Nileism: The Strange Course of The Blue Nile

by Allan Brown

Next year sees the 30th anniversary of The Blue Nile's first work together. Four albums - containing a total of just 33 songs - have followed since. Yet scarcity has served only to intensify love for the band's intensely romantic songs. Reclusive and enigmatic, The Blue Nile are one of modern music's greatest mysteries, as secretive about their plans and status as they are about their painstaking methods. For the first time Allan Brown, a fan from the time of the band's first album in 1983 and friend of the band's composer Paul Buchanan, gets behind the veil to analyse the band's agonisingly slow progress through personal memoir, critical study, access to unreleased recordings and encounters with those who have been central to the strange and elusive mythology of The Blue Nile.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Warren Stalley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nileism – The Strange Course of The Blue Nile by author Allan Brown attempts to chart the sporadic musical history of enigmatic Scottish group The Blue Nile. The trio of musicians Paul Buchanan, Robert Bell and Paul Joseph Moore alongside engineer Calum Malcolm made four long distanced albums then imploded quietly, softly and almost invisibly. The Blue Nile started off as a close-knit group but gradually as they grew older they drifted apart. The book hints at the tensions that emerged within the band, with management and various record companies. Their stubborn approach to perfecting their work hampered their career, with the music consequently taking years to complete. There are many valuable stories and events retold within the book, for example insisting on only recording Easter Parade on a Sunday of each week. Or how two tracks from their final album High were recorded in a day, after it took five years to create the rest of album! Interestingly the book also mentions unleased tracks, some of which are now available on the remastered Blue Nile albums. To conclude this may not be the definitive account of the mercurial group but it’s a lot better than nothing at all and recommended for any fan of the band or curious reader.

[Phil Brody · Rating 5 out of 5]

As of fan of the enigmatic band The Blue Nile since the release of their first album (A Walk Across The Rooftops), I thoroughly enjoyed this book by Alan Brown. Over the course of their 30-year career, the band has released mere four albums. However, those albums are held in high regard by their ardent fans -- myself included. In fact, the first two releases by the Blue Nile (Rooftops and Hats) are cemented in my personal list of the top 10 albums of all time. So, when a book was written charting the strange course the band took over the decades, I happily ordered a copy and dove into the story. Alan Brown succeeds in documenting the facts, while also delivering a love letter to the band and the compelling music they create. The story is not always a happy one, but it is a tale that every fan of the Blue Nile needs to read. And hopefully it will give birth to new fans too. After all, The Blue Nile deserves them.

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love The Blue Nile. Those first two albums, A Walk Across The Rooftops & Hats, were a mournful soundtrack to the 80's for me. The fact that they spanned the whole decade these 2 37 minute albums made them even more cultist and elitist in my mind. Nobody I knew liked them or even knew who they were, even people from their home city of Glasgow would be hard pushed to tell you who they were. But I enjoyed my feeling of secretive pleasure. But I also wanted to inform. This was music that deserved to be heard, shared, adored and more importantly, bought.
It is sad how short their shining moment was. How soon their flame first guttered and then died without achieving the commercial acclaim I am sure they all craved at the start. But in the immortal words of Elden Tyrell from Blade Runner "The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long, and you have burned so very brightly" their light still shines dimly for some of us, undiminished by time, age and memory.
This book brought it all flooding brightly back for me. I had to listen all over again. It was glorious.
Thank you Allan Brown.

[Scott Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of good Glasgow and Blue Nile lore.

Poor Paul Buchanan, think he was too nice and soft for the music business.

[Ipswichblade · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Blue Nile are a magnificent band, their album Hats is just superb, at least one if not two tracks from it I shall request to be played at my funeral!!
This book does the band justice and gives a good account of them and their sometimes “difficult” history

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read. My only gripe is that I already knew most of the info in the book and had all of the unreleased songs so I didn't get new insight into my favorite band. However I am happy that the book is exposing The Blue Nile to a new audience.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Outstanding band and a pretty good read if not a little pretentious......... but then again it is about the Blue Nile!

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic! The best pop/rock biography I have ever read.

[Maureen · Rating 2 out of 5]

It just wasn't very engaging, and a bit on the dour side. I eventually gave up because the Blue Nile is my favorite pop band and this book started to make me dislike them.

[Sandy Buchanan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must for all Blue Nile fans

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book for followers of The Blue Nile but keep a dictionary beside you. Someone has swallowed a thesaurus.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the idea of the Blue Nile more than their actual records. The Seinfeld bass that interrupts the flow of the first album is a hard no from me. I like the idea of three Glaswegians trying to make mystical music that really reaches people, but I don't connect with the music they made on an emotional level. But I am interested in their process, their struggles, their mystery.

The author obviously sees Paul Buchanan as a wizard, a true star. I found the many stories of the band's glacial progress towards recording gradually became more and more annoying.

The level of insight is greatly limited by his range of sources - neither of the other two members responded to requests to be involved, and it does not feel as if he had long or deep conversations with Paul Buchanan.

The most insight comes from Ed Bicknell, who managed the band after his time taking Dire Straits to the highest peaks. After yet more massively drawn out recording sessions, he bluntly tells Paul Buchanan that what the band has done so far is not very good, and they need two more songs to make the album long enough to release. Paul is crushed - "Nobody has ever spoken to me like that before", reacts badly, sulks for a bit. Then he comes out of his shell, shows Ed some songs that didn't make the cut. Ed picks two, then Paul sulks back home. Several days later, he phones Ed to tell him they went in to the studio the previous day and recorded the two new songs, and they are ready to go on the record. Ed is delighted, but points out that it had taken the band 7 years to write and record 7 songs that last 35 minutes. "What does that make you think, Paul?". Paul ponders this - "I'm wasting my life".

Maybe the story of the Blue Nile would have been a happier and more successful one if they had more people in their lives who were not willing to indulge them, so endlessly.

[Ian Mathers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really love the Blue Nile. I adore at least three of their four records (I'm still coming to terms with Peace at Last), love Paul Buchanan's solo record, have always found good critical writing, interviews with them, etc., fascinating. So I am absolutely in the target market here, don't get me wrong. But the reason why I think this is one of my favourite books on bands isn't just because I love the Blue Nile. I do think a lot of really successful work in this genre gives you a feeling for the emotional and aesthetic timbre of the band from the way it's written. Like, yes, I do want to learn information, but the style or viewpoint or prose somehow interacting with the way the band's work succeeds tends to push things over the top for me. And here Brown has written a book about the Blue Nile with all the late night regret and romance of the Blue Nile's music. He absolutely makes a compelling case that in a traditional sense they weren't a "band" at all, and also shows the ways they kind of half-worked and produced some brilliant work until, seemingly inevitably, they stopped working at all. And to me, Nileism does all that while just... feeling powerfully like it gives you just a small sense of what that was like. Brown doesn't get equal access to all three members and so also inevitably Paul Buchanan get the most attention and insight here and while I wouldn't mind at all getting more from the other two the balance feels reasonable, and Brown holds himself appropriately accountable for the shape and focus of the book. And as much as you sense Brown (and the rest of us!) would like some resolution to the central mystery of what, exactly, ended the Blue Nile, it feels appropriate that both us and the book know on some level we'll never get that.

[Harry Burnside · Rating 3 out of 5]

While at times it was interesting rather than entertaining I am loathe to give it any further stars. What a trio of up themselves boring lovers of their own image taking years to make a total of four albums and not all of them hitting the top of the clap-o-meter for brilliance after all that so called effort.
Considered themselves too great to bother getting out of bed to further their career in a positive way.
{f all they did was write genius it is a story of wasted opportunities and after it all all the greats appeared on the first album. AS the author says they took as long to make their fourth album as the Beatles did to make their whole canon of great albums with greater effect and memorability.
All opinions are given as a reaction to the information in the book. I have never met the Blue Nile or seen them play live although I do have Peace at last and Hats.

[Gary Fowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Allan Brown does a good jib at unpicking the various threads that make up the Blue Nile story. His warm prose is at times vingar sharp, taking swipes at people for seemingly no reason at times (John Peel).
Unsurprisingly most of the book is dedicated to the genius first two albums. Brown does have a bias towards lead singer Paul Buchanan, leaving PJ Moore and Robert Bell in the sidelines somewhat.

Other than that I thought this was an intelligent, well written read.

[Killian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable read. Although definitely for fans only, it's detailed and evocative.