Billy Nicholls
Would You Believe

And would you believe it...?

Would you believe that albums like this could exist, having come to light more than thirty years after their creation...? Would you believe that Billy Nicholls was a child prodigy, signed at 16 to write songs for Del Shannon, on the advice of George Harrison...? Would you believe that he was contracted by the Rolling Stones' manager, Andrew Oldham, for his Immediate label...? Would you believe that our musician appears (uncredited) in the masterpiece "Odgens' Nut Gone Flake" by Small Faces...? Would you believe that Lane and Marriott from Small Faces play and sing for him...?

Would you believe it...

But as often happened in those magical and crazy days, "Would You Believe" never saw the light, except in very few copies for the press and promotion. It was 1968, and Immediate was in dire straits and, despite Small Faces, couldn't make ends meet, so they decided not to release young Nicholls' album. It officially came out in 2000 as a CD with the usual slew of bonus and alternate tracks; better than nothing, but the magic was gone for him forever.

At a first (distracted) listen, it seems like Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, coated with a gleaming "British Songwriting," with the voices of Nicholls, Marriott, and Lane intertwining in long and dense patterns in pure Wilson-style (listen to "Daytime Girl - Coda" to believe). But going deeper, baroque arrangements, painted with multicolored keyboards, powerful and refined brass sections emerge, with Nicholls' voice oscillating between a lucid Barrett in "Portobello Road" and a Donovan who finally finds the taste for splendid vocal melodies in "Question Mark"; cheerfully traversing the drakian countryside in the acoustic "Come Again". The title track is magical and sparkling in its vaudeville stride, I don't think I've ever heard a better sunshine-flower pop piece than this... moving. A special mention for the final and prophetic "It Brings Me Down," where Nicholls skillfully mixes the entire musical panorama of the period, crafting a perfect seventies pop song, with dark melodies and melancholic openings, as if to foresee the dark turn that was brewing.

This work would have absolutely held its own alongside masterpieces like "The Village Green Preservation Society" by the Kinks, the aforementioned "Odgens'" by Small Faces, or the rougher and more abrasive "SF Sorrow" by Pretty Things... all contemporaneous works to "Would You Believe," but history denied it...

Would you believe it...