BURIED TREASURE
I’m With Cupid
Freed from limbo: golden songs, mysticism and Ronnie Wood protesting “then my bottom dropped off”.
Lightning conductors: Billy Nicholls (left) and Caleb Quaye dig
Love Songs
’ mystic brew.
Courtesy of Billy Nicholls
Billy Nicholls
Love Songs
GM, 1974
ENVISAGED BY Andrew Loog Oldham as the “British Pet Sounds”, Billy Nicholls’ psych-baroque debut LP Would You Believe was released by Immediate Records in spring ’68. Around 100 copies are estimated to have made it into the wild before financial problems consigned it to cult adoration and wild collector’s prices. Yet the follow-up was to be even more shrouded in mystery.”,
Born in London in 1949, singer-songwriter Nicholls had been keeping a low profile before he joined soon-to-be ex-Face Ronnie Lane on an informal tour of Eire at the end of 1972. “It was three, four weeks, just the two of us doing the pubs, playing guitars and travelling by Land Rover,” says Nicholls today. “Both of us enjoyed it so much, he came back and formed Slim Chance and I got straight into Love Songs.”