Billy Nicholls – London Social Degree
Such was the nature of a musical genre taking its name from the mind-altering effects of acid intake that psychedelia was inevitably going to produce thinly veiled references to the drug’s popular acronym within song titles.
Probably the most famous example of authority-baiting via the medium of song is The Beatles’ ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, although John Lennon dismissed such speculation as mere coincidence. Billy Nicholls was another such artist willing to nail his colours to the mast, penning ‘London Social Degree’, taken from his 1968 album Would You Believe.
A backing vocalist on the Small Faces’ psychedelic tour de force Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake and The Nice’s ‘The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack’, from the album of the same name, Billy Nicholls got his break when he signed to Immediate, the label of former Rolling Stones’ manager and producer, Andrew Loog Oldham. The album, Would You Believe, was touted as the British answer to The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, but due to a severe case of cash-strappeditis at Immediate only 100 copies were issued. The album was eventually released on Nicholls’ own label in 1998.
‘London Social Degree’ is a hymn to the all-encompassing powers of LSD -- the old chestnuts of free love and furthering the mind -- from a time when the wide range of casualties had yet to be revealed. It’s a bouncy burst of psychedelic pop, encapsulating the sound of a 60′s swinging London that’s as far from the underground UFO Club and Middle Earth scene of the Floyd, Soft Machine et al, as it’s possible to get.
Nevertheless it’s still some solid psych-pop, worthy of an airing right here on these very pages.
As it’s now deleted, the Expanded edition of Would You Believe can be picked up for silly money over at Amazon.co.uk
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