Kill Devil Hill unleashes its 'War Machine'

New metal act features legendary drummer Vinny Appice, ex-Pantera and Down bassist Rex Brown

By Peter Lindblad

Kill Devil Hill's new S/T release in 2012

A sonic voyage of the damned replete with eerie, hell-spawned imagery, doom-laden riffs and apocalyptically heavy grooves, Kill Devil Hill’s self-titled debut LP is the product of fiendish musical minds. Priests might be tempted to conduct an exorcism for its creators, but ex-Black Sabbath and Dio drummer Vinny Appice – the guiding force behind the new fearsome foursome Kill Devil Hill, which counts former Pantera and Down bassist Rex Brown among its members – wouldn’t be a good candidate for such an ordeal. He’s not at all evil and there’s no demon inside him trying to consume his soul. At least on the phone he didn’t seem to be tortured by such things. His biggest worry was a distracting girlfriend causing him to lose focus and prevent him from providing an articulate accounting of the group’s mission.

Augmented by newcomers Dewey Bragg, the powerful singer whose huge vocal roar sounds as if it could swallow the earth in one big gulp, and guitar wizard Mark Zavon, Kill Devil Hill sets out to dig up the remains of early Black Sabbath and “Man in the Box”-era Alice in Chains on its gothic first album, which drops May 22 via SPV/Steamhammer. Reanimating their bodies with darkly contoured melodies and skin-piercing hooks laid over the solidifying cement of Brown’s thick bass and Appice’s punishing, dynamic drumming, tracks like the devastatingly serpentine “Rise From the Shadows,” the haunting “Up in Flames” and the truly spooky “Gates of Hell” capture the sludgy creepiness of Sabbath in their prime. Meanwhile, the aggressive, gripping battle cry “War Machine” could be the soundtrack for the inevitable faceoff between heaven’s angels and Lucifer’s legions. A wicked seductress covered in stained-glass guitars and garish lingerie, “Voodoo Doll” is a head-spinning den of sin and iniquity, and “Old Man” sees deep inside your soul and castigates your wickedness with a brutal chorus and bloody, chopping riffs.

Kill Devil Hill has arrived and not a moment too soon. A massive, gloomy fortress of heavy metal that ought to be sitting on a mountain surrounded by towering pine trees, Kill Devil Hill’s latest is a powerhouse record and a warning to anyone who would doubt the abilities of Appice and Brown to reinvent themselves. Appice talked about Kill Devil Hill and touched on his days with Sabbath and Dio in this recent interview.

This new project you’ve got is something else. Explain to me how Kill Devil Hill got started.

Vinny Appice: Well, actually, it was a funny way it started. We came off the “Heaven and Hell” tour and I had to have shoulder surgery because I was killing my shoulder on the giant drum set. So what I did was, right before the shoulder surgery, I recorded 13 drum tracks for this download thing on the Internet. And then right after I did that, this hospital called and said, “We can get you in early. Why don’t you come down and we can do the surgery next week.” So I had these drum tracks and then after the surgery, I’m in a sling. I can’t play. So after the surgery, I’m in this sling. And I’m sitting there and I’m going, “I can’t play. I can’t do anything,” ‘cause the sling was going to be six weeks and I couldn’t play the drums for a couple months. So I listened to the drum tracks one morning, and I said, “Wow, these are really cool!” So I called Jimmy Bain (former bassist for Rainbow and Dio), a good friend, and he came over. So I said, “Why don’t you play to these and do what you do?” So he started playing, loves it and then I got word that there was this guitar player, Mark Zavon, who lives close by to me. And I thought, “Well, this will be a good way to see how he works and how he plays.”

So I invited him down one day and I engineered it, laid guitars down on some of the stuff Jimmy did, and it was really taking shape. Mark had a lot of great ideas, and I said, “Well, this is cool. Do you know any good singers?” And he played me a CD of Dewey, Dewey Bragg, of the song “Hangman,” which is on our record. I had never heard of the guy. I loved the way he sounded, loved his voice, it’s modern, it sounds cool and dark. So that’s how it came about. And eventually, it didn’t work out with Jimmy. We tried a couple other people, and I heard Rex was looking for something, so I knew Rex from way back, and I called Rex and messengered him some of the songs. He loved ‘em, played bass on ‘em on the demos and we thought, “This is really cool. This is really taking shape now.” We were able to get a deal with those demos, and Rex committed to the band. And we started grouping everybody’s ideas together, writing more songs, and then that’s the way it came together in a pretty interesting way. It all started with some drums.

Some of the songs you’ve been involved with over the years, have they started with drums or is that an unusual situation?

VA: Well, “War Machine” … it’s almost the real drum track that I played. I played that tempo, and I went, “Boom.” I started with a fill … the fill is not on the record, it just slams in. And those parts, I would play 16 bars and then I would change. And then, I would go back to the feel. And I was playing it in my head, like it was a song. And a lot of “War Machine” is almost identical to the track I played originally. And a couple of them are like that. Some of the rest are newer that we wrote later on. So it was interesting that they were written with the drums.

Talking about your past with Rex, I was reading an interview with him in Revolver magazine about him and Phil [Anselmo, from Pantera] would sit behind Geezer Butler’s rig on the Dehumanizer tour and watch you drum while smoking a joint. Do you remember much of that at all?

VA: Yeah, it was Black Sabbath and Pantera. We played a number of festivals together and they would go on, and then we’d go on. And they’d all be sitting by the side of the stage or behind Geezer’s amp, and they would watch us play because they were big Sabbath fans. And he said, “I was watching you, man, beating the sh*t out of those drums.” And they were always there; Phil was great. They loved Sabbath, so it was cool and it gave us energy. There they are over there watching us play, so we got off on it, too. It was pretty funny.

What were your impressions of Pantera back then?

VA: They were just bad-ass, man – a powerful, strong band. So much energy … they just slammed it to the wall. So I enjoyed them and I watched them, too, before we went on those shows when we arrived on time, I was watching Pantera. So, they were awesome, man … absolutely – slamming it to the wall.

Did you have any inkling back then that you could one day work with Rex or any of those guys?

VA: I never thought about it. I just liked the way Rex played. That’s one thing that stood out was his sound. It was so big and hip and really the foundation under the band. I always liked the way he played. He reminded me of someone between Geezer and Jimmy Bain. And I loved the sound, and I never thought that we’d play together. I just thought, well, it’s a little bit different types of music, you know – good friends, good buddies, but I hadn’t really thought about it. I admired the way they played, and especially Rex.

And then you guys reconnected a bit on the “Heaven and Hell” tour, which Down played on.

VA: Yeah, Down opened for us. We played a lot of dates together, and we went down to Australia, and it was cool. It was cool hanging out. It was a great tour and successful, so it was cool hanging out with friends and being out on tour for that long. There was even talk of, at one time after Ronnie passed away, if we were going to continue, what singers we could use. Phil’s name popped up as a possibility to make another record, but that never happened.

Wow, that would have been something.

VA: Yeah, great to think of it now.

Just before the interview, I was listening to the new album a bit and thinking about Dehumanizer, and I went back and listened to that a little bit. I saw a few similarities. Do you see anything in Kill Devil Hill that relates to Dehumanizer?

VA: Yeah, I understand what you’re saying … like the guitars, very heavy and very heavy riffs, and the drum sounds are a little bigger on Dehumanizer. There are some similarities to it. And I think there are some similarities with the old style Sabbath, the early Sabbath. And then there’s a little bit of Dio in there, too. Dewey is a very melodic singer, very heavy and dark. But then he hits on those melodies. Some of them remind me of what Ronnie had done. So it was kind of a combination of those things, and some of it’s like Alice in Chains. It reminds me a lot of Alice in Chains and Pantera. There are a lot of little ingredients in there, you know. And it wasn’t like we sat there and said, “Let’s do this so that it sounds like this.” It just happened that way with all the bands and the combination of them.

You mentioned the Alice in Chains comparison that’s come up a bit in regard to Kill Devil Hill. I know Rex was saying in Revolver that he thought Kill Devil Hill was much heavier. That definitely seems to come across in the record.

VA: Well, it does, because the thing with Alice in Chains is, the drums never really played anything more than the feel of the song. I don’t play that way. I play with the riffs more. I think the parts with Alice in Chains … they’re a heavy band, but the harmonies sound more Alice in Chains-y than the band. The band is a little bit heavier, a little more aggressive, but the harmonies in the vocals are what remind you a little bit of Alice in Chains.

Talking about the harmonies and the guitar player, Mark, maybe you haven’t exactly discovered this talent, but as big as your names are – those of yours and Rex – it does seem like he and Dewey are really strong up-and-coming musicians I would think.

Vinny Appice 2012

VA: Yeah, you’re right. When I first got together with Mark and he plugged into … we didn’t have any amps, he plugged into the sound board. I just had a little studio. He plugged in with some pedal things and he got a great sound. And I went, “Yeah, this is cool.” And with Mark, he reminds me of Tony Iommi because he plays good chords, heavy chords. A lot of players are into shredding all the time. They don’t learn how to play chords and the feel, steady, and to make it sound big and heavy. Mark did that I noticed and then we played together live and I noticed that, too. And he’s a great guitar player and he can shred, man. He can shred with the best of them. He’s a killer guitar player, and he’s a great guy. That’s what was important. I was looking for somebody I could work with first. And then he came down, and I went, “Man, he’s f**king awesome.” He’s a great guy, he became a great friend and he’s so into it and so passionate about music, you know. And that could be because he’s always dreamed about something bigger and this is his opportunity to shine. So it just worked out great, and then when we went to do the album, he wanted to do different things on the guitar – some of them I didn’t agree with, but I let him do them, and the outcome was incredible. He did a great job, all those doubling things and effects.

And Dewey … the same thing. He was a guy where all we had to do was come up with some cool, heavy riffs, and we give ‘em to Dewey and he comes up with these great little hooks. And if he didn’t, we’d help him. Mark was a great help, working with the vocals and lyrics, and even me … I’d say, “Why don’t you try something like this, something simple” and so we all threw in together, but Dewey was mainly able to come up with all this stuff. And he looks the part. He’s real … yeah, it’s amazing, and he’s got a great sound to his voice. It was just exactly what I wanted. I didn’t want an ‘80s singer or anything like that. It was supposed to be something new, with some roots to it. So, yeah, it just happened to be assembled, and that’s why I like the way the band came together. It’s not a paper band like, “Let’s get this guy from this band, and this guy from this band,” and it looks good on paper and then you do an album or two and then the band breaks up. It came together and fell together like a band should. And Rex and I want to keep it going. We want to build a career with this band. We think it’s a great band. We have fun together, we play live together, it’s fun, we jam and musically it’s awesome.

That, I think, is great news to everybody because the new album is really something. I just reviewed it and I was blown away by it.

VA: Yeah, and you know, it was produced by us and Warren Riker (Down, Corrosion of Conformity, Sublime, Cathedral). We had a lot of problems along the way, but we sorted them out and we needed somebody to mix it. It was supposed to be mixed and it wasn’t mixed on time, and we were kind of stuck. And then somehow, Rex mentioned this Jay Rustin guy, and we went, “Whoa, look at the credits that Jay Rustin has,” and he just did the last Anthrax release, so we met with Jay and got to know him and he just made it sparkle. And he just gave the whole thing this great … he took all the recordings of all the tracks and just made it happen, made it sonically sound really thick, a nice-sounding record. Jay did a great job. Now if we could only pay him (laughs). If could only make some more money and pay him, that would be great.

I was wondering if you could touch on some of the individual songs on the album. You talked about “War Machine” and that’s such a great opener, really heavy, it’s got that kind of hornets’ nest of guitars that it kicks up. It sounds like that was one of the first songs that you came up with.

VA: Yeah, it was one of the first songs. Like I said, that was a drum track – “boom dap boom, boom dap boom.” That whole thing was a drum track. And then Mark came over and started playing some stuff to it, and then he said, “Let me take it home and work on it.” And then he took it home, and the next day, he put all these guitars on, which was basically the song. And it was like, “F**k man, that kicks ass.” And then Dewey got to it and wrote the lyrics … I think between Mark and Dewey, they wrote lyrics. I’m not sure who wrote that one. And then the melody was there, Dewey came up with the melody and it just came together, like “Whoa, this kicks butt.” So that was a burner, out the door. Great opener, like you said.

I wanted to get your thoughts, too, on “Gates of Hell” and “Rise From the Shadows.” “Gates of Hell” was kind of unusual. In a weird way, it reminded me of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” a real twisted bit of psychedelia.

VA: Yeah, well, you know what? As far as lyrically and stuff, I don’t get into that. It’s the weirdest thing: I don’t hear lyrics. I hear them, but I don’t follow them in the song. And I played with Dio for years and I was with Ronnie for years, and he’d say, “Here’s what I’m trying to say in this song.” And I didn’t hear it until he told me what they were. So he would tell me the lyrics, and he would do that sometimes. “Here I’m doing this and there I’m doing that …” But I don’t hear lyrics. I’m so honed in on the riffs and the band, and I see songs differently, which is good because that’s not my thing. I’m good at what I do. So lyrically, I kind of know where it’s going and the feel, and I hear the words, but I don’t know exactly what he’s saying. And that’s just the way my ears hear. I mean, “Rainbow in the Dark” … how many times did I play that song – three million times or something – and I still don’t know what it’s about. I know some of the lyrics, but that’s about it.

So, “Gates of Hell” was something Mark and I started jamming on. He did these things and had some verses, and the next day we came in and listened to it, and we did this and there were some parts that were missing. Eventually, we added another part, and we thought, “Don’t go to the chorus after the first verse” because it’s such a giveaway to go the chorus. Let’s build it up and then it hangs and drops. And then they’re listening and “Oh sh*t,” now there’s the second verse. And it’s the second verse that goes to the chorus, so it was different things like that. I was just aware when we made the record and wrote these songs to keep … the only thing I thought of was to keep the listener interested by not doing too many verses or [making] the verses long. Ronnie always said, “You don’t want them to figure out where the next part of the song’s going to go.” And you want to keep a little bit of guessing going on in there. Instead of the song going right in on one, you might have done three bars instead of four, so when it comes in, it’s unexpected. So that’s the only thing I was aware of. For some of them that went long, we shortened things up a little bit or [came up with] odd changes or odd fills, a couple fills that are like three bars. See, I like all that weird sh*t and messing things up – that’s my drumming (laughs). “Gates of Hell” is a real moody son of a bitch, and Dewey does some great vocals in it and a great guitar solo and Rex’s bass goes to a dark place.

It’s very sinister. It definitely reminds me of that first Sabbath album. It’s kind of disturbing and unsettling.

VA: The other one, “Up in Flames,” you know we had that. Me and Mark jammed on that, and then similar to “Gates of Hell,” we wanted to keep it up a little more, so on that one, I actually thought of Ringo. And I thought, “Ringo would play this simple” – doo bap, doo doo bap, doo bap, doo doo doo doo [descending] – so I just kept it simple. It was kind of a Ringo effect. I thought Ringo played great, you know.

Was Ringo’s drumming influential for you?

VA: No, not really. It wasn’t influential, but now, when I listen to the Beatles’ stuff, when somebody plays parts of songs and not just beats, then I’m very impressed by that. Anybody can play the beats of a song. When you listen to Beatles songs, there’s a stop, there’s a part where Ringo just plays the toms, there are parts where he maybe just plays the bells … he’s so creative. And that’s what Bill Ward did in the early Sabbath stuff. He didn’t just play beats, he played parts. And that’s impressive when drummers create parts to play musically instead of trying to shred.

As far as playing together with Rex, what do you like about playing with him the most?

VA: It’s cool. First, I love the sound. It’s a giant, giant sound. And then, he doesn’t play busy. You know, he plays solid, and it allows me to go crazy sometimes. So Rex is not a real busy bass player. He’ll play some licks here and there, but then he’ll lay it down. He lays a great foundation and then I’m able to lay into that foundation and I’m able to go a little crazy with crazy fills and stuff, like I’ve always done my whole life. So it works well together, and then when we get down a riff, I’m just locking in with him and it’s huge. And then I just beat the sh*t out of the drums as much as I can and he plays like that, too. The cool thing is we’re both in sync, you know.

You mentioned that you and Rex want to make this a career band. Where do you envision it going?

VA: Hopefully, to a higher level. I won’t say the top, that’s hard. But the fun thing is, it is fun and it’s fun to create. So to have fun and have success on top of it is wonderful. So we hope to build it and tour bigger tours, build up a great fan base and make great music. I’ve done it before, but not with my own band. So this is totally something new for me.

Do you feel a greater sense of ownership with this group than past bands you’ve been with?

VA: Oh, absolutely. Just the way it was with Sabbath and Dio, they’d say, “You’re rehearsing from here to here, flying out here and going to the gigs. Here’s the tour.” Everything was laid out with decisions. Musically, with Dio I was involved more with the ideas and some of the songwriting. And then Sabbath, you know, it was mainly just ideas, ‘cause it was Sabbath, you know? I’d always put my opinion in with some of the things and try to be a part of the band that way. And this is totally different. There are a lot of decisions to be made. I never did this before, so now it is like, when the band makes money, you make money. When the band loses money, you’re part of the loss. So it’s a whole different animal, and I’ve never really done it this way before. It’s like owning your own company. It’s a lot more work.

You mentioned songwriting. Tell me some of the things you learned from your Sabbath experience and with Ronnie that crop up on this record.

VA: Well, like I said from Ronnie, it was try the unexpected. You don’t want the listener to go, “Ah, now I know what’s going into the next part,” and it does. It’s like sometimes when you hear records, they go back and forth, with something in between that. It might be an odd bar or something, or an odd change, a couple chords or hangs, or whatever it is. And then it goes to something that’s anticipated. So a lot of that stuff came from Ron, and Sabbath was more of watching Tony and Geezer play, how they played and how at times Geezer sometimes followed Tony on the riffs and then he wouldn’t follow Tony on the riffs. Tony would be riffing and Geezer would play something else to counter it. And I learned from Sabbath that there was no rest between the songs (laughs). It was like some of the songs were just heavy riffs that would breathe a lot. And in Black Sabbath there was no reason to have to go impress anybody ‘cause they were Sabbath! They breathed and they lived and they crawled. And it was interesting. Sabbath was more just observing stuff. “Why is Tony going there?” Things like that. And then you get it. “Oh, man. That’s weird.” And some of the harmonies Geezer and Tony would play – different notes, changes in chords and sh*t … like, “Whoa!”

How long did it take you to feel like you fit in with Sabbath?

VA: Well, when on the first tour for Heaven and Hell, I fell into that and it was just basically they wanted to continue the tour. So I came in and learned the songs quick, and they were happy with it. They were happy with the feel, and as it went along, there were very few things that were said. Like I never sat down with the whole band and discussed musically what we would do. It was like they just liked the way I played. And only very minor things, like Tony would say it would be interesting to do this or do this a little more open … there wasn’t a lot of stuff. So, I assumed they liked the way I played. And as it went along, when I didn’t have to think about parts of the songs, I became more “Vinnie” in the songs and they liked it. So probably midway through that tour, I felt like, “Yeah, it’s cool.” And then when we did “Mob Rules,” as we wrote “Mob Rules” and recorded it … because we did that before the album released. There are two versions of “Mob Rules,” one that’s for the “Heavy Metal” movie, and when I heard that, I thought, “Oh sh*t, this rocks.” I heard the sound through it, and I thought, “I’m going to fit in real well.”

I know you did some Kill Devil Hill shows in April of 2011, and I was going to ask you what the plans were to tour and what the crowd reaction was like back then.

VA: Yeah, when we toured last year, there wasn’t a big buzz on the band. We weren’t doing interviews. The record wasn’t even … it was recorded, it wasn’t mixed. So we just went out and did the tour, and people in some of the places knew me and Rex were in a band, so they came down. Some of the places didn’t know who the hell was in the band. Some of the places were full, some of the places were … well, there weren’t a lot of people there. But no matter where we played, we started playing and people came to the front and then they took the songs … the thing about these songs is they’re very grasp-able. The riffs are there and they repeat and the harmonies and the vocals. It’s got hooks – there’s a lot of hooks – and it’s heavy and it’s easy to grasp.

Can you imagine when Rush went out for the first time, playing some of those songs and nobody had heard them, but they repeated one riff and the songs are six minutes long. Our songs are more grasp-able, where people can say, “Oh yeah, I get it.” And then when we go to the second chorus, then they get it. It went over well, man, because people had never heard these songs. Now we’ve noticed there are more people at the shows because the re’s a buzz and they’re all waiting for the album, but they grasp these songs. They get it. It’s cool. They get the vibe of the band.

'Fast' Eddie Clarke talks Fastway's new album

Legendary guitarist revives classic metal band 

By Peter Lindblad

The Fastway lineup of 2012

Way back in 1990, Fastway released the abysmal Bad Bad Girls, the overly slick follow-up to the similarly over-produced On Target. For more than 20 years, “Fast” Eddie Clarke – clean and sober for years now after protracted and scary battles with drug and alcohol addictions – has longed to redeem the bluesy metal band he founded with UFO bassist Pete Way in 1982 after getting booted out of Motorhead. And he’s finally done it.

Eat Dog Eat, released in April, is a rousing reminder of just how tight and tough Fastway was when they recorded their screaming fireball of a self-titled debut, the rugged, energetic 1983 classic Fastway. Built with powerful, rock-solid guitar riffs and fluid, economical soloing from Clarke, plus singer Toby Jepson’s expansive howl and Matt E.’s blue-collar drumming, Eat Dog Eat is the album Fastway should have made in the ‘80s. Deeply spiritual in spots, with a surprisingly beautiful acoustic-guitar piece – don’t worry, it eventually turns electric and heavy – that comes out of nowhere, Dog Eat Dog is the early contender for comeback album of the year. Clarke discussed the record and his colorful past in a recent interview.

Listening to the new album, Fastway sounds as good as ever these days.

“Fast” Eddie Clarke: Yeah, I’m really chuffed with it. I must admit I think it’s turned out much better than I at first anticipated. We were trying to get that old-fashioned … not old-fashioned, but that old style feel to it, and it seems to have worked out. We seem to have managed it. And it was by accident, really, because we didn’t actually plan it, but that’s what we wanted. And it just seemed to happen, you know. I was using exactly the same set-up I had 25 years ago, you know, 30 years ago. I was using the same amp, the same guitar, and I’m the same sort of person, just a bit older. So I think that’s the mainstay of it that has kept it kind of honest, and then, of course, Toby comes over the top. He’s done a real good job of it I think.

He’s a really good singer, really diverse and really fits the material well.

Clarke: Yeah, well, we lumped it all together. It was kind of like one of those things where we started writing the record, right, and I mean we sat here in this little studio down in the garden here, and we sat down there … I think we had about three sessions down there. We were just so honest. It was one of those things where you just pick up the guitar and you say, “Oh, how about this one?” And he says, “Yeah, that’s great man.” And it was just one after another. And they just kept coming out. I haven’t had that since the first Fastway album or the Overkill and Bomber albums with Motorhead. You know, that thing where you’ve got so much inside you that it just falls out, you know.

I guess that’s what every musician hopes to feel.

Clarke: Oh, you dream of it. You do, because you think of things like … well, Ace of Spades is okay, but once we got to Iron Fist, we were struggling, you know, with Motorhead. And then, unfortunately, with Fastway, I mean, once we got to the second record, we were struggling. You know, I mean we got away with the second record, although I thought the production lacked on All Fired Up. Some of the songs could have been, should have been better; they should have been stronger, to match up with the first record. And of course, by the time we got to the third one, we were basket cases. The producer had taken over and the record company put strings on it. Oh, it was just dreadful that third Fastway album. I mean, I’m still paying for it (laughs).

You’ve got to go with your gut.

Clarke: Right, but we did have a bit of luck there. We followed it up with Trick or Treat, so that was kind of good, because we went back to our roots more or less. And so, I sort of thought we were coming back together on that one, but the third album was very strange – very strange record all around because we had Terry Manning from the Eliminator album, a top engineer. And he had all these ideas. He wanted to be like Mutt Lange as a record producer. So he put Fairlight drums on it, computer drums, and it all got a bit over the top. And of course, by then, it was out of my hands. Because the second record didn’t do too well, they kind of wrestled the reins from me. Another time, I was kind of bungled all then with the record company and the management having their say. All they care about is money. Well, you know what they’re like? They’re used to business. They want success at any cost, where my motto has always been: if you get success, great, but you must stick to your guns. So, it did f**k me up a bit, and that’s when I really started drinking heavily. I was drinking heavily before, but then I really started drinking heavily (laughs).

Tell me about “Leave the Light On.”

Clarke: We had one in the bag, which was “Leave the Light On,” which was brilliant. We didn’t have any vocals for it, we didn’t have any lead parts, but we just had the backing track, which was the riff and everything. And we played it, and we said, “That’s not bad, is it?” So we stuck a vocal on it. I did some guitar parts and we livened it up, and it turned out to be one of the best tracks on the album. Yeah, but the one we chose, we said, “Which one should we leave off? Let’s leave that one off.” Funny thing is, the first Fastway album, if we’d had 11 songs, the one we would have left off would have been … “Say What You Will.” Yeah, can you believe that?

“Leave the Light On” really sounds like classic Fastway.

The nice thing about that was, when Toby did the vocal, I said, “Oh, this is really starting to sound great.” And then I put the guitars on it, it was like, “Oh, wow!” It was one of those. It was like (snaps fingers three times) … a revelation, because we went up to the studio for just a couple of days to do the mixing and put the guitars and vocals on. It was one of those where you’re doing it, and you’re thinking, “I think we’ve got a real big one here.” (laughs) It’s was just, “Whoa, we really have something here.” And it’s all overshadowed, because of course, the other ten tracks by then had become old hat, because we’d listened to them for 12 months … well, it was about eight months actually. But it took so long to get a record deal. It’s tough out there, isn’t it?

Talk about a couple other tracks on the new record: “Deliver Me” and I think “Dead and Gone” is a different one for you.
Well, “Deliver Me” was kind of the first one out of the bag. We’d come up with that riff and we were sitting there, and I said to the other two, “I’ve got this riff, and I kind of see it a bit like this,” and I started playing it, and so … because we were in the studio, we put the drums down … using that program you get, we put a little drum thing together and stuck it down. And [Toby] was so taken with it, he said, “Man, I’ve got to sing on this.” So, he started singing almost immediately. Before we knew it, in a couple of hours, we had a really good sounding, sort of Zeppelin-esque riff going on. Brilliant, you know? And I think that was one of the sort of catalysts for the rest of the stuff, because you get one groove on you and it inspires you to do more, you know, and dig a bit deeper. But then, after we’d got all that, Toby had this idea. He said, “I’ve got this sort of acoustic thing I’ve been mulling around. He said, ‘I’ve called it ‘Dead and Gone’ for now.” And I said, “Well go on. Let’s have a listen.” Well, he played it, and actually, I said, “I love it.” It’s nice and simple. It’s acoustic. I’ve never had acoustic. I said, “As long as we put something on the other end of it …” (laughs) We can’t have an acoustic track on the album because I don’t like acoustic … well, I’ve never had an acoustic track on a “Fast” Eddie album. Can you imagine Motorhead … although, I think Motorhead did do an acoustic blues on one of their more recent albums. We always said acoustic songs and love songs are a definite no-no. And so we developed the idea of two verses and got the choruses sorted out. Then, I said look, why don’t we save it up there, and then we’ll go into this. And I just went straight into this riff, and whack! That’ll do. And we just built it from there, and it was a bit like “Say You Will” [from the first Fastway album] really because we needed something for the heavy bit. And for me, as you say, it’s an unusual track because it’s a bit of a departure, but it’s a big departure from what I’ve ever done before that. So, it checks the box for me. The list is getting about this big (laughs). I should stop before I start. (laughs)

Looking back on the album, what is it you like most about it?

I like the ease with which it came together and the enjoyment. We really didn’t have any real stress involved. It was a real enjoyable experience, and of course, I haven’t been in the studio for 20 years.

CD Review: Ignitor - Year of the Metal Tiger

CD Review: Ignitor - Year of the Metal Tiger

MVD Audio

All Access Review: B+

Ignitor - Year of the Metal Tiger 2012

None of the major media outlets in this country ever picked up the story, which is surprising considering the omniscience of the 24-hour news cycle. Apparently, though, CNN and Fox News don’t send war correspondents to hell to brave fire and brimstone in the pursuit of the truth as to what exactly happened when Ozzy Osbourne battled the devil for the soul of heavy metal and rock and roll. No, the only account of this epic duel is found on Ignitor’s thundering new seven-song record, Year of the Metal Tiger. As he did in “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” Satan, who seemingly never tires of testing musicians’ bravado, again gets his comeuppance, this time receiving a good thrashing in “Heavy Metal Holocaust,” the rugged bulldozer of an opening track to Year of the Metal Tiger, a fiery album of traditional, hot-wired metal that’s intensely passionate and utterly authentic. Spoiler alert: In subduing the beast, Ozzy is saved from certain doom by someone from his past. Any guesses as to who it is?

So, what to make of Ignitor, these Texans who declare themselves to be, “… warriors and fighters united in metal” in “We are IGNITOR,” the song that brings Year of the Metal Tiger to a smoldering conclusion. Formed by ex-Agony Column guitar shredder Stuart Laurence in 2003, Ignitor – now featuring JasonMcMaster, known best as lead singer for ‘80s metal court jesters Dangerous Toys, on lead vocals – Ignitor flies the “true metal” flag as high and as proud as can be, positioning themselves as battle-tested Spartans defending the faith of their forefathers, namely Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Accept and others of their ilk. But, are they serious? Are they perhaps going a little overboard in their zeal for metal? Or is Ignitor’s tongue firmly embedded in its cheek? It’s hard to know for sure, what with the whole bizarre Ozzy vs. Satan thing – although what a legend to be passed down through generations of metal fans. What is unassailably true about Ignitor is that its burning, rampaging riffs – almost thrash-like in nature – are powerful and weighty, and as for Laurence’s lyrics, delivered with such bravado and edginess by McMaster, they are tremendously entertaining.

Whoever “The Kaiser” is he makes Dos Equis’ “most interesting man in the world” look like a milquetoast accountant who’s never left the suburbs. And when McMaster, in no uncertain terms, states, “Give me a woman that loves the brew and I’ll conquer the world” – “So sayeth the Kaiser/the hammer of truth” – there is little doubt that "The Kaiser, this face-melting backdraft of incendiary guitars and serrated vocals, will do exactly that. Wonderfully intertwined dual guitars wrap themselves around the intro to “The Kaiser” before a battery of ripping guitar riffs pounds away at ruined ramparts of melodic majesty. Enter “Beast in Black,” riding cyclonic blast beats and turbo-charged guitars into the fray, while “Raiders from the Void” slams a battering ram of hard-hitting drums and meaty riffs into McMaster’s Udo-like caterwaul.

That’s Ignitor, always doing the unexpected. And they do it with speed, clutching hooks, dynamic tempo shifts, unrelenting heaviness and winning honesty. When McMaster’s ragged screech can’t quite hit those high notes, there’s no fixing the mistakes, and that makes them all the more dangerous and almost reckless. They gladly leave those errors in if it adds an element of unpredictability, so rare in today's manufactured rock and roll, to Year of the Metal Tiger and their work is better for it.

-            Peter Lindblad

CD Review: Fastway - Eat Dog Eat

CD Review: Fastway - Eat Dog Eat

MVD Audio

All Access Review: B+

Fastway - Eat Dog Eat 2012

Comprised of rock and roll gypsies eager to reinvent themselves, the Fastway that churned out the blazing fireball of blues-stoked heavy metal that was their self-titled 1983 debut was very different from the confused jumble of imitators and Johnny-come-latelys that hung around at the end to watch it all come crumbling down. What had been a bona fide supergroup that combined the DNA of Motorhead, UFO and Humble Pie was, by the late ‘80s, a shell of its former self. And so was “Fast” Eddie Clarke, once a fret-scorching dynamo with Motorhead.

Gone was Jerry Shirley, former drum basher for Humble Pie and Fastway’s indefatigable combustion engine. Gone back home to Ireland was singer Dave King and that screaming alley-cat wail of his. And Pete Way … well, ol’ Pete, a man without a country following his departure from UFO, never even made it on that first record, having been shanghaied for Ozzy Osbourne’s band before Fastway ever stepped foot in the studio – this despite starting Fastway with Clarke in 1982.

That left Clarke as the sole surviving original member, and he was having a bad time of it in rehab by the end of the ’80s. In a palace coup of sorts, Clarke was usurped as Fastway’s leader, and without him in the driver’s seat, the fractured unit produced the disappointingly synthetic On Target and Bad Bad Girls. Released in 1988 and 1990, respectively, they were as schlocky and bloodless as the worst ‘80s metal had to offer. Not that Clarke had much to do with any of it. He was focused on overcoming his addictions, leaving “Fast” Eddie little opportunity to join Fastway in the studio on either one of those records, and his absence was felt. All those synthesizers and computer drums – that was clearly not the “Fast” Eddie way

Influenced heavily by the British blues boom of the 1960s, Clarke’s blazing leads and tough, working-class riffs – on display during Motorhead’s most exciting era and found in the kinetic energy of Fastway’s early days – are born of a taste for simple, uncomplicated music that aims straight for the gut and seeps into the soul. Perhaps that’s why he walked away from Fastway in the early ‘90s, covering the old girl with a tarp and letting rust have at its compromised legacy. He could no longer stand by and watch Fastway devolve into a glossy, fabricated mess.

No one could have predicted Fastway’s glorious 2012 return – not Nostradamus and certainly not the Mayans. For two decades, Fastway remained dormant, but Clarke, possibly troubled by how he’d left things, has restored the abandoned vehicle, and the good news is it is absolutely road worthy. Titled Eat Dog Eat, the latest effort from Fastway is, in many ways, a throwback to a bygone age, one that prized the holy trinity of guitars, drums and bass and couldn’t get enough of good, honest songwriting – elements always in abundance in Clarke’s work, here strengthened by some of the most rigorous grooves and ballsy riffage of his career, not to mention his searing solos. From the stomping funk of “Freedom Song” to the nasty, swinging riffs of the hot-wired “Leave the Light On” – the track most reminiscent of Fastway’s earliest efforts – Eat Dog Eat is made of strong stuff, as evidenced by the relentless march of muscular, driving guitars that plow their way through the simmering tension of “Deliver Me.” In similar fashion, though the mood is much darker and the expansive choruses grow and fan out like plumes of black smoke signaling a fire in the distance, “Fade Out” grinds out a rugged, rough-and-tumble existence. Underneath Jepson’s impassioned, powerhouse vocals and flashing, occasionally sparkling guitars, a raging undercurrent of bass lines rumble as if an earthquake is imminent – the same signs of which are evident in the slow-burning “Who Do You Believe?” and those wah-wah effects of Clarke’s that light up the trac

And while “Dead and Gone” is surely no seismic event, it is a surprising anomaly for Fastway and “Fast” Eddie, whose aversion to anything acoustic is well-documented. While the thoughtful lyrics meditate on mortality, the loss of faith and the recovery of belief, “Dead and Gone” opens with a stark, melancholy cycle of acoustic-guitar picking from Jepson before he deftly brushes and strums the golden hair of those strings ever so gently. But, in the end, Clarke just can’t help himself, and when the words turn hopeful and downright uplifting and Jepson’s voice grows increasingly defiant, Clarke provides support in the way of rocky, sharply struck electric chords.

Never one to reinvent the wheel, Clarke is happiest when song structures have good bones – basic elements like undeniable hooks and gripping melodies, such as those found in the hard-charging “Sick as a Dog,” a galloping horse of a track that refuses to spit the bit. By the time “On and On” shuffles ponderously onto Eat Dog Eat’s well-worn stage, however, it’s hard not to be slightly numbed by the sameness of much of the record, or more specifically, the trudging tempos that become a little too routine and predictable while taking their own sweet time to bloom into bigger, more dramatic endings. Thankfully, the closer “Only If You Want It” offers more in the way of soulful, acrobatic dynamics and righteous energy.

On the whole, Eat Dog Eat redeems Fastway. The imagery of a mangy cur on the cover is not only appropriate, but it is emblematic of Fastway itself. Fastway is the malnourished underdog prowling the city streets in search of food, and though it’s been beaten occasionally,the animal is too tough to die and too optimistic to give up the fight. That hunger and desperation, not to mention the desire to restore Fastway’s good name, pushes Dog Eat Dog toward greatness.

-            Peter Lindblad

DVD Review: Santana - Greatest Hits: Live at Montreux 2011

DVD Review: Santana - Greatest Hits: Live at Montreux 2011
Eagle Rock
All Access Review: A-

From birth, the worldly Santana has been a band without borders, trying every musical style under the sun at least once in an attempt to concoct exotic genre blends that could appeal to a wide range of tastes. Woodstock organizers undoubtedly found common ground with Santana, both sharing an almost reckless sense of adventure and displaying little fear of the unknown. They must have thought highly of the San Francisco ensemble’s earthy, Latin-flavored fusion of jazz, rap, African music, blues and rock, because they decided to take a flyer on this unproven commodity and invited them to perform at an event they must have known, deep down, would make history.

It was just another in a series of risky steps that somehow worked out in the end for the rag-tag revolutionaries who, despite their “wing and a prayer” planning, managed to pull it off, as Woodstock, a festival that seemed on the verge of a major catastrophe every single day, maintained an admirable certain sense of civility and order. Even many of the initially suspicious townspeople came to respect the marauding invaders that just wanted to peacefully assemble, get high and listen to some of the most exciting music of the day. Certainly, Santana did its part to soothe the savages, this horde of hippies occupying a small town in upstate New York that just wanted to be left alone. It was the coming-out party to end all coming-out parties, as the scintillating Santana mesmerized the masses with a frenzied, euphoric performance that spoke multiple musical languages fluently.

Where Woodstock was a one-off event of extraordinary social significance, the long-running Montreux Jazz Festival has always been just about the music, and Santana has been a fixture at the event for years. It’s been the scene of some of their greatest concert triumphs, one of those being a vibrant, life-affirming 2011 spectacle of dazzling musicianship – not to mention showmanship – that was a colorful feast for the eyes, the ears and the soul. And the new two-disc, 204-minute DVD from Eagle Eye Media that captures the thrilling night on video is an all-you-can-eat buffet of Santana’s greatest hits and a few unexpected surprise

Take the joyous hip-hop version of AC/DC’s “Back in Black” that Santana segues into on Disc One after the melodious improvisation and red-hot firecracker beats of “Spark of the Divine” and the glorious Zappa-esque cacophony of horns, organ and crazed guitar squalls – conducted by a bemused Carlos – in “SOCC” dies down. The manic, incredibly busy instrumentation, always seemingly one step away from going completely off the rails, provides a graffiti-splattered backdrop for Santana’s searing guitar leads and sets the tone for a magical evening, one that sees Santana’s 11-member band cook up a wondrous mix of twilight moods and smoky atmospheres in “Singing Winds, Crying Beasts” that drift lazily into a spellbinding version of “Black Magic Woman.” Dancing his way into the summery “Oye Como Va,” Carlos, clearly enjoying himself, rips off one of the many effortless, mind-blowing guitar solos of his that seem to speak directly to God. Watching close-ups of his fluid, expressive playing here is an absolute pleasure. From there, the band’s reworking of Santana’s more recent hit “Maria Maria” – introduced by Carlos’s gorgeous Spanish guitar picking – is both achingly beautiful and an exuberant celebration of Hispanic pride and culture, while “Foo Foo” and “Corazon Espinado/Guajira,” which features wife Cindy Blackman Santana’s powerful, dynamic drumming, are sun-splashed block parties of hip-swaying Latino dance music.

And we’re not even on Disc Two yet, where Santana’s band navigates the tricky instrumental currents of “Evil Ways,” “A Love Supreme” and Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” in succession with wild abandon and passionate precision. Welcoming Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks to the stage, Santana and company give a tender, heartfelt reading to the bluesy “Make Somebody Happy” before launching into a full-on, righteous jam on “Right On Be Free” that gives all three guitars extensive room to solo brilliantly. Moving on, Santana slides into “Smooth,” and the crowd-pleasing Sangria of flowery pop hooks and sultry melodies leaves you thirsting for more.

The sound is spectacular, and the visuals, while not groundbreaking, are certainly vivid and professionally shot with an interesting variety of camera angles. But, it’s the personality, open-mindedness and skill of Carlos along with the unity and free-flowing instrumental voodoo of his band that wins the day. An inspiring interview with Carlos and a warmly engaging talk with Cindy are paired with enjoyable behind-the-scenes footage to give an intimate glimpse into the jet-setting world of Santana, while extensive liner notes tell of Santana’s historical and present genius fill out a package that is absorbing and intoxicating.

-            Peter Lindblad

Far Beyond ... Sabbath?

How a Pantera member almost joined Heaven & Hell

By Peter Lindblad

Vinny Appice of Kill Devil Hill

Since joining forces on Black Sabbath’s revitalizing “Dehumanizer” tour back in the early 1990s, the Sabbath family – as dysfunctional as it is at the moment – and members of Pantera have maintained a fairly cozy relationship.

Glad to stay out of the current mess involving plans for the reunification of the original Black Sabbath lineup, Vinny Appice, drummer for Sabbath during the Dio era, has other irons in the fire, one of which involves former Pantera bassist Rex Brown. On May 22, Appice’s Kill Devil Hill, which also features Brown, singer Dewey Bragg and guitarist Mark Zavon, releases its self-titled debut album on SPV/Steamhammer, a grim, crushingly heavy amalgamation of black-hooded, Sabbath-style doom metal, head-swimming melodies on loan from Alice in Chains, killer hooks and sinister riffs.

Before all this, however, Appice and another member of Pantera came close to working together. And when one thinks of what might have been … well, it’s nothing short of mind-blowing. Or, at least, it was.

Flash back to the spring of 2010, when the world of heavy metal was rocked by the news of Ronnie James Dio’s death. At the time of his sad demise, Dio was still part of Heaven & Hell, the name the Dio-fronted Sabbath lineup assumed when they reunited in 2006. Over the span of four years, Heaven & Hell toured, recorded three songs for the 2006 compilation LP, Black Sabbath: The Dio Years, and put out the devastating comeback record The Devil You Know in 2009 that critics raved about.

Of course, when Dio died, everybody figured Heaven & Hell was done. And for all intents and purposes, it was. Or was it?

Thinking back, Appice, in a recent interview, recalled how Down – the post-Pantera band that included Brown and Phil Anselmo, opened for Heaven & Hell.

“We played a lot of dates together, and we went down to Australia, and it was cool,” said Appice. “It was cool hanging out. It was a good tour, great tour and successful, so it was cool hanging out with friends and being out on tour for that long. There was even talk of, at one time, after Ronnie passed away, that if we were going to continue, what singers could we use? Phil’s name popped up as a possibility to make another record, but that never happened.”

Wait … what? Phil Anselmo in Black Sabbath? Good God, just think of the possibilities.

It’s easy to understand why the thought appealed to Sabbath. During the “Dehumanizer” tour, Appice and everyone else in Sabbath watched in awe as the EF-5 groove-metal tornado known as Pantera left a path of destruction every where they went.

“They were just bad-ass, man – a powerful, strong band,” said Appice. “So much energy … they just slammed it to the wall. So I enjoyed them and I watched them, too, before we went on those shows; when we arrived on time, I was watching Pantera. So, they were awesome, man … absolutely. Slamming it to the wall.”

Anselmo never did join Heaven & Hell, and perhaps it’s all for the best. Now, Appice and Brown are together in Kill Devil Hill, and everybody’s happy. And if an updated version of Dehumanizer – albeit one whose graveyard atmosphere is thick with gothic imagery – sounds appealing, then Kill Devil Hill is right up your alley.

“Like the guitars … very heavy and very heavy riffs, and the drum sounds a little bigger on Dehumanizer,” said Appice. “There are some similarities to it. And I think there are some similarities with the old style Sabbath, the early Sabbath. And then there’s a little bit of Dio in there, too. Dewey is a very melodic singer, very heavy and dark. But then he hits on those melodies. Some of them remind me of what Ronnie had done. So it was kind of a combination of those things, and some of it’s like Alice in Chains. It reminds me a lot of Alice in Chains and Pantera. There are a lot of little ingredients in there, you know. And it wasn’t like we sat there and said, ‘Let’s do this so that it sounds like this.’ It just happened that way with all the bands and the combination of them.”

Look for the full interview with Appice to be posted in the coming days. Visit www.killdevilhillmusic.com for news and touring information on Kill Devil Hill.

CD Review: Prong - Carved into Stone

CD Review: Prong - Carved into Stone

Long Branch Records
All Access Review: A-

Prong - Carved into Stone 2012

Mavericks in a thrash-metal scene that placed more of a premium on playing with wild abandon and blistering speed than rigid precision, Prong and its brutally intense major-label classic Cleansing, from 1994, was only slightly looser and a tad less militaristic than Helmet’s rugged Meantime. Pummeling industrial minimalism that seemed to march to the orders of an unseen drill sergeant set Prong apart from the herd it had taken a cattle prod to in hard-hitting pieces like “Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck” and “Whose Fist Is This Anyway?” In the years since, Prong, on occasion, has grown even more taut and single-minded, sometimes mistakenly neglecting the barely harnessed power of its formidable low end. Released from Al Jourgensen’s 13^th Planet label – Prong mastermind Tommy Victor also played with Ministry in the early 2000s – and winding up on SPV’s new Long Branch Records imprint, the crossover terrorists have significantly fattened a wiry sonic frame that had grown too lean.

In doing so, they have created a monster, the seething sonic psychopath Carved into Stone. Still painting bleak, disturbing visions of urban decay and street-level violence with technically brilliant musicianship, the harsh realities of Prong’s more recent diatribes are delivered with raging guitars, barking vocals and the double-kick drum blunt-force trauma of Alexei Rodriguez. Roaring out of the gate, the speed-metal blitz of opener “Eternal Heat” leaves one breathless, just as the visceral acts of sonic aggression that follow – namely, “Keep on Living in Pain” and “Ammunition” – somehow maintain the impossible breakneck pace previously set. Thicker and heavier, “Path of Least Resistance” and the surging title track, with its punching-bag rhythms and the kind of widescreen, black-hole choruses the Deftones get lost in, are mazes of dynamic riffage, while “Revenge … Best Served Cold” and “State of Rebellion” subversively chisel biting melodies into their uncompromising marriage of industrial and metal sadomasochism. An awesome sculpture of sound and fury, Carved into Stone is guilty of an aural assault so devastating that it really ought to be locked up.

-            Peter Lindblad

CD Review: Kill Devil Hill

CD Review: Kill Devil Hill - Kill Devil Hill
Steamhammer / SPV
All Access Review: B+

Kill Devil Hill

Ever wonder what a confluence of Pantera’s groove-mongering madness and Dio/Black Sabbath melodic black magic would sound like? Welcome to the gothic darkness of Kill Devil Hill, brainchild of veteran metal warriors Rex Brown, carpet-bombing bassist for the former, and Vinny Appice, bludgeoning drummer for the latter two outfits. Intense, ominous and unrelentingly heavy, Kill Devil Hill – also featuring vocalist Dewey Bragg and guitarist Mark Zavon – could be the bastard child of Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, were it not for the obvious doom-metal parentage of early Ozzy-fronted Sabbath. How proud they must be of their demon offspring.

Tuning up with the violent opener “War Machine,” Kill Devil Hill unleashes a dense swarm of malevolence that almost swallows the hornets’ nest of activity kicked up in the murderous “Voodoo Doll,” where the foursome play puppet master with shifting dynamics. The woozy, drug-sick “Gates of Hell” and “Up in Flames” revisit the twisted psychedelic carnival of “Black Hole Sun” while Bragg’s ocean-deep, anguished phrasing summons the hoary, hopelessly addicted ghost of Layne Staley. And with grooves as thick as molasses and monstrously huge guitar riffs, “Rise from the Shadows” comes off as the prodigal son of “Iron Man,” while the serpentine “Hangman” slithers through a jungle of tribal beats before confronting the gallows with supernova vocals and menacing guitars. As black as night, Kill Devil Hill has all the personality of a gargoyle come to life, and its appearance on the metal scene just might herald a new era of evil.

- Peter Lindblad

The Comeback Kid: ‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke seeks redemption

Legendary guitarist revisits the glory days of Fastway

By Peter Lindblad

The Comeback Kid: Eddie Clark

Just as “Fast” Eddie Clarke was getting back on his feet in 1982 and putting the ugliness of his shocking departure from Motorhead behind him, fate pulled the rug out from under the guitar great.  For months, Clarke and Pete Way, who had then recently walked away from UFO, had been plotting their next move and in doing so, they recruited a talented crew of rock and roll mercenaries for a potential supergroup that aimed to shake up the balance of power in heavy metal.

Former Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley was already in the fold when they discovered a singer from Ireland with the screeching, switchblade-wielding voice of an angry god in Dave King, who would later go on to front the Emerald Isle-meets-America punks Flogging Molly. The rehearsals had been scintillating. Every piece of the puzzle was in place. Then, just as quickly as it had all come together, something happened that drove the project dubbed Fastway off the rails.

“I’ll tell you what, man. It was fantastic,” recalls Clarke, talking about those early Fastway sessions. “Of course, we put so much into it, and it was fantastic, and then Pete fucking disappeared! We go to fucking rehearsals, and I’d say, ‘Where’s Pete?’ ‘Well, we don’t know.’ So, I went around the office and I said, ‘Where’s Pete?’ And they said, ‘We heard he’s going with Ozzy Osbourne.’ I said, ‘What?’ Apparently, Sharon [Osbourne] had offered him a job with Ozzy, ‘cause they were doing three [shows at Wembley Stadium] here in London. And they didn’t have a bass player, or their bass player couldn’t make it or something. So they asked Pete to do it, and Pete agreed. I didn’t see him again for seven years.”

As is often the case in such matters, the original Fastway was undone by record company entanglements, as Clarke would find out. Years later, the two would reconcile and rehash what had happened. “I was coming out of my flat in London and who was walking along the street with his girlfriend? Pete,” recounts Clarke. “I said, ‘Pete. It’s you.’ And we had a cup of tea and a chat and all that. And I mean he’s such a lovely bloke.”

As Clarke tells it, he invited Way’s label, Chrysalis, to the studio to review the demos they’d made. Only Chrysalis never showed. “I mean, it had been three days, and I said, ‘Well, what’s the problem here?’ recounted Clarke. “I said, ‘Well, okay. Come to a showcase at the rehearsal room.’ They didn’t show up. But CBS did show up, and my business guy – because we’d gotten a manager by then, an accountant who was helping me out – he said, they’ve got Billy Squier’s management and Gary Moore, and he said, ‘Well, what do you want to do?’ I said, ‘Well, look. Let’s play it this way: The first one with a check on the table, we’ll take it.’”

Ready to make a deal, Clarke remembers, “I didn’t even care what the amount was. I said, ‘The first one who puts their money where their mouth is, they can have the band.’ I thought that was fair, you know. Well, CBS bikes over a check and within two hours, there’s a check on the table. It’s just a down payment, but of course, Chrysalis got to raving and said we’re not going to let Pete go.”

Try as he might to smooth things over, Clarke couldn’t get Chrysalis to cut Way loose. “I said, ‘How come you’re not going to let this go? I’ve given you every opportunity to sign the band,’” said Clarke. “They said, ‘No, no, no. We’re not going to let Pete go.’ I went up to their offices and said you’ve got to sort this out. But it really upset Pete.” And Clarke believes that is ultimately why he took the Ozzy offer, “ … and that was that – which was a tragedy.”

Although Fastway went on to record one of the most underrated debut albums in metal history, 1983’s hard-charging, bluesy haymaker Fastway, and produced six more LPs of varying quality, including 1984’s All Fired Up, 1986’s Waiting For The Roar and The World Waits For You, 1987’s Trick Or Treat soundtrack, 1988’s On Target and 1990’s Bad Bad Girls, the band’s star-crossed first chapter came to an ignominious conclusion as the ‘90s ushered in the era of grunge. As for Clarke, he often wonders what might have been had Way stayed on.

“I never really got over Pete leaving, ‘cause you know, it was our thing,” said Clarke. “And so Pete leaving was … I never really recovered to be honest. I never recovered.”

Redemption Songs

In April, Clarke and a revamped Fastway, including vocalist/bassist Toby Jepson, released Eat Dog Eat, a tasty, satisfying dish of meat-and-potatoes, no frills hard rock that’s a welcome return to form for a band that’s been away far too long. Harkening back to the street-tough blues rock, razor-sharp guitars and thumping rhythms of Fastway’s eponymous debut album, Eat Dog Eat emphasizes a back-to-basics approach that targets and hits the erogenous zones of anyone who fancies old-school, early ‘70s metal dressed up in frayed denim and leather. 

For Clarke, recording Eat Dog Eat was a chance to right two wrongs – namely 1988’s On Target and 1990’s Bad, Bad Girls, the two records that sullied Fastway’s reputation and discouraged Clarke so thoroughly that he avoided stepping foot in a formal recording studio for two decades.

About recording Eat Dog Eat, Clarke said, “We went to a studio I used in the late ‘80s. There were a couple of dodgy Fastway records at the end there, On Target and Bad, Bad Girls, which actually didn’t have much to do with me, but they were done at this studio in Lincolnshire – it’s an old chapel. So I revisited that, and I’d forgotten how great it was to set up in the chapel live. And we just started jamming, and I’d just forgotten what a blast it was to be in the studio, to be backed by big monitors and all that. For me, it was the memory of how great recording can be and listening back to it and saying, ‘This is great, man’ and playing a solo and thinking, ‘Wow, wow. I’ve done it. I love it. That’ll do it.’ I enjoyed every minute of it, and I can only say, it was the best money I’ve ever spent in my life.”

Feeling vindicated by the lean, mean sonic quality and hard-hitting nature of Eat Dog Eat, Clarke had long been troubled by how he’d left things with Fastway all those years ago. “Well, in the ‘90s, or really the end of the ‘80s, I was messed up, you know,” said Clarke. “The last two, the On Target and Bad, Bad Girls albums, I wasn’t on ‘em really. I did a little bit of help with them, but that was it, because I was in a bit of a state. And the guy [Lea Hart, who replaced original Fastway vocalist Dave King] that took over by then – ‘cause I’d lost track of it before and I lost track of it again – he kind of took over and sort of just angled it the way he wanted it to go, with keyboards and all that. Of course, for the second album, Bad Bad Girls, I was actually in the hospital most of the time, in rehab ‘cause I was really ill. I got really ill. I was close to death, and I was really tanking it with the old booze. So I was in rehab for five weeks, and they let me out for one weekend to go up and have a listen to what was going on. But you know, I got back to the old hospital and the album was kind of done without me. And so, when I hit the ‘90s, I stopped drinking and I had to stop drinking because I was in such a mess, and that takes a little bit of a while to get over.”

In recovery, after doing a solo album in 1993 – which featured Lemmy singing on one of the tracks – that fizzled thanks to the rise of Brit-pop in the U.K., Clarke retreated from the public eye, buying a little house in the west of England where he “… just hung out there, just played a bit and just did a little bit of recording at home … and generally just wasted my time.” A call from Lemmy drew him out.

“What happened was, Lemmy called me in about 1999 and we were talking,” said Clarke. “And he invited me down to the 25^th anniversary of Motorhead and he said, ‘Well look, why don’t you come down?’ And I said, ‘Okay, I will.’ He said, ‘Come to the sound check. We’ll work out what we’re going to do and all that.’ I was really chuffed that Lemmy phoned me, so I went down there and I did that, and it kind of started me back up a bit.”

Ready to get back in the saddle, Clarke set about restoring his legacy. The way he went about it speaks to the man’s preference for that which is simple and uncomplicated. “So the next few years – I've got a little studio built down here – I started to try to get new equipment in,” said Clarke. “And then about 2005, I’m starting to write a bit of material, I’m working on new stuff. Then the record company asked me if I’d put an anthology together, so I put an anthology together in 2006. And then 2007 came along, and there was the offer of doing some Fastway shows. I mean, I kind of got Lemmy to thank for that because he got me back into believing in myself.”

Still, Clarke wondered if anybody still cared about him or Fastway. Was anybody clamoring for their return? As it turned out, the answer was a resounding “yes.” “If you’re gone too long away, you tend to think that everybody’s forgotten about you and nobody gives a sh*t,” said Clarke. “But when I got down with Motorhead in Brixton, the crowd went absolutely ape-sh*t. They really did, and I was really chuffed. And I thought, ‘Well, hang on, maybe I should be doing some more here’ … and that made me realize that there were people out there who didn’t want me to drop dead just yet.”

Turning the Ignition

Back in 1982, however, Clarke’s career, though, was on life support when he split from Motorhead. Upon returning to the U.K. after the divorce, the realization of just how dire his situation was hit Clarke full force.

“It was, “Oh, f**k. What am I going to do now?’” said Clarke. “I was heartbroken to be honest. We had a bit of a set-to, but I never ever imagined that I wouldn’t be in Motorhead. I thought we were there for life. And it’s funny how circumstances … they rally against you. Suddenly, you’ve got all these things going on that dictate the way things are going, and you just couldn’t even imagine that it would go that way. It wasn’t even on the menu, me leaving the band. But, one row and then another and they didn’t want me in the band anymore, and when I said, ‘Look, let’s carry on.’ They told me to f**k off. You know, ‘We don’t want you anymore,’ and I came back to England on the next plane over. And I remember tottering down the streets with half a bottle of vodka in me pocket, thinking, ‘What am I going to do now?’”

Complicating matters was the fact that Clarke and the rest of Motorhead lived in the same house in England. So, he had to move out. With no place to live and none of his equipment, which was still with the band in America, Clarke felt a bit lost. He also had no money to speak of. “I’ve got no money, because we never got any money in those days,” said Clarke. “We never really got paid, you know. A couple hundred well, you know, $250 a week, but … well, you don’t really need a lot when you’re on the road and everything’s paid for. You don’t kick up a stink. So I was poor, and they were very difficult times. And of course, we were huge here. We were Motorhead. So, it was a bit weird really. We had #1 albums and songs out … no money of course, because managers don’t like giving you money (laughs). They keep you under the yolk, you know.”

There was someone who understood all too well what was happening to Clarke. It was Way, who was undergoing a separation from his band, UFO. Somebody decided to play matchmaker. “I got a call from somebody at the Motorhead office in London, somebody who obviously felt a bit sorry for me or whatever,” said Clarke. “And it came out of the blue, and I said, ‘What’s this? I didn’t expect to hear from you.’ They said, ‘We just thought we’d let you know that Pete Way has left UFO and would you like to get together with him?’ And I thought, ‘Hey, I’ve got nothing going on here.’ I said, ‘Yeah, cool.’”

Previously, the only contact Clarke and Way had ever had was in the pubs. “I mean, I knew Pete a little bit, but only from being drunk together in the Marquee [the venerable London concert venue],” said Clarke. “We’d never had much to say, but … ‘Hey, do you wanna have a drink?’ ‘Fantastic.’ (laughs) So, I didn’t really know Pete. I knew he was a nice guy, but that was all. But we got together, and we hit it off right away because we both liked to drink. I had a drinking problem. He had a drinking problem. We had our drinking problems together, and it was a lot of fun. I think we were both relieved that we found someone who was in the same position.”

With Clarke on guitar and Way on bass, the budding partnership began laying the foundation for what would become Fastway by finding a rehearsal space … and a new friend. “That’s when we met Topper,” said Clarke, referring to Topper Headon, drummer for punk heroes The Clash.

By way of explanation, Clarke related how he and Way went to find the guy who ran the place where Motorhead once jammed. “Motorhead used to rehearse at this lovely place, a big old house in Notting Hill. We said, ‘Why don’t we go there and see if we can strike a deal with the guy?’ So we went around there to see the guy and said, ‘Can you sign us up for a few rehearsals? I can’t pay you immediately, but I can when things pick up.’ He said, ‘Yeah, no problem.’ And who was there? Topper Headon from The Clash, the drummer! And we all got chatting and we had a laugh, and he said, ‘My drums are here. Why don’t we have a rehearsal?’ So, the next day, we all picked up and borrowed a couple of amps that were out the back there, plugged in and off we went. But we had a couple of weeks, and playing with Topper, it was brilliant. It really was fun. We’d all laugh and get pissed and then go back and make some noise.”

Though word was getting around that a new supergroup was taking shape, Headon did not sign up for Fastway. He had other obligations. “So, then, of course, Topper did have a few problems with The Clash, and he had a few problems anyway, one thing and another,” said Clarke. “So, he said, ‘Look guys, I’d love to do it, but I can’t really. I’m just not well enough really.’”

No matter, Way and Clarke weren’t through taking applications. “By this time, we were doing a few interviews in newspapers and people had gotten wind of it, that this could be the first heavy metal supergroup, with members from UFO and Motorhead,” remembered Clarke. “And that’s when we sort of decided to advertise; in these interviews, we’d advertise we were looking for drummers. So we used to get all these tapes every day. We’d have about 50 tapes coming in every day … well, maybe not 50, maybe 20 or 30 in like a carrier bag, you know. Every day these tapes would fly in and Pete and I would listen to them, and all that.”

Serendipity would strike again with news of a certain drummer’s unexpected availability. “Then, a friend of Pete’s said, ‘You know, Jerry Shirley’s in town’ – Jerry, from Humble Pie,” said Clarke, who still sings Shirley’s praises, saying he’s right up there with Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham and that “ … he used to hit [his drums] like canons.”

Continuing with the story, Clarke added, “And I said, ‘If we could get Jerry Shirley, wouldn’t that just be the biscuit.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ll get you the number.’ So we got his number and we made a phone call, and he was about 25 miles out west this way. And we heard he was painting and decorating. So we made the meet with him, and we went down to see him after work. And he comes in the pub all covered in paint, you know. He said, ‘Hi guys. Why don’t I buy you a drink?’ And we said, ‘Sure.’ (laughs) We sat down and started drinking. We got chatting and he said, ‘Well, guys, my drums are in hock at the moment.’ I said, ‘No problem, we’ll get them out. Do you fancy the idea?’ He says, ‘I love it.’ So we sorted his drums out.”

Astounded at their luck, Way and Clarke went back to sorting through the tapes to find a singer. Way found two diamonds in the rough.

“Pete comes round my door one morning. He’s got a beer in his hand. It is 11 o’clock in the morning and a beer in his hand, you know,” said Clarke. “He said, ‘I’ve got two singers who are fantastic, two Robert Plants.’ And I said, ‘Oh.’ So we go down and we put the tapes on, and one of ‘em did ‘Communication Breakdown’ and it was out of this world. But he was in Australia, this guy. So that’s how big this got. People were sending us tapes from all over the world, wanting to be in the band. And then he played Dave [King]. And I said, ‘Oh, I like this guy,’ ‘cause he didn’t sound so Robert Plant-y. And you could just tell. I said, ‘Man, this is the guy.’ And Pete said, ‘Yeah, he’s good, isn’t he?’ I said, ‘Yeah, let’s call him.’”

And call him they did, even going so far as to propose sending him a plane ticket to fetch him from his home in Ireland. “So we called him and said, ‘Look, can you come over,’” said Clarke. “So we sorted it out and said, ‘Look, Davey, we’ll get a plane ticket to you and you can come over.’ And he said, ‘Oh, I’ll pay for my own ticket,’ and all that. He was real independent. He was only about 20. And the rest is history. We picked him up from the airport, took him to the rehearsal room and said, ‘Well, here are a couple of the ideas we got.’ And he’s singing ‘em straight away. And it was like, ‘Oh, this is brilliant.’ I mean, Jerry, he was an old soldier, and he said, ‘Man, this is really going somewhere now.’ And it really was. It was like a light came … we saw the light.”

A New Way

Ah, but that light dimmed considerably with Way’s confounding exit. Still, Fastway soldiered on, tabbing Charlie McCracken, formerly of Taste, as Way’s permanent replacement on bass, although they used session player Mick Feat during the recording of Fastway.

On the strength of the snaky, biting single “Say What You Will,” Fastway won over critics and fans with its tough, no-nonsense attitude and ballsy rock ‘n roll songs that sounded like back-alley knife fights, such as the menacing “Heft!” and the thrilling, nitro-burning opener “Easy Livin’” that brackets Fastway with the seductive, Zeppelin-like closer “Far Far from Home,” a separate promotional single attached to the first vinyl issue of the LP. These days, Clarke is feeling a bit of déjà vu when it comes to “Say What You Will,” a song that coalesced in much the same way as Eat Dog Eat’s “Leave the Light On.”

A swaggering bit of raucous, riff-heavy hard rock that packs a punch and delves deeply into spiritual matters, “Leave the Light on” [for more on the songs from Eat Dog Eat, please read “’Fast’ Eddie Clarke talks Fastway’s new record, Eat Dog Eat”] was largely unfinished, but the record company wanted 11 tracks, not 10 for Eat Dog Eat. “Funny thing is, the first Fastway album, if we’d had 11 songs, the one we would have left off would have been … ‘Say What You Will.’ Yeah, can you believe that?” exclaimed Clarke.

Hard to believe, though true, the story of how “Say What You Will” almost didn’t make Fastway is not so unusual in rock history.  “Jerry and I, in those days, we didn’t like really like ‘Say What You Will,’” said Clarke. “We had nine tunes, and we had to write one more. And it was like, ‘Oh, bloody hell.’ We just didn’t have too many ideas in our heads, so we said, ‘Why don’t do this.’ Jerry had a bit of a riff and I got a hold of that, and I said, ‘We can’t use that. It’s moving around a bit.’ So we sort of transformed the riff, and then it was like, ‘Okay Dave, well look, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll start playing here and you start singing.’ (laughs) And then Jerry and the bass player, you keep playing, and then we did it like that. I think it was the simplicity of it that made it such a killer track. But of course, because it had been written like that, we didn’t think much of it, because you know what musicians are like. You’ve got to have it all complicated and it’s got to be fancy and all that. So we didn’t think much of it. But, of course, to our amazement, it became the biggest track on the radio that year. And like I said, we would have left it off. Of course, we don’t know anything. We’re musicians. We really are daft, you know.”

Off and running again, Fastway embarked on a tour that would see McCracken come aboard. Not long after coming off the road, Fastway went right back in the studio to record All Fired Up. And though it was deemed a success, both critically and commercially, Clarke knew something was missing. “It’s got some good spirit on it, but it wasn’t really like the first one,” said Clarke. “It didn’t have the spirit of the first one. To me, albums are all about spirit, and that’s why [Eat Dog Eat] is so nice. It’s got that spirit, you know – that sort of thing where you can’t put your finger on what it is.”

The lack of proper rest may have had something to do with it. Clarke’s troubled personal life also, perhaps, contributed to the flagging energy of All Fired Up. “I think the expectation was very high, because the first album had done so well, which always puts you on the back foot,” said Clarke. “We had started it in March or so. My mother had died that Christmas, which didn’t help and really put a downer on everything. And then of course we’d only gotten back from America on Dec. 15. We needed a bit of time. What record companies didn’t seem to understand back then was that you need a bit of space to come back from a six-month tour. You need some time off to re-energize yourself to start writing tunes again. Of course, we went straight into the rehearsal room. The same thing happened with Motorhead with the Iron Fist album. They threw us straight into it. They said, ‘We need an album next week,’ you know. So, you’re trying to write songs, but of course, you’re trying too hard.”

Making matters worse, Clarke feels producer Eddie Kramer, lauded for his work with Jimi Hendrix and other rock legends, didn’t give his all in the making of All Fired Up, after his excellent work on Fastway.

“Then, of course, Eddie Kramer, he didn’t come up with the goods the second time with the sounds on the album,” Clarke opined. “I thought the sound on the first one was brilliant. I thought the sound on All Fired Up was left wanting a bit. I thought Eddie Kramer sold us short on that one. We used the same band, the same studios … it should have sounded exactly the same as the first one. But it wasn’t, you know. It wasn’t. He was in a hurry to get back to America. He said, ‘Oh man, I can save you some money if we can cut this short by a whole week.’ We said, ‘Why would we want to do that?’”

Following Kramer’s advice, Fastway took the short cut. “And then of course, what happened was, we did the album,” continued Clarke. “He hurried back to America. Then the record company called me up. I was down fishing in Cornwall. I thought I’d get a bit of fishing in and hang out down there. I got this phone call in the middle of nowhere saying, ‘You’ve got to go back to the U.S. to remix half the album.’ And it kind of summed up my feeling about All Fired Up. Eddie Kramer sold us short on it. It’s just one of those things. And that’s why I never used Eddie again. I wouldn’t touch him, because I thought he really let us down. You know, when we remixed the album, I think we went to the Record Plant. And it was fun being in New York, but you know, it had gone down on tape wrong. Whatever we tried to do, I could hear that we weren’t actually doing anything to make it any better really.”

Whatever his feelings about the record were, the genie was already out of the bottle. All Fired Up was a fait accompli, and Clarke couldn’t scrap it and start over. “That wasn’t an option,” said Clarke. “The record company and management were leaning so heavily on us that that wasn’t an option. They never gave us that option. And of course, the record company, they don’t f**king know. ‘Oh, it sounds all right to us.’ Of course it didn’t sound right. If you thought it did, you wouldn’t have dragged me over here to remix half of it. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, but …’ It was all that. And we got off to a bad start.”

In support of All Fired Up, Fastway were road warriors, but scattershot planning killed any possible momentum. After backing Iron Maiden and Saxon after the first album, Fastway toured with AC/DC for three months, “ … which was fantastic and they really know how to do it.” With All Fired Up, however, Fastway did a couple of weeks with the Scorpions, a couple of weeks with Rush and a few gigs with Billy Squier and then Ratt. “It was all broken up,” said Clarke. “So it was very hard to get any continuity going.”

According to Clarke, everybody in Fastway was unsatisfied with All Fired Up.

“I think we all thought we’d failed with the second record,” said Clarke. “And then the sh*t really hit the fan. Jerry went his way. I said I’d never work with Eddie again and that caused problems with Jerry. And one thing led to another, and Dave went back to Ireland then and started playing with his Irish band. And that’s when he said, ‘Look, why don’t you come over here and play with this band?’ And like an idiot, I said, ‘Okay.’ That was another mistake. That’s where the third record came from.”

That band included musicians from King's first group Stillwood. But with Waiting for the Roar, fans waited but the roar would never come. A chance for redemption, however, came to fruition in the form of a soundtrack for the horror movie “Trick or Treat.” It was to be King’s last dance with Fastway. “That was brilliant, because the third album had failed and Dave was already on his way out,” said Clarke. “Him and his Irish band, they wanted to go off and do something that was more Irish sounding group thing than heavy rock. He had started to complain, ‘I’m sick of every rock band. I’m sick of every rock thing.’ So we had our differences. But when I was off with ‘Trick or Treat,’ I said, ‘I’d love to do it.’ So I spoke to the director Charles Martin Smith [who also has acted in ‘American Graffiti’ and ‘The Untouchables’], and he was really up for it. And I said to Dave, ‘Well, let’s do this.’”

King, however, was reluctant, but Clarke was convincing. “I said, ‘Look man, you’re going to have to do it.’ I said, ‘Let’s do it as our swan song,’ our last thing together, because I discovered the guy for f**k’s sake. You know, I wanted to end on a high, rather than the other f**king thing, Waiting for the Roar. So we finally agreed. It was hard going, but it’s a bit like the track I was telling you about, ‘Leave the Light On’ or ‘Say What You Will,’ because it was a little bit strange. It was a little simpler, do you know what I mean? It was a little simpler and of course, I was being directed by Charles Martin Smith. He’d phone me up and say, ‘Look, we need a track for this thing,’ or ‘We need a track for this thing and such and such and such and such – something in that groove, you know that tempo.’ So I listened, just to get the groove and the tempo. And then I got an idea or would sit down and write something. But of course it was all simple because Dave wasn’t really into embellishing too much. It was all done pretty straightforward. And I thought the album came out fantastic. I really did with Trick or Treat.

King, on the other hand, didn’t. “Dave hated it. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. He hated it. Oh man, I’m sitting there, we’re on our last day of mixing, and I didn’t see him after that. He was gone. It was sad really, because I always thought he was me younger brother, you know. We had 10 years between us. I thought we’d been through a lot together, you know. I don’t know. I’ll never understand this f**king business and singers are very f**king hard work, man.”

New Beginnings

At ground zero again after King took almost everybody but Clarke who was left in Fastway and went on to form Q.E.D., Clarke picked up the pieces and teamed up with Hart. By then, however, Clarke’s drug and alcohol addictions had taken their toll, and Clarke was incapable of working much. Hart assumed the reins of Fastway and the result was On Target and Bad Bad Girls.

Fast forward to 2012 and Fastway is back, reloaded with Jepson and drummer Matt E. Eat Dog Eat has, at least to Clarke’s ears, erased some of the bad memories of the diminished states both Fastway and Clarke were in near the end. Tracks like the brooding “Fade Out,” which blooms into something more sprawling in the supernova choruses, and “Deliver Me,” with its sonic crunch, prove that Clarke is on to something, as do the dark acoustic meditation “Dead and Gone” and the driving “Sick as a Dog.”

As for what’s ahead with Fastway, Clarke is hopeful that the band will make a return to U.S. shores, provided that America will welcome them back.

“At the moment, we’ve just got to see … the album’s got to do a bit of business before we put any shows on for it,” said Clarke. “I’m hoping to get some feedback from America, maybe some offers, maybe we can do a few gigs here or there … I mean, I’ve got the guitar. I’m ready to go. I’m waiting, I’m keeping me powder dry at the moment, just going to wait and see what happens … and we’ll see if we get some good news and some positive signs.

Though he admits he’s had his day in the sun, Clarke would like Fastway to take off again so Jepson and Matt E. can experience the kind of wide acclaim he once did. That said, one last tour of America would be the icing on the cake for Clarke.

“Hey man, my dream is to strap on the guitar and take it to America one more time,” said Clarke. “It meant a lot to me when we were there with Fastway, because we did Fastway in England and we died here. Because of the Motorhead connection, a lot of the fans didn’t turn up. And I did think with the end of the tour here … well my career is over. Then we got a call from America saying, ‘Hey man, get over here. F**k, everybody’s playing ‘Say What You Will’ and you’re big.’ American fans saved my life, so I owe it to them … I’d love to do it one more time and play in America.”