Saxon: Too Tough to Die

Saxon back in the day. Photo via band’s official site.

As trailblazers of the late 70s/early 80s New Wave of British Heavy Metal scene—the same UK denim n’ leather explosion that spawned the likes of Iron Maiden, Venom, and Diamond Head—Saxon are one of heavy metal’s undisputed cornerstones. As of this writing, they’ve sold over 15 million albums worldwide and have scored numerous UK Top 40 albums and singles since the band’s inception in 1978. Though they haven’t enjoyed quite the same level of success here in the States, they influenced a group of American teenagers (and one Dane) who went on to start a little band called Metallica. In fact, Metallica’s second-ever show was opening for Saxon at the Whiskey in Los Angeles. You can even find much more recent footage of Metallica covering Saxon’s infectious 1980 single “Motorcycle Man” live in Paris with Saxon frontman Peter “Biff” Byford on lead vocals. These days, the legendary Brits are about to reissue a pair of CD/DVD collections (The Saxon Chronicles and Heavy Metal Thunder – Bloodstock Edition) while preparing to record their 21st studio album even as drummer Nigel Glockler recovers from a pair of brain surgeries brought on by an aneurysm late last year. In the meantime, Saxon have enlisted Sven Dirkschneider, son of former Accept vocalist Udo Dirkschneider, to fill in. We recently got the full rundown from Byford himself.

Noisey: How’s Nigel doing?
Biff Byford: He’s doing better. I talked to him today. He’s getting stronger. He’s still under doctor’s orders, and he still has to go to the neurosurgeon to get checked out every week. But he’s going for four, five-mile walks and he’s playing drums, so he’s doing better. He’s still getting a bit of a headache now and again, but I think the doctors are very pleased. Hopefully he’ll be ready to do the new album, perhaps, in March or April.

I saw the “bed report” video message he sent from the hospital a few weeks ago. He seemed pretty upbeat for someone who’d just had two brain surgeries.
Well, he’s a good actor. [Laughs] I was up there with him in hospital, and there’s not much you can do about it. It’s an out-of-the-blue occurrence, and he’s very lucky it wasn’t worse. I saw him the day before it happened and he seemed fine. He got up the next morning, and he just had this hemorrhage. He wasn’t even playing. He’d just gotten out of bed, so maybe it was a blood pressure spike or something. I don’t know. Apparently, it’s nothing to do with drumming.

In the meantime, you’ve got Udo Dirkschneider’s son, Sven, filling in on drums.
Yeah, Sven! He’s been Nigel’s drum tech for the last two tours, so Nigel thought it would be a good idea for him to drum with the band. He keeps sending me tapes of him drumming, but there’s no music. It’s just him drumming to our songs. It sounds good, but it’s a bit strange. I just send them to the bass player and let him deal with it. [Laughs] But yeah, he’s really working hard. I think he wants to drum with his dad later this year as well. He’s only doing seven shows with us [in the UK] for now, but he might come to the States with us as well. It depends on Nigel’s health, really.

How far do you go back with Udo?
We go back a long way with Udo. Our first tour we did of Europe, must’ve been 1980, it was with Judas Priest. It was the Wheels Of Steel tour [for Saxon] and the British Steel tour [for Priest]. A band came along to see us in Hannover, and it was Accept. They came to have a drink with us and talk about doing the next tour. We’d never really heard of them before, but a couple of years later they came to America with us when they did the Balls To The Wall album.

The next Saxon album will be the band’s 21st…
Yeah, 21st. But it could be our 51st. We don’t really give a monkey’s ass which one it is. We only knew the last one was the 20th because it’s a good number, isn’t it? It’s one of those anniversary numbers. So we’re still on our 35th anniversary tour [as a band] at the moment. That’ll go on through the festivals this summer. When the new album comes out, we’ll call it something else.

Did you ever think you’d make it this far when the band started in 1978?
No. I don’t think anybody does, do they? We didn’t really have any “world domination” attitude at the beginning, though I think we may have done later on. When we first started, we just wanted to make an album and play gigs where real bands were playing instead of just playing pubs. [Laughs]

Saxon took off really fast in the beginning, with songs in the UK singles charts, albums in the UK Top 40, and tours with Motörhead, Priest, and Rush in 1980-81.
Yeah, we did. It was our second album, Wheels of Steel, that really set Europe on fire. I think it did in America as well, but unfortunately we had a lot of problems with the record company in America at that point. They didn’t print a lot of copies of Wheels of Steel in America—about 25,000 and that was it. So there were a few political problems there. But it was a big album for us. It took us from being a local act, playing clubs and pubs, to being an international act and headlining big gigs.

After some touring for Wheels of Steel, you guys went right back into the studio to record Strong Arm of the Law the same year. But I know you felt like the band should’ve stayed on the road.
One of the reasons for that was that we went to tour America with Rush, which was our first tour over there—which was great. I mean, it was their Moving Pictures tour, so it was brilliant. But it really wasn’t our audience at that particular point in time. We went down really well and the audience were fantastic, but it probably would’ve been better to go out with Judas Priest or one of the bigger rock bands of the time—Scorpions or something like that. And because we only sold in the US what the record company printed—25,000 or whatever it was—we were told by the management to go in and do another album really quickly. But I think the same thing happened again, actually: The next album went over great in Europe but didn’t really break in America. [Laughs] So it was a bit of a sad thing, really. I think we missed that early 80s boat in America. But we did have lots of fans over there, and we did that really successful tour with Accept between the Power & The Glory and Crusader albums. I remember we did some shows with Sammy Hagar over there and he told us, “In some parts of the country I’m really huge and in other parts I couldn’t pull bacteria.” [Laughs] It was like that with Saxon as well.

Were you a fan of Sammy Hagar’s old band, Montrose?
Oh, the first Montrose album was our bible. We had an American car with an eight-track in it, and we used to play the Montrose album over and over and over again. In fact, if you listen to [Montrose’s] “Rock Candy,” the same drumbeat is on [Saxon’s] “Denim & Leather.” [Laughs] We were heavily influenced by that album. We listened to a lot of American bands from that period—Grand Funk Railroad, Black Oak Arkansas, Mountain.

You started out as a bass player. What drew you to that instrument?
Yeah, I started as a bass player doing backing vocals. I wanted to be a guitarist, and I did play guitar for quite some time, but I couldn’t really get it together rehearsal-wise. I couldn’t devote so much of my life to trying to play like Rory Gallagher or something. [Laughs] I just couldn’t get my head round it, so I turned to bass playing instead. I still play guitar, but I’ve never moved on, you know? I’ve never moved on from playing the blues, man. [Laughs] I know a few blues licks, and that’s it. But as a bass player, I was quite good technically.

At what point did you figure out that you could sing?
From an early age. My mother was a musician, and she played piano and organ in the local chapel. So I was surrounded by big hymns like “John Brown’s Body” and all that sort of thing. I suppose I had big choruses in my head from an early age, but I definitely got the music gene from my mother. My father was very supportive—he bought me a bass guitar from the pawn shop—but I think he was tone deaf.

Did you sing in the chapel choir?
No, I was too shy in them days. I didn’t want to bring myself to anybody’s attention. I was quite good at music, but I was too shy to be in the choir, really.

What were the songs you liked to sing along to as a kid?
Stuff I heard on the radio—’60s pop and rock like the Kinks and the Pretty Things. My older brother was into rock n’ roll like Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley, but all that was a bit before my time. My best friend’s brother was into blues music, so I used to get to listen to Blind Lemon Jefferson and Howlin’ Wolf over at his house.

You inherited the nickname “Biff” from your older brother. How did he get it?
[Laughs] I don’t know. Maybe he hit people a lot. He was taller than me, too. I’m six-foot-one, but he was about six-foot-seven, so he was a big lad. I inherited all his enemies when I went to school.

So he had a reputation.
He had a bit of a reputation, yeah. He was always in trouble with the local police. He was a bit of a rebel—as I was, actually. I had a motorbike when I was 16, and I was a bit out there, a bit of a criminal. Petty theft mostly, but I was on the wrong side of the line. My mum and dad brought me up good even though we weren’t a wealthy family, but I was always a bit of a rebel. [Laughs] I was one of the lads on the street corner, talking to the girls and smoking. People thought I was a lot worse than I was, but that’s usually the case, isn’t it?

Do you wish you hadn’t inherited the nickname?
No, it doesn’t bother me. It could be a lot worse. I know in America, “Biff” is a bit of a preppy name made famous by the Back To The Future films. But I don’t mind it. It’s a good little handle.

J. Bennett has been known to listen to Saxon’s “Princess Of The Night” on psychotic repeat.

Saxon will reissue The Saxon Chronicles and Heavy Metal Thunder – Bloodstock Edition on February 13th.