Beau

Beau, born Christopher John Trevor Midgley, issued a pair of little-known LPs on Dandelion during the closing years of the 1960s and the opening years of the 1970s. The material drew more heavily from the American folk songwriters of the mid-1960s, particularly Tom Paxton, whom Beau admired intensely, and Phil Ochs, than the majority of contemporary British folk releases did, although faint echoes of Donovan’s acoustic work could also be detected. His singing and tunes remained unadorned, leaving the albums as marginal entries within British folk-rock. The stage name itself originated with a French instructor during his school days; earlier he had played in the Leeds rock cover outfit the Raiders before leaving at age nineteen to pursue a solo career as a folk performer on twelve-string acoustic guitar. After an unsuccessful late-1960s audition for Elektra, he was signed to Dandelion, the label established by Elektra’s U.K. executive Clive Selwood together with broadcaster John Peel. The self-titled debut appeared in 1969, consisting solely of voice and twelve-string guitar; its most striking cut, “1917 Revolution,” became a hit single in Lebanon though nowhere else. On the follow-up album Creation, fellow Dandelion artists The Way We Live supplied electric backing for several tracks, and a few pieces displayed touches of strange psychedelia, yet the bulk of the writing stayed within plaintive troubadour folk. Additional sessions involving Beau and The Way We Live took place, yet none of the results reached the public once Dandelion ceased operations. Thereafter Beau stepped back from music as a full-time profession, although he kept performing and recording under the name John Trevor, a change he had already made before the label folded; one such track, “Sky Dance,” later surfaced on the 1972 Dandelion compilation There Is Some Fun Going Forward.