photo: Tom Sheehanfrom Melody Maker - feb 6, 1982 - page 11
Steve
Sutherland talks paisley with NICK NICELY.
photo: Tom Sheehan
Personally, I
reckon the Beatles were pretty damn bonzer. Me and a few million other people.
And Nick
Nicely.
Only Nick
couldn't leave it at that; he became so possessed by what history'd cruelly deemed an
artistic cul-de-sac that he actually wanted to BE the Beatles. While others his age were
getting strapped, ripped, buckled, and bondaged down the Roxy, Nick spent the late
seventies holed up in his room with a four-track tape recorder and a copy of ''Magical
Mystery Tour'' celebrating his own inner anarchy ... And when he ran out of records to
play, he naturally made his own.
“Most of
the psychedelic music from this period is crap " he informs me over a dolefully
unspiked tea and cheese omelette. "I'd like to think that the song I've done is good
enough that, even If I'd done it straight, it would still have been worthy of
attention”.
But
''straight'' it magnificently isn't.
‘Hilly
Fields (1892)' / '49 Cigars'’ is, for us old fogies, the most faithful recreation yet
of the seething soundtrack of our misspent youths. It was XTC'S Andy Partridge, actually,
who first put me onto it: ''It starts where 'Strawberry Fields' leaves off" he
enthused. Smart chap. The military drums, intruding echoey voices, classical cellos and
(what I mistakenly took to be) backward guitars are all there. Spot on.
Nothing, nothing
is missing. The earth moves. Why bother?
“Well
firstly, I just wanted to” - he sprays my coat with omelette and apologizes.
“And secondly, I hoped it would create some kind of stir, shake people up a bit and
perhaps get them listening back to the heritage of music we've built over the last 20
years. It's like saying ‘there's a lot of fantastic music out there; go and discover
it’ "
Of course,
it's had exactly the opposite effect - slagged into the middle of next week by a dying pop
press protective of its image, ashamed of its past and paranoically incapable of coming to
terms with anything it doesn't deem trend- worthy. What the rags don't seem to realise is
there's a whole new generation out there who've never even heard OF the Beatles, let alone
heard them. But they will hear Nick Nicely.
''I'd like to
broaden people's horizons", Nick studies his empty plate earnestly.
“I'd like
to shock them in a way. What you have to do is put a bit in there that they can relate to,
a bit they can hum almost and then, in between that, try and put in stuff that will change
them, broaden their outlook.''
Nick missed
out on the first summer of love; too busy playing football or listening to radio
Luxembourg. Then he heard ‘Tracy’ by the Cufflinks and ''for some inexplicable
reason, it affected me deeply and I just couldn't listen to straight pop radio after
that”. His conversion to full psychedelic, however, was slower; stopping off en route
at comedy, American acoustics and - with his first independently financed and produced
single, ‘DCT dreams’ - electronics.
Surely a safer
bet?
''Yeah, but
it's not as exciting" He throws me a look like a radio ham who's just been accused of
neglecting ‘The Archers’. "If you listen to music now, the Human League or
most computerized music, there's no room for the random; there's no room for sounds that
aren't put there on purpose. Psychedelics, to me, have a random feel. A backward guitar is
out of control - that's the beauty of it. I feel music has lost a bit of that”.
Hilly Fields -
a beauty spot just round the corner from Nick's house in Brockley - lovingly revives the
random. It took six months to make and comes at a time when, coincidentally, others are
starting to do much the same.
“Yeah,
I've been to a couple of their clubs”, he explains “but I found that they seemed
to be very interested in fashion and not so much in creativity. I mean, I couldn't get
into wearing paisley shirts - ever!”
Nick Nicely is
a slightly creepy young man who got his ridiculous name in 1973 when one mate said ''give
us a fag you sod'', and another said ''why don't you ask Nick nicely?''
His closest
claims to fame so far were nearly appearing on Stevo's ‘Some Bizarre’ album
alongside Soft Cell and Depeche Mode, and being advised by the fat one to change his
image. He reckons drugs ''can be a help" but won't say how much or how many.
“I'm just
not interested in all the psychedelic ephemera'' he says, staring out the cafe window.
''I'm just interested in the artistic side, the creative side. If that's a cold attitude
then I guess I'm just a cold fish
Fact: Nick Nicely is not a cold fish.
photo: Tom Sheehan