William Nelson (born 18 December 1948) is an English singer, guitarist, songwriter, producer, painter, video artist, writer and experimental musician. He rose to prominence as the chief songwriter, vocalist and guitarist of the rock group Be-Bop Deluxe, which he formed in 1972. Nelson has been described as "one of the most underrated guitarists of the seventies art rock movement". In 2015, he was recognised with the Visionary award at the Progressive Music Awards.
Nelson was born in Wakefield in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to Jean and Walter Nelson. His father was an alto saxophone player, and his mother a dancer. Nelson's younger brother, Ian (1956–2006), collaborated on the Be-Bop Deluxe song "Ships in the Night" and formed the band Fiat Lux; he also played on the 1979 Red Noise album Sound-on-Sound and with the 2004 touring band Bill Nelson and the Lost Satellites.
Nelson has been married three times and has three children. In 1995 Nelson married Emiko Takahashi, who was previously married to Yellow Magic Orchestra drummer Yukihiro Takahashi.
Nelson was educated at the Wakefield College of Art, where he developed an interest in the work of poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau. At this time he was also developing as a musician, drawing upon Duane Eddy as a primary guitar influence.
His first record was a brief contribution on the album A-Austr: Musics from Holyground, with Brian Calvert, Chris Coombs, Ted Hepworth, Mike Levon and Brian Wilson. Levon recorded and produced the album which appeared on Levon's own Holyground Records label in 1970. After that, Nelson appeared in a much more substantial role with Lightyears Away on Astral Navigations released in 1971. On one track, "Yesterday", written by Coombs, Levon recorded Nelson's lead guitars in an acid rock style, supporting Coombs' stylophone riff. This track also gave Nelson his first airplay by John Peel on his national BBC Radio 1 programme in the United Kingdom. Nelson's Holyground recordings were released in February 2001 as Electrotype.
In 1973, Nelson's debut solo album Northern Dream, released on his own independent Smile label, drew further attention from Peel which eventually led to Nelson's band Be-Bop Deluxe signing to EMI's Harvest Records subsidiary and releasing Axe Victim in 1974. Nelson replaced the original band members for Futurama in 1975. The lineup of Bill Nelson (guitar), Andrew Clark (keyboards), Charlie Tumahai (bass) and Simon Fox (drums) recorded Sunburst Finish and Modern Music in 1976, the live album Live! In The Air Age in 1977 and their final studio album Drastic Plastic in 1978.
Nelson found the structure of a permanent band constricting. An instrumental on Drastic Plastic performed by Nelson (acoustic guitar) and Clark (keyboards) anticipated Nelson's later solo ambient work. Other tracks on that album required Fox record drum parts for use as repeating loop backing tracks in the studio. (Performing these songs live on the subsequent tour, Fox would physically play these repeating patterns on drums). This sowed the seeds for later experimentation by Nelson. 1983's Invisibility Exhibition tour would see Bill Nelson (guitar) and Ian Nelson (sax) improvise to the former's self-produced backing audio (and video) tracks (later released as the Chamber of Dreams album), an approach Nelson would repeat for many solo live performances throughout his career. Playing the guitar over pre-recorded backing tracks would bear further fruit in later studio recordings, notably the Painting With Guitars series (2003, 2015) and And We Fell into A Dream (2007).
In autumn 1978, Nelson halted the Be-Bop Deluxe project, removed Tumahai and Fox from his immediate working band and replaced the name with the moniker Red Noise (releasing the Sound-on-Sound album in February 1979). Harvest, who had insisted on naming it "Bill Nelson's Red Noise", refused to release the second Red Noise album Quit Dreaming and Get on the Beam which was largely recorded by Nelson with contributions on sax from his brother Ian rather than the more-obviously marketable five-piece band Harvest's execs had understandably expected. The record remained unreleased in record company limbo.
Meanwhile, with his producer from Harvest John Leckie, Nelson did some production (and, in Nelson's case, sessions keyboards) work for the band Skids, whose guitarist Stuart Adamson was an admirer of Nelson's musicianship. Fruitful friendships followed. Vocalist Richard Jobson would appear as a support act reading poetry on the Invisibility Exhibition tour. After Adamson's death in 2001, Nelson composed a piece in memory of his departed friend, called simply "For Stuart", which appeared on 2003's The Romance of Sustain Volume One: Painting With Guitars and (in a live version) on 2011's live at Metropolis Studios DVD.
Nelson's manager Mark Rye negotiated with Harvest to buy back some of the unreleased songs for Nelson to release under his own name on his own label, Cocteau Records, which Nelson and Rye had set up. Consequently, in July 1980, Nelson was able to release the single "Do You Dream in Colour?", which after airplay on BBC Radio 1 reached no. 52 in the UK Singles Chart. This debut release on the label persuaded Phonogram to acquire the remaining tracks for Cocteau in order to release Quit Dreaming And Get on the Beam as a Bill Nelson album on their subsidiary label Mercury Records in 1981. The release contained bonus disc Sounding The Ritual Echo (Atmospheres for Dreaming) featuring experimental, ambient instrumentals which Nelson had recorded privately at his home.
Subsequent Mercury releases included The Love That Whirls, which included a bonus disc of Nelson's soundtrack for The Yorkshire Actors' stage production of Jean Cocteau's 1946 film La Belle et la Bête/Beauty and the Beast. Nelson had already contributed music (and released it under the title Das Kabinet on Cocteau) to the same company's similar adaptation of Robert Wiene's 1920 silent film classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It was followed by the six-track mini album Chimera in 1983, including collaborations with Yellow Magic Orchestra's Yukihiro Takahashi and Mick Karn, and featuring prominent use of synthesizers, sequencers and E-bow guitar. A single from the album, "Acceleration", subsequently reached no. 78 on the UK singles chart during a three week chart run.
Nelson released considerable quantities of singles and LPs on Cocteau throughout the decade, much of it by himself but also a number of singles by other artists, notably Last Man in Europe, A Flock of Seagulls, The Revox Cadets, Richard Jobson, Q (16), Fiat Lux, Man Jumping and Yukihiro Takahashi. The more ambitious Cocteau releases by Nelson himself included the four-LP box set of experimental electronic music Trial by Intimacy (The Book of Splendours) and the later ambient two-LP collection Chance Encounters in the Garden of Lights, which contained music informed by Nelson's Gnostic beliefs. In 1989, he released the 4-CD box set Demonstrations of Affection.
He was hired by English new wave artist Gary Numan to produce his 1983 album Warriors After Numan remixed some album tracks & B-sides, Nelson quit and chose not to be credited for his production role. Nelson also contributed towards several tracks on David Sylvian's Gone to Earth (1986). Nelson was commissioned by Channel 4 to write music for the 1987 television drama series Brond.
In 1986, a deal with CBS Records' Portrait imprint failed, leaving the one album Getting the Holy Ghost Across (US title: On a Blue Wing) with further tracks from that album's sessions issued on the UK mini-LP Living for the Spangled Moment. In 1988, Nelson signed to Enigma Records, which went out of business in 1992 after re-releasing his entire Cocteau catalogue.
In 1988 & 1989, Nelson suffered a series of personal setbacks, including a divorce, tax problems and an acrimonious dispute with his manager over his back catalogue rights. In the case of one album, the unreleased Simplex 1989, Nelson discovered his manager had been selling copies via mail order without Nelson's authorisation or knowledge; Nelson claimed he never received any royalties from these sales.