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SAXON
Interview with Biff Byford
| I wasn't sure what to expect out of Saxon. Aside from their early 80's endeavor, "Power & The Glory,"
I hadn't heard much from them, and admittedly, hadn't really bothered. So, knowing that I would be seeing the band
for the first time and interviewing vibrato-phenom Biff Byford, I quickly boned up by checking out their official
webpage and found that the band have been at it for the past 20 years since their first domestic release, "Wheels
Of Steel." I also found that despite the fact that their name seemingly dissolved along with most of the metal
during the 90's, Saxon continued to release albums on a regular basis and have, in fact, been doing quite well.
After a more commercial period at the end of the 80's and a few lineup changes, Saxon caught up with the times without forsaking their true metal roots. This was particularly evident during an extremely strong live set at Jaxxs, a Virginia nightclub, in which the band proved to be energetic, melodic and heavy enough to bridge the generational gap of 80's and modern day metal. And, at around 53-years of age, Byford's voice still carries the same power that it did in the Denim & Leather days. Myself (Dean, Neon Black), Deb, Scott (Exciter), Chris (Warlord), and Marc had the opportunity to sit and talk with Biff on the tour bus before the show and talk about everything from Saxon's career to underwear. --DEAN STERNBERG |
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| Dean-This tour marks 20 years since you first came out, so now might be a good time for reflection. I'm going to ask you to think back to the highest points and lowest points of your career. |
| Biff Byford-"Ummm...I'm going to have to condense it, otherwise you'd be here all fucking week. One of the high points was during the early 80's, when everything was going crazy." |
| Dean-Any particular instances? |
| BB-"Our second album was when we were really big, and we went from playing small clubs to playing arenas in a space of three months, so it was pretty crazy. First two (tours) we did in America were pretty exciting for us. The first gig we ever played in America was the Philadelphia Spectrum, and it was completely sold out." |
| Dean-OK, low points? |
| BB-"I don't know really. I don't relate too much to low points." |
| Dean-What about loss of bandmates, things of that nature? |
| BB-"No, we sacked them." |
| Dean-They never left on their own? |
| BB-"No." |
| Dean-Just booted them, huh? |
| BB-"Well, apart from Nigel Glockler (original Saxon drummer), who still writes songs with us. But yeah, we got divorced from those people." |
| Dean-On the subject of bandmates, I know Deb was wondering about this-there's a legal dispute over the Saxon name? |
| BB-"Well, there isn't really. I mean, they'd (ex-band members) like people to think there is. There's a law suit going around about money, which is completely different than the name." |
| Dean-How so? |
| BB-"Well, they think we owe them some money, and we don't." |
| Dean-Can you name any names? |
| BB-"It's just one guy, Graham Oliver, the guitarist we sacked." |
| Deb-Is he using the name Saxon? |
| BB-"No, we're letting him use "Oliver Dawson, ex-Saxon." That's what you should be using. We can't stop him from playing, we don't want him to stop playing, he has as much right to play as anybody, but if it confuses the fans and rips them off, then we tend to get involved legally. But no, there isn't a big lawsuit, it's something that's being built up by them. I mean, they would like it to be a lawsuit over the name, but it's not about that really, it's about money." |
| Deb-It's been reported over the Internet that it's over the name. |
| BB-"Well, they''re saying it over the net, but we don't say anything over the net. When somebody's lying, they can say anything they want, can't they? It's a lot harder to tell the truth than to tell a lie, because if you tell lies you can make anything up to fit. But, no, the Internet thing is lies. You mean on the Canadian unofficial site?" |
| Deb-Yeah. |
| BB-"We have had words with them, and they won't take it off. It's not right. It's not such a big deal for us really, it doesn't really affect us that much." |
| Dean-Not something you lose sleep over in other words. |
| BB-"We don't really. They did have a tour of America booked, and we stopped that. I don't know if you saw that. They did have 28 shows booked, and we stopped it. But, if you come over and play down someplace and we don't know about it, there's not much we can do about it. I mean, people must know that if they don't see it on our website, then it's not us that's playing. Our website is Saxon747.com, and all our tour dates and studio dates our listed there. It's updated every week." |
| Dean-Of course things have changed over the years as far as the metal scene is concerned. Let's say Saxon formed and got signed today as opposed to when you did...you think you would have made as much of an impact in the U.S. like you did then? |
| BB-"No." |
| Dean-What do you think of the music scene now as compared to then?
Deb-Like your Limp Bizkit and Korn... |
| BB-"That's not really very good, is it? Some bands seem to strike a sort of seam of good stuff, but most of the bands we're seeing is pop bands really. Fashion seems to be more important than music. In Europe, there's a massive metal revival at the moment. We've played some massive festivals this year, with Maiden, Megadeth, and it's really big business now, and Saxon are as big in Europe as we were in the 80's." |
| Chris-Is it that it never died down there, or is there a resurgence now? |
| BB-"It did die down there. In Germany, it maybe didn't die down so much for some reason, but it did die down in Europe, but it's really back up there already, I mean there's some massive metal festivals, really big." |
| Marc-The Reading Festival has garbage as far as bands go. |
| BB-"Well, I wasn't counting England as having a revival. For some reason, England's a little bit like America, a little bit slow on the uptake." |
| Deb-They seem to think that anything that glitters over here is gold, so they do it over there too, it seems to me. Even Kerrang... |
| BB-"Well, those things don't really exist for us anymore, to tell you the truth. Most of the major magazines are German, and most of the major magazines in England are German as well. So, they're lead seems to be taken from Europe now instead of America, as far as metal goes. I mean, you have a lot of things going on over here too, like Motley Crue and Ratt getting together again, so you've got the same sort of thing here. I know it's not British metal, but it is the same sort of thing. It is an 80's revival. The Motley Crue tour was quite successful." |
| Deb-We notice that a lot of the rock radio stations have gone from playing popular to retro 80's. They don't seem to realize that these bands have had releases since the 80's, but they will go back and play their hits from the 80's. |
| BB-"Oh yeah, most of the play we get in America is from the 80's, probably from "Wheels Of Steel" up to "Crusader."" |
| Dean-Does it ever get frustrating? I mean, you've got years worth of material. |
| BB-"No. I mean, you're lucky to be played at all, so we don't complain, you know. But the cities that are really into Saxon, like some of cities in Texas and the West Coast, do play the new stuff. But it's not programmed. It's individual DJ's that are into the band and play them. But, we never have been Def Leppard though, have we? We've never been that commercial." |
| Deb-We probably wouldn't like you as much if you were. |
| BB-"Probably not." |
| Scott-Do you like any of the new heavy metal bands out today? German bands like Primal Fear... |
| BB-"Well yeah, Primal Fear have been around for years anyway as Sinner. We've got friends in them, like Hammerfall from Sweden, you know, all those new bands, they're all melodic-based, which we like." |
| Scott-I think that's more the traditional heavy metal sound. |
| BB-"The influence is more from bands like us rather than bands like Van Halen. It's more a European sound." |
| Scott-I just wish we could have that sound over here all the time. |
| BB- "I don't know why the young kids haven't gotten off on it like they have in Europe, because when we've played the big festivals like Dynamo, the majority are teenagers that we play to. Not that you don't get the older fans, you do. But if you get the younger kids into it, it's a more exciting movement. We worked really hard these last four years with our albums and touring in Europe to get back to a certain level again. That's why our albums are really a mixture of classic metal and a more modern sound, because we have to play music for our newer fans as well." |
| Deb-"Unleash the Beast" sounded like it came right out of 1986 to me. |
| BB-"More so on "Unleash the Beast," it is mixed though on that album. I think people tend to be a little bit hoodwinked by the way we tracked it. I think "Unleash the Beast" sounds more 80's than "Metalhead" because "Unleash the Beast" is a classic 80's song, whereas "Metalhead 's" a bit more modern." |
| Dean-I was going to ask about the upcoming album-are you going to try to integrate a more modern sound to that? |
| BB-"I think we pretty much got the balance right now. I don't think we want to be any more modern than we are now, because we'd be just like any other band." |
| Dean-When you say modern, what do you mean? |
| BB-"I mean modern by a more darker riff, rather than a more melodic riff. On Metalhead, there's a song called "Conquistador" which is really melodic, and there's "Metalhead" which is really dark. The reason that is is that we've got younger members of the band that aren't coming from the seventies thing. So, the mixture of music, I think we've just about got it right now." |
| Dean-So the writing is a band effort, not just one or two guys? |
| BB-"It's always been a band effort. The music is the band, but most of the lyrics are mine. My thing hasn't really changed much from the 80's, it's still based on the same sort of voice thing and the same sort of melodies. A lot of what's changed is the guitars. We've moved back to a more heavier bass. In the late 80's, we went much more commercial on things like "Innocence Is No Excuse" and "Destiny." I don't even know if you know the albums well enough really, but anyway, we went more melodic." |
| Deb-You were getting MTV rotational play. |
| BB-"Well obviously we were making more money and our managers wanted us making even more money, and the way to make more money was to get played on MTV. One thing feeds another really. But I think, we didn't really sell out, we just liked being rich, it was as simple as that (laughs). Not that we got rich, but our manager did. At least someone had a good laugh. And then, we all went a bit pear-shaped at the end of the 80's, and we sort of didn't do anything for a long time. In the 90's we came back with the "Solid Ball Of Rock" album, which was a massive hit in Europe, and that really was our revival album, what you would call our comeback album. So really we have two careers, one in the 80's and one in the 90's. America missed the 90's, although the "Solid Ball Of Rock "album did do well here, it was on Virgin. It wasn't what you'd call a massive album here, but it was in Europe. It was on the top-20 there." |
| Deb-America slept through the 90's. I wanted the metal in the 90's, it just wasn't in my face or easy to find like it was when we were younger. There seems to be another wave of it now, just not as strong as it was. |
| BB-"Don't forget, when we make an album and we tour, it can take three years to make the album and tour for it. So, time in a rock band is different than time in any other kind of work. It really goes quick. We're in Mexico in three weeks time, then we're in Bulgaria in December, so the whole system is totally fucked up, isn't it? It's so surreal. It's like, I sat at home Tuesday watching Bill Clinton on T.V., and then you're here in Washington seven hours later. It's really weird to be in the lifestyle we're in. And then we all have our private lives as well, we have wives and children and mortgages to pay and all the rest of the shit. A band's cycle is on an album, where your cycle is on a year. Our whole life is geared around one album and the tour, you see. That's how it goes. This tour is at the end of the Metalhead tour, and we might sneak another one in Spring in America. We're actually writing the (new) album now. It will be out in January, February, so we'll be starting again. Maybe no one's really explained it to you like that before, but that's how our life is, so when you say the 80's, it seems a long way away, but to us it's just like 10 albums. We relate to the album, we don't relate to what girl we were with in the back of the car. It's not that type of life. You remember the albums and where you were at that point in time. It's really a strange life, it really is." |
| Dean-You have wives and children. How does that work in, I mean, you're obviously dedicating a lot of time to this. |
| BB-"We don't dedicate as much time to it as we used to. We did buy a lot of our souls back, so we haven't sold all our souls to rock & roll at the moment." |
| Dean-What keeps you going after all this time? |
| BB-"Well, I've just answered the question, because we've been doing it for so long, we still have album deals, and we're still making albums. We don't want to be boring and we don't want to keep repeating ourselves, so every album tour is what we're working on." |
| Dean-Twenty years ago, did you see yourself here, now, 50-plus years old and still doing this? |
| BB-"No. I don't think about shit like that. It's all in the answer that I gave you, in that you don't think in those terms. Time is irrelevant really. If you can deliver you can deliver, if you can't you can't, that's the end of it, but there's no in between." |
| Deb-You have children? |
| BB-"Lots of them (laughter). I love breeding, it's brilliant. Yeah, I have four young children. I have twin baby boys as well, so basically this is a rest for me. No really, I haven't slept for seven months, it's terrible. I thought, 'we'll put a tour together in America and get some sleep'." |
| Dean-What are some of your interests outside of music? |
| BB-"Making babies. Sex and rock & roll maybe." |
| Dean-Ever want to do something outside of metal musically? |
| BB-"I'm really busy, I'll tell you, I don't have a fucking second. I don't have time to do a side project. We've been really busy these past two years and we've had to turn a lot of work down. I do get asked to do solo albums and side projects, but I really, really haven't got time, because you have to be highly motivated to do this kind of thing. If I do anything with anybody, I don't want to do it just as a past time. If I work with somebody, I work with them 100 percent." |
| Dean-If you were in a plane crash in the Andes and ran out of food, which one of your bandmates would you eat first? |
| BB-"Uh...probably Paul Quinn." |
| Dean-Why? |
| BB-"Cause he's the one that gets on my nerves the most. We'd start with the roadies anyway." |
| Deb-Boxers or briefs? |
| BB-"Boxers or briefs...ummm, boxers. I haven't worn briefs in a long time." |
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