AXE VICTIM

Axe Victim (1974), Bill Nelson's first album with Be-Bop Deluxe, uneasily mixes glam posturing with the beatific, late-psychedelic Romanticism of Nelson's charming solo debut, Northern Dream (1973). It has dumb songs and terrific songs, and it's a lot of fun, though it seems achingly affected, a sort of arch put-on designed to make Nelson's art rock more sellable.

Side 1 leans into the luridness of glam, with the usual reflexive cynicism about rock stardom (think Ziggy Stardust) and some lyrical nastiness that seems, in hindsight, affected and shallow. Thankfully, Side 2 uncorks Nelson's wide- eyed lyricism with the lovely "Adventures in a Yorkshire Landscape," a hypnotic paean to his native region: a downtempo ballad in strumming 6/8 that mostly amounts to a gorgeous solo. There's also the draggy, bittersweet postwar reverie, "Jets at Dawn," another navel-gazing ballad and beautiful guitar workout. The climax is "No Trains to Heaven," a longwinded, anthemic rocker that swipes at religious dogma (there's no martyrs and no kings, because the kingdom lies within) before dissolving into a flurry of, again, solos. It's epic boogie: overegged, overwrought, and crude by the standards of later Be-Bop. I've always liked it.

The playing throughout the album is virtuosic and flashy, at least from Nelson, who seems determined to earn a guitar hero badge through sheer overkill. The rest of the band is serviceable. The mood, meanwhile, seesaws between hard-bitten, swaggering decadence and a dreamy, contemplative vibe that honestly seems more like the real Nelson. A tuneful single, "Jet Silver and the Dolls of Venus," strives to patch those two moods together. Its title may be stenciled from Ziggy, but its vibe is more rapturous than decadent; it's less like Bowie's louche rock 'n' roll anthem and more like a dispatch from some vintage SF mag of the Raygun Gothic era (the music comes out across the heavens, to a listener robed in space). Hinting at the retrofuturism that has since become Nelson's trademark, "Jet Silver" may be the only number here that is fast, catchy, but also personal.

Of the nastier numbers, the album's title track and opener is best. In true glam fashion, "Axe Victim" casts a cold eye on its own rockstar heroics and on rock fandom: You came to watch the band / To see us play our parts / We hoped you'd lend an ear / You'd hoped we'd dress like tarts. This sort of biting-the-hand-that-feeds will show up in later Be-Bop numbers too, like "Stage Whispers" and "Fair Exchange," and may be the one thing about glam that really spoke to Nelson: unease about the whole damn business. The song grinds gears awkwardly between verse and chorus, charging in but then downshifting at the refrain, all to make room for Nelson's skirling guitar fills. The final solo is a corker, the sort of thing that aspiring guitarists study. Quite a way to start an album. The remainder of Side 1, barring "Jet Silver," is not so good; as I've said, Side 2 is really where it's at.

I do enjoy listening to the whole album at a stretch, but I think I've already named all the songs that are good. The rest are a bit duff. "Third Floor Heaven," a leering song about sex work, is propulsive and riffy in a Mick Ronson sort of way, yet also mean-spirited and crass. "Love Is Swift Arrows" is better, yet still one I tend to forget. Fast, tangled, and prolix, it's a hint of better, tighter rockers to come. The trifling "Rocket Cathedral," the only number written by anyone other than Nelson, is frantic and boasts an arpeggiating guitar bit that Nelson would soon put to better use in "Maid in Heaven." Two songs stand out as especially overripe: "Night Creatures," another flirtation with decadence, evokes a shadowy glam demimonde, but it's no patch on "Walk on the Wild Side." It screams Hunky Dory, but with more cheese. Cheesier still is the final track, "Darkness (L'immoraliste)," a rank ballad that nods to Andre Gide. This one is gussied up with strings and choir in an earnest, artsy way. Perhaps Nelson thought that it would end the album with a big, sincere statement (his love of darkness, we're told, is no fashionable disguise, i.e. no mere glam pose). It's absurd, but I love its pompousness. That is, I don't think it's good, but I wouldn't want the album to be without it. Actually, that applies to most everything here.

On balance, Axe Victim sounds like the work of a self-conscious young genius trying to exercise his guitar, build a band, and at the same time ride the coattails of an already shopworn fad. Be-Bop's wannabe glam was Nelson's ticket into the mainstream, but my guess is that he was less interested in the rock 'n' roll throwback appeal of glam at its dirtiest and more interested in soaring, Romantic art song (though with an air of glamor and sexiness). His interest in literary Decadence was genuine enough, but he couldn't pull off sleaze convincingly, and was a bit shy of the shamelessness needed to sell a glam persona. Nelson, as I understand him, was ambitious and fussy and needed a better, sharper band to support his obsessive sound painting. Hence the sacking of this early lineup after this one album and the recruiting of a whole new Be-Bop.

Be-Bop Mark 2 turned out to be much better. Still, Axe Victim is about one half of an excellent album, and, for me, remains fun to listen to today. I think I prefer Nelson's Northern Dream, for all its naivete and clumsiness, but Axe Victim was a fair bid for stardom and a grand first stunt.