Shindig! Issue #158 – Billy Nicholls
JON ‘MOJO’ MILLS interviewed BILLY NICHOLLS in issue #158 about his fantastic 1974 album Love Songs. In this abridged extract he remembers his friend Caleb Quaye
An important figure in the adjacent Small Faces coterie was Caleb Quaye, who Billy had met back in ’66 at Dick James Music. The well-told tale of how the aspiring teenager songwriter ended up meeting one of the most important people in the biz goes something like this. Nicholls had knocked on the door of George Harrison’s Esher home wanting the Beatle to hear his songs, an impressed Harrison then passed them onto Dick James, who in turn invited Nicholls to come and see him. “James said, ‘I’m sorry I lost the tapes, but can you come up and record at my studio? At least you can then have some nice demos of the songs then,’” says Billy of his rapid introduction to the industry. “I jumped at that chance. I was only 15. I went in to record these demos and Caleb Quaye was behind the jump. He was engineering.” From there, Quaye then recorded further demos with Nicholls for Immediate, this time playing on them, and they remained close friends. By the time Nicholls was working with Townshend, Quaye was aiming for the big time with Hookfoot, but was always at hand.
After returning from Ireland, Billy was somewhat fortuitously approached by his old friend Phil Chapman at Olympic Studio, who’d heard that Billy was back in the game and asked if he’d like to come and record his new songs with him in studio downtime. Caleb was called up and the two musicians worked regularly over the next few months, primarily before the Stones came in during the early hours to work on the UK sessions for Goat Heads Soup. “I was so lucky to be recording in Studio One at Olympic,” says Billy with a huge smile across his face. “I knew it very well as I did my first album there and I recorded a lot of stuff with The Small Faces. It was like my second home, so I was very comfortable to go there. Pete gave me some electric guitars for Caleb to use, and I think Caleb had BB King’s old guitar too.
“When I went into the studio with him, I knew the format of each song. We wouldn’t just sit there and doodle and jam. I don’t work like that. The songs were always completely finished before Caleb heard them, and he was totally in tune with what I was doing. I would play the song to him on my Zematis acoustic six-string, and he’d say, ‘Okay, let me play drums along to that.’ That’s how it would always begin. I didn’t even know he could play drums, but he played great. The next thing would be him adding bass. I would then put a guide vocal down and that’s when it really started to happen. Caleb would play electric guitar and sometimes organ. It was very organic, but we had it off pat.”
The finest example of this method must be ‘Winter Rose’, which opens the album. “I played my acoustic tuned to an open E chord,” says Billy of the process. “Caleb played two guitar solos layered on top of each other. He made Love Songs as if he wrote the songs himself. He added stuff that wasn’t anything like you’d get from a session player. He totally understood where I was coming from. We’d known each other for so long that it was a very natural thing.”
To read the full article order Shindig! issue #158 here
I really like your writing style, excellent information, regards for putting up : D.
værdsætter dit indhold. Lad mig venligst vide det.
Podem recomendar outros blogues/sites/fóruns que tratem dos mesmos temas?
) Jeg vil besøge igen, da jeg har bogmærket det. Penge og frihed er den bedste måde at ændre sig på, må du være rig og
Nice Article
que eu mesmo criei ou terceirizei, mas parece que
grupo do facebook? Há muitas pessoas que eu acho que iriam realmente
for the reason that here every material is quality based
det. Denne side har bestemt alle de oplysninger, jeg ønskede om dette emne, og vidste ikke, hvem jeg skulle spørge. Dette er min 1. kommentar her, så jeg ville bare give en hurtig
|Tato stránka má rozhodně všechny informace, které jsem o tomto tématu chtěl a nevěděl jsem, koho se zeptat.|Dobrý den! Tohle je můj 1. komentář tady, takže jsem chtěl jen dát rychlý
|Hello to all, for the reason that I am actually keen of
nogensinde løbe ind i problemer med plagorisme eller krænkelse af ophavsretten? Mit websted har en masse unikt indhold, jeg har
مرحبًا، أعتقد أن هذه مدونة ممتازة. لقد عثرت عليها بالصدفة ;
This blog is definitely rather handy since I’m at the moment creating an internet floral website – although I am only starting out therefore it’s really fairly small, nothing like this site. Can link to a few of the posts here as they are quite. Thanks much. Zoey Olsen
Please let me know if you’re looking for a writer for your site. You have some really good articles and I feel I would be a good asset. If you ever want to take some of the load off, I’d really like to write some articles for your blog in exchange for a link back to mine. Please blast me an email if interested. Thanks!
It?¦s actually a nice and helpful piece of info. I am glad that you simply shared this helpful information with us. Please stay us up to date like this. Thanks for sharing.
Hi there! I simply want to give a huge thumbs up for the good info you could have right here on this post. I will likely be coming again to your weblog for extra soon.
Very interesting subject , thanks for putting up.
Loving the information on this web site, you have done outstanding job on the posts.
Hello, Neat post. There is a problem along with your site in internet explorer, would test this?K IE nonetheless is the market chief and a large element of people will pass over your wonderful writing due to this problem.
I am really enjoying the theme/design of your web site. Do you ever run into any browser compatibility problems? A couple of my blog readers have complained about my site not operating correctly in Explorer but looks great in Safari. Do you have any ideas to help fix this problem?
A formidable share, I simply given this onto a colleague who was doing just a little analysis on this. And he the truth is purchased me breakfast as a result of I discovered it for him.. smile. So let me reword that: Thnx for the deal with! But yeah Thnkx for spending the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love studying more on this topic. If possible, as you turn into experience, would you mind updating your weblog with extra details? It is highly useful for me. Big thumb up for this blog put up!
Some times its a pain in the ass to read what blog owners wrote but this site is really user genial! .
hey there and thank you for your information – I’ve certainly picked up something new from right here. I did however expertise several technical points using this site, since I experienced to reload the web site lots of times previous to I could get it to load correctly. I had been wondering if your hosting is OK? Not that I am complaining, but slow loading instances times will often affect your placement in google and can damage your high quality score if ads and marketing with Adwords. Anyway I’m adding this RSS to my email and can look out for much more of your respective interesting content. Ensure that you update this again soon..
I was looking at some of your blog posts on this internet site and I believe this website is very informative ! Keep posting.
Hi there are using WordPress for your site platform? I’m new to the blog world but I’m trying to get started and create my own. Do you need any html coding knowledge to make your own blog? Any help would be greatly appreciated!