Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 125

Record label: Immediate

Produced: Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane and Andrew Loog Oldham

Recorded: Olympic Studios, Barnes, and IBC Studios, London; late 1967–early 1968

Released: April 1968

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: Billy Nicholls (ag, v, bv); Steve Marriott (g, bv); Ronnie Lane (b); Ian MacLagan (o); Kenny Jones (d); Big Jim Sullivan (g, ag); Caleb Quaye (p); Nicky Hopkins (k); John Paul Jones (b); Joe Moreti (g); Denny Gerrard (bv); Barry Husband (bv); Jerry Shirley (d); Arthur Greenslade, John Paul Jones, Denny Gerrard (ar)

Track listing: Would You Believe; Come Again; Life Is Short; Feeling Easy; Daytime Girl; Daytime Girl Coda; London Social Degree; Portobello Road; Question Mark; Being Happy; Girl From New York; It Brings Me Down

Running time: 33.33

Current CD: Castle CMQDD1358 adds Would You Believe (Mono Single); Daytime (Mono Single) plus a second CD of demos and outtakes.

Further listening: Love Songs (1974); lone, self-titled album by a group that included Nicholls and White Horse (1976), both available on Nicholls’s Southwest label

Further reading: www.billynicholls.co.uk

Download: HMV Digital; iTunes

Immediate Records’ head, Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham was bowled over by the precocious talent of the 17-year-old singer/songwriter, who had been recommended to him by no less a person than George Harrison.

As Nicholls puts it, getting signed was a teenage dream; ‘Getting paid £20 a week, with my own room full of Revoxes, Mellotrons, and the Stones’ guitars.’ Between writing songs for the album Oldham produced for Del Shannon, Home And Away (not released at the time, though tracks eventually turned up on various collections), and doing uncredited vocals on the Small Faces’ classic Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, Nicholls got to make his own single, Would You Believe. Initially produced by Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane, but an overambitious Oldham overlaid it with an orchestra, killing its commercial chances. (One wag called it ‘the most overproduced single of the ’60s’.)

While the ensuing Would You Believe album was comparatively modest, it fell foul of Immediate chaotic management and was left in the can, save for a few promo copies that became highly prized among collectors, some selling for over £1,000. Its reputation was enhanced by the knowledge that its credits included a veritable Who’s Who of British late-’60s rockers: the Small Faces, John Paul Jones, Nicky Hopkins, Caleb Quaye, the great session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan, and Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley. Songs like the vibrant Girl From New York testify to what a great time Nicholls must have been having in the studio.

In 1998, Nicholls, by then a successful songwriter and musical director for The Who (and father to Morgan Nicholls of Senseless Things, The Streets and latterly Muse), took pity on those lacking a large disposable income and made Would You Believe available to the masses for the first time, on his own Southwest label. It is greatly to his credit that the result was not a collective sigh of disappointment, as can be the case when long-hyped rarities are finally brought to light, but rather unanimous shouts of praise from critics and fans of song-oriented ’60s pop.