Biff Byford and the School of Hardknocks
High-Noon with the Northern Lionheart Bard...
Interview and review by, Mike Blackhart
‘Mike the appointment is booked for 12 noon, please be prompt’ ... my editors words were ringing in my ears...
Nerves tend to get the better of me, and this was once such occasion...
My pulse was racing and my heart was thumping in my chest.
Morning TV played in the background… Holly Willoughby could be heard discussing the latest fashion trend in puffy sleeved blouses...
The clock continued to count down to the fateful hour…
I checked my phone for the twelfth time to make sure I had sufficient battery to make the call... to a living legend... a rock n roll hero... and probably the reason why denim and leather go so well together!
Five minutes to the hour I thought I better call… I wanted to make sure I wasn’t tardy, always try to make a good first impression as second ones seldom occur or count…
I make the call..
The phone rings and a woman answers, she asks if I would mind calling back in two minutes as Biff was on the other line... no problem...
Two minutes… two minutes... ‘Two Minutes to Midnight’, quite appropriate, given I'm about to speak a pioneer of the NWOBHM, I start singing along to myself and damn... I lost track of time.. Had it been two minutes already or should I allow for three or give the grace of four?
My phone rings... "Hi Biff here, sorry about that, I was on the other line... How are you?"
Wishing him the very best belated birthday wishes, I ask him how he celebrated his 69th year...
"It was a quiet affair with the family... the only extravagance being the bottle of champagne we opened… a very close friend had got it as a present… it was lovely"...
Enquiring after his health after last years heart surgery, which saw the remaining dates of the ‘Castles and Eagles’ tour postponed...
"Well it’s still beating and I'm feeling good, so what more can I ask for?"
Over the last 40 plus years Biff Byford has led Saxon to be one of the most consistent and essential live acts that any fan of heavy metal should experience, and they continue to go from strength to strength... and now Biff is on the cusp of the release of his first solo album, 'School Of Hard Knocks’…
How does one approach the question of the solo album with your fellow band mates?
"Well both Nibbs and Nigel have had albums outside of Saxon, so it wasn’t a problem"
But when its the front man forging ahead with his own venture, with that voice… the voice that gives the ‘act’ that unique quality, the singers solo project will always fly to a far greater extent the flag of the band from which they hail... and the question will be asked… How good can it be? and in this instance... Epic!
With the release date set for the 21st February 2020, Biff Byford presents to us his 'School Of Hard Knocks" on Silver Lining Music...
"What does that title mean to me? It’s all about where I come from, where I've been and the lessons it’s taught me"...
‘School Of Hard Knocks’ shares its name with the second track off the album…
"...it’s about my family, growing up working class, it’s about the North, it about home... Yorkshire... I'm proud of my roots and the community and I'm taking you back to where it all began... Life was tough, but fun, it was post war 1950'S, but my childhood was great... the tracks lyrics read like a memoir... ‘my mother played piano... echoes of the past... my father was a drinking man working all his life... keeping us together through the trouble and the strife’ ..."
It was standard practice for the time and place until his world was rocked by the tragic passing of his mother. It devastated young the young Biff who suddenly had to grow up fast.
"I was very close to my mother, and she had brought music into the home. Her memory still lives on through me and what I do... it was very sad, but from what I can remember of her she was amazing... but then one day she was just gone..."
While dealing with his grief, he went to live with his uncle and aunt, but returned home to face the next challenge, that of looking after his dad, who had lost an arm in an industrial accident. But against this adversity he found solace in playing guitar and trying to break away…
"…looking for a better and brighter future down a rock n roll highway"...
But before his big break he took an apprenticeship as a carpenter and then worked in the local weaving sheds…
"I was no stranger to hard graft... it made me who I am... and laid the foundations for what I was to achieve".
The artwork is a departure from what you might expect but it ties into the themes that the album explores and that’s what why L.S. Lowry made it onto the cover.
"Lowry's style has an honesty and simplicity and that’s what appealed to me most and best represented what the album is saying, as I’m singing about my past of course and about things I like, but mostly I wanted it to reflect me, my personality and my life... My daughter also helped in the artworks rendering and I love the fact she was involved...”
To the songs...
The lead single 'Welcome to the Show' is undeniably a brilliant homage to early era Saxon and 'Pedal to the Metal' finds Biff plotting a course that heralds eighties Judas Priest...
"Well when you’re on tour with Judas Priest, for as long as we were, you can't help but be influenced"… as the lyrics relate a time when he tore his way down an unrestricted section of the German autobahn... "We were driving in a Porsche 924 and it really rocketed... then all of a sudden in the rear view mirror this red Ferrari comes barrelling into view... It bared down on us… all lights and horns flashing until we pulled out of its way, it was quite a thrill..."
As one would expect both tracks are out and out crowd pleasers and will undoubtedly fill their hearts with Rock’N’Roll fire... "but the album is more diverse and not just focused on heavy metal".
The most ambitious songs on Biffs’ sonic journey are those that somewhat divert from what his audience might expect, but rest assured we are still firmly within familiar territory...
"I've always been into Prog-Rock, bands like Yes and King Crimson... always admired Peter Fripp and for me I tried to capture that with, 'The Pit and the Pendulum'… The story is about the torments endured by a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition by Edgar Allan Poe... Allowing for a certain amount of artistic license with the historical facts... The narrator of the story describes his experience of being tortured. The story is especially effective at inspiring fear in the reader because of its heavy focus on the senses, such as sound, emphasising its reality, and that’s what I tap into... it’s definitely the heaviest and darkest of the tracks on the album, with a sense of impending doom... I found the track fascinating to work on as I'm imagining myself in someone else’s shoes and writing from that perspective is quite challenging"...
'The Inquistor' mines the same territory and is somewhat Shakespearean in the way that it deals with the subject matter of pain, fears and the sorrows of life... its universal and tackles the shadows of the human condition. Biff performs it with a spoken word delivery and one could describe it as a ‘soliloquy set to music’ which works to great effect as he has a quality to his voice that most certainly conveys the emotional complexity in which the narratives protagonist finds himself.
The stoic, poetic nature is similarly shared on 'Worlds Collide', which sees us blasting off into the realms of a cosmic odyssey with the conflict of galactic forces on the brink of extinction... "I've always been a big fan of Sci-fi films that deal with these themes, so this is my tribute to them, but it also works as an allegorical tale, for example, it must of seem otherworldly to the Mayans when the Conquistadors appeared on their shores... and of course the world always seems to be on the edge of some major disaster".
But it’s not all brooding sentiment as the most tender of moments on the album is the song 'Me and You' which Biff dedicates to his wife, "She’s been with me through so much and it’s a testament to the love and life we share"
We also have two covers that are very dear to Biffs musical education, with close links to the history of the North that he embraces.
‘Scarborough Fair’... "We created a new arrangement which gives the legend new life... It’s a traditional medieval song, and the story goes that Paul Simon happened to hear somebody playing it in Whitby, which is just down the road from Scarborough... But I wanted something which represented Yorkshire and it is a Yorkshire folk song, so we tried a new arrangement which made it a little heavier, and it works really well.”
"And I had to do... ‘Throw Down the Sword’ by Wishbone Ash... It was the first song I ever heard that was anything to do with history in the sense of battles and war, and was really the thing which started me on the road to writing historically-driven songs... our version is longer, with a greater sense of drama as it gives the song the opportunity to really come to life… and for my vocals… it really allows the melody to soar!"
Joining Biff on the record we have Fredrik Åkesson (Opeth) on guitars, Christian 'Kicken' Lundqvist on drums and Gus Macricostas on bass, so I asked him what it was like working with them...
"It was great, we've all known each other for ages, having met through various award ceremonies over the years, when I suggested what I wanted to do they were happy to join in... Fred was absolutely fantastic, he is a formidable guitarist and helped with all the arrangements, he can play anything… he has all the skills and all the techniques... we sent ideas back and forth and it was great to be working with guys who were just as passionate about the material as I was".
We also have guest appearances from Motörhead guitarist Phil Campbell, Alex Holzwart (Rhapsody of Fire), Nick Barker (Voices), Dave Kemp (Wayward Sons) and your fellow band mate Nibbs Carter.
How did you tempt them into the fold?
"Some of the tracks just needed a certain touch so I was happy to share the work load...As you can see in the video for ‘School Of Hard Knocks’, Phil takes on soloing duties....Whereas you have Nick who is an extremely technical drummer and super talented guy... because of the different styles and genres on the album he stepped up when needed... my son also made some recommendations and I was happy to take the advice! And Nibbs had to be on album, he would have played on every track!"
It turns out Biff also gave a hand in the instrumentation…
"Yeah... we used my 70'S Gibson Gold top on quite a bit of the album, its fitted with 63" PAFs and that really dialled in the sound we were looking for with the Peavey and Marshall amps we used... I also took to my Rickenbacker 4001; it was a return of sorts for me as I had started out originally as a bassist so it was great to provide some four string thunder... The majority of the gear we used was circa 1970s purely because of the tonal qualities… the woods of that era have an age to them and they have a real depth and resonance".
On top of his dedication to the studio details in his role of producer, Biffs vocals sound absolutely superb: his range and delivery is spot on and that can be attributed to the fact that the audio is captured using the same mic setup we would find on a Saxon album
"AKG'S and Sennheisers always do the trick" … and of course keeping in good vocal health, "not singing from the throat but using the diaphragm to really push out the notes". And with Andy Sneap having kept an eye on proceedings, "it’s going to sound brilliant... as the recording duties were helmed by Jacky Lehmann at Brighton Electric Studios in Brighton (UK) and the mixes were produced at Queen Street Studios in Stockholm (Sweden) by Mats Valentin".
Biff will be back on the road with Saxon in March for the remaining dates of their ‘Castles and Eagles’ tour with support from Girlschool...
"Preparations are going well, and it'll be great to get back to live performance...I've got the desk recordings from the previous gigs, so I'm using them... just blasting the tracks out of my speakers and singing along…”
And then in April, Biff will be taking the 'School of Hard Knocks' on Tour for a ten date run in the UK.
"Its going to follow an evening with format... the first part will be me in conversation with the audience about anything really, from heart attacks to sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, old times, new times, friends, enemies and whatever anyone wants to chat about… and that will be hosted by American comedian, DJ and mate Don Jamieson... Then the second half we'll be bringing out a band and playing some new songs, covers and maybe end with a Saxon song or two. I’m still working out the details, but it’s a show I’ve wanted to do for a long time and one which I don’t think has been done in hard rock before. It’ll be something different and a lot of fun.”
And I'm sure it most certainly will be!
School of Hard Knocks not only achieves the goal of providing full bore entertainment, it also fulfils a long-standing wish to explore rock ‘n’ roll by one of the men who built the institution that we worship at!
“It’s been great to break new ground, explore new territories and work with some old friends,” concludes Biff, “and having waited so long to make this album, I have to say, I am delighted with it! It has a whole range of styles, from the ridiculously heavy to ballads, and it is certainly my album.”
And don’t worry; I have it on good authority that the next
Saxon album is on its way!!!!!
https://myticket.co.uk/artists/biff-byford
https://www.saxon747.com/en2/tour-dates-neu
https://www.facebook.com/pg/biffsaxon747/events/
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School of Hard Knocks Release date 21st February
Pre-order on CD, Vinyl, Digital formats and special
D2C bundles;
http://hyperurl.co/SchoolOfHardKnocks
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