Transcript of an interview I recorded with John Gallagher of RAVEN - 16/05/19. Full article here. MAL-
On the line talking to John Gallagher from RAVEN. John, thanks for taking my call. JOHN- It's very good to be here, mate. Good, good stuff. MAL- It's good to have you on. Now, since 1974. Tell us about that time. JOHN- Oh Jeez, I was still wearing nappies at that point. We just crawled out of the womb, me and my brother decided like idiots to form a rock and roll band. As we were huge fans of the QUO and SLADE and SWEET and DEEP PURPLE, and, you know, you name it. We cut our teeth playing the working men's clubs in the northeast of England, you know, basically 'pint of beer and a fight' please. That kind of stuff. And, you know, we used to get requests on the coasters, on the beer mats. And quite often they were two word requests, but we soldiered on. Turned into a three piece very late '79 and got Mr. Rob Hunter in on drums. And it was just myself, my brother, Mark and Rob. And that's really when it all started, as far as you know, coming up with our own sound. Usually, we were a three piece and still are. And that kind of dictates a lot of what's going on. There's a lot of freedom. There's a lot of responsibility, but we love it and wouldn't have it any other way. And of course from there we did our first single, ended up playing with OZZY and MOTORHEAD and WHITESNAKE and you name it, came to the state's first time in '82, move over the states '84, and blah, blah, blah. MAL- Just backtrack, just a bit to the first time most Australians would have heard of RAVEN, was in the NEW WAVE OF BRITISH HEAVY METAL. Now you were there. Did you see that coming? Was there any indicators that something like that was going to happen? JOHN- Only with hindsight. At the time, not really. I mean, there was a lot of, you know, when punk rock came, it kind of like, pissed off a lot of people. And they just said, I want to hear the music I like, and maybe it's getting a little harder to hear it, I'll play it myself. So there's a very mature DIY type of thing. So you had, you know, where we were, was 250 miles from London, which, you know, it's pretty much like starting a band in Northern Territory, and all your record companies are in Sydney, or something, you know, it's like, the other side of the earth, there was not a hope in hell, of anything ever happening. It was purely we love to play. And that's pretty much our philosophy. That's we do it because we love it. So strangely enough, there was a local record company in Newcastle, who put out a single by a heavy metal band called the TYGERS OF PAN TANG, who we knew well who, you know, lived a few mile away. And they sent it to one of the music magazines in London, and they loved it. And that was all the same time as IRON MAIDEN coming out and ANGELWITCH and SAMSON and what have you down there. So there was just a groundswell of bands who had nothing to do with each other weren't listening to each other, and they had very little in common, other than passion and energy. And, you know, some guy at Sounds Magazine just termed you know, hey, it's the NEW WAVE OF BRITISH HEAVY METAL. So it wasn't a situation where you had to be a card carrying member of the club, you know, it just kind of happened. MAL- Were you aware, or were you not aware of what was happening down in London, say at the time? Are these two bases just sort of growing independently, you know, concurrently at the same time? JOHN- Yeah, we saw it in again, in Sounds Magazine. Oh, yeah. It's IRON MAIDEN, what's this? On the Friday rock show got to hear a couple of tracks, oh these guys are pretty cool. And got to see DEF LEPPARD play their first they played a bunch of club dates and like, so young, but the first EP was really good. And, you know, there was just this feeling that, you know, wow, something, something could happen here. And when we did our first single, and there was a radio DJ called John Peel, who was famous for just every, like, once a week, he would just play new music. He didn't care if he hated it, or loved it. It was just like, here's a, here's this band RAVEN, and OZZY OSBOURNE was listening. He goes, 'Wow, I love that I want those guys to play with me'. So we ended playing 4 dates on the first BLIZZARD OF OZ tour, so it's very, you know, very organic at the time, you know, just, you know, GARY MOORE dropped out of some shows with WHITESNAKE, we ended up getting the gigs, we ended up playing a gig with IRON MAIDEN down at the Marquee club in London. And, you know, it was like a whirlwind, you know, from six months before, nothing, to you know, we're out there playing with incredibly well known acts. So it was definitely, you know, it was it was definitely interesting times. MAL- Do you ever look back and wonder how you survived? JOHN- Oh, I do that constantly. I mean, just the fact that we are here, and this is all Jeez, was it 45th, this is going to be a 45th years as a band. That's just doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. So we're very, very, very humbled, and very blessed to be able to do what we do, to enjoy what we're doing. and a have people enjoy what we're doing. So we never lose track of that. It never gets old, and we never get jaded on that at all. MAL- Right now, you mentioned moving over to the US. When was that? And did it go as planned? JOHN- Well, it was just one of those things. We played a few dates in '82. We came over and toured in '83 and had this young band no-one had ever heard of called METALLICA opening up for us. MAL- I've heard of them. JOHN- Yeah, they've done quite well for themselves, I think. And we came back in '84. And basically the idea was to tour until we got a record deal and a good agent deal, which took all year. And you know, we went home for Christmas, got our visas re-done and came back. And basically, we were living in America. It's the way it worked out. And we had a major deal with Atlantic which was kind of horrible, and kind of set us back a lot. There's a lot of pressure to be commercial. One of the albums in particular was very commercial. And we basically rebelled against that and kicked back and started just saying, you know, I'd rather do music I enjoy and be stone broke and living on the streets than having to be the, you know, the dog with lipstick and frickin spiky color on parading around like a like a clown. So we ended up kicking back doing our own thing. Our drummer Rob left, and then we got Joe Hasselvander in. And all of a sudden we were in the '90s. And it was tough times for metal, but we just stuck it out. You know. MAL- Now we mentioned, the longevity of the band before now, you mentioned Joe joining. He was with the band for like 30 years. So you had a stable lineup, basically, for 30 years. He had a heart attack, had to leave? JOHN- Yeah, he had a heart attack back in May of 2017. And I think it's somebody upstairs with moving pieces around, you know, it's, it was the best thing for him because, God forbid he didn't have the heart attack, and two days later been on stage with us and had the heart attack. That would have been devastating. And also he was very lucky when he had the heart attack. He was like about two minutes from a hospital. So he was able to get right in. Imagine being stuck on stage in Chicago. That would have been a nightmare. But it's I mean, he was done he didn't want to be on the road. And we wanted to up it. we wanted to do more. He'd be complaining, you know, 'Why are you booking more dates? You're going to kill me. I'm too old for this'. So it's worked out. I mean, Joe's an incredibly talented guy. And he's, obviously, going to continue doing his solo stuff, which is more of a Doom thing. But it's very, very well constructed. It's great music. So I know he's working on stuff right now. So that won't stop. He just physically can't go out there and beat the crap out of the drums for an hour and a half, you know, but he's a astonishingly good guitar player. He plays everything. So there'll be more music coming out of Mr. Hasselvander, I'm sure. MAL- You had to have a few drummers fill in the gaps on tours. But you've got.. JOHN- Mike Heller. He's a Heller good drummer. MAL- I can't even read my own writing. JOHN- That's my problem usually. So we had a few guys fill in definitely, yeah, we're there. We had a guy rehearse with us for four hours before that first Chicago date, Jimmy Mess did a great job. And then we had three dates in the northeast, and Mike turned up. We talked for half an hour. And he played a full show. I mean, he had it charted out. It was unbelievable. We're like, 'Why are you playing this like this?' He goes, 'Well, I'm playing it like the records'. We're like 'Oh, we kind of typed everything up since then play everything a little faster and go crazier'. 'Really?' 'Yeah'. And then that's how we hit it off. And you could tell it with this was a guy who liked to improvise, liked to push, push it in every way possible. And we had a couple of guys to fill in the short European tour we had coming up, but we just said to Mike, 'When we're back, let's talk' and we got Mike in after that short European tour did like five or six festivals, did a 50 date US tour, and then went out and did like 70-80 dates in Europe. And you know, we haven't looked back. It's amazing. We've never had one rehearsal, we've done about 200 shows. MAL- Right now coming up is something I'd never thought I would be able to say in my lifetime, but RAVEN, are coming to Australia. How did this come about? JOHN- Well, we've been pushing people for a long time. And my good friend, Mr. Johnny Z, who used to manage us way back in the day. We were talking and just saying, Yeah, I'm trying to get a hold of, you know, Australia, and he mentioned this guy's name, Doug, to talk to. And, you know, they were all on board. They wanted to put something together, put a package together. And we're like, 'Yeah, I don't care'. And it just turns out that it's great friends, you know, we're great friends with GIRLSCHOOL. We opened for them back in '82. And they opened for us back in 2013. So you know, they're family like they're great friends of ours and Tony and Jeff from VENOM INC. I mean, I've known both those guys off and on since '82 or something I mean, you know, Jeff's from the same town basically as us, and Tony's half Geordie, at least when he's not speaking London, he's half Geordie, so we'll let him off. It's, you know, personality wise, that's going to be awesome. And it's just a great package. And you know, looking forward to it. MAL- GIRLSCHOOL, VENOM INC, RAVEN, late June in Canberra, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, JOHN- And then we're doing one by ourselves in Sydney, I believe on the 30th of June. MAL- All right, John Gallagher from RAVEN, absolutely magnificent talking to you. Thanks for sharing all your insights into your career. And looking forward to you hitting Australia in June and thanks for talking to me. JOHN- Yeah, get your tickets come out. We're going to blow your heads off. Comments are closed.
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AuthorMetalhead who hates bad parking. |