Band Interviews

Stormqueen

 

STORMQUEEN can now be regarded as one of the most important metal band from the NWOBHM era when it comes about classic powerful song writing, sheer power and memorable riffs. This year we are celebrating the 25 years of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and it often takes a long time to finally see which bands made an impact on the scene and which ones stood the test of time and obviously STORMQUEEN definitely belongs to them. The band is actually alive again and a new release on OPM records will be out shortly, hopefully before the summer of 2005. This is a good opportunity to ask Dave Morse (guitar) to jump into the time machine back in the days when the guitars were loud and the hair was long.

Hi Dave, let me first tell you how glad I am to do this STORMQUEEN interview with you, as for me STORMQUEEN recorded some of the best songs of the nwobhm era. I always thought it was a great injustice you never achieved the same kind of success like the Tygers of Pan Tang or Diamond Head. I know STORMQUEEN hails from Wales but please tell me first when and where the band was formed and who was in the first STORMQUEEN line up.

DM: The band started life in Barry, South Wales. Basically I had been in bands for a while, and Neil Baker guitar was also jamming with people, and one day we met through mutual friends and got talking. Found we had a lot in common. He came over to my house soon after with his guitar and records he wanted to play me, I had the same ready at the house. We sort of played our choices and jammed a little and decided we should do something together.

That would have been late 1980 I guess, difficult to be 100% accurate but around that time anyway. We then set about finding others to be in the band. There was a very big pool of musicians considering the size of the place. Course we knew about Boofy and agreed we wanted him as drummer. He agreed right away. About this time we got our own rehearsal space above a run down shop not far from my house. It was great because we could go there all day every day and just jam, play and write. We were very fortunate in that respect.

We then sought out a singer and bass player, Chris Glyn-Jones Neil new from school, and he was inducted in due course. Bryn Merryck was sort of between projects, he had previously been in the quite legendary punk band Victimize. So he came and jammed with us and it all fell into place. StormQueen 1 was born.

The local welsh scene was quite fertile at the time with several young metal bands being around, the most well known being probably PERSIAN RISK. Do you remember any other bands STORMQUEEN played with ? Competition must have been serious between you all I suppose.

DM: Ummm there were other bands around yes, but we didn't look upon it as competition really. We were very much treading our own path, we weren't wasting energy obsessing about what other bands were doing or anything like that. We focused on the music, the writing and then later on the live presentation with gigs.

Some bands I can recall were Stallion, Tokio Rose, Persian Risk as you say, these being Welsh bands. Ummm Talan though I think they were around a bit later, Dead Reckoning from whom we later stole Paul Burnett and Nick Macormac, though we didn't know much of them really. There were other names that were outside Wales and doing well of course, Tygers of Pan Tang, Diamond Head, Def Leppard, Raven, Saxon etc etc.

I know that a whole part of the local music scene was singing and releasing records in welsh tongue (my favourite being Y DIAWLED, the devils literally, with their “Noson Y Blaidd” single). Did you ever question yourself about the choice of language or was it clear from the start you would sing in English ?

DM: No it was always English. None of us were/are Welsh speaking. It isn't as prevailant in South Wales, more so in the North of the country. So it was never even an issue for us.

Please enlighten us about your musical influences at the time, which bands were you playing on your turntable ?

DM: Well I can only speak for myself I guess really, though I do know Neil and Boofy were very into Rush and Led Zep. I was very into bands like Motorhead, Ac/Dc, Judas Priest, Sabbath, some Deep Purple I guess, Hawkwind.

Things moved along quickly with the band recording their first demo, the legendary “Battle of Britain” tape. It is fair to say the demo already showed a mature and professional band from a song writing and collective musicianship perspective, it reminds me of the first Diamond Head LP, both bands came out of the blue with powerful metal songs, quite high musical skills and a renewed and fresh energy that suddenly made Purple or Led Zeppelin sound old. Could you tell us when and where was this demo tape actually recorded ? The sound quality is really good to say the least.

DM: Heh heh, that demo was recorded in an 8track analog studio, the BBC Stacey Rd studio in Cardiff to be precise. It was produced by myself, Neil and the in house cardigan wearing, pipe smoking engineer, who had been there for god knows how many years. I can't say as I agree that the sound quality is that good. But I think energy, enthusiasm and passion is very present. We were very into it.... passionate and it shows. You can feel it for sure.

I have told various other interviewers, we never titled it the Battle of Britain demo or anything like that. It was a surprise to me to hear people say that. It was just either "the first demo" or "the bbc demo" to us. But I'm perosnally glad so many people have been able to hear and enjoy it. And that it is so highly regarded.

Was the demo sent to the music press or record labels in order to assess their level of interest ?

DM: Yes we sent it everywhere we could. It was played on the radio a bit. But we did have problems being a Welsh band. Not very early on because we were still busy writing and finding our feet, we hadn't sought to progress out of Wales then, but later it became a real struggle. Not just for us, but other bands too.

Did you sell the demo at your local gigs and how many copies were made of the demo ?

DM: We didn't sell any no, we would give copies away, as publicity material y'know. I wouldn't like to say how many copies would have been given out....a *lot* is the best I can do :)

Soon after came the first changes in the band which led to the classic line up : Dave Morse (guitar), Neil Baker (guitar), Paul Burnett (vocals), Nicky McCormack (bass) and Neil Clements (drums). The band from this point concentrated heavily on playing, gigging and rehearsing. How many people used to attend a usual STORMQUEEN show ? Did you use any stage effects : lights, pyrotechnics, …Please tell us some nice stories about life on the road.

DM: Yes that's right, a while after the first demo it became increasingly obvious that we needed a singer more capable of writing. Chris Glyn didn't write any lyrics for any of the songs whilst in the band. I wrote them all. All the ones on the first demo and more. But it was a problem because I didn't want to write them, but someone had to. And it was clearly compromising the writing of the band and that couldn't be allowed.

So when Bryn left to join The Damned, we decided we had to find the two right people to fill those posts. So we went a hunting, and found Paul and Nick. Well stole them actually from Dead Reckoning. But it was their choice to join, we just played them the stuff and they were blown away and joined.

After Paul and Nick joined we really began developing the bands stage show and image. I found a company that hired really good powerful P.A. and lighting systems, and they also happened to have a sister company that dealt with theatre pyrotechnics. So yes at that point we started putting on bigger gigs, organising them ourselves, doing all the promotion etc. And we really started to pull in crowds, especially in Cardiff at the time. We could easily pull in 500-600 people, and did so often. Not when playing the regular clubs around then though, as they were in small pub/club venues and couldn't hold that many.

Life on the road??? Errmmm we didn't really do life on the road at that time. We were planning to, we ended up buying a 40foot long coach and kitting it out ready to go, but as I said, Welsh bands weren't given the opportunities English bands were, it was very hard to book gigs in England, particularly London. Persian Risk were lucky enough to land management that got them around some of those issues. But for a lot of bands it wasn't such a good time.

What kind of guitars were your favourites and what was the equipment used on stage to build a wall of sound ?

DM: Well at first of course we didn't have much. I had a CMI S.G. copy that later got stolen, which was a shame as it was customised, and sounded great. It is the guitar on the first demo. Neil had a Strat copy first. Then later as we got more serious about things I got my limited edition Silverburst Gibson Flying Vee , which I still have today and is still my main axe. I had a Roost 100 watt amp head and two Marshall 4 x 12 speaker cabinets.

Neil also bought a vee a while after me. A nice white Gibson one, and he bought a Hiwatt 100watt amp head and two Marshall 4 x 12 cabinets. Nick eventually got a custom made Jaydee Flying vee bass, and he used to use an Ampeg head and Marshall cabinets. Boofy had a great Yamaha drum kit, with Paiste cymbals I believe.

When we would do bigger gigs we would borrow or hire more amps for the backline to fill out the sound. Mind you when we put those gigs on the P.A's we were hiring were 5,000 watts, and that was a *lot* back then. Huge great bloody speaker cabs they were heh heh.

How did the song writing change with the new frontman Paul Burnett ?

DM: Paul brought a new dynamic both vocally and lyrically. He is a very accomplished singer, with a powerful voice and a great ear for melody. His lyrics seemed to fit perfectly too, they purveyed the right kind of imagery without being cliched or copyist. He always had a great idea/angle for a lyric. As a frontman he totally brought the band to life as you can see from the photos. He took it to the audience and gave his all as a performer, it was great working with him.

Moving into 1982, STORMQUEEN entered the studio again to record their second 3 tracks demo. Please give us some details about the recording and the track listing.

DM: Well this demo was a much more involved affair. It was recorded up at Loco Studios in Gwent. Then quite new, but now infamous. It was done on 16track 2inch master tapes (which i still have). It was recorded quickly, in eight hours actually. Which included mixing, so is pretty incredible.

But we were so tight as a unit that the way we did it is we set up all at once with the drums in the live room, we went through each song with Paul singing as a guide vocal. We did about three takes of each song, playing as we did live. Then we chose the ones we thought were best, Paul went in and did the vocals properly and then we dropped the lead guitar solos on and began mixing.

The songs on that demo were:

Come Silent the World
No Peace for the Wicked
Raising the Roof

Nick Smith who owned the studio then engineered and co-produced it with us all as a band. I personally really like the sound of this demo, it sounds fresh to me in some way. I also think we had developed well as songwriters, matured as we ought to have. So it was a great time for us....Lots of optimism and energy.

Two tracks from the demo were then used to press the first and only STORMQUEEN 7 inches vinyl single featuring “Come Silent the World” and “Raising the Roof”. There’s an interesting story behind this release , especially for record collectors.There were in fact two different pressings, the first one having been destroyed, right ?

DM: Well, there is in fact a twist to this one. There was initially to be 500 copies in the official release. More ended up being produced due to errors and problems with the first pressing. But 500 *official* copies were pressed, plus a few test pressings for quality check. So....it was a small release.

When we got the first 10 test copies and an initial production run (which was about 150 copies), there were problems.

Firstly the labels, which were red with black writing, bubbled up and were sort of peeling off the discs. There was also a mis-print of the title of the A-side, it read "Come Silent the Night" instead of "Come Silent the World".

I seem to remember that there were some clicks on the pressings too, which was unacceptable. And so these were all supposedly sent back to be destroyed. Apart that is from a few copies that we had given out when we went to do a radio interview (as we wanted them to be able to play it). After this it was then re-mastered and re-pressed. As far as I am aware, there were only the 500 silver on black copies, and the few red copies that slipped out. I actually prefer the silver on black myself.

You are probably aware that the STORMQUEEN single is one of the most wanted record among the NWOBHM fans, with the asking price going through the roof when one of the few remaining copies shows up for sale (which didn’t happen since many months). What do you feel about this?

DM: It is baffling on the one hand, extremely complimentary on the other. I feel sorry that so many people are being excluded from hearing the music because of the high prices. But that is soon to be remedied with the OPM release and subsequent other CD releases we are planning.

I have to say that all of the interest in the band has been rather astonishing to us, we always knew we were good, we worked bloody hard at it, day in day out on the writing. So I guess this is welcome recognition after all the effort.

The STORMQUEEN single gave the band a brand new exposure, which was probably the initial goal. Was this release of great help in spreading STORMQUEEN’s music and increasing the notoriety of the band ? How did you sell the single, did the band manage to get a distribution deal and a good management ? Also, was Come Silent the World reviewed in the music press or local newspapers ?

DM: Yes, the initial goal was to gain exposure. We did it ourselves once again because of the difficulty we were having being based in Wales. We forged some interest from labels with it at the time. Music for Nations and Neat both showing keen interest on hearing it, which seemed to dull when they found out we were based in Wales. Paul and I went to meet with Music for Nations, and it was all good as I say up until the Welsh bit. There was definitely a perception that Wales was somewhere out the back of beyond. I live in London these days, and I still encounter people that have no concept of how far away it is, or have any knowledge of it other than it's famous for it's rugby.

As a tool the single did help us to gain recognition certainly, we sold it through record shops in Wales and through mail order too.

We did have a manager not so long after Paul and Nick joined. He was a rather infamous character on the local Welsh music scene, his name was Joey Parratt. He masterminded a brilliant series of "scams" involving the leading daily in Wales the South Wales Echo. Which meant that we gained a hell of a lot of publicity and notoriety. Very clever guy. And yes we did get reviewed and I have some of them still in the book of press cuttings I kept.

In fact they are to feature as a printed insert in the OPM album release, and on subsequent cd releases. So people will be able to read all about it.

Did STORMQUEEN get some broadcasting on the radio and was there any label interested in signing the band at this point ?

DM: We did get exposure on radio in Wales. On Red Dragon Radio's Friday ROck Show with Steve Tupper. Steve became a big champion of the band actually, sending our stuff to labels and people in the industry. He was a very nice guy and helped us a lot. One of the interviews we did with him a bit later on in the bands history I still have in digital format. So maybe that will get put on a release too, it's hilarious.

I think I covered the label interest part earlier so....

It’s hard to believe and annoying STORMQUEEN never released a full length LP album, especially when the songs were there waiting to be recorded. Hailing from Wales must have made it more difficult for bands like STORMQUEEN to get some attention from the media and the labels. I know that some bands from all parts of Great Britain moved to London to try their luck there with the hope of getting more attention and making it big. Do you think this “a priori” towards bands from provincial towns (and especially towards bands from Wales as Dave and xxx will confirm) did a lot of harm to the band ?

DM: We couldn't afford to record and release an album ourselves or we would have for sure. And as I have reiterated many times in this and other interviews, there was definitely alienation towards bands outside of big cities. We talked about moving to London, but it wasn't easy to do, financially for a start. Looking back I suppose we ought to have done it and struggled or whatever, but Neil, Paul and myself were all deliberately unemployed the whole time the band existed, this allowed us the time we needed to write. Bt of course it meant we had hardly any money at all. So to up and move to London would have been virtually impossible.

I've always maintained that had we been based in London we would have gotten signed, no question. In bands that I have been in since StormQueen ended it has always been such that we needed to get out of Wales. One band Warlords we took to L.A. to get exposure. That worked we got released out there, and later back here too we got an album deal. So... would say that's conclusive proof really. It's very very different in Wales today though, there has been a huge explosion in Welsh bands/music. So that's been beneficial and great to see.

How did you complement each others with Neil if we talk about the song writing, how did you share the rhythm and lead parts ?

DM: Ummm we would fight about it sometimes...heh heh about who got to do which solo etc. We also started developing some dual solo's one that I feel works beautifully can be heard on a track called "The Fire and the Rose" off the last demo we did (will be on OPM and future releases).

Song writing wise early on we were incredibly in tune. We thought very much alike so it was very easy for us to write together. Later on Neil wanted to experiment more with jazz influences and such like, in retrospect I see this was just part of his growth as a musician and the path he needed to take, but at the time it made for fiery writing/recording sessions with out a doubt. It never came to throwing punches, but came pretty close.

The diversity Neil was bringing to the table is very evident in the last demo. The opening track, "Cake" which is a stylised intro to "These walls have eyes" the second track, (it's hard to explain but they run into each other) is a fine example. It became a compromise of course, and it astonished a lot of people at the time. We really didn't sound like any other band around at the time by then. Not that we did anyway, but towards the end it was very defined.

Has a Stormqueen fan club ever existed and did the band produce some merchandising ? On the picture printed on the nwobhm encyclopedia, one of the guitarist wears a white Stormqueen T shirt. Any pin buttons, patches, etc… ?

DM: Heh heh if I had five pounds for every time someone has mentioned this, and that now legendary t-shirt :) There was no fan club, we just didn't think to do it to be honest. As for t-shirts there was never any thing official that we produced. The t-shirt in the photo (that is me wearing it btw) I got made up at a t-shirt stall over on Barry Island, especially for the photo shoot.

We did try and carve out a completely individualistic image with our on stage clothes. Partly engineered by Joey Parratt as part of his big scheme, we adopted these animal print outfits. I used to wear leopard, Neil snakeskin, Paul zebra stripes etc. Neil and went as far as having custom scratch plates with these patterns, if you look closely at some pics in the photo archive (www.stormqueen.co.uk) you can see them. They looked great.

In 1984, the third and last STORMQUEEN demo was recorded with some changes in the line up again. Bryn Merryck was brought in as bassist. In the meantime, the band was still progressing musically, with some more complex arrangements in the song structures. On another hand, Paul Burnett is also giving his best David Coverdale impersonation on “Just for a Day”, this song reminds me a lot about classic Purple songs like “Soldier of Fortune” ! Again, please tell us more about how and when was this third demo recorded.

DM:As you rightly say it was recorded in 1984, again at Loco Studios in Gwent. We booked a 3 day block session for this demo, we had some pretty elaborate ideas on production etc, so we knew it was going to take time.

Bryn did indeed step back in on bass, he was helping out more than anything, sadly Nick wasn't really musically adept enough to play the songs we'd moved on to writing. hence his departure from the band. "Just for a day" is a beautiful power ballad, with some exquisite acoustic guitar played by Neil. You can hear his jazz influences coming out, especially in his soloing.

Paul doing his Coverdale impression eh? Not sure he'll like that, he was very heavily influenced by David Bowie actually, and would never have strived to sound like Coverdale, a fine singer though he is.

The recording of this demo was a real baptism of fire in many ways. There was a lot of heated moments around the production and direction. But it was worth every second. We did things like record guitar solos with the amp out in the middle of the corn field next to the studio, with mics placed at different distances etc. It was great fun to do in that sense. You can hear dogs and chickens in the mix on Cake, all grabbed locally. Loco is in a rural setting you see, out in the sticks so..

Soon after this demo the band was no more. What led to the split actually, discouragement, weariness, musical divergences ?

DM: Primarily it was Neil, he didn't feel as though he was satisfied musically any more. He had outgrown the genre at that time. He wanted to try other things, more diverse musical endeavors, so he eventually quit the band. He and I weren't seeing eye to eye at that time. Which of course left us short one very fine guitarist. Hard boots to fill.

Not so long after that Paul got an offer from another band, and things were stagnating with us really not having a complete line up, rightfully he took the offer. So that was it really. It was impossible to fill both posts as far as I could see, so we all split and went off into other musical directions/projects. Though myself, Boofy, Paul & Nick were to regroup once again later as Vancouver. A very different sounding project to StormQueen, very much more slick sounding I guess. I like the demo we recorded personally, but I'm not sure it would fit into NWOBHM territory at all.

Did you join some other bands after STORMQUEEN ?

DM: heh heh did I ever. I have never stopped playing original music. Nearly all of it guitar based, not metal though really, but hard/heavy pretty much all of it. I am in a band called DEFACE at present, all the other guys in that band are based in Wales. We're gigging on the 24th March funnily enough, just getting back to that after finding a new drummer. Neil sessions for a variety of people, he too never stopped playing, in fact he is the only one that made a living if you like from music. Boofy still plays, in fact he played with DEFACE for a while, though now he only plays for pleasure. Paul did quit for a long time but is back singing again, not least of all on the new SQ recordings that are underway.

Did you stay in touch on a regular basis with the ex members ?

DM: Yes very mush so. With Boofy and Neil the most I guess, though Paul to a lesser extent, we used to write to each other. I was living in America for over five years in the late 80's early 90's. So during that time we weren't in touch much. Although none of have contact with Nick Macormac, nobody seems to know where he is these days. Also Bryn (what is it about bass players eh?) doesn't have much contact with anyone, but that's for his own personal reasons that I shan't go into. Oh and of course myself and original Chris Glyn Jones always kept in touch. We mail each other all the time these days.

STORMQUEEN is now regarded by many NOWBHM enthusiasts from all around the world as one of the best band of the genre. It simply took people 20 years to be aware of the band. In 2003, the homepage of the STORMQUEEN website was launched ( website here ), and plans were made for a full length STORMQUEEN vinyl LP release on the American OPM records label, due to be out sometime in 2005. When did you realize there was a renewed interest in the band ?

DM: Well a guy called David Baumgartner from the USA tracked down Paul in Cardiff somehow, and wrote to him asking about SQ singles. Paul had only one and didn't want to sell it so he decided to contact the rest of us for David. Basically at that point something was obviously happening as regarded interest, that was clear. You don't get people spending time money and energy tracking you down for no reason.

Then other people started to make contact, and Jim and John from OPM got in touch with me about a release. And of course Malc Macmillans New Wave of British Heavy Metal book really set the boat a sailing. I mean after that it went ballistic. That was when we put the few singles that Neil and I had on ebay.

John and Jim's want to do the release was the big factor for us of course, that was proof self evident that people wanted to hear the music. And the sheer amount of emails I get from people asking where they can buy/hear the music. It really has been amazing.

What do you think of all the 80’s NWOBHM bands that reform again (though it is not limited to the NWOBHM but it applies to the whole heavy metal genre from the 80’)? I mean soon we will nearly have them all back ! It looks like the internet is a very efficient promotion tool if we compare to the way bands had to promote themselves 20 years ago.

DM: Ummm that's a difficult one to be honest, I would never have foreseen a SQ reunion. In fact I can't say that in reality that is what we're doing. We all have our own things going on and frankly they are diverse, and wouldn't allow for a reunion proper for financial reasons. So I guess the fact that we're doing the new songs for the OPM release is great. And that possibly, though the chances are slim I think, we may do a few shows. The future for SQ as a permanent act touring etc like some of the bands are is very slim. Our collective financial commitments just wouldn't allow it....unless that is of course there's someone out there who wants to sign us to a million dollar record deal heh heh heh.

As for other bands, I couldn't comment. I have never stopped making music in bands, doubt that I ever will so...each to their own. I am all for looking forward, not back is the best way I can put it.

Do you find it rewarding but late that STORMQUEEN is finally getting the recognition the band never really got back then , how do you feel about still getting interest into STORMQUEEN after all those years from people who are still looking for real well played Metal from the 80’?

DM: Well as I said earlier, it is all very flattering, nice to get the recognition finally. But in reality I'm more pleased that so many people want to hear what we did again. That's the crucial thing for me, not the adulation or whatever, but the appreciation of all our hard work.

Can you give us some information about the STORMQUEEN vinyl LP OPM records is currently working on? How did you get in touch with them ?

DM: They got in touch with us as I mentioned. The release is set to be all the tracks previously unrelased, so it will not include the two on the original 7 inch. It will also include a 7 inch single of it's own featuring the two newly recorded tracks "StormQueen' & "Can You Hear me Thinking". It is going to be a gatefold sleeve with a book of photos in the centre of the gatefold, there will be a patch included, and also a printed biography inserted inside the sleeve, telling the history of the band in words, pictures and press clippings. It is going to be an excellent package.

What are the next projects for STORMQUEEN ? getting the band together again with some live shows, hopefully some future releases as well ?

DM: Well see above for the answer to that one. You have to remember that this is StormQueen, so you never know what might happen :)

What are your top 10 bands and albums of all time ?

DM: Impossible for me to say to be honest. There are just too many candidates, I'm sorry to cop out but it would take me a year and a day to even consider the options let alone decide.

What was your best moment in your career and what would you change if anything ?

DM: Again it is completely impossible to answer that, I have had many many high points, too many to mention, but singling out one is just not possible. The one thing I would have changed as far as SQ is concerned is that we should have made that move to London. I think we would have done really well out of it. But that is all water under the bridge as they say.

Thank you very much for answering all these questions. Do you have any message for all the STORMQUEEN fans and metal heads out there or something you’d like to add to this interview ?

DM: Yes I guess first of all thank you for all your feedback, enthusiasm, interest and support. Thanks also to everyone who has helped us, without their support we may never have gotten recognition for our work. Also look out for the cd releases that will be happening, finally the music will be out there for everyone who wants it. Keep rocking.

I really hope we’ll see them on tour very soon. Welcome back guys !!!!

DM: Thanks Fred, you're a star. Dave