In the hinterland between the tarnishing of glam and the birth of mewling and puking punk, there wasn’t a great deal of worth going on in Britain besides Dr Feelgood and Be Bop Deluxe. The failure of the latter band to ascend to enormously-deserved superstar status is a 70s mystery to rival the disappearance of Lord Lucan, but there is at least some consolation in the on-going respect accorded to founder Bill Nelson, who remains artistically valid a good 40 years after the original release of his debut album Northern Dream.
Recorded on a two-track machine in Wakefield’s Holyground Studios in 1971 and pressed in an initial run of 300 copies, the album reveals Nelson to have already been an exceptionally handy guitarist, if not quite as startlingly fluent and imaginative as he would summarily become in Be Bop Deluxe. In songwriting terms, meanwhile, there’s little evidence of even a nascent Cocteau influence in lyrics which are, for the most, part simple and sincere. Essentially, a variety of archetypes are hymned – the slo-mo groove of Everyone’s Hero recalls Free, while the Pied Piper flute and nodding festival gait of Rejoice summons Traffic and Bloo Blooz displays a firm grasp of Peter Green phrasing. Inessential, but beguiling.
