Bill Nelson - Biography
By Scott Feemster
Bill Nelson is a guitarist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and painter who has played many roles over the course of his long career. He has gone from folk-based troubadour to a guitar god fronting a band to an early proponent of synth-pop to a trusted collaborator on many projects to a respected composer of ambient compositions, and on and on. His output has been prolific and one always gets the sense of Nelson pushing farther and farther to see what he can draw out of his artistic muse.
William Nelson was born on the 18th of December 1948 in the West Riding region of Yorkshire, in the industrial town of Wakefield. Young Bill grew up in a creative household, with his father, Walter, being the saxophone-playing leader of a local dance band, and his mother, Jean, being a former dancer. Nelson showed talent in design and art and was a passionate reader of science fiction, but with music swirling around the house at all times, it seemed almost inevitable that he would pick up an instrument at some point and learn how to play. Bill didn't pick up a guitar until he was a teenager, when under the influence of such players as Hank Marvin of the Shadows and Duane Eddy, he begged his father to buy him a hollow body electric. Bill received a Gibson ES345 model, and has continued to play this model and be identified with it throughout his career. Nelson graduated from secondary school in Wakefield and went on to the Wakefield College of Art, where he continued to study graphic design and painting and began his lifelong fascination with the work of Jean Cocteau. He was also playing in bands on the side, including a covers band called Global Village, which cut a couple of songs before disbanding. Later he became involved with local bands A-Austr and Lightyears Away, both studio projects on the local Holyground label. It was around this time that Nelson became a Pentecostal Christian, got married for the first time, and joined a church group called the Messengers, who later changed their name to the Gentle Revolution.
Feeling he had more to express than what his group contributions allowed him, Nelson began recording a solo album at the Holyground studios, which was released in 1971 as the album Northern Dream (Butt). The album was financed by the owner of a local record store, The Record Bar, and initially only 250 copies were pressed, (though the album has been reissued several times, much to the annoyance of Nelson, as he's never received any kind of royalties from it.) The album itself was much in the vein of other singer-songwriters of the period, showing a particular nod to Neil Young, but did show that Nelson had an amazing ability on the guitar and was willing to incorporate other somewhat avant-garde elements to his music, like backwards guitar lines. The album also got him play on influential BBC DJ John Peel's show, and became a favorite of the DJ. Because of this nationwide exposure, executives from EMI's Harvest label contacted Nelson about releasing another album in the vein of his debut, but Nelson had other ideas.
Nelson wanted to move in a more orchestrated, harder rock direction and wanted to have a band to carry it out, so he put together the first version of his band Be Bop Deluxe with guitarist Ian Parkin, keyboardist Richard Brown, bassist Rob Bryan and drummer Nicholas Chatterton-Dew. Brown ended up leaving the band after gigging for a while but before the band could record their first album, 1974's Axe Victim (Harvest). The band looked and sounded like any number of glam-rock bands of the period, though they stood out purely on the basis of Nelson's lyrical and virtuoso guitar playing. The executives at EMI were not happy with the musical abilities of the other members of the group, so Nelson broke up the original version of the band after Axe Victim. Nelson briefly worked with former Cockney Rebel members keyboardist Milton Reame-James and bassist Paul Jefferies, and eventually settled on a trio format with himself on vocals and guitar, Simon Fox on drums, and Charles Tumahai on bass. The trio recorded the 1975 album Futurama (Harvest) together, and then added keyboard player Andrew Fox and recorded Sunburst Finish (Harvest)(1976), which included the British Top 25 hit “Ships In The Night.” The quartet went on to release the live album Live! In The Air Age (Harvest)(1977) and their fifth and final album, Drastic Plastic (Harvest)(1978). Be Bop Deluxe had grown into a prog-leaning science-fiction fixated hard rock band with a following, but by 1978 Nelson grew tired of the format and wanted to try something else. It was also during the time of breaking up Be Bop Deluxe that Nelson broke up with his first wife, Shirley, and married his second wife, Jan, who would go on to be an inspiration for him and a model for much of his photographic work in the coming years.
Nelson next put together a new “band”, Red Noise, but it was basically a studio project and one look at the credits to their only released album, 1979's Sound On Sound (Capitol), reveals that Nelson was playing most of the instruments himself. ( A second Red Noise album was completed, but was never released in its original form). Sound On Sound was a somewhat radical departure from what Nelson was doing in Be Bop Deluxe, incorporating extensive use of synthesizers and drum machines, and it shocked many of his audience who were expecting something more commercial and traditionally “rock”. After Sound On Sound's release, Nelson was dropped from his contract with EMI, the label being nervous about Nelson's sudden change and his ability to sell records. Nelson reworked some of the ideas he hatched for the second Red Noise album and decided to head off in a truly solo direction. He signed with Mercury Records and released Quit Dreaming And Get On The Beam in 1981. The original version of the album came packaged with a second album of ambient sketches Nelson had recorded at his home studio called Sounding The Ritual Echo. (Sounding The Ritual Echo was later released by itself.) Both albums showcased Nelson's prolific output and amazing capability not only with guitar, but also with the newer synthesizers and drum machines. Nelson's newer sound also shoe-horned him in nicely with many of the younger synth-pop bands that were emerging in Britain at around the same time, and thus expanded his audience to people who had never paid attention to Be Bop Deluxe. Quit Dreaming... proved to be a success and went on to the Top Ten in the U.K. album charts. In 1981 Nelson also started his own label, Cocteau Records, with his then-manager Mark Rye. The label was set up to release Nelson's mostly instrumental and more esoteric work as well as work by other artists he was working with. The label generated many releases over the course of the early and mid eighties, mostly by Nelson, including the four album box set Trial by Intimacy (The Book Of Splendours)(1984), which included a set of six postcards of Nelson's artwork and a book of text and cryptic black-and-white photographs. (The individual volumes later were released on CD).
Following up the success of his previous album, Nelson released The Love That Whirls (Diary Of A Thinking Heart)(Capitol) in 1982, which included the hit “Flaming Desire”. The album was also packaged with a companion album, another instrumental collection of impressionistic ambient pieces called La Belle Et La Bete, intended as a soundtrack-of-sorts for Jean Cocteau's movie of the same name. The Love... proved to be Nelson's commercial peak, as his next couple of releases failed to find much of an audience and were chopped up and shuffled between U.K versions and American versions.
Nelson released the Chimera (Mercury) EP release in 1983 in Britain, and the same tracks were reissued with other Nelson tracks the following year in America as Vistamix (Epic). The 1986 U.K. release Getting The Holy Ghost Across (Portrait) was repackaged and reshuffled and released in the U.S. as On A Blue Wing (Portrait), supposedly because the U.S. branch of the record company thought the original title would provoke too much controversy. Though his major label deal did result in a lot of frustration for Nelson, the money paid to him did allow him to completely rebuild his home studio, providing him with the ability to record at his own pace. Because of a stipulation in his recording contract that stated he couldn't release any experimental work under his own name, Nelson recorded and released an EP and two albums worth of his sketches under the name Orchestra Arcana.
After his record deal with CBS ran out in the late 80's, Nelson signed a deal with the small major-label distributed label Enigma in the U.S., and was able to release just about everything in his catalog in the U.S., barring his first album and his albums on CBS. He also released a new double album Chance Encounters In The Garden Of Lights (1987) and the second album by Orchestra Arcana. Unfortunately, soon after his catalog was released, Enigma started experiencing financial troubles and began scaling back its operations, resulting in poor distribution for Nelson's releases and one of his albums, Simplex (1989), never receiving an official release. The late 80's into the early 90's was a trying time for the musician, as he separated and eventually divorced his second wife, was hit with high tax bills, had to suffer the collapse of both Enigma and Cocteau, and engaged in a protracted battle with his ex-manager over the rights to his back catalog.
Though his release schedule was definitely affected during his troubles, Nelson kept on working in his home studio, and released the four-disc set Demonstrations Of Affection (Cocteau) in 1989. Other work from this period has later been released as the albums My Secret Studio (Resurgence)(1996) and Confessions Of A Hyperdreamer (Resurgence)(1997). Nelson eventually got to a point where he could compose and record entire songs in two hours. While dating the person who would eventually become his third wife, Emiko, Nelson recorded over 150 new songs in the space of a year, and sent them to her in tribute on cassette tape. With his personal life back on track and new management, Nelson spent the 90's working as hard as ever and collaborating with such artists as David Sylvian, Gary Numan, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Harold Budd. Highlights include Blue Moons & Laughing Guitars (Plan 9/Caroline)(1992), Electricity Made Us Angels (Resurgent)(1995), the all-instrumental guitar-based Practically Wired...Or How I Became Guitarboy (All Saints)(1995), the drum-and-bass influenced After The Satellite Sings (Gyroscope)(1996), Atom Shop (Discipline)(1998) and the cross-cultural mish-mash of With Culturemix (Resurgent)(1999). Nelson also worked with composer Roger Eno, ex-Dream Academy member Kate St. John, cellist Mayumi Tachibana and American percussionist / zither player Laraaji in the group Channel Light Vessel, which released one album in 1994, and the group Heroes De Lumiere with his brother Ian. Nelson even formed a new version of Be Bop Deluxe, but the group quickly dissolved again when financial backing for the group disappeared.
Bill Nelson continues to be driven by his individual muse well into the early 21st century. A new multi-disc collection of songs Noise Candy (Tone Swoon) was issued in 2003, as well as a return to more pop-song oriented material in the double-album Whimsy (Fabled Quixote). Two other multi-disc collections of some of his earlier material were released that same year, Chameleon (United States Distribution) and a collection of his Orchestra Arcana work, The Hermetic Jukebox (United States Distribution). Nelson set up another label, Sonoluxe, to release his material and created the website Dreamsville to keep his fans informed of his many releases and activities. Nelson returned to the acoustic guitar with two volumes of the album Rosewood Ornaments And Graces For Acoustic Guitar (Sonoluxe)(2005) and continued issuing albums that alternated between pop-oriented songs and instrumental collections, including Return To Jazz Of Lights (Sonoluxe)(2006), Gleaming Without Lights (Sonoluxe)(2007), Silvertone Fountains (Sonoluxe)(2008), and Illuminated At Dusk (Sonoluxe)(2008).
