BE-BOP DELUXE

Futurama: Limited Edition Deluxe Boxset ESOTERIC

1975 second album remastered, expanded and reappraised.

Being a follower of Cockney Rebel through 1974 usually involved sitting through support band Be-Bop Deluxe, Bill Nelson in his white suit striving to connect with the glammed-up teeny fans there to hear the headliner’s hit.

Pushing debut album Axe Victim, Nelson obviously had the weight of EMI’s promo department behind him but failed to strike a chord with the masses, which may have been his trouble all through the pre-punk 70s and beyond.

After the tour, he split the band’s first line-up, recruited two from Cockney Rebel, along with drummer Simon Fox, and tried again. After a recording session for a new single floundered, he split the band again, keeping Fox and recruiting half-Maori bassist Charlie Tumahai.

Directed by his EMI superiors, Nelson found himself at Rockfield Studios doing battle with the infamous ego of producer Roy Thomas-Baker, whose overblown style had castrated Ian Hunter’s third album Overnight Angels but worked wonders for Queen. It kind of worked for Nelson too as the pair’s butted heads sparked Futurama, the album considered Be-Bop Deluxe’s finest, if perhaps the most overcrowded production in rock history with guitars soaring, swooping and squeaking out of every orifice. Where a pregnant pause might have benefited Sister Seagull

Nelson brings in whole flocks of the titular bird.

The songs were strongly melodic and complex, particularly single Maid In Heaven, revisited single candidate Between The Worlds and prog-Springsteen Music In Dreamland. Nelson paid tribute to Jean Cocteau, got Bowie-lite on Stage Whispers and uncorked epic slowies like Swan Song, ambition towering out of every glistening shred.

Despite having a video, Maid In Heaven failed to trouble the charts, and neither did the album. It may have been a case of trying too hard as the band held back from the unadulterated prog market they could have cleaned up in, instead falling between all, hindered by slick 70s dressing where everything was big, from production to trousers.

Over the years, enough have discovered the album to merit this lavish expansion, in which a new stereo mix clarifies some of the guitar dazzle, joined by an out-take, May 1975’s BBC In Concert set, a Peel session, that Maid In Heaven video and Old Grey Whistle Test appearance. There’s also a 68-page book containing a Nelson essay and multiple photos of the trio trying out costumes, including gangster threads and Nelson’s ill-advised harlequin jump-suit.

Still firmly of its time but a feast for any fans and those new to its complex wonders.

AMBITION TOWERS OUT OF EVERY GLISTENING SHRED.