Dave Morse (StormQueen, Lucifer)

StormQueen were formed around 1979, in Barry, Wales. They recorded 4 demo tapes between 1980 and 83 and the single "Come Silent the World" in 82. We talked with guitarist Dave Morse about the early days of StormQueen and about his previous band Lucifer.

Q. - Hello Dave, tell us a little bit about your beginnings in the heavy metal world, what lead you to be a guitar player?

Dave - Hello, and a huge thank you for this opportunity to talk to you guys.

Wow… That’s a tough question to be honest. The guys that influenced me to first pick up a guitar and start trying to learn to play didn’t really have much to do with Heavy Metal. I mean it was Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townsend, Marc Bolan, David Bowie and others that actually influenced me early on. Jeff Beck, Andy Scott (The Sweet), Mick Ronson, Brian May etc. The ‘Heavy Metal’ influences came later with the likes of Angus Young (if you can call his style metal at all), Fast Eddie Clarke, Eddie Van Halen, Michael Schenker, Tony Iommi and more. Then later again people like Steve Vai, George Lynch, Randy Rhodes etc. Then one of the biggest influences on me further on down the line and one that really changed the game for my approach to playing was Ron Asheton. Ron was a badass. A true innovator. 

Q. - When did Lucifer start? How did you get in touch with the other members? Tell us a bit about the beginning of the band.

Dave - Well, I started out just jamming with a great friend of mine Pete McCarthy, I dunno maybe around late ‘77. He and I discovered bands together like Ac/Dc, Motorhead, Judas Priest, Scorpions etc. As well as lots of punk bands. The Ramones, The Ruts, Stiff Little Fingers, UK Subs, The Stranglers, The Damned and more. We started travelling to Bristol to see these bands play live as back then they didn’t really play Cardiff/Wales much if at all.

So we used to jam in his father’s business premises basement. LOUD! Ha haa. No one to disturb so it was great. We tried to learn songs by the bands we loved etc. Then we started jamming with other people at this church/coffee bar place called the Luciana Mission. Which was where I met future Lucifer bassist Glyn Kitkat. He and I jammed a bit and kinda clicked. Lucifer was spawned from those early jams basically after I wrote the bones of the songs we recorded at the BBC and played them to Glyn at his parents house on Barry Island a little while later.

Q. - Did you start writing your own songs since the beginning or were you most concentrated on covers?

Dave - Everyone starts out learning other people’s tunes y’know? I can’t imagine even a genius like Eddie Van Halen starting out just writing their own stuff right off the bat lol. So yeah there were covers. We jammed on old school rock n roll to begin with. Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues was one I recall, oh and Johnny B Goode was one that simply had to be mastered. Chuck Berry’s oeuvre was mandatory. Then I started branching out, experimenting and writing my own stuff at home on my own. I think around ’78. Which were the first songs that we ended up recording at the BBC as Lucifer.

Q. - When did you record the 3 song demo tape? What do you recall from these recording season at the BBC Stacey Road studios?

Dave - It’s a tad hazy as to precise dates but it was sometime around early ’79 as far as I can ascertain from talking to people who were around/involved at the time.

It was the stuff of magic for us. To be in a proper recording studio for the very first time. Otherworldly. I was absolutely in my element. I wasn’t thrown by it as the others seemed to be. I was confident and I just wanted to make a great demo and learn as much as possible while doing so. When the engineer said ‘ROLLING’ I just lost myself in the moment and gave it my all. It was just SO exhilarating. We were all on cloud 9 afterwards for weeks ha ha haaa!

Q. - What about shows? Did you play regularly in Barry, back then? Or was it hard for a heavy metal band to be booked at that time?

Dave - We only ever did three shows. Two in Barry and one in Cardiff. The band wasn’t in existence for that long really. Less than a year. We didn’t really hit our stride before there were line up problems, the singer quit as he felt he wasn’t able to deliver. Soon after that I met Neil Baker and Boofy and we formed the nucleus of StormQueen so….

Q. - Did you get support in the media back then? Radio, magazines, fanzines?

Dave - Lucifer never really got that far. We did have a meeting with a promotion company in Bristol and the lady that ran the company, Jane Revell, LOVED the band and promised to get us gigs and even offered to represent us to labels. But as I said it fell apart pretty quickly so…

Q. - By 1979 you leave Lucifer and start a new band, StormQueen, how did that happen? What made you feel like start a new band?

Dave - Well Lucifer was over really. Those guys were nice people but they weren’t hungry or serious. I WAS! I wanted it bad… REAL F**CKING BAD! So when I met Neil and Boofy and I jammed with those guys it was very clear the stakes were infinitely higher. First of all they could REALLY play. I mean we’re talking proper musicians. That was everything to me. We HAD to have the best in the band. The BEST! Nothing less was acceptable so…. The decision made itself.

Q. - StormQueen had strong image, as well as a strong presence on stage, with pyrotechnics, did you try to make an impact since the beginning of the band?

Dave - Most definitely. My vision for STORMQUEEN was HUGE! Even if we were just playing a high school end of year disco, which is what our first gig was. It was a STORMQUEEN show. Every detail had to be covered. Light show, backdrop, Drum riser, guitar stacks, bass stack etc. We weren’t allowed to use pyro/dry ice at that first gig or we would have had them. Huge P.A. All of it HAD to be there and had to be full on. Nothing could be second best…. NOTHING!

Q. - In 81, Paul Burnett replaced Chris Glynn, how did that happen?

Dave - Sigh… The thing is, we all loved (and continue to love) Chris Glynn Jones. He is such a fabulous guy and an amazing singer. Really. What a voice. But at the time when we were trying to get STORMQUEEN happening, he wasn’t really as focused as the rest of us. He loved singing of course. But his heart wasn’t really in the other side of things. The hard work of rehearsing and writing. I wrote ALL of the lyrics for the songs before Paul joined for instance. Not really because I wanted to or that I was a control freak, but because Chris *wasn’t writing with us for his own reasons. So it really made things difficult and added a lot to my workload. He got very flaky towards the end and so he just had to go. There was no room for passengers. Harsh maybe, but that’s the way it had to be. We started looking for a singer and a bass player because Bryn had joined The Damned too. We put out ads in Cardiff and a lovely bloke by the name of Mack answered the singer ad. He didn’t work out but as it turned out his flat mates were Paul and Nick. Paul listened to the BBC recording and really liked it. He asked Mack if he got the gig and he said no. Paul said ‘I’m really interested’ so Mack let us know and we went to see the band Paul and Nick were in do a gig in Cardiff. We liked what we saw and heard so we invited them down for a jam. The rest as they say is history :-)

Q. - By 1982 comes the single "Come Silent the World", did it have airplay on radio stations? Or did you try to approach a record deal at that time?

Dave - We did get quite a lot of local radio airplay with that thanks to Red Dragon Radio and the Rock Show hosted by Steve Tupper who really loved the band. We did try and get the single out to all and sundry in the music industry but it was a weird time. There was a massive prejudice against Welsh bands. So much so that I tried to manufacture a history that showed the band were English. It worked to a degree as we got invited to Heavy Metal Records in the Midlands to discuss a possible deal. When we were in the meeting the guy says ‘ermmm I’m detecting some very definite Welsh accents here guys I thought you were from England?’ We freaked out and said ‘well a few of the guys are from Wales but we all live in England now and really we’re an English band!’ But he wasn’t having it. He said ‘sorry guys, it’s just not done to sign Welsh bands nowadays, I’m afraid we’ll have to pass’, and that was that. F**king nightmare!

Q. - With the great talent and potential you guys had, what do you think has failed to achieve a real success? Do you think that things would have been better if StormQueen had moved from Wales to London?

Dave - Without question. Had StormQueen been based in London or another large English city things would have turned out VERY different. We had the musicianship. We had the songs. We had the ambition and drive. We had a vision. We worked our asses off. But it was futile in Wales. The connections just didn’t exist. Not a single band from Wales from that era or a long time afterwards ‘made it’. Not one!

Q. - Did you stay in touch with the other former members over the years?

Dave - Absolutely. We are all very much great friends. Bryn sadly passed away recently but I stay in touch with all the rest of the guys and see Boofy and Chris Glynn often when I am in Wales doing gigs etc with my present band I AM DRUG.

Q. - After StormQueen you started another band, Warlords, how did that happen? Did you moved to California at that time?

Dave - That is a very long, convoluted story. I’ll try and summarise; The band got together in 1986. We played our first gig in July of 1987 in Barry. When the band formed I had already instigated plans to move to L.A. Which I followed through with in late July 1987. The band came over to L.A. in March 1988 and we played a month of shows, 26 in all, in an attempt to break the band stateside and take off from there. Which sort of happened but not in a way that meant the guys could remain in the USA. So I decided to come back to the UK to continue the band in September 1988. We then focused on breaking the band in the UK. We did get signed in 1989 to Terminal Records and we released one album called God Squad before things unravelled.

Q. - Did Warlords have a different approach from StormQueen? Was it a more hard rock band?

Dave - Yes. It most definitely was a very different sound. More rock/punk/Detroit/dirty/ugly/filthy. Not ‘metal’ at all. I AM DRUG is in fact a continuation/progression of that band.

Q. - The song "StormQueen" was recorded in 2006, for the "Come Silent the World" compilation, but only made it in the "Raising the Roof - The Definitive StormQueen Anthology", are there any other songs that were never recorded?

Dave - Oh hell eyes. I just wish I could remember them all ha ha haa. We didn’t really have access to cheap/easy methods of recording rehearsals and writing sessions like people have today. So many, many songs got lost in the annals of time. Which is a crying shame.

Q. - What did you think of these both compilations? Were you happy with it's final result?

Dave - Very much so. They both have different qualities I feel. The OPM release was a real ‘for the fans’ endeavour, focusing only on stuff that hadn’t been released before, which I loved for that reason. The High Roller release is a slick and polished ‘proper’ anthology of everything, and I love it for that reason too. I think they are both just fantastic.

Q. - The "Lucifer" demo tape will be compiled in a cd edition with Diamon Dogs and Nightstalker, how do you feel about that? And how do you see these recordings after all these years?

Dave - Well, when George approached me about it I can’t lie I was totally blown away. I don’t remember giving out the Lucifer stuff to many people to be honest. So it was a massive surprise to find out it was out there to the extent that a label owner would hear it and want to put it out. I’m massively proud. Without wishing to sound conceited. I worked my ass off to write those songs. I wrote it all. Music and lyrics. So to have it recognised as worthy of release after all these years is just bloody fantastic. When I listen to the tracks I feel warm and fuzzy for the period that it was, the honesty and innocence. But my musician side cringes at the lack of finesse in the playing ha ha ha haaaaa.

Q. - What do you feel about the interest in Lucifer and StormQueen after all these years?

Dave - It’s hard to quantify. It all seemed to kick off with StormQueen after Malcolm MacMillan’s New Wave of British Heavy Metal Encyclopaedia to be honest. Now that may have coincided with the explosion of the world wide web too which meant that people all over the world could connect with each other and learn about the bands in that book to so... All of it seemed to coalesce into a stream of love and appreciation of StormQueen that I truly never, ever thought would happen. But I’m so glad it did. It quite literally blew us all away. When Stu and the guys at Brofest UK asked us to reform to play that festival in 2015 we were so honoured. It was just such a high. Just incredible. I still get daily emails and Facebook messages from ‘fans’ all over the world telling me how much they love StormQueen and it still blows my mind. If Bryn hadn’t passed on who knows what we might be doing now eh?

As for the Lucifer thing well that too blows me away. I mean can you imagine recording a demo in a little studio in Wales 40 years ago and thinking *anyone* would possibly give a shit now? Ha ha haaa it’s just insane. But it’s GREAT insane. I love it :-)

Q. - How did you see the whole N.W.O.B.H.M. movement, back then, and how do you see the interest around those bands and recordings nowadays?

Dave - Being in Wales as we were, we didn’t really pay any attention to that scene in all honesty. We were too busy doing our own thing. With bands like Iron Maiden, Diamond Head, Tygers of Pan Tang et al we just weren’t paying any attention to them. That sounds weird or big headed perhaps but we really, really weren’t. We were heads down and into our own thing. Just working hard to sound like StormQueen. The influences that we had may have been very similar to these NWOBHM bands, in fact they were, and perhaps that’s why we sounded somewhat similar. But if you listen to the StormQueen stuff it does sound different. Especially as we progressed. The later stuff took on a life and sound all our own I feel.

Q. - Would you like to say anything more, to end up this interview?

Dave - I would just like to thank everyone for showing an interest in bands I have been involved with. It’s extremely flattering that people like this stuff so long after it was created. It allows me to realise that I/we weren’t completely crazy for believing it was great music. I know I can speak for all the guys in StormQueen and Lucifer when I say that we hope you all continue to love and listen to the music, and we dearly hope many more ‘fans’ will get enjoyment from what we created. That’s what it was all about… The music.

Keep Rockin’

Dave Morse

Thank you for your time, and wish you all the best for the future!