Croydon’s Bellevue Days have apparently been together for a couple of years, although their debut EP finally arrived earlier this year. ‘Let’s Be Friends’ is the lead track from that Ep and contains the refrain ”The Sun Came Up When We Were Young’ which is the title of said Ep. It’s a song radiating a warm sense of melancholy, a sense that it’s better to have loved and lost than never loved at all and juxtaposes joy and regret in equal measure.
Award winning video maker Richard Heslop who’s directed videos for the likes of The Smiths, New Order, Happy Mondays, and The Shaman went back to his super 8mm archive from the 80’s and 90’s to produce a video, (which includes footage of Derek Jarman who he worked with,) inspired by the song lyrics as he explains “I made a sort of video diary of friends and ex-loves .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 brought 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”