Nell Campbell, better known as Little Nell, is but a footnote in the history of pop, but an important one nonetheless. She's best known for her appearance in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and secondly for an unfortunate television outtake for a performance where her breasts repeatedly stole the limelight.
In the wake of Rocky Horror's success, she released several records between 1975 and 78 on A&M Records, and one on the PRE Label in 1980. None were particularly successful, and to be fair, Nell's brittle helium vocals are not everyone's cup of tea.
It's a real shame though, as her music is pretty charming, good humoured and fun, and The Pop Archaeologist wishes she's had the chance to record an album.
Do The Swim is the best known of Little Nell's solo work, due to her exposure in the outtake clip mentioned above. Written by RHPS alumni Brian Thomson and Richard Hartley, Do The Swim is a postmodern kitsch collage, opening with a descending Duane Eddy guitar and then pinching the opening bars of The Ohio Express' Yummy Yummy Yummy, before a disco beat kicks in. The backing vocals in the chorus is pure Rocky Horror, mixing falsetto with baritone. It's inexplicable that this was relegated to the B side.
On her follow-up disc See You round Like A Record, written by Campbell with Thomson and Hartley, the excesses of Do The Swim were reined in, and the result is a heavily Phil Spector influenced number, all thumping grand piano and castanets, and throwing in references to Desert Island Discs and Twist And Shout. It's quite reminiscent of Wizzard, but the trouble is that by 1976, that group were a spent force commercially.
After the release of this, Nell spent 1977 working on the TV programme Rock Follies of '77 and Derek Jarman's Jubilee (the latter along with a young Adam Ant, Toyah and Siouxsie and the Banshees), and her remaining 70s singles comprised of reissued tracks.
Her final single, released in June 1980, was the theme song for the documentary film of Andrew Logan's Alternative Miss World, a humourous yet subversive and feminist take on beauty competitions founded in 1972. The sound of this waxing is distinctly new wave - no suprisingly, considering her association with Jarman's circle, although it is pure pop, lamenting that 'Oh this competition's tough, I'm up against those boys'. Her 'Ambitions are to be a mum and gain my PHD'.
Dancing around in a 'Miss World's End' (notorious punk enclave, and the location of the Sex boutique) sash in front of a life sized photo of Logan in his traditional half man/half woman drag at the start of the movie, it's chances of being a hit were probably doomed, even though gender bending was to become a hot property in pop once more within a few years.
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