BE-BOP DELUXE

Axe Victim (reissue, 1974) CHERRYRED

REISSUE OF THE MONTH 8/10

KEEN to sign up the quirky singer-songwriter whose self-released solo hippie oddity Northern Dream had been getting regular play on John Peel’s Radio 1 show, EMI’s A&R men lured Wakefield troubadour Bill Nelson down to London, but were somewhat nonplussed when he announced that he had formed a band. Invited to see Be-Bop Deluxe play at the Staging Post near Leeds in 1973, the big-city rock scouts were less than bowled over.

In his sleevenotes to this super-abundant version of Be-Bop Deluxe’s debut album, Nelson remembers that the men from EMI deemed