Artist:  Wolfsbane

Date: 26 November 2011   

MM - Hi, are we ready?
Blaze - We were born Fuckin Ready ! (Laughs)

MM - A brilliant attitude to have!

MM - How was Sheffield last night, are the new tracks going down well?
Blaze - Very surprising, very surprising.  You know we didn’t know what to expect.  When you're in the studio or you are writing, and you're thinking ... this is going to be great, but there’s still that wondering about how people will react to it.  Will they feel the same as you do?  The reaction was absolutely fantastic to all the new songs, I couldn’t believe it really.  Where they didn’t know it, they were listening and really getting into it and it was great.

Steve / Jase / Jeff - A lot of people were singing the words especially “Smoke and the Red Light”, when they hadn’t heard that before.

Blaze - We do repeat the words a lot on that one and it wouldn’t take long to know the lyrics.

Steve - I'm not having that!  I'm taking it, I am gonna keep that and bank it.

MM - Brilliant!

MM - Newcastle Wolfsbane fans always give you a good welcome, are you looking forward to tonight's show?
Steve / Jase / Jeff -  Definitely!

Blaze - No, I’m not.  No I can't because there’s no Newcastle Brown Ale.  When we first came to Newcastle we were told that there’s a special clinic for people that were addicted to Brown Ale …We tried to get in!!

All - We've played a lot of gigs up here and let’s face it, we were addicted.

Blaze - I don’t know, if I do manage to get my hands on some Newcastle Brown maybe my mood will improve! ha ha.  I try not to get too excited before a gig.  I generally try and remain calm and not look forward to it too much.  Get on and get through the first few songs and then my confidence builds.  I’ve always found it a tough crowd up here, but if you do well and get the respect of the crowd, you really feel like you have earned it. 

The last few shows we've done up here have been tough, but we have had a really good reaction.  I will be interested to see what happens tonight.  I’m hoping for the best (at this point Jase drops his glass of wine... leading to much hilarity!).  There’s a lot of nerves going around!

All - This is our first headline gig up here for a long time.

MM - I saw you on the Saxon tour and actually got to meet you (Blaze), I must admit I was a tad star struck!
Jase - I think that the gigs we have done up here have gone down really well, but I guess people have moved on.  We first came back with The Wildhearts, there was a element of “what the fuck is this ..Wolfsbane?" kind of thing, but the fact that we have done those things, especially as they were in a bigger room as well, there would have been an element of ... Wow, those crazy bastards!

Blaze - It was nice of Saxon to follow after us!! They let us warm down!

MM - It was like watching a load of twenty year olds on the stage. 
Blaze - What us or Saxon?! .Last load of twenty year olds I saw on stage was in Thailand!

MM - 'Wolfsbane Save The World' is your first album for 18 years.
  All - It’s been a long time in coming.

So we needed to also think about how we used to sound and not be something totally different, so it’s been an interesting process.

Jase - We wrote quite a few things maybe three or four songs “Blue Sky” made it really worth doing, learning a new way of writing based on how we used to write, throwing out ideas, seeing how we react to them and trawling through and putting it all together and going “oh that’s good”, it’s been a real journey from that point of view.

MM - 'Did It For The Money' is a brilliant track, I just love it.  Is there any significance in the title?
Blaze - That’s another track that was an early one.  It was one of the first ever tracks we did.  Years ago I did say to Jase, if we did an album, what about calling it 'Did It For The Money', because that’s what everyone will think.  Years later there we are and I had some difficulties and I had this lyric hanging around.

The song is an intensely personal look into being broke and the reasons you do what you do and what you give up, and people just think ... oh they only do it for the money ... when it was really the opposite.  Whereas really we didn’t have a choice, we were seduced by the idea that we could make some music of our own, that we could believe in, no interference from a producer of any kind, recorded on our own terms with only ourselves to argue with. That was why we did it and made an album, we haven't got a huge record company behind us throwing loads of promotion out there, we made the record because we wondered what’s it going to sound like. What’s going to come out of us now?

Steve - That was a major motivation.  I was like I want to hear this record!  You don’t know what it's going to sound like.

Blaze - The lyric revolves around this idea called the spreadsheet of defeat.  It's like well, you can’t make any money doing what you are doing, you can’t, so you can’t carry on doing it, but you don’t have any choice because it’s this thing pulling you along and making you do it.  So that was it, we did it and we had it finished.  We wanted to do an EP to go with the Saxon tour and we thought this would be a really good way to demo our recordings and what we are going to do for the album.

All - It did set us up very well.

Blaze - We used that one song and recorded some old stuff, then it was like ... yes! it's worked and sounds great!  So then when we came to do the album, we used that same technique to record the rest of the album and hopefully its worked well.

Jeff - I think it did help as well that the records we made we are very proud of, we never necessarily completely nailed our vibe and we felt like we did have some unfinished business.

All - Yeah we never put out the albums we really could and push it.  It was like there's more miles in the Wolfsbane car, let's drive it and see where we get to.  That was also the motivation behind it.  Whereas other bands have gone and done their bit, we hadn’t.  I think that drove us to new music, obviously we have made some great music and we go out and play it, but we wanted to do something new stuff as well.

Jase: We were talking all the way back from the Wildhearts gigs of doing a new album four years ago.

Blaze - Jase and I had a bit of time together by accident, he engineered and produced my last two Blaze Bayley albums and one day we were talking and I had a bit of an idea.  Then Jase said he had a bit of an idea, then when we started thinking seriously, Jeff said he had this idea.  Jeff came around at twelve o’clock one day on a break and then came back again on the night and we had a full demo done.  It’s on the album 'Smoke and Red Light', which we will play tonight!

There was something magical there, to go with what Jeff was saying about unfinished business, certainly from a purely god like arrogant point of view, I always felt like there is absolutely fantastic, blistering, best ever album in the world in us and that’s what we should of wrote, that’s what we are capable of writing.  I don’t think this album is that, but it's a huge step towards that and I think if we have the opportunity to write and record again on another album, it's going to be another step closer to absolute perfection of being one of the greatest albums of any serious  UK band.

MM - There is still a lot of interest In Wolfsbane out there and that’s a good thing isn’t it. 
Steve - There is a cult level

Blaze - We are a cult band.

Jeff - It has taken people a while, but like this tour, there are some real hard-core fan's out there.

Blaze - We have got hard-core fans and that’s tremendous, we have become a cult, hard-core band.

Jeff - You mention us to any rock fan and they will know the name back from the start of Wolfsbane.  It’s such a huge world out there, what with the internet etc., it’s taken some time for people to realise we are doing stuff again.

Jase - We were in the Guardian today!

MM - Were you!!
Jase - One of the writers Dom Lawson put 'Live Before I Die' as a favourite song.

All -  We should rehearse that one up and play that one live sometime.  And we got reviewed in the Sun too.  That would defiantly be a good one to do live that’s one that was written for that purpose.

Steve - In reviews and stuff, that’s a track people are picking up on.  We need to do it live soon.

MM - What bands are you currently listening to?
Blaze - I'm listening to Obsessive Compulsive, it reminds me, though it’s a different music, of the attitude we had around the time we got signed up in the late eighties, we were just doing gigs all the time.  They are doing original music and have their own slant.  Maybe not everyone’s cup of tea, because it is original, but that means they could be the next big thing, or have a cult underground following.

MM - Are you looking forward to Hard Rock Hell and do you any major festivals lined up for next year? 
All - Everyone’s asking us about Download, but Download aren’t asking us!

MM - Why not?
All - There’s something going on there, we aren't invited. Something going on where we will never be invited to Donnington.

Blaze - We would love to play, but none of us are holding our breaths.  It just seems we are cursed not to play it.

Jase - We are practically a local band as well, it doesn't really make sense.

Blaze -  The other thing is,  now it's a very commercial thing. We haven't had a new product.  Yes we have done some supporting tours, we can do that and we do add value to the bill.  It’s a good package to have us and the Quireboys or us and Saxon, but on a festival gig, what’s new about us?  

Now we have an actual record, that may make a difference. That gets a full distribution on iTunes and HMV in February.  That will make the organisers realise ... yes they are coming back with a new album and tour.  Then we are something more attractive.  It's often the problem with festivals, unless you are a big name, you need to be releasing a new product.  We hope this will change with a new record out.  It’s going to be a slow burner as well.

Jeff - It does seem as well when we were playing, a lot of our fans are older, and a lot of those people do go to the festivals. There must be one of the smaller ones we can get on.

MM - You have played SOS Festival (Blaze), would you consider it? 
Blaze - Of course we would consider it! I have done it twice now and had a great time.

MM - Hold your own event if you don’t get invited to any festivals. 
All - "Wolfsbane Hell" we could call it!

MM : How do you feel about the X Factor?
Jeff -  I don’t mind it.  I watch it as a reality show.  I love rock n' roll and play it .. it has no relevance.  So I watch the X Factor in the same way I used to watch Opportunity Knocks in the seventies.

Blaze - It's light entertainment, that’s all it is really.

Steve - They should change the title and call them "Gullible C**ts" !!!!!!!!!

Blaze - I know if we went on it, we would win!

MM - DEFINITELY!! 
Jeff - I can’t speak for anyone else, but my motivation to be in a band wasn’t to be famous.  It was to play music that I liked and not to have a normal job.

Blaze - I wanted to be in a big band and I wanted to play to a lot of people.  I'm happy doing what I do now and at this level, it's great.  If we can do a bit more of this as Wolfsbane then that would be great.

MM - You (Blaze) do your solo stuff still. 
Blaze - Yes I'm lucky enough to do it full time, but it's great to be back together, to be in a band.  I don’t have my own band anymore, I am just Blaze Bayley now.  I get a band together to do a tour then that’s it,  I'm on my own.

Interview by: Seb Di Gatto

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