Bill Nelson (musician)

Bill Nelson

Bill Nelson (* 18th December 1948 in Wakefield , West Yorkshire , England as William Nelson ) is an English guitarist , songwriter , record producer , painter and photographer . In the almost half-century musical career, Nelson released over 100 albums with his bands and solo.

biography

Bill Nelson comes from a musical family. His father Walter Nelson was a saxophonist and leader of a dance band, his mother Jean was active in a dance group. There were other musicians in the family, and Bill's brother Ian Nelson (1956-2006) was also a saxophonist and member of the new wave band Fiat Lux .

Bill attended Wakefield College of Art, where he learned to appreciate the work of French writer, director and painter Jean Cocteau . As a teenager he began to play the electric guitar; He counted Duane Eddy and Hank Marvin among his role models . He made his first recordings with a band called Global Village, which broke up in 1968. As a session musician, he worked for the record label Holyground Records.

1970s

1971 Bill Nelson's first solo album Northern Dream was released ; John Peel regularly played pieces from it on his radio show. It came to a record deal with EMI and the formation of the progressive rock band Be-Bop Deluxe , whose debut album Ax Victim came out in 1974. With a completely new line-up - except Nelson, of course - the group recorded four more studio albums and a live LP before Nelson disbanded them in 1978.

With his new band, the new wave group Red Noise, to which his brother Ian belonged, Bill Nelson released the album Sound - On - Sound and two singles in 1979 . A second album was recorded but not released by EMI. Nelson began a solo career with a revised version, Quit Dreaming And Get On The Beam , released on Mercury Records in 1981 . Quit Dreaming And Get On The Beam and The Love That Whirls (Diary Of A Thinking Heart) , released in 1982, were Nelson's most commercially successful albums - both of which reached the top ten of the UK album charts.

1980s

In 1980 Nelson founded the Cocteau Records label together with Mark Rye, on which essentially Nelson's extensive production appeared. The first release was the single "Do You Dream In Color?", Which reached number 52 in the UK charts.

In the 1980s Nelson worked intermittently with other artists - in 1983 he produced e.g. B. Gary Numan's album Warrior . The collaboration with big record labels in America was not particularly successful: a contract with CBS Records ended after the release of an album On A Blue Wing (1986), which had previously been released in England with a title sequence other than Getting The Holy Ghost Across . The subsequent contract with Enigma Records came to an end with the dissolution of the label in 1991.

1990s and beyond

After disputes with his ex-manager, Nelson regained the rights to his previous publications. In the 1990s he founded the Populux label, on which he released an album for the last time in 1998. His subsequent albums appeared on other labels.

Many of Nelson's albums have been reissued over time. There were also a number of compilation albums. In 2011 Esoteric Recordings released The Practice Of Everyday Life , an 8-CD package that showcases 40 years of Bill Nelson’s career.

Web links

• Bill Nelson's website (English)
• Holyground Records web presence early with information about Nelson's work (English)
• Bill Nelson at Allmusic (English)
• Bill Nelson at Discogs (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Allmusic, see web links
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Discogs, see web links
3. ↑ Paul Tingen: Bill Nelson: BeBop Deluxe & Being 50 . Interview on Sound and Sound, February 1999 (English)
4. ↑ Article on the Esoteric Recordings website ( Memento of the original from August 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)