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got this instrument with the potential that no other instrument has got in terms of its possibility and complexity, yet it’s married with a musical world in people’s imagination that is simplistic and limited. It’s an iniquity! I’ve been battling with that all my life.” He’s emphatic. “It’s wrong! People have to know it’s wrong! I’m an instrumental musician, but because the pedal steel has got such a narrow remit in the public imagination I’m in no man’s land almost all the time. The steel guitar is 95 percent new possibilities; it’s only using five percent of its potential, restricted to use within the narrow mar- gins that people accept!”
BJ got his own pedal steel at the age of seventeen with help from his ever-sup- portive parents, and his playing career kicked off in the folk clubs of North Lon- don, St Albans and Potters Bar. From there, he got into a bluegrass band doing the rounds of American Airforce bases and the Fullers pub country circuit in West London where he developed a love of the music, even if he refused to be confined by it, and played with the legendary Albert Lee.
Then one night in Richmond, BJ was headhunted for a rock band by Chris Dreja of the Yardbirds. “I became part of a line- up put together by Peter Grant, Led Zep- pelin’s manager, who wanted a British Fly- ing Burrito Brothers. It didn’t last very long but because of it I met a load of people. It was sex and drugs and rock’n’roll. I want- ed to be a heavy rock steel guitar player, using loads of effects and doing things musically on the pedal steel that weren’t standard.” The sweet shy boy from Enfield had finally arrived smack bang in the cen- tre of the mid-to-late swinging ’60s and there was no looking back.
years called it a day. Lauder asked BJ if he’d like to record a solo album, giving BJ the opportunity to put the poetry he’d been writing to music and to work with some of his great musician mates, includ- ing Danny Thompson, Mike Giles (King Crimson) and Francis Monkman (Curved Air). The string arrangements were by Robert Kirby, well known for his work with Nick Drake.
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The result is the psychedelic yet spa- cious sounding The New Hovering Dog. First released in ‘73, digitally re-mastered and re- released late 2013, it still sounds fresh. There’s a charming, whimsical and timeless English sound to it that was later compared with Brian Eno’s early ambient work. It has the rare quality of being an album of music composed entirely on the pedal steel guitar. Uniquely it features BJ singing and he remembers being un- confident about his vocal performance. But it’s sweet, beguiling, though laden with effects, which could point either to that lack of confidence or the psychedelic sound world.
From Cochise onwards, BJ’s phone just kept on ringing and he embraced the international world of a session-player with open arms. He mentions working with Jimmy Webb, Elton John, David Bowie, Scott Walker and touring with John Cale, saying that he’s also been honoured to work with many great musicians who never get such huge public recognition. He’s very generous about them all, happily referring to many as ‘musical heroes’. The list is far too long to mention, but includes the big names in every decade since he
ndrew Lauder signed BJ’s country-rock band Cochise to United Artists. They achieved critical acclaim but not main- stream success and after three
started who gave him the opportunity to explore the potential of the steel guitar in just about every musical genre – most recently with classical cellist Emily Burridge on their exquisite suite of Erik Satie pieces – to touring with fRoots favourites Devon Sproule and Martin Simpson.
It was working with Eno on Apollo For
All Mankind that brought his playing full circle. Through Eno, BJ realised how beau- tifully the pedal steel is suited to ambient music. It was a neat irony that Eno wanted the sound precisely because of its connota- tions with country music, recognising that the early astronauts were all basically Texan cowboys at heart. Yet for BJ the ses- sion represented a wonderful freedom to explore the instrument’s sonic possibilities.
Very engaged with life and personally very engaging, BJ is passionate about the importance of creativity and the need to question and to break through bound- aries. It’s a passion that feeds his life as well as his approach to music. “When you study things like Jung and higher disci- plines and ways of being, you have to translate them and carry them into real life rather than separating yourself. It has to be part of your general attitude. The trick is to keep the answers you find rele- vant to every day.”
So, back to the self-help. Let the pedal steel guitar – limited due to stereotyping – remind you to think creatively beyond your own mindset and transform your life! As BJ says, “Creativity is transformation.” But, I wonder is the pedal steel truly limitless? “Well”, he says, “some classical music does- n’t suit it. Nor does punk.” He thinks the instrument is too sonorous for that. But then he hasn’t heard me learning to play it. F
www.bjcole.co.uk
Photo: Kenny Laurenson
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