Photo: planetblaze.com Intervju - Blaze Bayley, Blaze Den 3:e mars ringde Blaze Bayley upp Metalshrine´s skribent Mikael Ekström för att prata lite om den nya liveskivan "As live as it gets". Här har ni hela samtalet! ME: Congratulations! The new live album got five out of five from Metalshrine! BB: Fantastic! Thank you very much indeed. Brilliant! ME: You have recorded two albums with Blaze. Why did you choose to record a live album now? BB: What we decided to do was record our live set. We´ve done two albums, that we are really proud of, with the band and a lot of people know who Blaze Bayley is, but not as many people seem to know Blaze the band. And we wanna let people know what we are all about. So we thought, well the set we did on the last tour was really good. We thought, well what if we make this into a live album, so it would give people, who perhaps didn´t know what Blaze was about, a chance to find out. Because we are not an Iron Maiden clone, we are not nu-metal. I think you can see on the live album, if you listen to that, what the band is about. That´s why we decided to do it really. ME: Where was it recorded? BB: We recorded two main shows. One we recorded in Switzerland, at the Metal Days Festival and the other one was recorded in the UK. We recorded our christmas show. The most of the album comes from the christmas show in the UK. That was a big event for our fans and everything. To be honest, I think the record is only as good as it is because of the fans who were there. They really inspired us. They got us going! We were all nervous and everything about doing the recording, because we weren´t gonna record a lot of nights. We had one that we had done and that was gonna be the main one. And the reaction of the fans really made it absolutely fantastic. Some fans flew over from Sweden especially for the show. It was just incredible! It was just a really good night and I think that the atmosphere comes over you on the album. When we started listening back to it, we had two weeks off after recording it, which you don´t normally get when you make an album. You normally start mixing it right away. When we listened to it, we liked the sound so much better than the last two studio albums. Soundwise, we think it´s the best we´ve done so far. ME: It must have been a lot of work listening to all the tapes? BB: We were really lucky because we only had the two to go through, because the most of it was from the UK. Andy Sneap came and set up his mobile studio at the gig and we were really lucky with the venue, because it was our home town gig. We knew the venue well and they didn´t have a band in the day before so they let us have the venue the whole day and the evening. So we managed to get all our equipment in and our soundcheck done. Everything the day before. The whole day of the show we managed to set up for the recording, which is a lot more time than you usually have, so it worked out great. Everything seemed to go in our favour really. ME: How do you enter the stage when you know you´re gonna record the show? Are there things that you don´t say to the audience or don´t do on stage? BB: I´ve done a live album with Wolfsbane and I´m pleased with the way it turned out, mostly. I thought it could´ve sounded better so this time I had more confidence and we had more time to set up everything. We knew from the soundcheck that the sound was gonna be really clear. I try to do my best really. I got a bit nervous sometimes and there was a couple of songs that I had to write the lyrics down. Something I normally wouldn´t bother. Sometimes I go to pieces just in case... ME: No practical jokes on stage? BB: No, so that was it really. We were all a bit nervous. You know, coming back to it, we are really, really pleased. ME: It´s great that you included "Dazed and confused" and "Virus"! BB: Yeah, we were asked to do that for "The music remains the same" and we did it quite quickly in the studio and we were that pleased with it. And we wanted to do something special because it was our christmas show and we decided to do that and it turned out so much better than the studio version. We thought, let´s put it in on the album. And virus has been in the set for a few months now and that one has gone down really well. We always do a couple of Maiden songs in our set, but we wanted to do something a bit different and that´s a song that I never did live with Iron Maiden. When we rehearsed it we enjoyed it, so we tried it in the set and it seems to do well. Our version is a little bit different from the Iron Maiden version and quite a bit different from the studio version. ME: I´ve seen you live twice and both times in Malmö, Sweden! BB: Oh yeah! ME: And you played a Wolfsbane track there last time, "Tough as steel", which is also on the live album. Have you performed any other Wolfsbane songs live on tour? BB: We have played "Kathy Wilson" and "Manhunt" from the first album. ME: Speaking of Wolfsbane, what do you think of the re-release of the last Wolfsbane album, "Lifestyles of the broke and obscure", as a double disc? BB: Nobody asked me about that one. It´s poor value and I think it´s a rip off for the fans! ME: Did you do any overdubs on this live album or is it as the title says, as live as it gets? BB: Yeah it is as live as it gets, but what we did do, was we cheated in one place. "Born as a stranger". What happened was that a fire alarm went off during the song, so we actually asked the fans if we could play the song again at the end of the show. So we played it again and we put the two verses together. So it´s like the first half of one verse and the second half of the other. The producer managed to stick the two together into one song. And if you listen to the end of "Born as a stranger", you can hear the alarm still going off at the very end. He said he wouldn´t have to mess about with it if the drummer had played in time with the alarm. Then it would have been ok, like a weird sound effect, but it didn´t work out. ME: Which song is most fun to perform live? BB: I think it varies, but I really enjoy "Sign of the cross" because it´s the first time we´ve been doing it. We liked to do something different from my Iron Maiden days. I always used to love that one. It´s a song that I´m very well known for. A lot of fans have asked me about that one the last couple of years. In the night it´s really a good one to sing. It´s like seeing an old friend. And "Speed of light" as well. ME: You have been on tour for quite a while now. Have there been any funny Spinal Tap incidents? BB: It sems like everyday is a Spinal Tap incident. How can you survive it? The last part of the tour we supported Overkill and during the tour the singer from Overkill, Bobby Blitz, he had a stroke. Luckily he has fully recovered from that now. It was just bizarre. A set of events happened around it. The drummer´s brother got taken seriously ill and they thought he was gonna die, so we borrowed Doro´s drummer to finish the tour and he only got time to learn forty minutes and then we got to one of the gigs and we thought that forty, fortyfive minutes is ok supporting. We didn´t realise that they booked us as a co-headliner with Overkill. They wanted us to do an hour and we just didn´t know an hour. The football´s world cup was on at the time, so we ended up spending loads of time between the songs talking about football. Just trying to pump the time up. There were a few funny ones on that. When we were in Brazil...the title song of the last studio album "The tenth dimension" the chorus goes "here I am standing in the darkness..." and when we started playing that song all of the lights went out. It was an outdoor show and people could just see us from the street lights and when we got to the chorus and started singing "Here I am standing in the darkness...", we were all laughing so much we could hardly sing it. It was so ridicolous. So there were a few bizarre events, too many to remember. We should write ém down really. ME: You don´t keep a diary on tour? BB: We try to keep our website updated, www.planetblaze.com. When we´re away we try every few days to send in something to tell people what we are up to. ME: You have great musicians in the band Blaze. You sound very tight. How is this band if you compare to Wolfsbane and Iron Maiden? BB: It´s a different thing. Wolfsbane was very much a rock and roll band. It was a line up with one guitar, no rhythm guitar and things were a bit looser and the whole style of the drumming was a bit loose. In Iron Maiden it was driven a different way with the two guitars. In our band we are more like traditional metal. We always think that the music is the most important thing to us. We always try to be the musicians as we can and jump around as much as we can and have fun without messing up. So we always put the music first and that´s the most important thing. We´re not worried about image. We just like to play the music we love and have a good time. ME: I think you treat your fans with a lot of respect as well. Myself and a friend were standing outside KB in Malmö before a show, in the freezing cold. We got pictures and you signed our stuff and later on John Slater came out with a cup of coffee for us. BB: That´s great! Did he make you pay for the coffee? ME: No, no! BB: So you got off pretty good there? ME: I think so. (laughter) BB: He should´ve charged you for the coffee! (laughter) ME: What are your own personal favorites when it comes to live albums? BB: My favorite classics are "Live evil" by Black Sabbath and "If you want blood..." by AC/DC and... ME: "Massive noise injection"? BB: (laughter) No, I wouldn´t put my own stuff there. They are my top two live albums. ME: I´ve seen on tour that your manager Neil has been filming the shows. Do you plan to release a dvd? BB: Yeah, we are planning that, but we want it to be really, really good. Some of the dvd´s we´ve seen, that bands have done, seem like they´ve just done ém so they can say that they have a dvd. We really like videos and stuff like that, but we haven´t really done any proper videos. So we want to make sure we can really make a good job. We are fans of this music as well. We want it to be something that we can be proud of as fans, that we really can enjoy. What we do now is collecting bits and pieces as we go along. We want to make a dvd that really pushes the format to its limit, you know. That have loads of features. When it comes to the artwork and the music, we do everything ourselves. There are hardly any outside input into the artwork and there aren´t anybody outside the band that has anything to do with the music and we feel the same with videos and stuff like that. If it has anything to do with us, if it´s got the name Blaze on it, then we want it to be our ideas. ME: Ok, what about the future? Do you have a new album in the making? BB: We´re bringing out the live album at the moment and we´re gonna do some festivals.I think we´re gonna do SRF this year to support that album and we´re doing the Bloodstock in the UK, I think Bang your head festival in Germany and in the mean time, in between festivals, we´re writing and coming up with all the ideas and songs for the next studio album. ME: Do you think it´s gonna be similar to "Silicon Messiah" and "Tenth dimension"? BB: It´s probably gonna be a combination of the two. When we did "Silicon Messiah" we felt very confident about the songs. We were pushed about the time in the studio and when we did "Tenth dimension" we were in the studio for too long and when we did the live album, we were so pleased with the sound of the live album and it only took us a couple of days to get the sound and everything. So I think what we´re gonna try to do...the live album really inspired us, so we´re gonna try and get some of that live energy and that power into the next studio album. If we only can get a little piece of that energy that we had, that´s what we´re aiming to do. ME: From early Wolfsbane to today´s Blaze there have been quite a lot of development in the songs, lyricwise. Wolfsbane was more of a party, love song band and Blaze is a bit philosophical. Do you miss to write a simple love song or a "Paint the town red" song? Do you think you have achieved what you want lyricwise? BB: These ideas do come up occasionally. That side of me is still there, but I really prefer to work on heavier things and things that are a bit more complex now. That was great when I was doing it, but I learned so much, I´ve grown as a musician and I´ve developed. I´m really proud of those songs and what we did and I wouldn´t rule out to do another party kind of song. But now I concentrate on darker and deeper lyrics. ME: There´s no chance of hearing "Temple of rock" live with Blaze? BB: (laughter) Seems unlikely, doesn´t it? But those were great days and great memories when we did those songs. ME: I read in an old article i Kerrang, some days ago, and they (Kerrang) often referred to you as the dark lord of rock. What do you think of that today? BB: It was a bit of fun really, because you know I always wear black and I was always around. They just looked at me as their pet celebrity singer. That was fun days really. ME: Well, nice talking to you! BB: Yeah, cheers! Nice talking to you! Blaze Bayley - Official website

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