Still prolific despite various health issues, Bill Nelson has released literally hundreds of esoteric, often instrumental solo albums since his avant- garde electronic act Bill Nelson’s Red Noise folded in 1979. But it’s his output with mid-70s art-rock wonders Be-Bop Deluxe which remains most celebrated – and rightly so.
This CD clamshell set corralling Be-Bop’s opening triptych – 1974’s Axe Victim, 1975’s Futurama and 1976’s Sunburst Finish – comes just a couple of years after all three records were separately re-released.
Any package shining further light on the band’s singular brilliance is to be welcomed, however, with Nelson’s guitar heroics and playful understanding of meta narrative still endlessly rewarding.
In 1974, details such as Axe Victim’s skull guitar artwork and its title track’s virtuosic call-and-response between lead guitar and vocal led some to assume Nelson and Be-Bop were fairly conventional rockers. But the song was actually about the hollowness that can lie at the heart of fame; US promoters who wanted Nelson’s band to support Ted Nugent had him all wrong.
That much was abundantly clear by Futurama, home to material as diverse as Nelson’s classy, bossa-nova imbued nod to one of his polymath heroes, Jean Cocteau; and the exquisitely taut and concise power-popper Maid In Heaven.
Futurama also marked the arrival of bassist Charlie Tumahai and drummer Simon Fox, who, together with Nelson, comprised Be-Bop Deluxe’s definitive line-up.
After major fall-outs in the studio, Nelson dispensed with the services of Futurama producer Roy Thomas Baker and recruited future Radiohead collaborator John Leckie for the part-orchestrated, still more adventurous Sunburst Finish.
“Bill hated the idea of being commercial – almost hated the idea of being famous,” Leckie told this writer in 2022. All the same, Sunburst Finish was Be-Bop Deluxe’s biggest album: a UK No.17 in 1976.
The Albums – 1974-1976 is on sale now via Esoteric.
