Intervista Saxon (Biff Byford)
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Hi Biff, how are you doing?
Good, yeah!
I’d like to start talking about “Thunderbolt”: first of all, you’ve been on the road supporting it for a while now, how did your fans receive the new songs?
Great!
It seems like people picked their favourites songs, you know? ‘Thunderbolt’, obviously…’Nosferatu’, people like, ‘The Secret of Flight’…yeah, people picked their favourites.
The album is doing very well, sold a lot of copies, downloaded a lot, streams and all that, so we are very happy with the album.
On ‘Predator’ you have Johan Hegg of Amon Amarth as a guest, a band quite far from Saxon’s genre; how did this collaboration came to be?
Well, he’s a friend of mine, Johan, we’ve done a few albums in the same place with Andy Sneap, I just wanted a different slant on one of the songs, I did the low voice on the demo and I thought it would be cool to have one of the guys that sings in a deep voice to do it with us, so…Johan was my first choice and he said, “Yeah”.
And the video seems to be doing very well.
This album came out 2 years and a half after “Battering Ram”; for your whole career you’ve always been very prolific never letting more than 2 or 3 years pass between albums, is it any harder to come up with new music today, after many years of activity?
No, the thing is that you have to prepare yourself better these days, you have to spend a bit more time on the writing just to make sure that everything is great and spend a bit more time…’cause when you’re younger, we were just throwing everything at the wall, whereas now we tend to not record anything unless we really like it.
Even though you are not 20 anymore you keep having a very busy touring schedule and, after having seen you guys quite a few times over the last few years, I know you can still sing beautifully and rock the stage every night; do you have any particular routine to stay in shape?
No, not really, no routine.
It’s just nature.
I try to keep fit when we’re not touring, it’s all about stamina, really, that’s the secret with being a singer, strong lungs and strong legs [chuckles].
You know, I don’t have any routine, really, I might have a glass of wine and that’s it!
In recent years many bands retired, both older bands like Black Sabbath and younger bands that have been influenced by Saxon such as Slayer and Mötley Crüe, how does that make you feel? Have you ever thought of retiring, or this is a thought still far from your mind?
No, we’re not ready yet!
We haven’t thought of that.
I think circumstances dictate whether you retire or not, I know Slayer have had some problem in the latest years at one point, so…I don’t know, I mean, Slayer are a great band…no, we are not ready yet, no.
Changing topic for a second, I remember a few years back you met Lady Gaga and both you and she were quite enthusiastic about that; in many occasions she claimed to be a Rock and Metal lover, and some metalheads dismissed it as a pose. You spent some time with her, do you think her love for Metal is genuine?
I think she used to be in a Rock revue when she first started, with her friends called…Lady Starlight, actually, so they used to do a Rock revue and I think they used to play Judas Priest, bit of Saxon, bit of Motörhead, things like that.
I think she definitely is a Rock fan, a Metal fan…I don’t know if she’s a fan of the hardcore stuff but she definitely is a fan of the Eighties Metal so, yeah, I don’t think it’s a pose.
She came to see me because she likes the band, basically, that’s it.
And I was there to see her because I was taking my daughter to see her, and my daughter didn’t go so I went with our agent who was taking his daughter, I thought, “Let’s just go, we’re all ready to go, let’s go!”; we were just in the bar, backstage in the O2 having a drink and the manager came and said, “She’d like to meet you both”, so we went down there.
Did you enjoy the show?
It was pretty good, yeah, pretty good, it was all that ‘Paparazzi’ stuff, all that sort of really catchy Pop stuff, it’s a bit like Abba really…really catchy stuff, yeah, I liked it!
I like all music, as long as it’s catchy and it’s got a good groove, you know.
A big trend of the last decade is reunions and special shows with guests or playing full albums; have you thought of doing any special show involving your former band-mates?
No, not at the moment, we’re gonna do some 40th anniversary shows next year…you never know, anything could happen, we’ll see.
Can you already tell me anything about those special shows?
No. [Laughs]
Every now and then some musician comes out saying something along the lines of “Rock is dead”; looking at the present situation on one hand we have huge, extremely successful festivals like Wacken and Hellfest, but on the other hand while big bands such as Black Sabbath retire it looks like no one has got what it takes to replace them. How do you feel about the Metal scene state today?
For us it’s quite good at the moment, we’ll have 2000 in here tonight so…yeah, for us it’s good…[Biff’s phone rings interrupting us]
Is there any new band you feel could be the next big thing?
I don’t really know, actually, because there are so many different genres of Rock, isn’t there?
I don’t know, things pop up out of the blue, you can never tell who’s gonna come through, there are so many bands, aren’t they?
You have a lot of bands now that are a bit like Rival Sons, that type of things, Black Stone Cherry, there are a lot of bands doing that sort of slower, groovy, Blues stuff.
Then you got a little bit of a Punk revival going on in England, my son’s in that sort of teenage Punk thing going on there so, I don’t really know.
It’s all down to songs for me, somebody writes a big song then they’ll be a big band, I believe that.
Any young band you like, in particular?
[Pauses a few seconds] Well, the bands that I like are already quite big, I don’t really know anybody that’s like nothing at the moment, I think I know my son’s band and a few other bands, but they’re not really in our genre, they’re not Metal bands.
I don’t know about Metal bands, the latest bands I know coming up at the moment…let me see, who’s around at the moment…Powerwolf are doing really well, they’ve been around a couple of years now, they’re doing really well.
There are a few bands coming up, they’re all in the same mode, they’ve got some good songs, Powerwolf, but for somebody to come take Black Sabbath’s place…I don’t know.
It would have to be somebody that is very, very innovative.
The music business today is very different from when you first started: new technologies, everyone can produce their own music at home with just a computer, Spotify…there’s a lot going on.
From you side of things, and comparing it to the past, what is better today and is there anything you think changed for the worse?
I think things can be very corporate when you’re really big big, we are not really big big, so it doesn’t really affect us.
I think for us things haven’t changed as much as they have for other bands, because we’re still trying to sell a lot of physical products, we spend a lot of time on the artworks, so we’re not really…we spend a lot of time on Facebook as well, so we’re in that too, but as far as recording music we’re still doing basically the same, drum, bass, guitar, do some vocals later.
For us technology…it’s just become easier with Pro Tools and things like that, a lot of the software and the plugins, that’s changed.
Everything is accessible now, that’s the thing, you can video a band in a concert, you can stream it if you like, that side of things have totally changed the business, I think, it makes music more accessible.
Saxon fans can go on Facebook and can see…us twenty minutes ago having dinner, you know, that’s how it is now…I think it’s a good thing, I’m not one of those older guys that think it’s been bad, I don’t think “Rock is dead”, I think it just morphed a bit.
People still want their guitar heroes, and they still want great bands, and they still want to listen to the old songs.
Some things are changed for the better, and a few things are changed for the worse.
You mentioned that everyone can video a concert today: there are bands that forbid their fans to do that, how do you feel about it?
That’s a bit strange, I must say, that’s a bit strange…I can’t see how you can stop that without having a fight with everybody in the fucking audience.
We don’t have any restrictions on filming so…you know, we’ve never made millions and millions of dollars, so we’ve got nothing to lose, it’s different, you know what I’m saying?
If you used to make millions of dollars and things have changed and you’re not making as much money now, then I suppose your concept of that is that it’s not as good as it was, if you know what I mean.
But we’ve never made millions so, for us we’re still working class boys out there playing our music, really.
TrueMetal.it is Italian, so our readers we’ll see you guys very soon…
Yeah, we’re on our way down there.
…so, if you have a message for them…
Yeah, we’re coming and…we love Italy, back in the Eighties Italy was our craziest country in the world, we regularly played to 15.000 people a night down there, it was crazy!
We have so many great stories about Italy back in the day, we love Italian people, we love the cities, we love the culture, we like Italy a lot.
Interview by Davide Sciaky