In March 1987, Nick Beggs teamed up with keyboard player ‘Simon Ellis’ and singer ‘Austin Howard’ to form a new band, simply known as ‘Ellis Beggs and Howard’.

The band starting off gigging around London including playing at highly popular nightclub ‘Heaven’,  before later playing bigger arenas.  Initially, the press were less than supportive of the band, mainly as a reaction to Nick Beggs’ association with Kajagoogoo.  The band were to go on to be more popular in Europe than here in the United Kingdom.

The debut single, ‘Big Bubbles No Troubles’ was received very well indeed and it the best known of the singles released by the band, winning awards across Europe for both the song and video.

The single reached No.41 in the UK charts with the 1989 remix.

Big Bubbles No Troubles
Video courtesy of SenorSenor:

As Nick explained on his website, the single was really quite different to the rest of the album ‘Homelands’ and therefore the album was not as successful as the single.

Including the remix, four singles were released in total, three in 1988 and the remix following in 1989.

After the disappointing lack of support for Homelands, the band did work on a second album between 1991 and 1992 which remained unreleased for many years.  This album did see a digital release much later, entitled ‘Ellis Beggs and Howard – The Lost Years Vol 1’.

In February 2009, Nick announced on his site that he had put together unreleased tracks recorded from 1989, and a third album was born, ‘Ellis Beggs and Howard – The Lost Years Vol 2’.  In a nod to the less than perfect sound quality of the tracks and also to the faithful fans of the band, Nick released this album free of charge from his official site where it can still be downloaded:

http://www.nickbeggs.co.uk/news.html

Note on that page, the incredible painting of the band done by Ronnie Wood, it really is a wonderful piece.

There are many videos on YouTube of EBH, do have a listen if you aren’t familiar with the bands material.  I love their sound and I’m sure you will too.  The band may have been short lived, but the material they have released really was outstanding and will always be available for our listening pleasure.

They will always go down as a hugely important piece in the musical career of Nick Beggs.

These days, things have worked out pretty well for Simon Ellis.  He is a very successful musical director working with such acts as Spice Girls, Britney Spears, S Club 7, Jamelia, East 17 and Belinda Carlisle.

He has also written and produced tracks for many top artists.

Nick Beggs is currently touring with Kim Wilde and hopefully having ideas about more Goo concerts!! 😉

2011 KajaFax