Buzz Elliott (Hammerhead)

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 1^st 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 back then? Did you share stage with other well-known bands?

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 1^st 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 40^th 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

KASHMIR

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

NANTUCKET SLEIGHRIDE

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.