INTERVIEW from SOUNDS August 16th 1980

Why did Samson's drummer decline to speak to Sounds? Was it because Deaf Barton had mislaid his hearing aid and he was afraid of being misquoted? Or was is something much more sinister? All will be revealed (maybe) in this poetically titled story...

The sound of silent Thunder

The likes of Simmons and Stanley do interviews minus make-up, out of stage regalia and in normal street clothes... So why not Thunderstick?

After all, it's hot and airless in this Henrietta Street office and to wear the mask, the junpsuit, the full gig garb here and now must be sheer suffocating torture, demanding intense dedication to the image., the masked rapist/axewielding executioner pose. Unless it's for real.

Mr Stick it watching television at the moment. Feet up, slumped in a chair, ostensibly relaxing, an aura of brooding menace nonetheless emanates from the hooded figure. Barely acknowledging my presence, he seems to be concentrating on the direct-from-Moscow-Olympic activities. Oversized athletes lumber across the screen and Thunderstick's eyes - incongruous white specks in the midst of all the balaclava'd blackness - watch intently but unemotionally as hefty great cannonballs are heaved onto the middle distance.

"Are you going to join us, Thunderstick?" I ask, my voice quavering with the uh - impertinence of the question, almost like interrupting an Alsatian with his teeth into a hunk of juicy rump steak and trying to persuade the animal to go 'walkies'.

No reply. Bruce Bruce, Samson singer and the other member of the band present today, attempts to explain: "He's watching the telly. He's waiting for that big 1500 metres race. He's into Sebastian Coe I think, I'm not sure, I've never found out whether he's more into Sebastian Coe than Steve Ovett". I mentioned that, what with the weather being so sticky 'n' humid, it seems ridiculous seeing Thunderstick in his complete cowled capacity. "It's what he feels like really," says Bruce. "He's quite an impenetrable character. Occasionally he talks, occasionally he doesn't. He just goes his own little way. We just have to try and tolerate him..."

And keep him under control? "Well, not really. I don't think he's ever actually damaged anybody recently. He damages things on stage, pours beer over his head, all over the fans' heads, but that's what they seem to want. He does get nasty with women sometimes. They don't seem to be able to understand what he's trying to do." What does he try to do?

"He's very much into mental intercourse - with his flying suit on it's very difficult for him to be into anything else - and I don't think the ladies he meets can really handle that, really handle any sort of relationship on a brain-wave level."

"Consequently he does get a bit lonely, especially on the road. Wearing that mask, not many people feel like coming up to him, patting him on the back and saying hello. When he does talk he says he feels lonely."

Strange. Very strange. As regular readers of this rag will readily recall, during the course of the last interview I conducted with Samson (in December last year I do believe) Thunderstick turned out to be quite talkative and perfectly affable. Once off course you became accustomed to holding a sensible, friendly conversation with someone who looked so threatening. So what's happened to change him?

"It's like this you see", confides Bruce. "He's had a few problems..." Coincidentally at this precise moment, the Coe/Ovett clash over, Thunderstick decides to leave the TV and comes over and sits down with us. But instead of giving the writer an explanation, a much needed insight into his, er, problems, he just flops on to the sofa next to Bruce and extracts from his pocket and starts to read an 'Emmerdale farm' paperback book! By now I'm totally bemused, completely mystified. I decide that if this is the way Thunderstick wants to play it.- if indeed he is playing it.- I'll let him. Call me chicken if you like, but fighting shy of a face-to-face confrontation I start firing questions at Bruce Bruce hoping that somewhere along the way the drummer will feel the need to chip in with a comment or two. A vain hope, as it turns out...

G.B.: Continuing on the Thunderstick tack for the moment, the promotional campaign for your new LP 'Head on' is based almost exclusively on the image of your sinister skinbeater. Howcum?

B.B.: "Well that's a record company thing. Obviously they thought, well, here's something people will latch on to easily: a mask, a hood, a visually striking character ...but having said that it's not in fact as premediated an idea as it might seem. I mean, if you think back to our first album 'Survivors', at that time Thunderstick was just another member of the band. One quarter of the Samson whole. And you lot at Sounds were the fuckers who started it off by putting him on your front page!"

As far as the cover to 'Head on' goes, I think it's certainly very dramatic. But really, it's not as much of a total Thunderstick trip as you might think - It's 50 pre cent him and 50 per cent just a sort of general medieval executioner image.

And our live reviews are generally pretty fair, the writer never really concentrates on one specific person on stage. Unless it's whatever's the reviewer's preference - He may be into a guitarist, drummers, singers, or something - each individual member gets an equal mention, which is as it should be. Everybody in Samson has his own personality on stage. I'm as valid as Paul, Paul's as valid as Chris... We all complement each other perfectly. And despite the, um, Thunderstick overkill if you like, people aren't slow of the mark to recognise this."

G.B.: 'Head on' is a vast improvement on' Survivors', don't you agree?

B.B.: "Yeah, but that first one's still got a lot to recommend it. You gave it four stars after all, don't forget that 'Survivors' is still extremely worth while, it's representative of a four to six month period in the bands existence. It's what we were about in a certain state of our career, in our life. Which is how it should work. I can't understand it when people say they want to disown certain records that they've made - the way I see it, an album is a piece of your life on vinyl.

But of course, 'Head on' is the first LP with all my vocals on it, the first when all four of us have had a hand in the songwriting. It's also the first that has all of us playing on it all of the time, because obviously 'Survivors' contained contributions from John (McCoy) and Colin (Towns) in various sections.

I'm very pleased with 'Head on', with the songwriting in particular. Which is amazing really, because we write in rehearsal studios, numbers usually just come together like as a result of us mocking about. No song on 'Head on' took more that one day to write..."

G.B.: That's very prolific.

B.B.: "The history of it went, I joined the band last July, we went into rehearsals to learn some old material, bits and bobs, things like that ...and while we were in there we thought, let's have a go at writing. So we sat down at two o'clock one afternoon and by six we'd written 'Take it like a man'. So we thought, this is good, this is working well. And the next day we wrote something else. Eventually, in just four days we had written 'Take it like a man', 'Too close to rock', 'Walking out on you', and 'Hammerhead'.

That's how we work. If someone put us in a studio for two months and said, go on, write a really good album; and if someone put us in a studio for two weeks and said the same thing, there'd be no difference. In fact, I think the two week period would suit us better.

We've already got a lot of material for the next album and we're showing no signs of drying up."

G.B.: What was your reaction to the comment I made in the 'Head on' review when I said that despite being there more or less since the beginning Samson aren't the trendiest of the [ahem]NWOBHM bands? Are you aware of the fact that your lagging a long way behind the likes of Iron maiden and Saxon in popularity stakes?

B.B.: "That's difficult, because now you're getting into the areas of ticket sales, concert attendances, percentages, grosses and nets... We go along and it doesn't matter if there is five or five 5,000 people at a gig, we're just there to enjoy ourselves. We haven't done a gig since the Gillan-tour where we haven't gone down really well.

If, in comparison with other heavy metal bands' gigs, our attendances haven quite been up to scratch then I don't think it's our fault, no the fault of our music. It's somebody else's fault and more than that at this stage I do not wish to say. It's a problem, but it won't be in the very near future. We're having energetic discussions at the moment. I can't say anymore."

G.B.: But surely you can't lay the whole blame at the feet of the mysterious Mr Somebody Else; surely you must find yourselves to be at fault to some degree as well...

B.B.: "The whole situation basically boils down to being in the right place at the right time. Up until last Christmas we were doing very well, we were being carried on the wave of 'Survivors'. But then things started to go wrong. We were booted off the Rainbow tour, there was a single that was supposed to be coming out in February, but that didn't take place... all kinds of things were apparently going to happen but none of them ever seemed to get off the ground.

In the end there was a gap of several months after we recorded 'Head on' when we'd ground to a complete standstill, we were out of the press, out of everywhere. So we missed whatever sort of boat that happened to be sailing around at the time.

But in retrospect I don't know if that was such a bad thing. I don't think we're unduly bothered about it. It would have been nice to have had the success that's starting to happen now a little earlier in the year, but no-one is tearing his hair out at this stage."

G.B.: But now's different to three months ago, there's more competition than ever before in the HM field. Don't you think that Samson are in danger of being swamped by a glut of metal bands - good and bad; bandwagon jumpers and genuine articles - at the moment? If the group had happened in the beginning of '80 there'd have been no such problem...

B.B.: "It's the punk thing all over again, isn't it? Record companies are just applying their 'punk blueprint' to heavy metal and everything's going ever so slightly silly. I know what you're saying, new metal bands seem to be popping up every five minutes. They may mean it, they may be committed to the music, They may not. It's up to the public, not me, to say, to judge them, assess their worth. All I know is that you mustn't let it get on top of you. Once all the craziness had died down, then we'll see what happens.

I don't know if I'm naive in saying this or what, but I just reckon that as long as you've got something really good to offer and you've got people behind you who believe in you and are willing to give you support, then you can't fail to win trough in the end.

And Samson will win through, mark my words."

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