BILL NELSON - Interview December 2002 - Noise Candy Box Set

noise candy is the new CD 6 CD box set interesting story this is it's best you tell me it's stuff that you've recorded over the last 10 years uh it is it's in a way it's it's kind of leftovers and uh I don't mean leftovers in a negative sense because the material I think stands up very well but it's it's material that was uh originally recorded for other projects but didn't fit on there um or just was recorded for its own sake and then forgotten about for a while and uh towards the end of um uh 1999 I decided it was time to sort of go through some some shelves of tapes and found all this stuff in in different forms and and suddenly realized there was perhaps an album or two to be made from it and as I started to assemble what seemed to be the best tracks They started to take on more than um one or two albums worth and and I ended up with six albums in fact there six double length albums which is a bit extreme but I couldn't uh really sort of restrain myself once I got started I was to say it's it is it's I worked out it's probably 9 10 hours of material on here isn't there I would think so I haven't I mean I must have timed it at one time but I can't remember exactly now yeah you must have a very high quality threshold there cuz you know a lot of this doesn't you know I know you said it's not you know second rate stuff but it's stuff that could have easily made the proper albums it's they're not off cuts at all are they um um no I mean the the thing I found um fascinating about this is that when I came back to the material and I realized obviously that some of the pieces were destined for other projects uh that had had already been released perhaps 5 years more previously and so on um I started to think I'd made the wrong decisions and that the ones that I put on the other projects perhaps should have been the offcuts and these should have been the main ones so it really it went you know it proved a point that when you're on top of something you sometimes you need to be able to sit back and make a later judgment as to what's the the best and what isn't and uh a lot of the snap decisions that I've made originally might not been the right ones and they sound remarkably fresh as well you say some of them date back to ' 91 they sound like they were recorded six 10 days ago not not 12 years ago don't they um well I hope so um I mean one of the things that it's quite flattering and and it's difficult for me to judge how true it is or how accurate it is but people do say say that the material does have a a long levity and even some of the things that I recorded in the 70s the bbop deluxe period stuff some of that uh still sounds fresh now and um I don't know why that should be because um it's not something you know that I have in the Forefront of my mind when I sit down to write a piece of music I have to write something that's going to last a long time I write whatever is on my mind at that moment and um those whims that take uh a composer at that those moments um can be very sort of uh nebulous and and and um ephemeral but uh yeah I you know people do tell me that they can live with it for quite a long time so that's fine by me so at e have you had to touch them off bit or they literally as you found them because that you know for you know they are finished tracks uh no they're exactly as they were simply because they were recorded on my old uh analog real toore type system and um because I was a cheap skater I never used to buy new reels of tape so I just wiped the master uh the multitrack tapes would get wiped as I do a new piece I would wipe whatever was on that tape and use the Reel over and over again and uh so the multitracks don't exist there are no multitracks all I had was the mixes that i' had done at the time and the mixes obviously you can't get into and change around you you're stuck with the way they sound so apart from just doing the usual mastering process at the end of the day on on each CD once the running order was assembled uh they weren't tampered within anywhere at all so how have you themed this the six disc you haven't just started at 91 and worked to the present day have you it's kind of you've actually put them in six themes they've all got six separate titles so in the way they are separate albums it's not just a simple box set yeah well um initially that wasn't the plan I I just suddenly realized there was a lot of material that was worth hearing and and I should I should try and and use it in some way um and then as I started making a a short list it became a medium list and then a long list and certain things started to emerged that there were a group of tracks that would sound nice together and they had a sort of a general um theme if you like or Vibe about them and uh eventually I got a framework for the six albums and and was able then to look at the list and put things into these six albums almost as if there were six separate categories and one of the albums um has a very sort of bizarre take on well not bizarre but sort of a left field take on on country music which is something I hadn't done before uh one has uh a more obvious kind of a rock guitar approach one has a an instrumental ambient type of feel one has a a jazzy bluesy Groove kind of feel to it another is pure pop uh and the other one is something that seems to be a collection of everything that didn't fit into the other categories so um it did suddenly take a shape you know of its own accord really so you're looking through your career you mean there's so much stuff out there you must make and you're just constantly recording and writing or is is it is it a daily trip down to the home studio and a couple of hours and and just experiment well yeah I mean it is you know it's worrying really because it can be seen as obsessive and rather sort of uh um unhealthy and I'm sure it is unhealthy and obsessive at times um but it is a daily thing I enjoy doing it that's the really really the the main reason why I do it um I just derive a lot of pleasure from making music and uh obviously if you're doing it every day and it's day long you know um apart from weekends when I try and sort of have some kind of social life um you do aass an awful lot of material and particularly with the old analog system that I used to use um it's a very quick and easy way of of recording uh there isn't so much technology in the way so things can go down um quickly and easily as if it was a a Sketchbook almost and I I used to treat tape in that way it would be a a sketch pad for for ideas that often i' tell myself that this is an idea I will finish later and I will work up into something that's that's that's more polished and but then you know you move on to the next piece and before you know it you You' have a master stack of ideas which um you intend it to go back to and finish off and yet they've suddenly uh achieved an identity in the form they are they you become used to hearing them that way and to do anything more to them would seem wrong so they end up taking on their own life very much like this project you've never been a man who's afraid to put out the stuff if you feel you haven't been able to complete it but work in progress as well you've been able to let listen public hear all all different Works in different forms yeah yeah yeah I know what you mean from De from like demos to work that I haven't been able to finish this but to the real polish start yeah I think if it's if it's interesting enough to me um you know obviously I wouldn't let things go out that I I would I I thought were really substandard or reflected badly upon me in any way um gosh I mean it sounds kind of wrong in a way saying that but anyway I if I think the criteria is that it that it's honest and it interests me and if it's not particularly well polished or absolutely refined that that's that's kind of not even secondary somewhere down the list of priorities the main thing is that it says something that means something to me and reflects something back and uh and and has a point of Interest U and I think it's worth worth having that approach I mean so me we we get so used to hearing um supremely disciplined and Technical recording and works and all the rest of it we are used to seeing everything kind of hyped up to the ninth degree but um the Sketchbook is just as interesting as the finished painting sometimes is it not with just the music you're actually very heavily involved in the packaging you that's something that's struck me over the years you've been very not not just happy to give it to a reel company but every bit of it you like to make sure is 100% and correct with the the artwork the line of notes which you've always given in depth line of notes you like to be involved in every part I think that's probably the partly you know my art school background I did originally plan to be uh involved professionally in some kind of form of of visual art um at the bottom line that would have been teaching but I think you know many of us at art college at the time dreamt of becoming uh successful painters um but music took over and uh it became my career uh but the the visual sense is still there and is very sort of important to me so I've yeah I've always had a hand in in in the design and the look of things and um I'm I'm I'm pretty fussy about things being right you know and uh that can be a bit frustrating for the some some of the people I have to work with because they're not used to musicians having such a a large say in in in the visual sense but um unfortunately that's the way I am I can't really s do much about that WR you're very much looking at your artwork of the years very much a fan of kind of um 30s 40s sci-fi and kind of images from the 30s and like the dandere kind of cartoons that kind of thing what do it appeals to you about that well I I you know I was born in 1948 which makes me a very old person indeed now but um I grew up in in that sort of post-war uh retrofuture era where technology was seen as benevolent at that time to a great degree even though you know obviously there being the horrors of of Hiroshima and so on but the particularly the as a young boy the kind of Science Fiction that I was exposed to obviously things like dandare um and some of the American Science Fiction U flash G and bck Rogers um and now looking back on that I you know it's it's easy to see that it it was very naive and it was very utopian and it's it's an antique kind of futurism that has lots of ornamentation and uh uh quirkiness about it it's kind of sweet and in view of the dangers that we are now exposed to Via all kinds of te technology whether it be uh out there in the worlds of war in in in in in terms of warfare but or whether it be something that's more Insidious like the kind of things that invade our homes via television and um computers um now looking back at that more innocent time it becomes a kind of a sanctuary in a way you know it's it's a it's a reminder that that uh innocent still has its place and um I I I kind of hang on to it in a way because it does remind me of where I've come from and it does remind me that that a child's view can be uh full of wonder and full of optimism um whereas I think it's very difficult sometimes for for younger people now they're so well informed of what's going on out there in the real world and and so they should be in a way but the world is such a sort of a a a fragmented and uh and yet you know unified because we're aware of things happening on the other side of the globe all these things make such an impact on young people that it must be very hard to sort of maintain a real optimism you know about things um so this for me is is a reminder that there that there is some innocence still to be uh to be thankful for I think I know what you mean we kind of had the dirty look of Blade Runner and all that kind of image is that now kind of dominate ccio but you look at that and it has a kind of very as you say clean kind of good feel about what the future could be from a very young talking about te techology you've very much involved yourself with the internet because the website you have your the fan website but there's a lot you you've used that quite well to your music to distribute it around you're not you're not one of these artists who's not afraid to put their music on the web are you uh not particularly no I mean I'm I I am sort of wary of of some of the exploitation that happens because uh it's difficult because I can see two sides to the argument you know that a lot of music fans say well why shouldn't artists um make certain things things available for free downloads and it helps to um spread the word about their work and it helps people to at least have a little insight into what they're doing and perhaps then go out and buy an album later on um and also they say you know these people earn lots of money the record companies make lots of money why shouldn't we have some freebies but whilst that might work well for an artist who's well established an Elon John or Paul McCartney or whatever a household name who's you know very wealthy and and comfortable and successful for the for the independent artist who is working um on the borderline of being able to survive if you like financially from from from making music um those infringements actually are quite dangerous you know when when when there are illicit downloads going on where people are um copying CDs and passing them around instead it's always been done with cassettes before so it's not so new but um it's kind of it can be worrying for the smaller people so I can see both sides of the coin but I do think that that the communication that that the internet offers between artist and his audience that direct communication is very very uh important and it's very new um relatively new anyway and it does cut out a lot of middlemen and it's the middlemen that are most frightened by this it's the you know the record companies in between and the um the that whole infrastructure that that maintains the music business in the way that it has been for so many years you know where the power is really vested in the corporate identity and the artists are of a in a way lesser importance although without them the whole thing collapses but um the internet allows the artist to directly uh deal with his audience and to receive feedback from the audience too um and in that respect I think it's a very very good thing you know you've got a very loyal and hardcore fan base as well haven't you reading as I had a look on the site today before I came you're very open with them you have a very open diary you it is it's a DI I probably wouldn't publish it's kind of it's a it's a very heartfelt you know you reflect things in the news what's happened in your own life and it's like you actually feel like you're part of the family do you feel that's very important um well the diary is I guess it it may be seem seem to someone on the outside that it is fairly sort of raw and open but there's a lot can assure you doesn't find its way into there I I do keep some things private but um I I I think it's a good way for people don't have an insight into how a musician or a writer a musical writer um Works how they conduct their lives on a daily basis there's a there's a lot of Illusion there's a lot of fantasy presented particularly from from um the point of view of the the mainstream record industry you know I mean the the notion of St and of celebrities something that's concerned me for a long time and I had a bit of a taste of that obviously back in the 70s when I had bbob Delux because we were part of that particular machine for a while and when I was younger it was exciting and so on but there was always that thing of feeling a little dishonest about the way we were presented you know um what the internet has allowed me to do and what the diary's allowed me to do is is really sort of show people that um it's not to get rid of any sense of specialness about it because I think you know people who um who who make music they have I this is this is a very very tricky thing because it starts to get into when we're talking about specialness are we talking about somebody who's better than somebody else or not and I don't mean in that sense but I meaning that a creative person Works in a particular mindset all the time works from a slightly different angle from say the way I worked when I worked in my office job working for local government back in the early '70s um the things that concern me on a daily basis are totally different from the things that concerned me then the things that concern me now on a daily basis aren't necessarily healthy um it doesn't mean I've got a good grip on the real world it means I've got a good grip on my musical world but my musical world is very sort of closeted and some of these uh problems if you like interest me the way that uh artists balance their creative life with their everyday social and family life and so on and I think the hopefully the diary shows some of these things at work and some of the kind of uh paradoxes and the complex things that go on um in the mind of someone who's desperately trying to sort of keep ends together and yet follow this rather sort of obsessive urge to make music and not alienate friends and family and indeed The World At Large around him by being so self-centered and into that particular Act of creativity um it's quite possible that many artists don't even bother to think about it this way it's just something that they get on with and do but it does trouble me and has done for a while so it's I think is interesting reading because of that one of the other to tie with the album um even though you're not playing as i i g stuff from it you're playing live for the the second time in London this year but it's it's been a long Gap since we've seen you on stage uh yeah I mean uh I think the last time actually last time I played London was in 1998 and that was at the Queen Elizabeth Hall I did two nights as part of a thing called the Festival of drifting on the South Bank there and um prior to that it would with Channel light vessel which was probably a couple of years before that um so yeah it's been a while since I played London and the Jazz Cafe uh concert on Sunday is um purely instrumental and I'm using some pre-recorded tapes uh to form part of the the musical backdrop but there's it's basically live guitar uh and live marimbas uh improvised on top of um pieces of music I've made in my home studio and bringing in other people as well uh to work with me improvise with me so some pieces will have my brother Ian playing saxophone on some will have Kate St johon playing saxophone and OBO on some will have a keyboard player called uh Steve Cook playing with me uh and some will have a Basse player called Ian Lee playing with me and some will have different combinations of those people in fact one has has us all on two two pieces actually have us all playing on so um it should be a fairly you know interesting evening because there are all these different combinations and and everything that happens on top whilst we've had sort of rehearsals they're very much uh the rehearsals are designed to familiarize ourselves with the backing tracks rather than familiarize ourselves too much with what we might do live on the on the day the thing that we add on the day the live component is very much sort of in a state of flux all the time and um it can be kind of uh Dancing On The Edge if you know what I mean can be a little bit hair raising so hopefully it's going to be quite exciting do you miss playing life um I do when I finished the concert I always go away saying I must do more of these I really enjoyed that that was great but then months or a year or two will go by and somebody says it's time you did another concert why don't we fix one up here and then I start to panic and then I get in a really terrible State and get very anxious and I wish I'd stayed at home in my studio where I'm safe and I know exactly what's happening but uh I'm sure after it's all finished on Sunday I'll be I'll be uh wanting to do it again so what's next the box sets out it new material is that is there plans for a single album there is yeah well it's a double I mean a single you're joking there it's a double album called Whimsy coming out um hopefully early next year perhaps February if I get the artwork finished that's all it's waiting for it's all master just need needs the artwork and what can we expect on that uh it's it's um an album of so people tell me very accessible almost pop songs um I don't know what that quite means in in my world but but that's what I've been told um and it's the first set of recordings I've I've made at home on my digital Studio system uh so really the pieces were put together to to uh give me something to work with so I could learn how to use this this new digital recording system that I installed a couple of years ago and um at the end of it I had again you know two albums worth of songs which hadn't originally started out as being pieces for release they were pieces to to rehearse with this new equipment uh but they ended up being worthwhile uh music hopefully um and so a double album will be appearing of those and I'm already on with the follow-up to that which is a guitar instrumental album um which is kind of uh introvert and that ambient word again which seems such a cliche to use now but um sort of expansive music but with the guitar being the the focal points rather than uh rather than keyboard do you prefer to work on your own um because a lot of this work is literally stuff you've done on your own multitrack do do you miss having people around to bounce off or do do you find yourself actually one who works better on his own um well when I worked in a band on a regular basis you know I used to sort of love those moments when I could go and do something on my own but for the last 20 odd years I've been working alone and um it gets lonely working alone uh I I I'm looking forward to we're hoping to be able to um fund uh an album in an outside Studio next year uh not in my little room at home with uh various musicians working with me and I think that would be uh uh kind of a nice exciting thing for me to do now because I I really feel that it's time to sort of open up and let other people put some ideas in as well just for a while anyway and then I'll go back to doing it on my own I'm sure but we'll see what happens next year you've done you've been what since 1971 Northern dream if I remember it's over 30 years you've made a career of been a musician is it it's it's been a mixture you could you've been a rock star in the band you had the solo career and now you've quite happily settled in doing what you've wanted to do and has it been a joy oh absolutely and you know anyone who sort of knows me closely always followed the career closely will know that there there have been times when it's been a nightmare as well I've had a lot of sort of um problems as a result of uh all kinds of business um the usual music business things that happened it's not just me it happens to lots of people but I've had a few problems anyway and and and yet despite that I wouldn't have changed a thing you know I I really consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to make the music that I want to make um and still be doing that after such a long period of time I mean there are many artists who have had more Commercial Success uh than I've experienced and whose careers have lasted a few short years you know and then they're back doing whatever they did before and uh you know thank God I'm still doing the thing I love most so I'm I'm lucky I'm very lucky great sir thank you thank you