MM – Then album get's off to a great start with 'Black And Blue' and from there on in there’s no turning back.  It’s just pure melody from start to finish. Tony – Like I said before there was no rules broken in the song writing fashion, I stuck adherently to the mainstream middle of the road rock n' roll.  It didn’t break any rules and it was never intended too and in fact I went off the rails a little on one song and wrote something that was a bit radical.  After that we all agreed that we didn’t want to do that, we just wanted to keep it middle of the road, sweet happy and bouncy and we left it there where it belonged MM - Yeh the album doesn’t proclaim to be anything that it isn’t. Tony – No not at all.  They're mostly all love songs or broken heart songs, or something else.  There’s no terrible surprises at the back end of the record for you, or anything like that.     MM - What’s with the video for 'Heartless Dreamer'?  Your character looks like he’s got two black eyes!  It looks like the aftermath of a Saturday night out in Birmingham! (laughs) Tony – I didn’t know anything about that.  I think that’s the one thing that really irks me about people who set up bands and projects and albums, they do terrific things as regard to promotions but they don’t spend the bloody money on

doing a professionally cut video.  I don’t understand that because it doesn’t cost that much money really.  I mean I’ve just done a one with a different band from Wales and it was just a couple of thousand quid to have it filmed by a TV company from Manchester and they’ve done an absolutely stoaking job of it.

MM - The Serpentine one?
Tony – Yes, and I mean for a couple of grand what’s the problem.  People don’t want to stick their neck out and risk what they’ve already speculated to the point of… I do understand the politics behind this but it’s still annoys me, that people will press two or three thousand albums and when they’ve sold them all they won't press anymore.  That’s because they’ve reached their break-even point or they are just in the profit margin, and if they step into the risk mode or the margin of risk then there could be a chance that they’d lose some money.  

Now they aren’t interested in spending a couple of thousand quid on a video that will push the sales to say ten thousand because they are still in the risk mode, and they have already laid out the cash.  Now unless you’ve got private financers like Serpentine did, who said I don’t care how much it costs we’re just going to pay for the video, then you're messing about and you're talking with people who know exactly where the fine line is, how many they are going to press, how many they are going to sell and when they are going to cut it off and let it go! And this goes for Frontiers, Escape, all these labels.  They all press say two-five thousand copies and when they’ve gone they won't press any more because there is no risk involved.  

That is extremely frustrating for the artists who want to sell fifty thousand copies.  I don’t want to sell fifty thousand copies, I’m happy as long as everyone who wants a copy of the album has it available for them to get hold of, even if it is only six thousand or seven thousand, as long as they can buy it, it's there.  If they can't buy it because the label has only pressed two thousand copies then the whole object is defeated. 

MM – Yes if you look back at things say ten to fifteen years ago, if you brought out an album, you did a video to promote that album. 
Tony – If you brought an album out you were stupid if you didn’t do a video! 

MM – If you look at the Serpentine video, that's not a big budget production but it does the job of promoting the album, I mean it looks as if it was shot in a warehouse?
Tony – It’s actually a Victorian Baths in Manchester

MM - It’s not going to take a lot to get permission to shoot there and it's only going to take what, half a day?
Tony – It took twelve hours.

MM – Couple of cameramen, sound guys, you do that to rake the money back in, you’ve to speculate to accumulate. 
Tony – Of course, it’s immediately available worldwide and then you’ve got streams of people from Japan and America and god knows where else saying ... WOW this is going to be a great album!  What a great video! ... blah blah blah.  I can’t say that for many artists that I’ve been involved with, unless it’s been some dodgy camcorder thing from a live gig.  It’s probably one of the first pro-cut videos I’ve done for years and it certainly cost a fraction of the money, so I don’t understand the motivation.  No, I do understand the motivation but it frustrates me why they don’t go the extra mile and spend a couple of grand on a proper cut video.

MM - There was a time when you only had the likes of MTV to showcase your videos on, but now with the likes of YouTube, you can have your video available 24/7.
Tony – Yeh that's right.  To be honest with you I did say to the management of Serpentine, why don’t we, while we’ve got all the cameramen and sound guys and staging, why don't we film three videos instead of just the one.  But it was minus four in there (laughs) so that was enough and we just went with the one.

MM - It is a marketing tool.  The labels have to take some risks with some bands if they want to turn a profit.
Tony – The major labels, they aren’t stupid anymore like they were in the 80’s throwing money at things and hoping it stuck to the wall.  They are now very selective of who they spend money on for large promotional tours.  It's only major acts that get money spent on video production nowadays.  The only other way around it is private finance and it just so happened that particular situation had private finance.

MM – If you take the video for 'Heartless Dreamer' you could easily just turn of the screen and listen to the song to be honest. 
Tony – Well I didn’t know that had been done, but to be honest I think the band did it just as bit of fun.  Someone asked ... "what do you think of the video for 'Heartless Dreamer" ... and I said ... "What video?  They said ... "Haven’t you seen it?" ... and I said ... "No I haven’t seen it".  So they sent me a link to it.  I said what on earth ... is this South Park?  But then it doesn’t add up that somebody spent that time and effort on the video when they could have spent it on a proper film crew. 

MM – You talked a little about the band playing live, is there a tour lined up?  I know there were rumours of an appearance at at least one show, although this is a bit of a loaded question.
Tony – Yeh go on... 
MM - OK I won’t say it. 
Tony – You're right it was a loaded question. 
MM - Firefest ...
Tony – No.  No I was asked if we could do Firefest and I said yes.  I don’t think that’s really a problem.  I spoke to the band and Georg and everybody was quite happy to come over and rehearse, because we’d have to rehearse to play that, probably in England because it would have made more sense.  So I managed to arrange the rehearsal time and Georg offered to pay for all the accommodation and everything else, but I didn’t understand the protocol of the advertisement of the Festival so I put it on my website.  Which in retrospect was a bit of a mistake actually as Kieran went up the bloody wall and ripped the record label to pieces.  Which was a bit of a shame because it wasn’t so much their fault.  It was my error and then I got an email off them saying they couldn’t afford the costs of bringing State Of Rock over to England.  But we don’t have any costs, we were gonna pay for it.  We were just gonna come over to promote the product.  To promote our band and promote the album.  They came back ... “nobody told us that, anyway we’ve booked somebody else now”... So that was that.  Unless they’re in the shit a few months before the gig as they usually are every year when he rings me up, then we’re not playing it! 

MM - I know they have a big thing with ARFM where they announce the bands on a specific day, I think more to help promote the radio station than the festival.
Tony – We don’t want any money, we’re prepared to play for the art.  If it’s going to get politically and financially motivated then I don’t want to know.  And I certainly don’t want to be fucked about because it’s stupid and doesn’t become about the music anymore.

MM – It was originally about a gathering of like-minded people who wanted a platform to see the bands that you wouldn’t normally get to see.
Tony – I’m not so bothered about me, but I know a lot of people would love to see Robby play.  I’ve done enough in England.  I’ve done a lot more that he has and a lot of people would have loved to see him play because he’s a phenomenal guitar player.  I’ve only played it once and I was profoundly insulted backstage by the promoters before the show.  I was pretty disgusted by that then and I had to then get motivated to do the concert and I thought that most unnecessary.  So then I think I went on stage with a pretty big frown on my face and I felt like that all through the show.  I thought then that I wouldn't do that again because it was most unpleasant.  Then every year I get the call ... ermm ... can you ... would you .... will you ...

MM - Someone’s dropped out ...
Tony – Someone’s cancelled.  Is there any real point? No bugger’s gonna get paid anyway, although there are lots of rumours of who got paid what last year. It’s not going to get any bigger when there are no bands left who wanna play there because of these situations.  Then they’ll be in trouble.

MM - Well I mean, there are literally hundreds of band that would die to play on that bill, like yourselves even willing to play for free. 
Tony – I know!  When you mark it up with the likes of Mr. Alger and that crowd, you're not going to get paid and you’ll get lumped with the bill anyway.  So if you’ve written a record that you're proud of and you want to play it live, and you’ve got the opportunity to play in front of a good sized crowd, then you’d do it for nothing anyway.   And if you look on the face of it the names really haven’t changed at all in last ten years, you look at Andrew McNeice’s new festival being held in Illinois, it's all the same names just in a different place.  I’m thinking where are all the youngsters?

MM - Exactly, we get loads of great debut albums from new and young bands that just simply don’t get the opportunity to play them live. 
Tony – It’s heartbreaking.

MM - Bands would break into their savings to play in front of 1,000 – 1,5000 people. 
Tony – But that’s England Baz, you’ve got to pay to play .

MM - Not so in the rest of Europe.
Tony – That’s a completely different kettle of fish. Not in Germany though, it’s broken down the same way as it did in England.  The market's not there in Germany.  You can't go out and get paid ten grand for a gig just because you had a history in the 80’s, it’s not there. 

It is in Norway and the rest of Scandinavia.  I’ve had four years of that so I know the crack there.  You can get paid twenty thousand quid a show just because of what you were.  It doesn’t matter because they still are really crazy about what you were.

MM - We're getting a little sidetracked here, back to Tony Mills, what this Tony Mills Classic Arias all about then?
Tony  – Ah yes ...

MM – I listened to the three tracks you’ve got on you MySpace site and I must say I was simply blown away by them.
Tony – Really?!?

MM – Honestly! 'Nessun Dorma' is stunning.  If nobody said that was Tony Mills you wouldn’t know, it's just stunning.  The other two tracks equally so.  I read about them then I saw you had three tracks on you media player so I put them on and I was actually speechless when I heard them.  I put 'Nessun Dorma' on first because that was the one I recognised and I was blown away!
Tony – Ok ...

MM - I don’t know if you’ve seen that Pop Star To Opera Star show that’s on at the moment?
Tony – I started this quite a considerable time before that TV programme was aired, and I was embarrassed really.

MM - I thought perhaps you were gonna do a Rock Star To Opera Star thing! (laughs)
Tony – What it is, it's a introspective project actually, it's something that I’ve wanted to get out of my system since I was a child.  When I first started singing I went to an opera teacher and these were the songs I’d rehearse with the teacher.  But I did nothing about it, so they’d been bugging me for thirty years now and I thought if don’t do anything about this then I’m gonna go fruit cake.  I thought lets just do it.  So I started recording them.  I got them mixed here and mastered in Norway and I thought ... OK, so I started this one, then the next one, then this TV programme pops up and I thought ... oh dear!

So I’ve got people saying you know this opera stuff you’ve got, well we’ve got contacts with people from Britain’s Got Talent and I’m like ... NO! NO! NO!!!  I’m not really a competitive sort of person.  I would find it very very difficult to make it a competition.  It's not about that for me, it's about demonstrating the art.  If someone dragged me along to Britain’s Got Talent to sing an opera song I’d be gutted.

The remainder of the songs are wonderful arias and it did occur to me to release the finished product as 'Access All Arias'.  The rest of the band thought it was a great idea.  It’s a lot harder than it looks on the face of it.  It's a lot more difficult than singing rock music.  You think you’ve picked the easiest song for the day and it turns out to be your biggest nightmare, but then when you've finished it, it is also your biggest satisfaction actually.  I’ve listened to the songs many many times now and I only started recording them ten weeks ago or something like that.  I sit there and think ... WOW! That’s the most amazing thing I’ve done in my life!.

MM - Like I say I was stunned by them ...
Tony – It’s a terrific challenge, I don’t know where it will go.  I took them to France a couple of weeks ago and there are no labels signing opera at all, so there's not an outlet for it.  So I thought should I carry on or should I stop?  Should I waste time on it or should I continue with it for self-centred reason?  So for now I’ve come to a stop.

MM – You should just carry on, even if just for yourself, then perhaps later take it further.
Tony – I mean I’ve only chosen very beautiful songs, they are all very inspiring, obviously the writers died hundreds of years ago, so there are no issues and no contention or anything.  And they are very emotive tunes.  The next one I’m about to start is 'Salut! Demeure' which is absolutely heartbreakingly sad and beautiful.  I can't really not allow myself to record that, I have to do it and as soon as it’s mastered I’ll put it straight on MySpace.  But whether or not it achieves anything Baz at the end of the day is another matter.

MM – I didn’t know what to expect.  I thought when I first heard them that this can't be Tony singing.

MM – Well you’ve got that on the go and your name is always on some CD or other when I look at the bios and things I get.   Albums like Arcacia Avenue, Voices Of Rock and one of the most impressive albums I’ve heard you on recently was Lasse Dale’s.  
Tony – Oh you’ve heard that?
MM - Oh Yes!

Tony – That was a labour of love that one.  It took me the best part of two years to write that.  That was hard work.  When someone gives you that music with no words or lyrics and nothing and no intention of what they want to be sung over any of the music, all you hear is .... DA DA DA DA, TA TUM, TA TUM ... you think what the bloody hells this?  Where do you start?  I certainly spent eighteen months writing it and on top of that another six months recording it  There was lots of to-ing and fro-ing and the guitarist didn’t speak very good English.  He’s a clever old kid but he was bloody hard work.  Luckily I managed to secure the guys down here from Magnum again to mix it, so I could stay local with what was going on.  He’d just sent the files down from the Arctic Circle because that was where he was based and the drummer I couldn’t believe the drummer, Kristoffer Oyen, he was just a psychopath!  It think it cost around £1500 to record the drums on the album.  What an amazing drummer, I’ve never heard anything like it.

MM - It's not the type of album people would normally associate you with.
Tony – I was always into Prog and I was always into Metal, the fact that it all fell together at the same time when I met this guy didn’t bother me too much.  If you're in the right frame of mind to listen to that sort of music, stuff like Queensryche, Dream Theater or whatever, then you’d be pretty much set up to write the tracks and at that time I was, so it panned out quite well really.

MM – I think I actually said in my review something like if Geoff Tate ever left Queensryche you could fill his shoes. 
Tony – Mmmm I don’t know, writing and recording the album is one thing, but I’ve been sitting here chewing my nails thinking ... If anybody asks me to go on stage and sing one of those songs I’d cack myself! (laughs).

MM - I rate that album along with the Siam stuff.
Tony – I’ve always liked the 'Prayer' album.  I do listen to that.  You don’t listen to much of the stuff you’ve done in the past (a) because you're too busy, and (b) because you're too embarrassed to listen to it again.  But that is one, even though the production is not quite as it could have been and that was simply down to money, but I still get off on some of the songs. It’s been fifteen years or so since I did that.  

MM – So solo albums, are we going to get a follow up to 'Vital Designs'?
Tony – Ohh big question, I don’t know at the moment, at the moment I’m working an album with John Payne.

MM – Ah yes, the Rock Opera. 
Tony – It’s a project that’s based in Milan.  It's been written by a classic pianist called Douglas R. Docker, a very clever man, and he’s got Greg Bissonett on drums. Ted Poley was going to sing on it but couldn’t commit to it because of touring schedules, so I’m doing some of the vocals on some of the songs and John’s doing the vocals on the other songs.  So it’s a bit of a mixture.  It’s basically a rock opera the equates itself to Star Wars, so it's spread over about eight albums.  It's pretty awesome stuff.  I’ve just finished the first track actually and all the performances have been accepted and Simon Hanhart is producing it.  The next track I’ve got to do is twelve minutes long and I’m dreading it.  Well I’m not dreading it, it’s just a computer crash frenzy that’s all.  The music is fantastic, it's very well written and well presented and it’s quite an exciting thing to get involved with actually. 

MM - Do you ever wake up and say which band am I doing today?
Tony – No it's easy to make it look bigger that it is from the outside, but I actually only work with a handful of people.  I don’t really venture outside of England, Norway or Germany.  Yeh I’m doing this thing in Milan with John Payne and these other guys but I’m doing it remotely.  Yes, that really is a project album.  If that ever came to the stage it would be an enormous production, something like Jeff Wayne, but what are the chances of that is this day and age?  I don’t know.  

But really I don’t feel that prostituted to be honest, I mean TNT are doing nothing these days and there are no live concerts booked.  Probably because they’ve burnt themselves out of the past four years, we’ve done three hundred gigs, so that’s no surprise.  Shy can’t do anything because Steve isn’t very well, so actually it all tapers back down really.  So actually I’m not involved with that many people after all. (laughs)  

MM - You mentioned TNT, what’s happening?  There were rumours of a new album later this year?
Tony – I’ve written three new songs on which the backing tracks have been recorded.  And after the last three years having spent months in Oslo living in the mountains on my own waiting and waiting, I’m pretty much not going to do that again.  I’ve got pretty much up-to-date studio equipment here anyway so if they are going to follow through and produce the tracks, I will do it from my studio at home and record them there.  They haven’t come so far, so I don’t know.  All I know is Ronnie le Tekro is producing an album in Denmark for another artist at the moment.  

MM – What other things can we look forward from you?
Tony – I’ve just put the finishing touches to an album from a Norwegian band called Wildside.  It’s like a young Motley Crue but with a Scandinavian edge.  

MM - What influenced your decision to get back together with the guys from SHY?
Tony – You mean about the album?
MM - Yes
Tony – Ok, they spent a long time recording with the guy Lee Small ... this is a dreadful situation really, he’d finished the album and done all the vocals and the band sat back and thought .... hmm this isn’t really SHY.  So he was in a bit of cleft stick there ... and I went to see him play with them ... yeh I can't fault him as a singer, neither did the band, so things started to get a bit uptight.  So they decided to go their separate ways and scrap all the work that had been done on the album because they thought the songs weren’t the songs they thought the band should play. 

So they said ... “listen if we give you all the finished recorded backing tracks, will you write the album completely?” and I said ... "WOW! Not again!".  I said I’ve got to hear it and as soon as I had, it knocked me stupid.  He’s written probably the best album he has, Steve Harris, and since then he’s been extremely ill, so I can't just leave it there, and I’ve not got much in the way of session work left at the moment.  When I have finished it, which will probably be in the next few weeks, then I intend to carry on with it.  I’ve written three of the tracks already, but there is around fourteen or something.  I’m thinking ... bloody hell Steve! (laughs) and none of them are short, they're all epics.  They're all fantastic and I have to hold my hand up and say ... you are a bloody genius!   I’ve got to do it.  If I let you down it's more fool me.  I don’t want to let him down, what I want to do is get the record signed and get the money so his family can support him properly. 

MM – I think we’ve covered most topics here but what does 2010 have in store for Tony Mills?
Tony – I’m not sure really.  I had three days off last year and obviously that isn’t fair on the family and I want to try to get some time off this year.  I want to get the recording commitments finished and I’d really like to make a serious dent in the SHY album.  I’ve not got any actual live commitments this year, which is the first year in many that I haven’t.  I’ve upgraded my recording studio too.  If anything I’m going to have a recording year and to be honest that suits me to be home with the family as well. 

So rather than racing across the Arctic Circle and across Sweden all the time, because I’ve had a lot of that over the past four years, a year at home might not be such a bad thing.  Over and above that I don’t know ... and you don’t know until you open up your blood emails in the morning and all sorts of crap pops up and all your plans then go up the wall!  I’ll wait and see. 

MM - Well as always it's been a pleasure.  Good look with the promotion for the new album and hopefully we’ll see Tony Mills 'Classic Aria' out in some form or another, and next time we’re down at the Asylum and you’re in there, there'll be a drink at the bar for you too.