MY NORTHERN SKIES

Featured Album | 389

Bell + Arc | Bell + Arc | Charisma CAS 1053 | 1971

After an initial album release by the band Every Which Way, singer Graham Bell joined forces once again with his fellow Skip Biffery band mates to record this album for the famous Charisma label. Comprising the collective talents of John Turnbull on guitar, Mickey Gallagher on keyboards, Tom Duffy on bass and John Woods on percussion, augmented by such notables Ken Craddock on various instruments and Alan White on drums, the band’s only album release is perhaps most remembered for the two covers, Leonard Cohen’s “So Long Marianne” and Dylan’s “She Belongs to Me”, the remainder being pretty much Graham Bell originals. Soulful from the start, Bell + Arc demonstrates such slick musicianship that it’s little wonder that both Turnbull and Gallagher would soon find themselves within the ranks of Ian Dury’s Blockheads before the end of the decade. Mostly a band effort, the album does include the one Bell solo effort, the acoustic “Dawn”, which loses none of the soulfulness found in the band tracks. Graham Bell’s career, like many of his generation, was affected by the onslaught of Punk, not to fully recover or relinquish a his rightful place in British rock music. He died at the age of 60 from cancer.