[5] Bell was briefly featured in a 1986 BBC documentary, The Celts, in which he discussed the role and evolution of the harp in Celtic Irish and Welsh society.
Derek Bell also appeared with Van Morrison at the Riverside Theatre at the University of Ulster in April 1988.
An hour-long BBC special was broadcast in which Derek Bell talks extensively as well as accompanying Morrison on several songs including "On Raglan Road".
Bell introduced a small cimbalom (a hammered dulcimer from central and eastern Europe), which he called tiompan after the medieval Irish instrument.
On St Patrick's Day in 1972 Bell performed on the radio the music of Turlough O'Carolan, an 18th-century blind Irish harpist.
[4] From the early 1960s, Bell was a friend of Swami Kriyananda, also known as J. Donald Walters (also an avid composer of music for the Irish harp).
Bell and some associates visited Kriyananda at his spiritual centre in Ananda village in Nevada City, California.
"[citation needed] His first album, Mystic Harp, with Kriyananda was positively reviewed by the New York Times, "This is a lovely, light album full of charm and innocence [...] The Mystic Harp will take you to places that stretch from the innocence of childhood to the mystery and otherworldliness of the spiritual.
[6] Bell died of cardiac arrest in Phoenix, Arizona on 17 October 2002, just four days shy of his 67th birthday.