At the end of the 1970s, bandleader Bill Nelson dissolved Be-Bop Deluxe and founded a new kind of band. Red Noise saw him embrace the burgeoning new wave movement – and although they released just one album, it paved the way for his solo career. With the recent release of the expanded Sound-On-Sound and its companion box set, Art/Empire/Industry, Nelson takes Prog on a trip back to the group’s creation.

Words: Julian Marszalek

Spotted: Bill Nelson (centre) and Red Noise in their heyday.

Possibly the greatest myth surrounding rock, pop and all points in between is that music moves in a strictly demarcated linear fashion with distinct boundaries and cut-off points. Indeed, these are the narratives that push the notion that established musical ideas and forms become obsolete the moment the Next Big Thing arrives. But as anyone with a keen eye on popular culture will attest, the development is more akin to the flow of a powerful river; while it moves ahead towards the sea, it contains within it currents, tides and patterns of flow that frequently overlap and mingle without one, single dominant force at play. So it is that there are those whose ideas might be out of kilter with prevailing trends or even looking several generations ahead.

Ergo Bill Nelson, who allows himself a present-day chuckle as he recalls writing a spoof letter under the pseudonym Christian Spink to the New Musical Express. Pre-dating punk rock and partly inspired by the Futurist Manifesto that rejected the influence and reverence of and to the past in favour of modernity, and what was much later described as “the white heat of technology”, Nelson/Spink halfjokingly called for a “New Liberation Front” to sweep away what he saw as “bloated and tired rock music” in favour of a “more radical and adventurous approach, less reliant on the industry’s commercial pursuits.” “I thought, ‘There needs to be something like this applied to pop music to shake it up a bit,’” Nelson tells Prog from his North Yorkshire home. “It was slightly tongue-in-cheek, but serious as well.”