I just stumbled across a Glam Rock band called Be Bop Deluxe.  I am really digging their guitars and prog/glam sound.  I am surprised I have never heard of this group.  Perhaps, because I am an 80s kid in the USA.

Are there any fans of the group?  Were they popular in the US?

"Be Bop Deluxe" had no commercial success in the States while they were together.  You had to be a fanatic about progressive/glam rock to even have heard of them.  A rock critic might mention them in passing if they were writing an article about Bowie, Roxy Music, T-Rex, or Hawkwind.  Even if you were interested, good luck finding their records.  You'd have to go into a hipster center, such as Berkeley, Greenwich Village, or Harvard Square to find a store that carried Be Bop Deluxe.  

Bill Nelson, on the other hand, got into synthesizers and beatboxes just as MTV was taking off.  Right place, right time.  He had a minor New Wave hit with "Flaming Desire."  The video for this song got some MTV play.  That was the Second British Invasion, so if MTV programmers saw "English" "New Wave" and "synthesizer" on the press release, they'd give the artist a shot.  Nelson also got into producing other artists.  The first place I saw his name was as a production credit on A Flock of Seagulls 1983 album "Listen."  Nelson produced and released that band's first single "(It's Not Me) Talking" for his label Cocteau Records.  That was originally released in 1981, but AFOS didn't get big in the US until a year later, and "Talking" was not released here until 1983!

Record Town in the local shopping mall had cut-out of the double-cassette "Diary of a Thinking Heart (Love That Whirls)/Beauty and the Beast Soundtrack," which I bought for $2.99 in '84, and that's still my favorite Bill Nelson album!

I myself never got into Be Bop Deluxe, though I can hear why they were so acclaimed by prog and glam rock fans.  My late brother-in-law Jay had just about everything BBD/Nelson ever recorded.  He was in a few bands himself and then worked as a sound engineer for the remainder of his career.  In other words, Jay was a hipster.  

Bill and his brother Ian Nelson (RIP) did try to get the Be Bop Deluxe show back on the road in the 1990s,  but they couldn't generate enough interest to get it going.  

Record labels had a hard time marketing Bill Nelson.  Be Bop Deluxe is a catchy name, Bill Nelson is rather generic (which I thought was part of the charm).  Also Nelson is one of those creative artists who is driven to make the music he wants to make when and how he wants to make it.  He was acclaimed as a "virtuoso guitarist" in his BBD days, but he switched over to synthesizers when he embarked on his solo career, but sometimes he went back back to guitars.  In other words,  if he wants to make catchy dance pop, that's what he does.  If he wants to make experimental electric guitar music, so it shall be.  If he wants to make ambient electronic soundscapes, he'll do that.  Initially, the labels tried to put him in the New Wave ranks with Gary Numan and AFOS, then they tried to market him to a New Age audience, which didn't work; Bill Nelson is too weird for New Age.  Ambient music had a loyal niche audience in the 1990s.  Ambient was a big portion of my radio program from 1994 to 2000, when I went in a more electroacoustic/avant-garde chamber music direction.  However, Nelson's records in the 1990s were an amalgam of college pop, adult alternative, and only somewhat ambient, so I didn't play the newer records All Saints was trying to market, such as "Automatic" and "After the Satellite Sings," as much as "The Love That Whirls (Diary Of A Thinking Heart)" (1982) or the "Trial By Intimacy" series (1985).  Thus Nelson presents frustrations even for his fans like me!  

Bill is still around, but I haven't heard any of his new stuff.  I think he sells it mainly through his website.  He still has a loyal following like so many prolific artists who wouldn't be pigeon-holed.

8)

BBD were one of those groups with a foot tentatively placed in different camps...Glam or New Wave, so it was probably a publicist's nightmare how best to promote them (the same fate also befell Slik, one of Midge Ure's pre-Ultravox bands)...

In Britain, 'Ships In The Night' started to build up some steam sales-wise, but inexplicably the record suddenly became very difficult to get hold of! A rather strange way of gaining publicity which, in this case, backfired...

Good information guys!!!!  Thanks for the posts!!!  I've recently found that I knew less about 70s prog music than I originally thought. 

I just stumbled across a Glam Rock band called Be Bop Deluxe.  I am really digging their guitars and prog/glam sound.  I am surprised I have never heard of this group.  Perhaps, because I am an 80s kid in the USA.

Are there any fans of the group?  Were they popular in the US?


i'm an old guy that remembers Be Bop Deluxe.  I really remember the album cover, the hot girl and burning guitar. racy for the day.

i think, contrary to the other excellent response, that Be Bop had some commercial success.  certainly nothing chart topping, or even close, but those who followed pop music back then knew who they were.  and you could occasionally hear them on the weirder radio stations. some burning guitar, as you mentioned.  

unfortunately, i wasn't a big fan so i can't tell you much else.

find that album cover in a used record shop  :)

lot of good music in the seventies! your on a good track.......