INTERVIEW: Saxon decide to ‘Paint It Black’ on new covers album
Photo: Saxon are a heavy metal band from the United Kingdom, and their new album is Inspirations. Photo courtesy of the band / Provided by press site with permission.
Saxon, certainly deserving of the legendary status amongst UK rockers, couldn’t wait for the COVID-19 pandemic to lift before giving their legions of fans something to enjoy. That gift came in the form of a new covers album, called Inspirations, out now from Silver Lining Music.
The heavy metal band shreds into some classic tunes, including … wait for it … the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer,” the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” and Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” among others. As the title suggests, the recording is a chance for Saxon to pay respect to the bands that influenced them over the course of their lives and multi-decade career.
Biff Byford, the lead singer of Saxon, who is unmistakable with his long rocker hair and aggressive vocals, said the band found themselves at a crossroads during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their new album of original material was pushed back to February 2022, so they figured they’d try something different.
“We figured it would be good to put out something for fun really, get together and just play some music together because we haven’t played together for quite some time,” Byford said in a recent phone interview. “We had the idea in October, recorded it in November. I think it was finished by the end of November. It was a pretty instant idea, and it’s a bit of an instant album really.”
The band members took a trip down memory lane and decided to jettison the typical recording experience in a studio and instead lay down the tracks in Brockfield Hall near York in the United Kingdom. Byford said they were after a 1970s vibe.
“It was great really,” he said. “I wanted to create that sort of vibe of the ‘70s when a lot of bands used to use big houses and chateaus and castles, big manor houses as recording studios probably because there weren’t that many big studios. They used to use their own houses or rent houses, and have a mobile studio outside. I wanted to do it like that really, record it live, as loud it could be, big rooms. … We all lived there, so it was a good atmosphere. It was great fun actually. The whole album was fun to do, you know.”
Saxon’s early albums, including their legendary releases in the 1980s like Wheels of Steel and Crusader, were recorded in a studio, so this experience was a new one for Byford and company. “We always made our early albums in studios, so this was the first time we’ve ever used a big house or a big room outside a studio,” the singer said. “We would have liked to have done it, but the record company and producers were never into that. I suppose it was easier to use studios for them, but we weren’t making records back in the early ‘70s. So we didn’t have that opportunity, but, yeah, it definitely took us back. A lot of these songs we’ve never played before and certainly never sang some of them before, so the album was done as a performance really and just to bring a bit of pleasure to people, play some songs that influence and inspire us.”
“Paperback Writer” is a particular favorite of Byford’s. He saw the Beatles on TV in 1963 when he was 12 or 13 years old, and he started to have thoughts of getting his own guitar or bass guitar. He eventually came around to the idea that he wanted to be a musician.
“The Beatles inspired millions of musicians, I think, so the thing is some songs influenced us and some bands inspired us,” he said. “That’s the whole concept of the album. I wanted to do ‘Paperback Writer’ as if we did it in the ‘80s, a bit aggressive and a little bit faster. I think we could have done that on Wheels of Steel actually. We could have recorded that song in 1980. It would have sounded great.”
In those early years, when Byford was messing around with the guitar, he realized that for his style of playing, the Rolling Stones were easier to play than the Beatles. But no matter the band he was trying to emulate, the singer said the 1960s were a fantastic time to be learning about music. “There was a lot of music coming from America,” Byford said. “There was a lot of music in the UK and from Liverpool and places like that. It was based around music. The ‘60s was a revolutionary time for music, and it inspired us really.”
This past year has been a strange one for Saxon, and the rest of the music world. For the first six months of quarantine, the band members decided to sit back and wait out the virus. Then, come the fall of 2020, they started to emerge and think about the next projects. This covers album made its way to the top of the ideas list.
“I did my solo album just before the pandemic started, and then we moved on to this album,” Byford said. “Nobody knows how [the virus is] going to go. It goes up, and then it goes down. There was a point in the UK when cases were really dropping hard. It looked like we were going to be getting out of lockdown, and then we went back in again. It’s a bit of a question mark really over the entertainment business definitely.”
That question mark still stands for the live music industry, but in the interim, Saxon have found a way to deliver the goods for their fans and pay respect to some influential bands.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Saxon’s new album is called Inspirations, now available from Silver Lining Music. Click here for more information.
