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When
it comes to rock legends they don't come much bigger than Saxon.
Formed in 1976 the band released their debut album in 1979. Now
some 28 years later (!) the band are still going strong and with the
release of their latest live DVD we catch up with the main man himself,
vocalist Biff Byford to talk about the past, present and future of the
band ... and we even manage an exclusive in amongst it all, read on to
find out more!
MM -
Firstly thanks for taking time out from what is I’m sure a busy
schedule to take part in this interview.
Biff
– No bother mate.
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MM -
The band are due to release a new double DVD with over 5 hours
of material now that’s what I call value for money.
Biff
– Yeh it’s a good package actually.
MM
– You speak very fondly of the ‘Lionheart’ album on the
DVD.
Biff – We were going to put
‘Inner Sanctum’ on the DVD but then we figured we’d leave
that till later. This is covering from when we did
‘Lionheart’ right up to when we were starting to write
‘Inner Sanctum’.
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MM
– There’s a lot of footage on it from Wacken and lots of different
European Festivals. The European festivals seem to be the bread
and butter of Saxon at the moment.
Biff – Yes well things are changing
now and even in England
things are starting to come on really strong now. The last album
‘Inner Sanctum’ out sold the previous album ‘Lionheart’ by quite
a bit. We also have a new agent now and we’re planning to play
some festivals here in England again next year.
MM
– You’re playing at the Hard Rock Hell festival here next weekend
aren’t you?
Biff
– Yes, that’s a good one. It’s being held in Minehead and
it’s the first one they’re doing and it should be good. I’m
curious to see what it’s like although I can’t be running on stage
shouting … ‘Hello Butlins!!!’
MM – With your red coat on?
Biff – I think I’ll just say …
‘Hello Minehead!!!’
MM
- The band are also re-releasing the ‘Unleash The Beast’ album?
Biff
– Yeh the record company have basically bought all those older albums
from Saxon/Virgin and ourselves and they’ve been talking of
re-releasing them for quite a while now.
MM – It is going to be a straight re-release or is it going to be a
re-mastered version?
Biff – They’re going to do all the
albums like ‘Metal Head’ and all the songs like that.
They’re re-introducing them with new booklets and putting our music
back in the shops again, basically that’s what they’re doing. MM
– There’s also two bonus tracks as well
‘Cruisader’ and ‘Solid Ball Of Rock’. Biff
– Yeh, there’s loads of stuff we have in our cupboards that we’ve
yet to release so we’re just waiting till the markets right.
MM
– Are you working on a new album at the moment?
Biff
– Yes we’ve already started writing the new album.
MM – Can you give us any hints on what
the new album will be like? Will it be like the ‘Inner
Sanctum’?
Biff – Yes it will actually. It
will be a mixture of rock n’ roll and heavy metal.
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MM –
The DVD also includes a new version of ‘I’ve Got To Rock’
with Lemmy, Angry Anderson and Andi Deris. That’s a bit
of a who’s who of metal really isn’t it?
Biff
– Yes well it is really. It’s more a who’s who of
metal singers that have been around a while. Obviously
Andi’s been with Helloween as more of junior partner but he
used to be with Pink Cream 69 so he’s been around a long time.
I thought it was a good idea at the time and Lemmy and Angry
Anderson also recorded on it. It just gives it a different
slant on the song really.
MM
– Yeh it’s a really good version I have to say I thoroughly
enjoyed watching it on the DVD.
Biff – It’s better when you
can actually see the people singing live I think.
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MM
– The band in it’s current form have well established themselves as
the true Saxon, has it been a long hard road?
Biff
– Well it’s like the song isn’t it, it’s a long hard rock.
I think the last 10 years since ‘Unleash The Beast’ have been really
great as we’ve had a chance to re-build ourselves. Bringing back
the older band but feeling young again and we’ve been working really
hard to get people interested in what we’re doing again.
MM
– How do you feel now about that infamous Harvey Goldsmith venture?
Biff
– Well the Harvey Goldsmith thing was only one small part of that
whole thing. I did so much TV and radio off the back of that
actually that shot our popularity way back up again. I can’t
really knock it I mean you were looking at the edited piece of Channel 4
garbage, but in actual fact if you look at it more than once you
virtually come up with the end result that we couldn’t give a fuck
anyway and we told him … You might think that people change but in
actual fact they are basically doing what they have been doing forever.
You’re a promoter, you’re not a fucking manager and you
don’t have a record company so … But is was after making him a star
wasn’t it?
MM – Well it acted as a double edged sword for
the band it had good things and bad things about it at the same time.
Biff – I think there were more
positives come out of it, I really do, although I think that football
match thing will go down in history. It’s no big deal for us, we
could have just said thank you and gone off, but we’ve had a lot of
loyal fans throughout that period who have followed us along the way.
I think the band were better afterwards actually. We were writing
‘Inner Sanctum’ while we were filming, so we did have a great album
to come out of it. The single was perhaps a bit overkill but we
liked it. The audiences all came out when we were on tour and we
sold out across Britain. I did lots of things from that that I
wouldn’t have been doing had we not done that.
MM
- What do you think has been the media’s biggest misconception about
the band?
Biff
– I think there was maybe a misconception about the band but I don’t
think there is any more. I think people know what they’re going
to get now. We’re not playing musical chairs any more. I
think you’ve got a full on band who have loads of great songs, so I
don’t think there’s a problem with the media’s perception now.
I think there are quite a few who still have this concept in the media
of thinking of us as these spandex boys from back in the 80’s but I
think we’ve all grown out of that. Well hopefully we’ve all
grown out of that! I think if there is any misconception then
it’s that some people think we are still trying to be like the band we
were in the 80’s, but hopefully what the film actually told you is
that this couldn’t be further from the truth. I think it’s
hard to loose that vision people have of us but we are ready and you
know we wrote some great songs in the 80’s and we’ve got a great
campaign to help us move on.
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MM -
I know everybody wants to hear the classics when the band play
live but when you have such a huge back catalogue that’s never
going to be possible.
Biff
– Well yes that’s right.
MM – Are there any songs that you
haven’t played yet but feel should be included in the set
somewhere?
Biff – Well we always try to
make the shows a little different but it depends really, when we
did the festivals and did ‘To Hell And Back Again’, which is
a classic example, we didn’t play that for 20 years.
Then we played it again and it went down absolutely fantastic
and now it’s back in the set. There’s also something
on the first album that we’re thinking of bringing back.
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MM
– One question that I really wanted to ask, and it's probably
something a lot of your fans out there want to know, will we ever see
the Eagle land on our shores once more for a whole tour?
Biff
– Well they wanted us to bring it to Minehead but there wasn’t
enough room, the venue wasn’t big enough. That is one of the
problems with that thing it’s so bloody massive! We would like
to. There’s some really great things happening nest year for us.
We’re doing a one off gig at Shepherds Bush on St George’s Day at
the Shepherds Bush Empire and that could very well end up being an eagle
show. That’s only just about to be announced today so you’re
the first guy to know about that! I think we’re also going to
try and do some quite big festivals here in England again next year,
just don’t ask me when or where they’re going to be because I
can’t tell you. They won’t be eagle tours though. It
would be nice to get to a position where we could do a nice tour of
England and bring the eagle out with us when we play.
MM
- When the NWOBHM took hold there were a great number of bands that
should have made it huge along with Saxon but they seemed to fade away
why do you think the whole Saxon sound ignited when others fizzled away?
Biff
– I think when us and Maiden first started there were some great bands
around but I don’t think they had the songs, the ‘747’ or
‘Running Free’ for example. I just feel that perhaps they
lacked that song that basically all the young rock fans could latch on
to. I do think they were good band and they had some good songs
but I don’t think they had these types of songs. But you
know it’s not just about having one or two goods songs, you need to
have more than two great songs on every fucking album, that’s what
it’s all about.
MM
– Well on ‘Wheels Of Steel’ I don’t think there was a bad song
on that whole album actually.
Biff – Yeh that was a really fucking
good album that one. We could go on and on about this. I
just feel you need to have more of that in it and have more that just
fashionable rock songs to stand the test of time.
MM
- Finally do you have any words of wisdom for all our readers?
Biff
– Keep the faith and live to rock!
MM - We'd like to thank
Biff for talking with us today, it is especially appreciated as we know
he had only just returned from the dentist and was still in incredible
pain and having difficulty talking at all. Biff you are both a
hero, a legend and a true gent and we look forward to catching you back
out on the road again soon. |