If you’ve ever donned your “Denim and Leather” or experienced the “Heavy Metal Thunder,” then you are probably a fan of the British band Saxon. Saxon has been a staple on the heavy metal scene since their self-titled 1979 debut album and have played an integral role in music history since the onset of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Legendary albums “Wheels of Steel” and “Strong Arm of the Law” garnered them an army of fans and worldwide recognition. Fast forward to 2018 and the band is still going strong with “Thunderbolt,” their 22nd album which was just released. Saxon is also planning a major year of touring hitting Europe and then making the trip across the Atlantic to tour with Judas Priest here in the US. BackstageAxxess had the privilege of chatting with lead vocalist Biff Byford to find out all about the making of the new record and the upcoming tour. Please join us for a conversation with a true metal legend, Biff Byford.
KE: Hello Biff! How are you?
BB: Good, good
KE: First of all I wanted to wish you a happy belated birthday.
BB: (Laughter) Well, thank you very much.
KE: So tell us a little about the new Saxon album coming out, “Thunderbolt.”
BB: Apart from the fact that is fantastic (Laughing)
KE: Well, we already knew it would be!
BB: It’s our 22nd album and we’re looking forward to it being released in a couple weeks I think so yeah. It’s a collection of songs, no concept beyond the album. It’s just we write songs basically and all of the different things. It’s just a selection of what we feel to be classic metal tracks really.
KE: How does the writing process within Saxon?
BB: Well, it changes from album to album and the last album and this album me and the bass player got some ideas together for the original ideas. Then we got the band together in a room and hammered it out a bit. It generally starts with me and one other guy, either the bass player or the guitarist or sometimes the drummer will write some things. But usually it all goes through me and then I choose the guitar you know riffs and things that I really like that inspire me to write lyrics and we take it from there really.
KE: There are a lot of really interesting stories within the songs specifically on tracks like “Nosferatu” and “Sons of Odin.” Is storytelling something that Saxon tries to consciously incorporate into the songs?
BB: Well, yes, me really. I write all of the lyrics but yeah I’m always looking for stories you know, interesting stuff to write about. I mean in the sort of rock genre you can do songs about Dracula and the Vikings and things. It’s quite acceptable to do that. I mean it sounds great. Those things fit the music really well.
KE: You also have a Motorhead tribute song on the record, “They Played Rock and Roll,” which of course takes on even more meaning with the recent passing of “Fast” Eddie Clarke. Tell us how that particular song came about.
BB: Yeah, yeah. I wrote that song quite a long time ago. I pulled out the idea for it before Lemmy died in you know 2015. So it’s just a song about 1979 when we did our first tour with Motorhead with the “Bomber” tour. They were pretty big in the U.K. at that time and we’d travel on the bus with them and we learned a lot of things about rock and roll from Motorhead. We became friends and have been friends ever since really. It’s just a song about that and the political you know environment in England in 79 and 80. So the song’s really about where we came from. So yeah I suppose since there’s no original members left of Motorhead so it’s very poignant. We had scheduled it to be our next single and we asked the fans on Facebook what they thought and 99.9% of all fans thought that it was a good idea to put it out. I didn’t want to be disrespectful, you know what I mean?
KE: Sure
BB: So that single came out on video on the 22nd of January and it’s available for download so that’s what we’re doing with that.
KE: What about the song “Predator” which has Johan Hegg on it? How did that collaboration come about?
BB: It does yeah. He’s a good mate Johann and I love the band. I love Amon Amarth. I love the Vikings stuff so yeah. I wrote the song, wrote the lyrics. It’s quite melodic the verse so I wanted to do a low octave so I sang a low octave and then I had the idea to get somebody else to sing it and Johan was my first choice. He’s a great singer and you can hear what he’s singing. So yeah I sang him the song and he said yeah I will do it. Let’s do it. He just did it in Sweden in the studio there, his studio so it worked out really well. I love what he’s done with it and you know we mixed it so he had his own lines as well as me and I like that. It’s a little bit controversial given the fact that it’s you now more modern style but I like it.
KE: Let’s talk production of the record. You brought in Andy Sneap as producer, what does he bring to the overall Saxon sound?
BB: He took on full production credit on this album. On the last album we sort of did it together. The album before that he mixed the album. So it gradually got to a point with Saxon where you know I trust him know to take control of the band when we’re recording so he did a great job you know. He did Saxon and then he went straight on to Judas Priest so the two albums come out quite close to each other that Andy did and obviously we’re going to tour together in America so it’s pretty good really. It’s looking really good.
KE: Fantastic. Now tell me about the artwork on the album. It’s so cool and I love that it’s important to the band. It’s such a lost art nowadays and really takes me back to the classic vinyl days of the 70’s and 80’s.
BB: I think it came out great, really classic. You know we’ve got cassettes for sale on this album and I just got a cassette, looks fantastic. I just love the way it sits on the cassette. It looks really good. It’s a classic oil painting, a very large canvas so when it’s reduced down to vinyl size and CD size it just looks incredible. The artist Paul Raymond Gregory has done quite a lot of our albums. The first album he did was Crusader and a lot of albums since then. We have a great relationship with Paul and he has that really great sort of gothic sort of old school classic rock look about his art.
KE: Absolutely. It fits with the band really well.
BB: That’s the idea.
KE: Tell us about the upcoming tour.
BB: We’re doing a few shows in Europe just to support the album release and then we head off to the U.S. with Priest and then we’re doing a couple shows in South America with them. Then we come back to U.K to do some festivals in U.K. and Europe and then we’re going back out again in Europe in October, November, and December for a much bigger tour. We’re pretty busy all year on this really. It’s the year of the “Thunderbolt.”
KE: Do you enjoy playing the larger festivals?
BB: We like doing festivals. It’s really great. We should try and get some festivals in America really. We’re not really on the festival circuit in America so that would be great. We love playing festivals. I mean we get to headline a lot of them so we can put on a big crazy show with pyro and all sorts of things, eagles, and castles. It’ a lot of fun, good fun.
KE: What can fans expect this time out? What do you have in store for them?
BB: Well we’re going to play some songs off the new album obviously and we’re gonna play some big hits, “Denim and Leather,” things like that, Wheels of Steel,” you know. We’re playing as many songs in the sets as we can possibly get really. That’s the thing.
KE: Saxon has been around a long time and the band is really a staple of heavy metal. What is it about Saxon that has allowed the band to achieve such longevity in an industry that is ever changing?
BB: I think a lot of it is the songs really. We’ve always tried to write great songs that we hope people will like. I think our live concerts are usually really great and I think that counts for a lot.
KE: It absolutely does! Thanks so much Biff for taking the time to talk with us today and best of luck with the new album and tour.
BB: Thank you, thank you very much!
We would like to thank Doug Weber from New Ocean Media for setting up the interview with Biff. For more information on Saxon including their new album “Thunderbolt,” please go to: Saxon.
