When
Be Bop Deluxe's first album was released during the glam rock wave in 1974 and the band (then comprised of
Bill Nelson and Ian Parkin on guitars, Robert Bryan on bass, and Nicholas Chatterton-Dew on drums) turned up on the back of the record cover in heavy makeup, it was viewed as being in the
David Bowie mold, which certainly took in
Nelson's thin but confident tenor vocals and the uptempo rock approach, and even ballads like "Adventures in a Yorkshire Landscape" that sounded a lot like
Bowie's "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide." But it was already obvious that
Nelson was an unusually lyrical guitar slinger, and in fact the tunes often took a back seat to his sometimes jazzy, sometimes metal-ish excursions. He was, as he sang, "an axe victim," but at the same time,
Be Bop Deluxe's musical identity was uncertain. ~ William Ruhlmann