Hammerhead were one of the most underrated bands to evolve from the
N.W.O.B.H.M. movement of the late 1970's. They recorded the single "Time
Will Tell" in 1981 and even made it into some Heavy Metal Charts.
Interview with
Buzz Elliott – Guitars/Keyboards/Vocals
By Paulo
Rodrigues
Q. Hello Buzz, tell us a bit about the origins of
Hammerhead, how and when did it all start? Who were the first members of the
band?
Buzz – Hammerhead
started off as a three piece power trio under the name ‘Destroyer’ in the late
70s, founding member Brian Hodgson on guitar & vocals, Steve Archer on
bass, & Maurice Reay on drums, Brian & Steve had been playing together
in a club band called Flight who eventually changed their name to Hot Property,
but as well as playing covers in this band they were very keen to start to
write their own material which was to prove far heavier & louder than what
they had been doing in the band Hot Property.
Brian &
Steve tried out a couple of drummers to test the water and eventually invited a
friend called Maurice Reay into the embryonic band, with this line-up the lads
began playing a few local gigs and eventually made the very first studio
recordings of the songs that Brian & Steve had been writing together, I did
see them live at this point several times before eventually joining them, they
sounded great to me & just the type of thing that I wanted to do myself,
their style of song writing appealed to me as it reminded me of many of the
early 70s rock bands that I grew up listening to.
Steve Archer –
Bass Maurice Reay – Drums Brian Hodgson – Guitar/Vocals
Q. Who would you cite as your major influences at that
time?
Buzz – Brian
was always into Free & Paul Kossoff and this influenced the way that he
plays; slow & melodic, using feeling rather than speed, he also liked Jimi
Hendrix and all the popular melodic rock bands of the 70s such as Deep Purple, Budgie,
UFO, Wishbone Ash etc. Steve was also into the same kind of things as Brian at
that time, as for myself, guitarists such as; Rory Gallagher, Ritchie Blackmore,
Mick Ronson, Andy Powell, & of course the riff master himself Tony Iommi
are all sources of inspiration for me, but as well as all those typical 70s
classic rock bands, I have always had a much wider taste in music than the
others, I’ve always listened to all kinds of musical styles; classical,
krautrock, folk, psych’, indie etc.
As well as
listening to all the classic UK Prog bands from the late 60s to the mid 70s, I
especially liked checking out unusual progressive bands from around the World,
places like, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, USA
& Canada, and, some of the stuff that I listened to back then such as
German bands Neu & Can, & Magma from France, were so weird that the
others would think I was a bit crazy to listen to it, but I still love all that
unusual stuff to this day, & I also now follow many modern prog bands such
as Norwegian bands Ring Van Mobius & Arabs in Aspic who are both super cool
and very retro in style.
But there is
one band that unites us all, we collectively love Black Sabbath, and have done
since the very beginning, their power and style has had a very big influence on
all of us as players, especially in a live situation, like them we are also incredibly
loud live, we hate turning the backline down to allow the mixer to control our
live sound, we like playing at full tilt, even in small venues, it is so exhilarating
compared to the modern way of doing things, a few years ago we had a gig
supporting Paul Raymond from UFO in The Borderline club in London and the mixer
crew made us play so quite that we may as well have left the amps switched off
all together !!
It was
ridiculous how far they made us turn down to, I think my amp’ volume ended up
on less than one (and as you know they are supposed to go up to eleven!), gig-wise
that night was definitely one of the worst experiences of my entire playing
career.
Q. In the late 70s did you feel that the NWOBHM was
reaching to a higher point, in the whole UK
Buzz – Most of
the UK media of the day would have you believe that rock (& especially prog) was dead and Punk had taken
over, but despite what was in the music press & the daily papers there
seemed to be so many bands around all over the Country playing fresh &
exciting rock music, people like Iron Maiden, Saxon, Motorhead, & Diamond
Head to name just a few of the front runners.
But as you now know
there were many other underground bands in the NWOBHM scene, I went to lots gigs
back in the early 80s & it did sometimes feel as though something special
was going on & that you maybe had a chance of some success if you
persevered, Kerrang magazine also came along in the early 80s, (initially as a
one-off edition with the music newspaper Sounds) and this gave the growing
scene a much needed boost & a great platform to help promote the bands in
the scene, unfortunately we never got much of a look in ourselves.
Being very much
a prog head myself I was also into what is now being called the Neo Prog scene,
bands such as Marillion, Pendragon, & Pallas, those bands deserve a medal
for bucking the trends of the day and sticking to their guns despite being out
of fashion, & they all still exist to this day, that shows a genuine
determination & I really respect them for their commitment to their
beliefs, the same could be said of lots of NWOBHM bands, many of them endlessly
forging on regardless of the lack of any commercial success, many of these
bands (just like us) were doing it because they loved it and not for any
financial gain, for many of these bands recording sessions & releases might
often be self financed or even home-made, but at least working that way does give
you the total freedom to do whatever you want, you certainly have no record company
pressure to make a hit single, or play in a certain style, or dress a certain
way, you can literally do whatever you want, you can hear that freedom in a lot
of the NWOBHM music which is what helps make it so exciting, even when the
production is sometimes not as good as it might have been, you can still hear a
genuine band with spirit making great music their own way.
Q. - Where did you record the 78 demo? Was it a
self-produced or did you work with a professional producer? Were these songs
recorded in order to record an LP?
Buzz – Firstly,
I need to say that I may have made a mistake with that date, the tapes that I
have do not have the dates written on them & it was so long ago that it’s
hard to remember everything accurately, the chances are that this studio
session was a touch later than 78, not that it matters, some of the songs were
actually written well before that, ‘Lochinvar’ for example was a song that
Brian originally played in a previous band called Bitter Harvest as far back as
the early 70s although our version is very different to the original so Brian
tells me.
We live in the
North of England & the recording studio that was used is about 30 miles
away in a city called Carlisle, the studio was owned by a musician called Jimmy
Henshaw who had been the guitarist in a local band called The VIPs back in the
late 60s, at one point The VIPs even had Keith Emerson from ELP on keyboards
for a short while (just before he left to form The Nice), and even more
amazingly they backed up Jimi Hendrix on some of his earliest appearances at a
club in London when Jimi first came to England.
Jimmy Henshaw –
Musician & producer.
After Jimmy
Henshaw left the VIPs the band changed their name first to ART and then Spooky
Tooth, they were a superb band, bass player Greg Ridley eventually left to
become part of Humble Pie with Steve Marriott, and their guitarist Luther Grosvenor
(aka Ariel Bender) left to join Mott the Hoople and also form Widowmaker, so as
you can see they were all well connected and very well respected musicians of
the day, their singer Mike Harrison was one of the finest vocalists in the UK
ever as far as I’m concerned.
Jimmy Henshaw remained
in Carlisle & eventually set up a small recording facility, this is where
the 3 piece version of Hammerhead went to record, the studio technology was a
bit limited & the band were very inexperienced in this environment, so the
results were nowhere near as good as they should have been, the tracks on the
tape were done in no particular order and although they are interesting to hear,
the lads quickly realised that through being a bit naive in the studio & rushing
things, the recordings were simply not as good as they had hoped for, despite
what Brian and Steve think of these early studio recordings I always enjoyed
listening to them myself, & it’s also where I learned to play the songs.
Q. - Did you sell this demo at shows or send it to
labels and fanzines to try to find a record deal?
Buzz – I don’t
think too many of these studio tapes were handed out due to the limited
quality, but Brian did hand out various compilation tapes back then which might
have included a few of these studio tracks, sometimes at gigs, and also to fanzines
& small record labels, he would also send them out to fans that got in touch
by mail, but they were never deemed good enough by the band to be released
officially at the time, although despite this, about a year ago I was
approached by our record label in Germany (High Roller Records) to see if we
would consider allowing them to finally release them officially.
Initially Brian
& Steve were concerned about this & not too happy about the idea, I had
to really twist their arms to get them to even think about it, but eventually
they did see where I was coming from, certain people are very interested to
hear how a band evolves from quite humble beginnings, for example; I have heard
early rare recordings of some quite famous bands (and this includes Black
Sabbath), where the sound quality & the playing is a bit limited, but I
still enjoy hearing them because I want to listen to hear how things began and
how things developed & improved over time, ultimately it doesn’t matter who
you are, there is nothing to be ashamed of by the fact that you were simply not
as good back then.
Once the
decision was made to go ahead with this project, I sourced the best possible
copies I could find on tape from my own collection and sent them off to HRR in Germany,
along with some live photographs of the original band and also a few rare live
recordings, some of which sound better than the studio tapes to be fair, High
Roller Records are working on this project right now & hopefully it will be
available some time soon, possibly this year or maybe early next year? I do not
have any release dates yet but it is in progress, inevitably the original plans
have all been delayed by the Corona Virus pandemic.
Q. - Did Hammerhead get support in the media from the
legendary BBC dj Tommy Vance, or from Neal Kay in the Soundhouse?
Buzz – We were
always well supported by the local press in our own area, but only a few brief
mentions in any national music papers, regarding Neal Kay I’m not sure if he
played any of our stuff, maybe he simply wasn’t aware of us?
Tommy Vance certainly
did play them on his Friday Rock Show and seemed to like our style, especially
the B-side of our single; ‘Lonely Man’ which he played on a few occasions, the
guy is a legend and it was so thrilling to hear him playing your own stuff on
his show, he had the perfect voice for a rock DJ.
We also got a
nice boost from some rock DJs called The Bailey Brothers who used to play a lot
of cool underground rock music on vinyl & tape, sometimes they would go on
tour supporting a band, that is how we met them, before our first single was actually
released on vinyl we had just come back from the recording studio &
happened to have a spare tape with us from the recording session a few days
earlier, because they liked our live set we gave them the tape to listen to and
just a couple of weeks later we ended up in the Sounds heavy metal chart
because of that, the Bailey Brothers had been invited to compile the heavy metal
chart for their forthcoming publication of Sounds, which was one of the more
popular music newspapers back in the day.
The Bailey
Brothers were very cool dudes and if I remember correctly their record decks
were fitted into a coffin which I though was hilarious! & they used to
dance about to the music with fake flying Vs, they were very entertaining.
Geoff Barton,
the journalist who was responsible for coining the acronym NWOBHM didn’t
actually like us at all and gave us a bad review, as did Bernie Marsden who was
a guest reviewer in a fanzine I was reading once, but that doesn’t bother me
you can’t please everyone, we actually ended up supporting Bernie at one of his
M3 Whitesnake gigs, and I’ve also supported him myself with my solo acoustic show,
he is actually a nice guy when you get some time to talk with him.
Music press
journalist and critic Malcolm Dome gave us a good review in Classic Rock
magazine when we finally got round to releasing our 1st album, he
gave ‘Will to Survive’ 8/10 along with a positive review which was nice of him.
Q. - How about shows? Did you play regularly in the UK
Buzz - In the early days we did most of our gigs in
our own County where we have always had a faithful following, there would be
the occasional trek up to Scotland or the North East, and occasionally
travelling South we would venture into the next County (Lancashire) but we
never really travelled much further South than this, we never got to play in
London until we re-formed many years later, & for whatever reason we never
managed to get onto a tour either with another band or by ourselves, if we had
got the chance to support another band on tour, a band like Budgie for example,
that would have been ideal for us, but it just didn’t happen for us, so we
continued to mainly play home County gigs most of the time.
Because of our status locally (and also because I knew
most of the local theatre managers very well, hehehee), we often got the chance
to support more well known bands that were passing through our area on their
tours, this is how we came to support many bigger bands such as Budgie, Uriah Heep, Michael Schenker, Bernie Marsden, Diamond Head, Graham Bonnet
(Rainbow), Paul Raymond (MSG/UFO),
Magnum & more.
Since reforming Hammerhead we have played at several festivals getting
early slots on the same stages as acts such as; Status Quo, Ian Anderson
(Jethro Tull), Von Hertzen Brothers, The Enid, Caravan, Curved Air.
Q. - How was the single "Time Will Tell"
received by the fans? Did it have airplay on radio stations?
Buzz – Time
will Tell has always been popular in our live set, within our repertoire of
songs it was possibly the obvious choice for a single being short & snappy,
prior to releasing it we had no luck getting a record deal from anyone despite
sending off many tapes to various labels (including NEAT Records) who I was
sure would have picked up on us, but all we ever got in reply from everyone was
“Sorry Lads etc etc.”, so in the end the single was only possible because
Brians Dad offered to fund it for us, there were 1000 copies made at the time
& it sold fairly well to local fans at our gigs, like many bands around the
time of the NWOBHM era there was still a very homemade element to it in that I
put the basic sleeve design together myself with a few pics’ of the band and
some basic info’, then I got them printed at the firm that I worked for at that
time (CN Print), I had to fold and glue everyone of those single sleeves by
hand myself, some of the earliest ones we sold came with a Hammerhead Skull
poster (until the posters ran out) I have 1 copy of that poster left &
about 5 singles, Tommy Vance would play both sides of the single on the Friday
Rock Show and this coupled with reviews in Sounds & Melody Maker led on to
us getting enquiries by mail from rock fans all over the place, some of them
were even on the continent and further afield, there was no internet back then
but dedicated rock fans around the World would get hold of these rarities and
then presumably copy & share them with their friends, so year upon year bands
such as ours would eventually pick up an ever growing network of fans from
further afield, & even when the internet did come along we were still unaware
of the situation at first, that is until I advertised ‘Will to Survive’ on eBay,
it was only then that I suddenly realised that we had somehow acquired a fan
base around the World, so this was the catalyst that triggered much more
activity for the band in this second life, & I have noticed that it’s not
just us, the same thing has happened for other previously underground bands, I
suppose that it is all down to the internet for making it so easy for
information to be past around the globe.
Q. - Billy Branch did the vocals on the song
"Lochinvar", back in 84, the compilation "It's Unheard Of",
how did that happen? Did you think of him to be a permanent singer for
Hammerhead?
Buzz – Back in
the early 70s Billy Branch had been the singer in another local band called
Necromandus, they were an outstanding band featuring some of the areas most
talented musicians & he was an excellent rock singer with a very
distinctive voice, if he had been willing to join Hammerhead as a full time
member it would have made a massive difference for us, he was asked but he
simply wasn’t interested in joining the band, fortunately though he did agree
to go into the studio with the band to sing on a couple of tracks, these tracks
demonstrate a small taste of what the band would have been like back then with
a more confident skilled singer & front-man like Billy was.
Necromandus =
Dennis McCarten, Frank Hall, Baz Dunnery, Billy Branch
In a just World
Necromandus really should have made it big as they were way ahead of many bands
that did become successful, Black Sabbaths Tony Iommi saw them whilst Sabbath
were playing here in West Cumbria in the late 1960s, Necromandus supported them
& Tony recognised their talent immediately, he took them under his wing and
helped them, Tony was managing them, paying for recording sessions, organising
gigs, even contributing guitar work on to some of their recorded songs, & importantly
getting them to tour the UK with Black Sabbath in 1973.
Black Sabbath
were getting ever more popular & with little or no notice Tony Iommi had to
suddenly go off to America to tour with Sabbath, with Tonys commitments understandably
changed, Necromandus found themselves stuck in Birmingham living in squalid
conditions with no manager, no gigs, no money, & partly due to these
circumstances the release of their 1st album on Vertigo became
delayed, eventually things came to a head & Baz Dunnery who in my opinion was
one of the most skilled guitarists in the whole country at that time decided
he’d had enough, the lack of momentum for the band combined with the harsh
living conditions & lack of money pushed him over the edge to the point
where he was to quit the band and travel back home to West Cumbria to go back
to living a more ‘normal’ life, he once told me that if he hadn’t come home he
would have died! such were the harsh conditions they were having to deal with,
Baz was a uniquely skilled guitarist so this represented the death knell for
the band as he was totally irreplaceable, the record label shelved the release
of their only album and it remained that way until eventually it leaked out
into the World many years later, that album has now been released by at least
three record labels that I know of, and so as time has gone on more & more
people have come to learn just how good these boys were, sadly Billy passed
away before ever seeing how well respected they eventually became.
Billy Branch & Baz Dunnery
Q. - The 1984 demo tape had 8 tracks, some of it live,
what do you recall from these recording seasons?
Buzz – I do not
have a copy of the actual demo tape that you mention, any tapes such as this
one were not handed out in any great quantity, just a few copies to those
people who got in touch with us to ask for something, I assume that this would
just be another compilation of the best studio recordings that we had available
at that point in time, the live tracks would be there to make up for the lack
of studio recordings, we did have many more songs but we couldn’t afford the
studio time to record them, It is also possible that fans of the band put these
type of compilations together, I’ve seen a few examples of that happening.
Q. - What do you think that lacked to
"Hammerhead" to have a successful career?
Buzz – A number
of reasons spring to mind; I guess that people who don’t like us would say we
were never good enough, simple as that.
We never had a
manager to sort anything out so we always ended up having to do everything for
ourselves and being honest, none of us are experts with that side of the
business.
Despite trying many
times we couldn’t get any record label interest from anyone, not even the small
independent labels who specialised in bands like ours, without a manager or any
close relationships with booking agencies etc. we could never get any suitable gigs
away from home, or the chance to go on tour with any more successful bands, doing
something like that would have been a major boost for us if it could have been
organised.
Another big
factor is that most of the lads were in full time jobs, and everyone had family
commitments which would have made it very difficult to commit to a multi-date
tour, even if we had been offered the chance.
If you really
want to make it in a band you have to be so committed to it that it becomes
your life and comes before everything else, as much as I have always loved
playing in the band, I don’t think it would appeal to me to live that way, and
how can anyone give up a full time secure job with decent money to take a
chance on something that may come to nothing.
Q. - Were you still active in the music business
during the Hammerhead hiatus?
Buzz – As well
as playing in Hammerhead I have always played guitar and sang in ‘covers’ bands
purely for a bit of fun, it’s just something that I enjoy & it gives me the
chance to play the music that I like to listen to, bands such as Budgie, Black
Sabbath, UFO etc. so there has never been a time when I wasn’t playing in a
band, for many years I played as part of a band called; ‘The Bullfrogs’, we
played a mixture of rock, pop, and blues, it was good fun and the band are all really
great musicians but eventually I moved on and joined another band because I
wanted to play louder heavier material than the direction The Bullfrogs were going
in, what I initially had in mind was a very loud power trio, something in the
style of Budgie (you may have noticed by now that I like Budgie very much,
hehehehhe), anyway, I mean no disrespect to the lads in The Bullfrogs but they
are simply not those types of players with the exception of Tony Steel who is a
really solid powerhouse drummer.
Q. - Back in 2005 what made the band reunite again? Some kind of unfinished business?
Buzz – We did
not reform the band with the intention of continuing to play any more than one
gig, in 2004 a close friend of mine asked me if I would consider playing one
gig with Hammerhead for a friends 40th Birthday party, I said that I
would if everyone else would, but I honestly didn’t think that the rest of the
band would be interested, surprisingly everyone said yes, except ‘Tol’ (our
previous drummer), he was already committed to another event on the same date that
he couldn’t get out of, so I had to ask Tony Steel (the drummer from my covers
band) if he would be willing to learn all the songs so that we could do the
gig, that is basically how come Tony became our drummer, remember that at this point
it was meant to be for one night only, Tony had a lot to learn but he did an
amazing job in doing so.
Tony Steel
Q. - How did the idea of compiling "Will to
Survive" came up? Do you think this compilation was important in the
revival of Hammerhead?
Buzz – Without
the release of the original batch of home made ‘Will to Survive’ CDs none of
the band activity in the last 15 years would have occurred at all so yes it was
an important development, all be it an accidental one, back in 2004 when we
were asked to play that one-off gig, for whatever reason I decided to put
together all the best studio recordings of the band that I had and burn them on
to a CD, I also made a very basic sleeve design to go with it, I was hoping that
people at the gig would maybe buy one, I made 100 of them but only 16 of them actually
sold, so a few days later I decide to try selling some of them on eBay, I wasn’t
really expecting anyone to remember us, but as soon as it was available I
started selling them all around the World with the very first one going to
America, then all over Europe and even Japan, it began to dawn on me what had
been happening on the underground, and very quickly I had sold all the
remaining copies, it was also at this point that Sonic Age Records in Greece
got in touch to say that they would like to release it officially on their Cult
Metal Classics label, which I immediately agreed to.
Q. - Headonizm came up a little bit later the same
year, was 2005 a very active year for Hammerhead?
Buzz - With the
money that was raised from selling the ‘Will to Survive’ Cds I suggested to the
rest of the band that we could use this to fund a recording session to get more
of our old songs recorded properly, everyone agreed and so we went back into
the studio, the results of this became our ‘Headonizm’ album which was released
on vinyl only by High Roller Records in Germany, songs mostly written in the
70s but recorded in the 00s.
Fortunately I
have always been very good friends with a local Theatre manager who would often
book top classic rock bands of the 70s, so each time one of these bands would
pass through our Town I would jump at the chance to get the support slot, as
long as the main bands didn’t mind he was happy to give us the support slots,
we still have a very faithful local following so it would also help to bring
people in to the gigs, through doing this we have got to support many of the
bands that we really admired; Budgie, Uriah Heep, Wishbone Ash, Michael
Schenker, Bernie Marsden, Diamond Head, Paul Raymond (UFO), to name but a few,
so not only have we had more activity in this ‘afterlife’, the quality of the
gigs was also raised by some degree, plus we didn’t have to travel for these prestige
gigs, they were right on our doorstep, to be fair part of the deal was that we
don’t get paid anything & this has caused friction in the band but personally
I was happy with that arrangement, it seemed fair to me & as well as
enjoying the gigs I have got to meet quite a few of my heroes in the process so
I’m not complaining.
Q. - What's the biggest difficulties you have faced
all over the years to keep Hammerhead alive?
Buzz – The
biggest problem Hammerhead has always faced is not being able to fully commit
enough time to the band because of work & family commitments, and if I’m
being honest I am probably the worst culprit of this, and yet at the same time
I am also the main motivator behind much of the activity that’s happened since
we reformed such as dealing with record labels, organising studio sessions,
festival appearances, support slots etc. it always seems as if I don’t make the
effort to sort something out nothing happens.
There is also
friction in the band caused by the type of gigs that we try to get, Steve has
always been keen to get gigs away from home whenever possible & to be fair I
would also like to do that as well if it worked for us, but it doesn’t, it
would be great to travel all over the place playing to good sized crowds and
having a fantastic gig with like-minded rockers, but the reality is that almost
every time we try to do a gig away from home hardly anyone goes and it is a
disaster which usually ends up costing us money, I have found out the hard way that
if we are going to travel away from home the most suitable gigs for us to do
are as part of an established festival, things like; ‘Brofest’ in the UK, or
any of the HRH rock festivals, we have won many new fans this way, and at least
you know you are going to have an audience when you get there, the amount of
times we have travelled all over the place and ended up playing to an almost
empty room is depressing, and also one of the reasons I gave up doing it in the
mid 80s, sadly it’s still the same now, a couple of years ago we made the
effort to go up to Edinburgh in Scotland to do a gig in the well known venue
‘Bannermans’ and most of the people in the audience that night were our own
fans from back home who had travelled up to see us, it was well advertised but
sadly there were hardly any local people in, the same happened twice at The
Riverside in Selby, twice at The Snooty Fox in Wakefield, and also when we
tried a gig at The Diamond in Mansfield, all these gigs cost us money! &
it’s just not worth it, it is for this reason that most of our gigs tend to be
either at home or at a festival, I know it’s not ideal but being realistic they
are the only gigs that are really worth doing.
Another problem
that keeps raising it’s head is that on a number of occasions the older lads
have expressed a wish to call it a day and bring it all to an end, after all
the founder member of the band Brian is now heading towards 70 years old so I
know there is a point where you have to stop doing this, but for now I have managed
to persuade them to keep it going for a bit longer even though I do know we
will have to stop eventually, rather than actually split up I would be happy even
we just continued with just occasional studio work as I love messing about in
the recording studio.
Buzz - Guy
Forresters studio
Q. - Besides Hammerhead, you have a side project
called ‘Slagbank’, what can you tell us about this band? What kind of music do
you play?
Buzz – For the
story on how this band came into existence we have to go back to 2008 when
Hammerhead were playing at a festival in London called ‘The Last Weekend’ at a
legendary venue called The Ruskin Arms, it was a fund raising event in aid of
‘CliveAid’ a charity originally set up to help drummer Clive Burr who was
originally with the band Samson, he left them to become the drummer for Iron
Maiden on their first 3 albums.
Sadly Clive was
diagnosed with MS (multiple sclerosis) and became to ill to continue playing,
hence the fund raising event that we were invited to perform at, a Cumbrian friend
of mine who was living in London called Mark Coles came to watch the gig, Mark
is a superb bass player & on more than one occasion has been headhunted by
UFO, anyway, he told me that he was planning on moving back home to Cumbria
very soon, and when he did he wanted to form a band with me on guitar &
Tony Steel on drums, with the intention of playing as a power trio, we all
talked about this and agreed to select some songs that we each wanted to play,
when Mark eventually moved back to live in the North we got together in my
small rehearsal room and tried a few things out, it became clear immediately
that this would work, it sounded very exciting and powerful.
The easiest way
to answer your enquiry as to what type of stuff we play is to show you the
bands repertoire, starting with the shortest song title and finishing with the
longest title we call this set list our Mountain our Rock:-
N.I.B
STEALIN
ROSALIE
EMERALD
WAR PIGS
BLACK DOG
THE SEEKER
PROUD MARY
ROCK & ROLL
MR CROWLEY
WISHING WELL
SHADOW PLAY
HIGHWAY STAR
SILVER MACHINE
ZIGGY STARDUST
DOCTOR DOCTOR
LIKE A HURRICANE
I TURNED TO STONE
SUMMERTIME BLUES
PERFECT STRANGERS
STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN
SMOKE ON THE WATER
ROCKY MOUNTAIN WAY
ALL THE YOUNG DUDES
DON’T BELIEVE A WORD
ONLY YOU CAN ROCK ME
ROCKIN IN THE FREE
WORLD
NAPOLEON BONAPARTS 1
& 2
A NEW DAY
YESTERDAY~STARSHIP TROOPER~WURM
Since first
forming Slagbank we have expanded to a four piece with the addition of a
brilliant guitarist from the North East called Dave Burn, with the exception of
myself this band actually became the touring band for Paul Raymond out of UFO for
a couple of years, obviously everyone was devastated to hear of Pauls untimely
passing last year, we had all been watching him play with UFO in Newcastle just
two days earlier and he had never looked healthier, so you never know what is
around the corner.
Personally I do
not like the name of the band at all but the others picked it & thought it
was funny, the reasoning behind it is due to fact that we live in a ‘steel town’,
for many years the local Steelworks made steel rails for the railway industry
all over the World, during the process of making the steel rails a waste
product known as slag is separated off, this waste was dumped along the
shoreline beside the steelworks and over many years it eventually formed into a
huge bank of Slag, hence the band name, Slagbank.
Q. - In your opinion what are the main differences
between the eighties and the reality of today? Do you keep an eye to the metal
scene of today?
Buzz – Back in
the 80s Global Pandemics were only ever found in the scripts of imaginative
script writers, but the harsh reality of the situation today is that the music
scene has totally ground to a halt, everything I had tickets for has been
cancelled & all my own gigs are also cancelled, eventually things should
get back to normal but it will take a long time to fully recover from this
awful situation, fortunately for me I have another source of income, but it
will be much worse for any professional musicians who rely on gigs and selling
merchandise to survive, turning to the internet is probably the only way to
continue for them right now, using sites such as ‘Patreon’ perhaps?
Even before the
Corona situation another big problem in modern times is that many bars and
venues had already been closing because of poor business, there are a number of
reasons for this and the government don’t help the situation by continually
adding tax on to beer etc. lots of people stay at home to drink rather than go
out as it is much cheaper to do this, also high business rates, and even the
smoking ban all played their part in a shift of trends from how it used to be,
if this trend does continue without being addressed I really fear for the
future of live music as we have always known it!
Regarding the
current Metal scene I really struggle with the death metal style of
singing/growling, I can take it in small doses especially live where you also
get the energy of the performance, but I can’t listen to it at home, also
overuse of the double kick pedal by drummers does my head in, once again in
small doses it can enhance a song but overused it ruins everything, I went to
the Graspop festival in Belgium a few years ago and I felt as though I was at a
double kick pedal demonstration event for most of the weekend!
Over the last
10 years my love of the Prog scene has been rekindled, & there are so many
superb bands experimenting again, especially in Scandinavia, I would say that
the modern prog scene is divided into two main areas, there are those bands who
go for the retro sound as if it is still 1970 and the last 50 years never
happened, and then there are bands who are still trying to push the boundaries
of what is possible and keep moving things forward, fortunately for me I love
both styles.
Q. - In 2004 you did some solo recordings,
"Monsters From The ID", did you try to release it?
Buzz – You may
be aware that ‘Monsters from the ID’ is a line out of an old sci-fi film called
‘The forbidden planet’ from 1958, I saw this when I was a kid in the late 60s
and I loved it, through watching that film I learned that the ‘ID’ is another
term for the subconscious, in 2004 purely for fun I made some solo recordings
in my home studio using a variety of backing tracks, all the guitar work was
done spontaneously over these pre-recorded backing tracks, and when I listened
back to what I had played there were quite a few things that I had done that
would be hard for me to replicate again, little happy accidents if you know
what I mean, so it occurred to me that this stuff seemed to have come out of my
mind and rolled off the end of my guitar neck from nowhere, none of it was
rehearsed & some of it I can’t actually play again, so that is the
reasoning behind the title, I didn’t have any intention of releasing it,
although I may have passed a few copies out at the time, I do remember putting
one track from it called ‘Tuesday Blues’ on to Youtube.
Q. - How do you want to end up this interview?
Anything more you want to say? Thank you for your time, and wish you all the
best for the future!
Buzz – Firstly
I would like to thank you for continued interest in our band & for taking
the time to send the questions, I have enjoyed answering them for you.
I will end by
telling you the up to date situation with the band as it stands, over the last
few years we have only played a handful of gigs, once again mostly local ones.
The current
line up with Steven Woods (Pecker) as our singer/frontman & Tony as the
drummer is probably the strongest in the bands history so it would be a shame
to not continue, Pecker was instrumental in bringing more showmanship and fun into
the band so hopefully if you were to see us live now you would feel like you
are watching a show rather than a bunch of serious metal heads working sternly through
the songs.
Bass player
Steve & I have been writing material together for some time now in an
attempt to make one more album which will feature a long concept piece called
‘Lords of the Sun’ it is 22 minutes in duration, this will either be one full
side of a vinyl album, or possibly split into two parts in a similar way to how
Pink Floyd did their ‘Wish you were here’ album, we haven’t decided on that
yet, and it may be determined by what else we write for the rest of the album.
We have already
had one failed attempt to record this in the studio with our producer Guy
Forrester, it was probably my fault for trying to speed things up but I think
that I may have booked the studio session before we were fully ready to take on
the task.
We also made
the mistake of trying to record it without trying it out live a few times first,
I think that it’s always best to try something new out live first before
recording it, since that initial recording session was done the song has now
evolved into something quite different from how it started out so when we go
back to the studio we will have to scrap what we have already recorded and
start all over again, unfortunately the revised dates for recording studio
sessions have been delayed by the Corona situation, Steve was out in Spain when
the lockdown came into force, he has been stuck there for 3 months now.
If the bands
days with the original 3 core members playing together are numbered, I have
already told the others that if possible I would still like to keep playing our
songs live in some shape or form but any form of playing activity is really tough
for me right now, I don’t really like to dwell on any negative stuff but I’m
afraid that I have to end on a very sad note, on February 6th 2020 I lost one
of my sons (Lee) in tragic circumstances, this has had a very traumatic effect
on me and my whole family, I am still struggling to come to terms with the
situation & I am still on sick from work indefinitely, I haven’t been able
to touch a guitar since it happened, I hope that one day I can come to terms
with the situation and feel well enough to play again, whatever else happens I
want to make sure that eventually we will finish that one last album as I would
like to dedicate it to my son Lee, he loved rock music and was a fan of
Hammerhead himself, I really miss having him around.
Lee Elliott –
RIP son.
Lee, Buzz,
& Alex, my other son Glenn is not in this picture.
