Croydon four-piece Bellevue Days have shared the official video for ‘Let’s All Be Friends’.
Directed by Richard Heslop, who has also worked with the likes of The Cure, Happy Mondays and Queen, the video accompanies the track from the band’s debut EP, ‘The Sun Came Up When We Were Young.’
“For this video I have gone back into my 8mm archives from the 1980s and early 1990s and made a sort of video diary of friends and ex loves,” Heslop explains. “In the Video are Derek Jarman, the film maker who I used to work with in the 1990’s and dearly miss, there’s Yolande Brener who’s a very talented writer having her hair cut and modeling before she took several years out to join the Moonies. There is the jewelry maker and set designer Simon Costin who used to design Alexander McQueens live shows, there is also me as a sort of tour guide and silent narrator. There is Tim Burke, a good friend and former member of The Grey organisation, and there is Sasha Heslop, my youngest daughter at the beginning of the video for whom I hope this film will be a little insight into her fathers past life.”
“I also used some footage I shot in and around the Berlin Wall way back in the early 1980s when I was traveling with the band 23 Skidoo and some footage I shot in New York,” the director continues. “I think the Berlin wall is a good visual metaphor for the “What if’s” and all the lost hopes and dreams and divided friends and lovers that this songs lyrics bought to mind.”
“It’s a positive video with a melancholy heart and reminds me of how much I used to love filming nature and people when the sun came out with my 8mm camera. And the sun did come out when I was young, and it still does. Oh and John Maybury, the film director, is in there as well, but he’s sort of obscured by a reflector.”
Read all about Bellevue Days in our extended feature.