B.J. Cole

Born on June 17, 1946, in London, B.J. Cole drew early motivation from the instrumental style of Hank Marvin in the Shadows and first took up the guitar. He experimented with multiple guitar formats before committing to pedal-steel guitar. Throughout the 1970s he became a highly regarded studio musician, lending his playing to recordings by Elton John, Scott Walker, T. Rex, and Nazareth, among many others. In 1970 he established the post-psychedelic, country-influenced group Cochise and issued three albums with them. Once the band dissolved, Cole put out his first solo recording, New Hovering Dog, and subsequently collaborated with David Sylvian on the 1986 ambient work Gone to Earth as well as with vocalist Hank Wangford. The ambient country recording Transparent Music surfaced in 1989. He maintained an active session career across the 1990s, appearing on projects by the Verve, Björk, and Beck, among others. In 2000 he joined forces with electronica experimentalist and producer Luke Vibert for Stop the Panic, an album that paired Cole’s shimmering guitar lines with the squelch and bop of Vibert’s electronic textures.