Intervista Magnum (Bob Catley)
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Hi Bob, how are you doing? How is the tour going?
It’s going extremely well, thank you.
Very good, yes, we did three weeks in the UK, which went great, then we played in Holland a couple of days ago, the first show of 25 in Europe.
Tonight is the second show in Europe, it’s going great, we’ve got three in Sweden, one in Norway, then we’re going down to Munich in Germany, we’ll do 13 shows only in Germany and some other countries, then we get back to England on April the 19th and we just found out that we’re going to be playing the Birmingham Symphony Hall, and that’s going to be filmed.
So, yeah, it’s going pretty good, thanks you!
I took a look at your recent setlists and I’ve seen what new songs you’re playing. The quality of the new album is very high and I think it could easily compete with your classic albums; have you considered playing it in full?
You never know in the future, we’ve done things like that, but not at the moment, no.
We do four songs from the album which is enough, you’ve got to keep the balance within the show, of course, you know, recently recorded ones and the old stuff.
To do the album in full, it sounds great, yeah, maybe in 10 years’ time when we’re really old [laughs] we do it then.
“Lost on the Road to Eternity” shows, as usual for Magnum, a great care for the lyrics, always deep and never trivial. Can you tell me more about them?
Tony writes all the lyrics, yeah, and I’m happy to sing them for him.
Some songs, most songs kind of tell a story, and some songs don’t tell a story, they just make a statement.
Some are kind of politically motivated, and some others are just about ’s personal experience in life and stuff like that.
And some songs are love songs, not slippy drippy slippy honey honey honey, I love you, I love you, they are about love, a song called ‘Without Love’, which was the last single, it is totally about love, but is about lonely people, they may have everything going for them, but there’s no love in their life, it makes you quite lonely, I think.
We would be nothing without love, you know.
The title track, ‘Lost on the Road to Eternity’, is about being…sometimes we all get a bit lost [chuckles] in life, you know, the road is something people can picture in their mind, but you will get lost in life sometimes, I know I’ve been, and you get somebody to pick you up and put you back on the right track.
I love singing Tony’s lyrics, I’ve done it for most of my life [laughs], most of my professional life.
I wouldn’t be me without Tony’s songs and lyrics, something to sing, not just going through the words, actually meaning what you say, and you have to mean it, or not go there [laughs] it’s not for the faint-hearted some of those songs, songs like ‘Les Morts Dansants’, ‘How Far Jerusalem’, and we are still doing them.
And that’s what makes Magnum, Magnum, you know, stuff like that.
In the title-track of the album you have Avantasia’s Tobias Sammet, how did collaboration happen? Was it a way to reciprocate your work with Avantasia, or was it more coincidental?
It’s more than a coincidence, this was meant to be, believe me!
I’ve done several Avantasia albums over the past few years, as people may, or may not know, and Tony, Tony Clarkin, songwriter, guitarist, producer in the studio, he’s everything to the band, he said, “I’ve got this song that I’ve got an idea for and I think it’s perfect for a duet, what about asking Tobias if he would be interested in singing the other part of the duet?”, like I’ve done with him for Avantasia.
So we got in touch with him and he said, “Yeah, you bet!”, but in a German accent [laughs], he’s great, he’s a lovely man, lovely guy, so he gave us his voice: we sent over the tune, “This is where we’d like you to sing”, something like this.
I take a part, he takes a part, and then we come together in the chorus as a duet, and it worked great!
He sent his voice back to us, because he was on tour with Edguy at the time, so he couldn’t actually be with us, he said, “I’d rather be there, like you do Bob, next to Tony telling me what to do and how to do it, but I’m on tour, so here’s my voice anyway”.
That’s how it happened, and it works fantastic, I think.
I hope Edguy and Avantasia fans will get to hear it and maybe enjoy that track on the album.
Also, he’s going to be singing with us on that song at the Birmingham Symphony Hall, I believe, that’s the idea, that’s the plan.
I hope that actually happens, because that would be a wonderful thing to do.
An integral part of your albums, and their magic, lies in Rodney Matthews’ artworks. What is the meaning of the cover of this last album?
It’s kind of depicting what I was saying earlier about being lost in life and you don’t know which way to go sometimes.
Tony went down to see Rodney Matthews and said, “I’ve got this idea, make it very colourful and use characters that people would recognise, make it more fairy-tale, Walt Disney, nothing offensive, something children could enjoy looking at, as well as grown-ups, characters coming of the woods, characters from the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland and stuff like that, all bumping into each other, “Oh, where do we go?!” [laughs].
And the little boy, with his back to the viewers, who’s been on previous Magnum albums, so there is a thread there; this little kid is still there, he hasn’t grown up at all, he must be Peter Pan or something.
And this character is there like, ”Follow me, I’ll show you the way”, so it’s a colourful, artistic way of portraying getting lost in life sometimes, but making it more fun to look at than just someone looking, “Uhm, okay, in what…?” you know, it’s more appealing to anybody who loves those characters in those films and books.
Listening to your music the listener can get lost in grand, magical worlds evoked by your melodies and lyrics. Do you think today’s music is still able to have that effect on the fans, or is it something that was lost by the newer bands?
I don’t know of many bands who have a songwriter like Tony Clarkin, I think he’s quite unique.
He lets me be his storyteller, as people say, which I love doing, but the words come from his imagination and his pen.
I think you’d be pushed to find many other bands and songwriters like Tony, I think he’s quite underrated as an artist, I think he deserves a medal for longevity, I’d like one as well ‘cause I can’t be left out [laughs], we’ve been going for a long time and he keeps getting better and better over the years.
I don’t know of many…I think he’s quite unique, you know, and I think that any band would be proud to have Tony as a songwriter, so I think you’d have to look far, very far to find somebody just like Tony and other bands would say that we are quite unique, I think.
I’m told I have a quite unique voice as well, so you put the two together, and I think that Magnum as a whole are quite unique in the Rock circle of people, you know?
I think that’s where our success comes in, because we are different than most other bands, you know, I’ve got records by bands and they are quite similar to other records by bands, you know, but I think we are quite different, quite unique.
The process of producing and recording an album has changed through the years, what are the most different things today, compared to the Eighties?
Well, technology has moved on a lot since then, I think.
We have a great, big desk in the studio and we just put cups of tea on it and we don’t actually use it, it’s all computers like bands do these days.
We have the big speakers, and we use the little speakers, the [Yamaha] NS10s, and if it sounds good on the NS10s we put it on the big speakers and it sounds magnificent.
Tony’s very up with the modern technologies, and we have a great engineer, Sheena Sear who’s our engineer in the studio in Wolverhampton where we recorded.
Technology is great, I don’t understand half of it, I’m from the old days when you had big knobs and dials and levers and, “uuuh”, steam coming out of the machinery, “Let’s make a record!” and it would take forever, wind the tape back and forth.
Now when Tony gets an idea he can try it instantly, that’s the difference, before it used to take ages to wind the tape and by the time you are ready to try the idea you’re gone off, it would be, “Oh, I’ve got a different idea now”.
I think we get better, more interesting albums, production-wise, because technology definitely is there to help you.
I think some people can let it overtake them and it uses them, but we use the technology, we don’t use that silly thing that a lot of Pop records use for the voice, and all the voice sounds the same these days, I hate it, I think it’s awful.
That’s abusing technology, I think, but that the fashion with Pop music, thank God we are not a Pop band.
It’s a good thing to have technology, but we are still a Rock band, so we use just a little bit of it when want to enhance what we are doing.
Looking back at your career, do you think Magnum would have deserved more recognition and more success?
Yes, I do!
Come on, I’ve said Tony deserves a medal!
I’m joking [chuckles].
We’ve been going for over 40 years now, so…we deserve more success?
I don’t know about that, that down to the fans, that’s for them to say, not us.
We do what we do, I think we do it very well, I think we are respected within the business, I think the name Magnum stands for something classy, I hope, not rubbish, not a joke.
I think we have…not a great image, we never have had, but it’s about the music with us, it’s not about how you cut your hair and other silly stuff.
I think we’ve had a certain amount of success over the years, in the Eighties especially, we were doing the big arenas and stuff, we were up there, and I think we’re trying to get back there, but at least attain a level of respectability where we can do proper tours, come across good on stage and sound good and the lights look really good for the fans, so we can give our fans and anybody else who wants to come along, please do, but we can give them a proper show.
As long as people keep coming back to see us, that is success in itself, we don’t need things on the walls to say, “I have been successful”, I’ve got Gold Records and Silver Records on the wall at home, but there’s more to success than just having a Gold Record on your wall, it’s a feeling with the fans that keep you going, I would say that in itself is success, I believe.
That was it, thank you so much for you time.
You’ve been very nice, very nice to meet you.
Davide Sciaky & Eric Nicodemo