I am a huge fan of Bill Nelson and he is more than happy to answer questions via his website's forum.
This was my recent question;
There have been a couple of threads regarding the first time people heard Bill's music, in my case it was on the 1986 David Sylvian album Gone To Earth.
I was though aware of Bill before as he was photographed alongside the then recently split Japan at Hamilton's Gallery at David's photography exhibition (Perspectives) in 1984.
The photograph was in a magazine called Bamboo, a Japan fanzine (they commented that he didn't purchase any of the photographs!).
My question to Bill is this;
Was this the first time you had met the band Japan/David, did you
receive a personal invite to the exhibition and was this the point where David asked you to contribute to Gone To Earth.
Can you also provide any recollections of when you co-wrote/recorded Answered Prayers, as this is a favourite track of mine.
(NB I kind of assumed that all the artists (incl Bill/Japan) who contributed to Masami Tsuchiya's album Rice Music (1982?) were not in the studio at the same time)
[b]And this was Bill's answer[/b]
Yes, this was the first time David and I met. He invited me to the exhibition after seeing me review his 'Brilliant Trees' album on a television programme. I seem to remember saying I liked the album very much but I cheekily suggested that David appeared to be a little too self-consciously and artificially 'romantic' or melancholy and should perhaps get out to the pub with his pals a little more! I guess that was the down-to-earth Yorkshireman in me, always suspicious of anything vaguely suggestive of artifice. (Which is, of course, an entirely different thing from art.)
I was surprised to soon after receive a call inviting me to his exhibition and equally surprised to find a somewhat more grounded person than I'd expected.
Can't recall whether the invite to play guitar on Gone To Earth happened on that day or later. All of the work I did with David and Rain Tree Crow was created in the studio over a basic 'skeleton' of the track. Guest players such as myself and Robert Fripp would improvise freely over the pieces, different takes being later 'comped' together to build the song's final structure...an egalitarian approach that allows each musician a more open brief than working to someone else's pre-conceived idea of what the song might require. I've never particularly enjoyed 'session work' so this open-ended approach was much more comfortable for me.
I seem to recall that there had been some talk about me getting involved in the production of Japan's 'Tin Drum' at one point in the past, quite some time before David and I first met. One of Be Bop Deluxe's old stage crew had become involved with Japan's tour production and it may have been through him that I heard about the idea. I was impressed by Tin Drum when it eventually came out, though I wasn't particularly aware of the band's music previously. It would have been really interesting to work with them on Tin Drum but I certainly couldn't have done anything near as good as Steve Nye's wonderful work on that album.
I had played some guitar on Masami Tsuchiya's 'Rice Music' album, (my first work with a Japanese musician,) but it was just Masami and myself in the studio when I recorded my contribution.
It all seems so long ago now and so very, very 'eighties. I tend to think of much of that era's music as being the perfect compliment to Thatcherite yuppie sensibilities. Working class kids seeking some sort of glamour and status via pop music, expensive hair-cuts and clothes. Understandable in terms of social psychology but, with hindsight, utterly superficial. For the commited musicians amongst us, it was just a phase we went through and soon grew out of. Just part of growing up, I suppose.
But, amazingly, (like every era in pop,) there's always a percentage of fans that get marooned there, forever locked in one stylistic straight jacket or other, whether that be '50's drainpipes, 60's mod suits and parkas, mid-'70's long hair and flares, late '70's ripped and torn punk threads or '80's shoulder pads and glam-revival eyeliner. Music and fashion used as a security blanket, a lifeboat in life's stormy sea. Again, perfectly understandable but somewhat frustrating for musicians who have moved on and even more frustrating for those fans who haven't. But that's the way it goes and, probably, the way it should be. That's where the challenge lies for all of us.[/b]