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t took a motorbike accident to turn humble Nick Saloman into The Bevis Frond. The born-andbred north Londoner had been in numerous Nowheresville bands since his teens in the late ’60s, starting with Cream-style combo The Museum, then acoustic duo Nick And Dick, and “Humblebumsesque” Oddsocks. He’d even auditioned for Procol Harum in ’71, after Robin Trower departed, without success. Alerted to punk by his school friend, Stuart Goddard, who’d recently metamorphosed into Adam Ant, he formed the psychedelic-punk Von Trap Family. After fractious negotiations with several labels, the band changed their name to Room 13. He reached a certain nadir, he says, when he caught himself exploring white reggae to try and fit in. Then, circa ’82, Saloman came off his bike, smashed up his elbow, and spent three months in hospital. For Bob Dylan, of course, a similar predicament prompted a shift to more pastoral, philosophical music. Saloman, in contrast, was strapped for cash: he’d been scraping by, selling old vinyl at record fairs, and he and his wife Jan had just bought a house in Walthamstow, but he was due some compensation for the two-wheel collision. When the cheque finally landed in ’85, he paid off his debts, went on holiday and, on his return, bought a Tascam 4-track Portastudio. “When we had our daughter,” he says, “Jan ended up being slightly less maternalistic than I am, so she went back to work as a secondary school teacher, and I was mum.” Afforded unlimited time at home, he hatched his neo-psych bedroom alias, The Bevis Frond. Self-releasing his first album, 1987’s Miasma (recently repressed for Record Store Day), he predicted for it a fate of on-going disinterest, but a mail-order store in Margate took 450 of the initial pressing of 500, and he quickly had to press up more. At the behest of legendary psych zine Freakbeat, he was forced to form a live band and was soon touring Europe, while indulging his highly prolific muse with a barrage of labyrinthine long-players. For 1990’s fourth album, Any Gas Faster (also reissued), Saloman graduated to using a proper studio, and duly trimmed off some of his Hendrixy lead-guitar blitzage, in favour of sharper song writing. The following year’s New River Head at last struck the perfect balance of tunes and wig-outs, and is rated by most Frond loons as his finest hour.
IGiven that Saloman has remained a niche concern among purist psych fiends these past 30 years, it may well be the greatest psychedelic rock record you’ve never heard. This kaleidoscopic 24-track magnum opus opens with some rather un-Bevis tracks, proof positive that our hero was really pushing himself: White Sun roars off the blocks with a sax and wah wah instrumental meltdown which wouldn’t be out of place on The Stooges’ Fun House, while Drowned drifts on a shimmery riff, waves lapping, like one of the quieter bits off The Who’s Quadrophenia, before Saloman’s reedy voice mordantly tells of a downer he’s on, like an anglicised take on Dylan’s Nine Below Zero. “I’ve been here for hours in my all-weather coat,” he sniffs. So English! Yet, She’s Entitled To duly crunches in on the kind of Sabbathian chord sequence then so de rigueur in America’s Pacific Northwest, which that very year would send Nirvana supernova. It’s safe to say that Superfuzz, Big Muff, and numerous other gnarly old pedals then known only to Mudhoney and Dinosaur Jr’s J Mascis were used in the making of this album. However obliviously, Saloman was making the right noises for his era but slipped between the cracks in rock history for his honesty, for singing in his own natural voice, about the world he knew. Waving, for instance, whimsically commences: “The view from city buses is most wondrous to behold/As the panoply of bridges, domes and alleyways unfolds” – useful for the London Tourist Board, perhaps, but hardly the currency of grunge. Listened to today, however, out of time, so much of New River Head is indeed timeless – classic rock of the highest order. He’d Be A Diamond, with its sublimely chiming guitar, is right up there with Big Star’s September Gurls as one of the best songs The Byrds never wrote. Equally, Undertaker (chorus: “I’ve got no point I wish to make/I just wanna be your undertaker!”) is a scuzzy, three-minute, two-finger salute worthy of the giants in any age of punk; ’66, ’76, or beyond. Elsewhere, there are tinges of exquisite, fiddly folk (Waving), blissful, organ-tinkling Floydian ballads (Snow) and kosmische incantation courtesy of Current 93’s David Tibet (The Miskatonic Variations), but the real star of the show is Saloman’s guitar-playing, which, throughout, is voraciously exploratory, simply immense. Though he went to the Marquee in Wardour Street three nights a week in his youth, Saloman never actually saw Hendrix play. You could say he never recovered. On Blurred Vision, his blitzing lead threatens to eclipse every line of the vocals, as if the majority of what he has to express is way beyond words. Solar Marmalade, an eightminute progressive instrumental à la Interstellar Overdrive, is conducted entirely in the red, as Saloman busts stormy riffs, gale-force feedback, vertiginous fretboard ascents and wah wah flip-outs. This furious energy lights up every track. As Saloman notes today, “we were never a waffly hippy band – I’ve always tried to avoid progging out”. He continued to unleash at least an album per year, up to 2004, when he lost his mother, moved to Hastings and took a sabbatical ’til 2011. Alongside a newfound burst of creativity, Fire’s reissue programme will salvage his colossal body of work from the dumper. Pretty much all of it’s ace. This one, however, really hits the bullseye.