Bill Nelson (musician)
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Bill Nelson (musician) |
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| Bill Nelson | ||
|---|---|---|
| Background information | ||
| Birth name | William Nelson | |
| Born | 18 December 1948 in Wakefield, Yorkshire, England, UK | |
| Genre(s) | Experimental
rock Art-rock New Wave Post-punk |
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| Instrument(s) | Vocals Guitars Keyboards Drums Bass Guitar Percussion |
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| Associated acts |
Be
Bop Deluxe Fiat Lux |
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Bill Nelson (born William Nelson on 18 December 1948) is a prolific guitarist, songwriter, painter and experimental musician from Wakefield, Yorkshire, England, UK. He currently lives in Selby, Yorkshire, England, UK.
Contents
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Nelson was educated at the
His first recording was a brief contribution on an album
entitled "A-Austr"
with
Nelson's solo album titled Northern Dream drew more attention from famed DJ John Peel on his national BBC Radio 1 programme in the United Kingdom, and this eventually led to Nelson's band Be Bop Deluxe signing to EMI. The band's first recordings were also made at Holyground. All the Bill Nelson recordings made there were released in February 2001 by Holyground on a CD called "Electrotype". Shortly after this they were signed to EMI, releasing "Axe Victim". On stage the band developed a reputation built upon Nelson's electric guitar stylings, which have been described as "pyrotechnic".
After the breakup of Be Bop Deluxe, Nelson
attempted another band project called
In mid-1980 Nelson released "Do You Dream In Colour?", and after airplay on BBC Radio 1, especially on John Peel's late night show, the single climbed to number 52 in the charts.
A notable contribution to the work of another
electronically oriented artist, Gary Numan, occurred in 1983
when Numan, an admirer of Be Bop Deluxe, began to co-produce his
Nelson had bad luck with major labels in the 1980s. A deal with CBS Records went sour, leaving one admired album, Getting the Holy Ghost Across (US title: On a Blue Wing). Nelson and his manager Mark Rye had formed the Cocteau Records label in 1981, and for many years this label handled the majority of Nelson's output, which often included multiple albums per year. Among the more ambitious Cocteau releases were the four-record boxed set of experimental electronic music, Trial by Intimacy (The Book of Splendours), and the later ambient collection, Chance Encounters in the Garden of Lights, which contained music informed by Nelson's Gnostic beliefs. In the late 1980s, Nelson signed to the US label Enigma Records, and though they re-released his entire Cocteau catalogue and seemed to be giving him a big push, the label soon went out of business.
As the 1980s ended, Nelson suffered a tremendous series of personal setbacks, including a divorce, tax problems, and an acrimonious falling-out with his manager over his back catalogue rights. In the case of one album, the unreleased Simplex, his manager had been selling copies via mail order without Nelson's authorisation; Nelson claims he never received any royalties from these sales.
Nelson channelled his troubles into his music, with the result that the 1990s proved an even more prolific period for him. His divorce inspired a 4-CD boxed set, Demonstrations of Affection, and he worked on some guitar-based instrumental projects such as the albums Crimsworth and Practically Wired, or How I Became Guitar Boy. With Demonstrations, Nelson perfected a songwriting ethic based on the immediacy of creative inspiration; each song was recorded almost as soon as it was written, taking only an average of two hours to complete. This technique enabled Nelson to produce a staggering amount of new music into the new century, which resulted in such large-scale releases as the 4-CD set My Secret Studio and the 6-CD set Noise Candy.
In 1996, Nelson's troubles with his former manager were resolved in a lawsuit which enabled Nelson to recover much of his back catalogue. A fully authorized version of the Simplex album was released in 2001.
In the late 1990s, Nelson created the Populuxe Records label, with a distribution arrangement with Robert Fripp's Discipline Global Mobile, but the relationship with DGM has stagnated and Nelson's last DGM release was Atom Shop in 1998. Subsequent releases have been on other imprints such as Toneswoon and Voiceprint as well as direct mail-order releases. In recent years Nelson has begun to perform live again.
2002 saw the release of Three White Roses and a Budd (CD Single, with Fila Brazillia and Harold Budd) on Twentythree Records.
In late 2005 through 2006, Universal Music (UK) re-issued the classic 3 Mercury albums on CD. Quit Dreaming and Get on the Beam, The Love that Whirls, and Chimera all have been remastered and released with bonus tracks. The lone CBS album, Getting the Holy Ghost Across/On a Blue Wing, has also been issued on CD for the first time after over 20 years, with all the original tracks and extras on Nelson's Sonoluxe imprint (12/06).
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