Bevis Frond

(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

The Bevis Frond, the project of British singer-songwriter and guitarist Nick Saloman, was an endless tribute to 1960s psychedelic rock. This hobby earned Saloman a modest degree of popularity during the 1980s revival, when he ended up becoming an institution of the new alternative scene. The main limitation of his career is that he produced an abnormally large quantity of mediocre music, although occasionally some worthwhile ideas are hidden in the mass. At his worst (often), the Bevis Frond is more than anything an adept manipulator of the most detrimental aspects of record-collecting culture. At his best, he is the musical equivalent of an anthropologist in search of the origins of a civilization (that of rock).

His records are not especially varied, but they have the merit of being performed impeccably (generally by himself alone). “Rediscovered” by an influential magazine and launched by a savvy marketing campaign based on concepts such as “limited edition” and “collector’s record,” and other similar nonsense, Saloman is in reality only an honest second-tier survivor: any second-rate musician from the 1960s could do the same things, but partly out of modesty and partly because others found better things to do, no one had thought of it before.

He had been trying for twenty years to break through as a guitarist (his first recording dates back to 1974) when he launched the Bevis Frond name on vinyl. The opportunity came after a motorcycle accident: with the insurance money he financed the recording of the first album, Miasma (Woronzow, 1986 - Reckless, 1987 - Rubric, 2001). The album was the work of a rock amateur who featured a few decent songs (Maybe) and several imitations of the Byrds (Splendid Isolation, Newgate Wind) and Jimi Hendrix (Wild Afterthought), but nothing transcendent. A clever publicity campaign (entirely his own doing) turned it into a cult phenomenon.

Inner Marshland (Woronzow, 1987 - Rubric, 2001) served as a more serious compendium of his “underground” career as an epigone of Syd Barrett (Hey Mr Undecided), Hendrix (Reflection In A Tall Mirror, Once More), and the Seeds (I've Got Eyes In The Back Of My Head). The most catchy song is Termination Station Grey, which remains one of his best. These collages of clichés from the psychedelic era have a purely necrophiliac charm.

Meanwhile Saloman, together with his trusted Bari Watts (another guitarist), formed Outskirts Of Infinity, even less original in their “copies” of Cream, Hawkwind and Pink Fairies (Lord Of The Dark Skies, Gemini Machine, Stoned Crazy) on their first album, Lord Of The Dark Skies (Woronzow, 1987).

The double album Through The Looking Glass (Woronzow, 1987) documents instead Saloman’s alter ego, the wild experimentalist of abstract jams. Dominating it is the psychedelic mass of Shrine, as pompous as it is predictable. Overall, the album proves to be an inexhaustible source of boredom.

Triptych (Woronzow, 1988) is perhaps destined to remain his best work, even if it is also perhaps his least personal, most “retro” effort. Saloman revisits folk-rock (in Lights Are Changing, one of his masterpieces, it sounds like the Byrds singing Dylan, and in fact it was later covered by American singer-songwriter Mary Lou Lord) and blues-rock (in the instrumental Into The Cryptic Mist it sounds like a Santana converted to black masses), before sinking into the soporific 19-minute suite Tangerine Infringement Beak. With a good melodic talent, Saloman says nothing that hasn’t been said a thousand times before, but he says it at the right place (Britain) and at the right time (the late 1980s). As a guitarist, he actually recalls a more loquacious Zappa and a more atmospheric Santana.

On the same lines is the coeval Acid Jam (Woronzow), which seems like a collection of outtakes from the previous album, i.e. even less interesting (see Growing Weed).

Auntie Winnie Album (Reckless, 1988) returns instead to a more melodic approach, but manages to capture attention only in the long Malvolio's Dream Journey To Pikes and City Of The Sun, between medieval movements and Eastern fragrances. The rest is the usual ballast Saloman inserts into all his albums in order to sell them at album price.

Outskirts Of Infinity in turn released Scenes From The Dreams Of Angels (Circuit, 1989), a ridiculous hard-rock record.

When recording albums in an approximate manner lost its marketing value, Saloman wisely decided to move to a more professional sound with the album Any Gas Faster (Reckless, 1990): songs like Old Sea Dog and Ear Song introduced him to a wider audience.

In the same year Saloman had the honor of releasing Magic Eye (Woronzow, 1990) in collaboration with veteran John “Twink” Alder. The record is as unfortunate as few others, but it integrates Saloman into the circles of psychedelic nostalgia enthusiasts. Similarly Gulp (Woronzow, 1991), credited to Magic Muscle, a supergroup of living relics of the psychedelic era including Simon House on violin and Steve Broughton on drums. The trilogy, interrupted by the EPs Ear Song (Reckless, 1990) and Snow (Woronzow, 1991), is completed by another tribute to the 1960s under the pseudonym Fred Bison Five, Beatroots (Woronzow, 1992).

The double album New River Head (Woronzow, 1991 - Rubric, 2003) opens the more mature (and perhaps more honest) phase of the songwriter, see the meditations of New River Head and Thankless Task. God Speed You To Earth is a small gem in the relaxed style of Mazzy Star. The outtakes from this album are found on A Gathering Of Fronds (Woronzow, 1992).

As a result of greater self-restraint, the albums become more cohesive and the average quality improves.

The style also changes drastically, moving toward the powerful blues-rock of London Stone (Woronzow, 1993 - Rubric, 2005), with the catchy Coming Round, and of It Just Is (Woronzow, 1993), on which Saloman plays almost all instruments—records of embarrassing banality. On the latter, the catchy I Can't Catch Up With You and Everyday Sunshine still stand out.

The forty-year-old Saloman still finds the courage to collaborate on the new Outskirts album, The Altar Of Elements (Dark Skies, 1993), with the suite Infinite Madness renewing his usual flaws.

Sprawl (Woronzow, 1994), with its twenty-minute Right On, and Superseeder (1995), with the no less verbose House Of Mountains, are self-indulgent to the point of nausea—records that become catalogs of endless guitar masturbation and cloying “trippy” moods. The EP Summer Holiday (Woronzow, 1993) and the single Dolly Bug (Woronzow, 1995) are better.

Superseeder (Woronzow, 1995) finally shows a minimum of variety, pairing yet another predictable jam (Superseded) with a few crooked folk-rock numbers (Stoned Train Driver, Animal Tracks).

Incident At Pilatus is the new Outskirts record, with Watts increasingly possessed, a fitting alter ego of Saloman.

With the Bevis Frond, second-rate psychedelia was born—similar to “B-movies”: it has no “auteur” pretensions, but simply endlessly recycles the most conventional canon of classic psychedelia, while simultaneously trying to take maximum advantage of the desires of “cult record” collectors.