OneMetal.com INTERVIEW:
Blaze Bayley Talks to OneMetal

Hellfire II at Birmingham NEC was the venue, and in one of the small designated press areas we wedged ourselves alongside Blaze Bayley and his drummer Lawrence Larry Paterson. We had been looking forward to this one for a while so we weren’t going to hang about…

OneMetal:Blaze Bayley… how the f**k are you mate?

Blaze:Good Good, really looking forward to the show. We wouldn’t have chose to get it like we did, with Evile having to drop out, you know with Mike passing and everything.

OneMetal:Of course…

Blaze:It’s very sad news but we are really happy that they wanted us to go ahead and do it, and you know we are going to go and make the most of it, and have a really good show. I get the sense that there will be a lot of people here who aren’t familiar with the Blaze Bayley band, and what we’ve been doing over the last couple of years, so I’m really excited to play to new people and see how it goes.

OneMetal:But surely, you are in Birmingham… it’s a homecoming?

Blaze:Yeah hopefully, and I’ve never played the NEC before so that is a real bonus… even though it’s only Hall 8 (laughing)…

OneMetal:Yeah but it’s still the NEC

Blaze:Yeah yeah, it’s still the NEC so it’s absolutely great to be able to say that and all my family are really really chuffed about it. It only took me 20 minutes to get here (laughing) . It’s really, really cool.

OneMetal:Come off it. I still cannot believe you have never played the NEC. You have fronted one of the greatest British bands ever…. Wolfsbane

(laughing)

OneMetal:We won’t mention any other bands you may have been associated with… anyway, you are where you are. Looking back would you have done anything differently?

Blaze:Oooh well, I mean I wouldn’t do anything differently to what I am doing right now, because I feel we have something really special. We kind of got our groove together with “The Man Who Would Not Die” with this line up and now we have just taken a small break from the recording of the next album to do this and another couple of shows. There’s certainly a real identity to our sound and a real strong chemistry between the people in the band, and I think that comes through. Hopefully people will see that when they hear the next album in February, “Promise And Terror”. I wouldn’t really change anything, we have our Wolfsbane reunions every couple of years and its great that it’s still the original line up, that’s a lot of fun and that’s why we do it really.

A lot of the time in Wolfsbane we ended up making ugly compromises with the record label and getting shafted by this that and the other, and the timing was never right… we never played abroad enough. So we just do it now for a laugh and a giggle, and to remember the good times. It’s a lot of fun to do that but what I am really doing is getting my own band together, and the Blaze Bayley band is something where we all share in the creativity and the triumphs and disasters. We have played all over, we started the tour in January in Brazil and then gone all over. We have done a live album and our own DVD . We have done everything on our own terms and nobody outside our little organisation has any say at all in that process. That’s a really great situation to be in. The only other time I was in a situation like that was when I was in Iron Maiden. They fought tooth and nail so that no one within EMI could have any say in the artwork, the albums or the music. So when I got to a situation where I could put my own band together and get a new line up I thought well, that’s the way I am going to do it. Everything on my own terms, and that’s what we do as a band. It’s a lot of sacrifice and effort, but it’s really satisfying and it gives you a real edge over some of the bands that don’t have that control.

OneMetal:You are saying you have put together this line up… it’s not exactly been easy has it? I mean, I want to congratulate you on becoming the lead singer of Chokehold…

(laughing)

Larry: Yeah, well put.

OneMetal:Obviously I mean with bringing in Larry and having Dave stand in.
(laughing) Anyway, what I am getting at is are you a solo artist or are you part of a band?

Blaze:Well yeah it’s really confusing, but it’s also really good. I started the Blaze band thing and all that but it just didn’t evolve into what I wanted, and I wanted to change the name as I found so many people recognised me personally and asked what I was doing. I’d tell them I have my own band called Blaze and they’d say well I don’t know, I’ve never heard of it. I was thinking that’s really s**t, so I changed the name after speaking to everybody. I said no one associates the name Blaze with the former singer from Wolfsbane and Iron Maiden. So the Man Who Would Not Die came out under Blaze Bayley and on that tour we played to twice as many people as we did before, and that was with no extra promotion.

OneMetal:‘The Man Who Would Not Die’, is that self fulfilling, because after the Maiden stint you dipped off the radar somewhat. Was the ‘Man Who Would Not Die’ you saying here I am and I’m coming back?

Blaze:Yeah, I agree and for the most part it’s not through any fault of my own. I mean I have had plenty of problems. The fact that I got Silicon Messiah album together and ready to release with artwork done and dusted to come out in January or February, and then through whatever reason it came out in the same week as Brave New World… I never recovered from that. The same thing happened to me with Tenth Dimension. The next album I did I thought I would get this ready for February, you know there’s no conflict with an Iron Maiden release, there’s no conflict with anything else. But the management I had at the time said no they wanted it for July, so I missed all the festivals that year, rushed things through, and when I did deliver it on time, on the budget, they said they’re not going to put it out now until later on. I was stuffed twice, and I could never recover from that. So when we got this band together we were not going to listen to anybody else. We will decide when we do things…

OneMetal:Plus you have your own label…

Blaze:Yeah we have our own label and we’ve said right, we are working on an album now and it will come out in February. That is it. If cattle prods have to be used on drummers to get them to get their parts right, then it will be done (laughing). .. People will be tortured. That’s what we’ve done, it’s going to come out on time, and it’s going to be fantastic, and it will have been done on our own terms. Our tour will go with our album… which isn’t rocket science, it’s what you are supposed to do. But since I have done my own thing post Maiden, none of the things have fitted into place until now. So we really have high hopes that we really have something to talk about with The Man Who Would Not Die, the live album and the new one Promise and Terror in February. Everything we are doing we are doing back to the roots, we are doing the small venues all over the UK and Europe where people haven’t got to drive for a couple of hours, haven’t got to pay a fortune for parking… could even go on the bus. We will be playing in a venue that they recognise, and when people see all of these things up close and personal that’s when our music comes to life.

The way we work in this band is not “Let’s get huge gigs and play to thousands of people”. It’s more like “We will convert one fan at a time”. If we just get one more person at each gig… but if we get a big festival then that’s fantastic. But its one person at a time, if they listen with an open mind they will understand and get such an intense passionate vocal and something that is not afraid. We are not trying to conform to any trend, we are not trying to be fashionable. We’re just being what we are as these five musicians in a band. When people understand all that, it seems to go down really well.

OneMetal:Talking of cattle prodding drummers and electrocuting them… Of course I am all in favour of that…

Larry:Yeah you would be (laughing)

OneMetal:I mean you have Larry here now, and the last time I caught up with him, he was in Chokehold and he was raving about the new Blaze line up… clearly he knew something we didn’t… now he’s jumped ship and joined you. Now he has gone and written a book about you… do you feel like you have your own personal stalker?

(all laughing)

Blaze:I think it’s worse than that… it’s much worse than that. I’ve let him stay at my house (laughing) so it’s really bad. It’s worse than a stalker because a stalker is generally outside your house looking in… he’s actually inside the house doing whatever he wants, leaving his drums everywhere.

Larry: Now I’ve done the book I’ll leave(laughing)

OneMetal:Yeah, are you going to go and find some other unsuspecting subject? How is the book actually doing?

Larry: Yeah, doing good doing good, it seems to be going down really well .

OneMetal:Anyway back to the band. You are having a few problems getting the other guys over and having stand ins. How are you going to progress from this?

Blaze:Oh well we are just going to carry on. The only thing we have left to do on the album is the lead vocal and the mixing. So all of the main parts we have just worked around and it doesn’t seem to have been detrimental in any way. It doesn’t affect the album recording. It’s just a very inconvenient unpleasant fact of life. When we put it together we put it together for musical reasons not for practical reasons. We wanted to have the best music we could have and work with the best musicians we could, to make the sound we wanted. We didn’t think if everybody lives within a 15 mile radius then that will be a great advantage for the band, but it probably would have sounded c**p.

OneMetal:Are you bringing in anybody from the outside?

Blaze:We’ve got a couple of friends that we phone up when we have these problems. One of which is Dirty Dave, as you know former Chokehold guitarist and the other one is Luke from Fury

OneMetal:It seems quite incestuous with all the band relationships.

Blaze:It is yeah…

OneMetal:I thought there was always more of an inter-band rivalry, but it seems to be always borrowing each other, shack up with each other, stalk each other… write books…you know?

Blaze:Yeah yeah (laughing)

Larry:Yeah that’s why we don’t let many people backstage (laughing)

OneMetal:Well that just about sums it all up for us… although I have to ask you who are you looking forward to seeing?

Blaze:Benediction and Beholder for definite, and although they have been around for ages I have never seen Anvil. Oh and as always Saxon… I’ve toured with Saxon, I’ve seen them so many times and you think I’m not going to watch them this time, but you hear the first song and you are hooked… then it’s the end of the set. I really enjoy seeing Saxon.

OneMetal:Yeah well you and Saxon have similarities, you are both from the school of the bastions of British rock. Is there ever a time when you just thing, s**t, I’m getting too old for this?

Blaze:No no, never… I think I just worry about not getting enough work in. Never think I am getting too old, I’m not ageist at all. I get really offended when people say “oh you dont want to be doing this when you are sixty”. I just think well what else would I want to be doing? What else would you want to do when you are doing something that you love ? Rock and Roll and entertainment in general has got a great history of people just carrying on until they feel like stopping, not until someone decides they should stop. I think that’s a really really good thing. In metal in particular you keep going as long as people are interested in hearing you and your ideas are still good.

OneMetal:Excellent, good on you. The final question for you today though. What are your three top albums of the year?

Blaze:Oh I dont know….My album, my album, my album (laughing)

OneMetal:What about you Lawrence?

Larry: Erm Motorizer, Motorhead, Saxon’s new one is pretty good, and I am anticipating the new Slayer one being b****y good. Everyone says its the bollocks. I havent heard it yet, but the last one was awesome. Yeah there’s quite a few good ones out at the moment.

OneMetal:Excellent, thanks guys… good luck with the show and we’ll catch up with you next year.