that people understood his lyrics?

"Ha ha. I don't know. Well, they're easy enough. I don't think there's anything complex in them image-wise. I use images that are stock images that people can relate to, it’s just a mixture of them that might be a bit different to someone else's. I've got things at home, the meaning of which is probably lost even to myself - things that I've written down because I've felt strongly about the words that I’ve used, Each word has a certain fascination or power for me when written it down, and it hasn't necessarily made a kind of order or sense in a literal sense, and these are the things I don't often use for our song lyrics.

"There's a song on the new album called ‘Twilight Capers’ which is a trap for Jonh Ingham! Well, no, it’s not really — it’s just that he did a review of the last album in Sounds. and he went on about ‘Blazing Apostles^’ being ‘perhaps the most interesting song on this album, ,,an impressionistic walk not unlike the hotel corridor in ‘Blood Of A Poet", The funny thing was that whole track was just a throwaway lyrically. Whereas I’d been writing songs that were meaningful to me on a personal level, like ‘Sister Seagull’, which was a kind of romantic thing where I was really wanting to express this inner feeling, ‘Blazing Apostles’ was just me standing off something and looking at it in a humorous way. Like it’s about the whole commercialisation of religion, just setting it in the context of being a motorized evangelistic crusade that went round saving people, only they were so corrupt that if you didn¹t feel you were sinful enough to need saving, then they’d sell you the sin first and save you afterwards.

"The whole band just laughed when we read the review of that track, and I though it would be really nice to put one song on this album that would be totally vacuous as far as content goes. The words "All the white horses ran bleeding to the end/Shot through the heart by dear devoted passion..," well they were just lines that I wrote for the sake of the words and the pictures they put in my mind, without being based on anything at all. It’s just nice words that sounded nice at the time,. and there’s just one clue that it¹s a joke. You remember the detective series ‘Dragnet’? And the theme tune, every time anything dramatic happened it went ‘dan, da dan dan – daan!’ Well, at the beginning of the song there’s the opening chords, almost semi-classical chords, and then it goes ‘dan da dan dan’, just that little part, But it’s a bit of a giveaway — I mean, anyone who puts a quote from ‘Dragnet’ into a song with lyrics apparently as heavy as that, has just got to be kldding!

"But if Jonh Ingham does see it as being some kind of Cocteau—influenced surreal ism or whatever, then that¹s what it is, and If somebody else sees it as being a joke, then it is that tool I just want it to be ambiguous and the reference any interpretation is valid. So I could never turn round and say ^‘Fooled you, it’s not about that^’, because it’s about whatever anybody sees in it".

The fact remains though, that It is frequently only too easy to read several different interpretations Into some of Bill’s songs, simply because he seldom writes anything in straight factual terms. Through his use of imagery he will often disguise the motivations behind a song with colorful little symbols which, taken at face value, seem pretty straightforward. But looking through the external symbol ism, you’ll invariably find something quite different lurking beneath — it^’s almost as though it’s written in his own private code. The only trouble with this sort of thing is that it’s often difficult to know exactly how far to go - look too hard and you’ll probably see something that wasn’t there in the first place.

Most of Modern Music is fairly straightforward — the first group of five tracks on side two quite openly display Bill’s reactions to the fast lifestyle of America; the bright lights and fast cars and, I suspect, his separation from friends at home, particularly his girlfriend, to whom the album is dedicated. "This jet-age life is getting worse/I feel I’m half a universe away. . ./1 left my home some time ago/To fight the creatures of the USA.." — couldn’t be more simple. But then look at ‘Orphans Of Babylon’ and you’ll see what I mean about ambiguity. (I’m not quoting any more lyrics — this is already looking too much like a degree course on T.S. Eliot - so you’ll have to buy the album!)

Doesn’t it bother him though, that people often interpret his lyrics in a way that he had not originally intended when he wrote them?

"No, because the whole point of writing a song is for me to get rid of an idea out of myself so it stops bugging me, not to put an idea across to somebody. It’s like being haunted by an idea or a feeling and the only way I can exorcise it is to get it out in a song or a painting or whatever. So, once it’s out it doesn’t really matter whether people understand it or not, as long as it’s out of my system. It’s probably a bit selfish to do it that way, but if I didn’t I’m sure I’d get very ill — very strange in the head or something".

How does he define poetry then? "It’s many things really. Sometimes it’s actually a direct expression — one person having an idea that they wish to communicate to others — and it’s just a direct description, or whatever, but it gets that feeling across. But there are times when the writer, rather than putting his idea across, is more of the key that opens the door in the person that’s reading or hearing it, and he’s as much in the dark as to what’s behind that door as the person that actually possesses the door. I think when it works on that level it’s the most mystical, the purest level of poetry perhaps".

A bit like abstract art isn’t it?

"Yes, abstract art works on the same level. Art of that nature is still communicating, in the majority of cases, a definite form that has been transmuted into another form. You know, something that was concrete turned into abstract through a process of transmutation. But then the symbolist painters, the Pre-Raphaelites, they had an apparent reality on the surface, but the significance is underneath that. The symbolism that comes underneath. It is probably deeper than the symbolism of a cold abstract, where It’s the result of an almost technical process at times. And that’s the sort of thing I’m more interested in, both in painting and writing, where the images are a bit more concrete perhaps, but they have a kind of uncertainty behind them".

Looking through the lyrics of the four Be-Bop Deluxe albums, you can’t help noticing that, for some obscure reason, swans and seagulls keep appearing. Lately Bill seems to have developed a penchant for airships too, and there are a number of other less obvious links between their albums. About 18 months ago, when they’d just finished ‘Futurama’, I asked him about the birds and he seemed to find it quite interesting too, although he wasn’t too sure why they kept cropping up in his songs.

"Yes, it’s amazing — they must have attracted me. The swan is what I’ve adopted for my image. My girlfriend’s got this thing about seagulls — she collects them, and I collect swans. The swan’s supposed to be the symbol of the poet, you know, the Pre-Raphaelite painters used to paint loads of swans - they’re supposed to symbolize a kind of innocent beauty".

Well, innocent beauty or not, it’s pretty evident that Bill Nelson is a confusingly complex character. During the course of the interview the conversation inevitably ended up on the subject of mysticism, spiritualism, and black and white magic — something in which Bill has always maintained a strong interest. Those regular readers among you will no doubt remember, back in Zigzag 56, Bill mentioning that at one time he got fairly heavily involved with the church. This was when he first met Richard Brown, the original keyboard player with Be-Bop Deluxe who left before ‘Axe Victim’ was recorded, and together they both played in a band called the Gentle Revolution. Well, it turns out that Bill’s been involved in some pretty weird scenes, all of which he recounted with boundless enthusiasm.

"It was a Pentecostal church, and initially I only went because they had a band there called the Messengers (who later became the Gentle Revolution); after the service was over I was introduced to them by a friend, and we had a bit of a jam. So I started going every week just for the jam sessions afterwards, but after a while I began to get interested in the church. It’s far more relaxed than an orthodox church where you have an altar and crosses, and they do all these things where they bless you and the Spirit comes upon you. They used to do faith healing and a very frightening thing called speaking in tongues – I’ll probably be struck down for talking about it! They do this thing where the spirit kind of moves people and you’ll find people will stand up and start talking in an alien tongue that you’ve never heard before, and when this happens there’s always someone else who’s struck by the same thing to stand up and translate. It’s an incredible, indescibable feeling and it used to frighten me. It’s like a power that’s given and it’s supposed to be God demonstrating that he is present at the meeting.

"Really weird things would happen — healings, levitations - it was very magical. A lot of what happens in the Pentecostal church is very, very powerful, and if you’re a total cynic on the religious level it gives you a lot of questions about the power of the human mind anyway, like supernatural powers in the human body, you know, and how far the powers of the mind can be stretched.

"I had a friend who used to follow Alistair Crowley’s doctrines, who used to do very strange things — little miracles, heed call them. He had this thing where heed pick up a pair of scissors, hold his hand up and chop his fingers off while we watched. And then we’d look again and they were there. Or we’d be walking along the street and he’d say ‘Look at that car, and suddenly the car’s headlights would come on and go off again. There would be no need for them to be on —he¹d just make it happen. He did lots of things like that, and he had a white

your own guardian angel, and I’ve got a book at home that tells you how, but I daren’t do it!"

The conversation continued through mysterious tales of Bill’s past, with stories of ghost hunts, seances and hair—raising accounts of glasses flying off ouija boards. It began to sound more like something out of the ~Exorcist~, but for reasons of space, that part of the conversation will have to remain untold here.

So, there you are. An Interview as short as this can only give a minimal insight, but I hope that at least it’s shown that Bill Nelson is far more than just an average rock musician. For him, art Is one boundless act of exorcism, be it through painting, poetry, songwriting or playing guitar.

At the moment Be-Bop are midway through their second tour of the States, having completed their British tour at the end of September, when they we re augmented by a second guitarist, Mike Close, an old friend of Bill’s from Yorkshire. How they’ll stand up to the pressure remains to be seen (they had only a two day rest between the end of the British and the beginning of the American tours), but perhaps the most pressing problem at the moment is the question of their bass player, Charlie Turnahai’s permit troubles. His future with the band has been in the balance for some time now, but hopefully the powers that be will see reason and put an end to this ridiculous situation by letting him stay.

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