Doug Sampson has been flying high for the better part of 55 years, pun fully intended. Playing with a slew of bands in the ’70s, Sampson joined a little band called Iron Maiden in 1977. You might’ve heard of them. He exited in 1979, but not before playing on their iconic Soundhouse Tapes demo. Today, Sampson is still holding down the beat, this time for his own outfit, Airforce, who have just released their third album, Acts of Madness. We sat down with Sampson to discuss Airforce’s current happenings, growing up with an older brother who also played rock n’ roll, and the life and times of Maiden in the ’70s.
Greetings Doug and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Doug Sampson: I’m doing great, thanks!
It’s been quite some time since we last heard from Airforce, 5 years to be exact. Could you tell us what’s been happening in the Airforce camp?
DS: Yeah *laughs*. We were starting to record the album about 2019. Then, we had the pandemic, so that stopped everything for a while. In the meantime, I think they lifted restrictions so we could go out, allowed more movement. Unfortunately, our producer, he became ill and he died, so we were stuck with half the album. Well, most of it done, but it wasn’t complete. We’d got some of the backing tracks down and that, but we didn’t really know what to do. That was Pete Franklin, our producer. He was a close friend of ours. He used to be in a band called Chariot, so he was quite a well known character.
So we contacted our friend that’d done some recording for us back in the mid ’80s. He was a part of that band at the time and he’d gone on to doing production. He got quite high up in it. We contacted him and asked him if he’d be interested in finishing the album off. He said, “Yeah, sure. Great!” He took over. He’s been working with American bands and Simple Minds. He was making living out of producing, so I was quite shocked when he said he’d be quite happy to put some time on the side to help us out, to get this album finished. That’s why its taken so long to get the album out, really. There’s been a lot going on *laughs*.
Despite all the challenges that stood in the band’s way, Airforce prevailed and have just released their third album, Acts of Madness. What did the band set out to achieve musically with this album?
DS: Well, we wanted to better the Strike Hard. We wanted to go one step further if we could. Apart from that, we didn’t really have any sort of plan. We play a style of music and we just stick to it. Obviously, we want every album to be better than the last, but we don’t have a sort of a program of ideas that is gonna take us in a different direction. We’re NWOBHM, and that’s what we wanna stay in. It’s turned out really good. We’re really pleased with it.
Acts of Madness is a very nuanced album. Whether it be headbangers like “Westworld” and “Among the Shadows”, or an ultra-melodic number like “The Fury”, there’s something for every metalhead. How did the band approach the writing of this album? Did you do anything differently?
DS: Not really. We’d just have these ideas knocking about in the studio. (Guitarist) Chop (Pitman) would come in and say, “I’ve got this idea.” We’re down in the studio every week, so we just work on different ideas. That’s just how its come about, really. We don’t really concentrate on whether it’s gonna be faster or slower or anything. It’s just how it comes out, what it sounds like, and how it’s gonna be.
Considering these songs were initially recorded as far back as 2019, were they written alongside the songs that made up Strike Hard or afterwards?
DS: Oh no, that was afterwards. Once Strike Hard was out, then we said, “Let’s work on the next album.” We went to ROAR. They were really pressurizing us at the time to get this album done, so we were really working hard. Then, obviously, what with the pandemic and Pete Franklin passing away, it all came to a stop. Then, ROAR was merging with RPM, so that slowed everything up. It has been a bit of a difficult time for the last few years, yeah.
It was well worth the wait. While the band has been releasing new music since their 2008 reboot, some might forget that the band has roots going back to the late ’80s. What events led to the band’s reformation and how does this second go-around compare to the first?
DS: It wasn’t too long, a couple of years after I’d come out of Maiden, that we got the original Airforce together. We had a lot of trouble with singers. That was a minor problem. After a while, we gave up. We just said, “Let’s just give it a rest for a little while.” *laughs* It went on for a bit longer than what we’d imagined, but we all had family business and stuff like that. We didn’t really see much of each other in that time.
I think it was about 2015, a chap called Owen Lucas contacted us and he said, to cut a long story short, he wanted to get an album together with all ex-Iron Maiden members called The Origins of Iron. We had 3 tracks that Jez, our producer who’s working with us now, had done for us back in the ’80s. So we put one of those tracks down, “War Games”, and it opened the album actually. It’s one of our slower songs. It’s my brother singing, Sam Sampson. It went down so well that me and Chop decided to get the band back together.
That’s when Tony (Hatton) contacted us, the original bass player, and he said that he was interested. We went down the studio and was working on some songs. Chop had already written some songs. He was in a band before that was using these songs and he said we could use these particular songs for Airforce. We just started rehearsing them and that’s how it started. We’d done the first gig and we realized that it was going down really well. We weren’t sure on our end how we’d be taken by people now. It was such a long time. That’s how it all started again. From there, its been America, Colombia, all over Europe. It’s quite bizarre, really *laughs*.
That ’87 demo you speak of, was that ever circulated or was it unreleased?
DS: I have to try and think. As I said, one of the songs was on The Origins of Iron. Then, we brought another album out called Judgement Day, which was all of our older stuff. This was also arranged by Owen Lucas. He took us on when we first started out. That was called Judgement Day. It was all our previous recordings, stuff that me and Tony might not have been on, but Chop might have been working on with his band. I don’t think it was…*laughs* I don’t know if you could get hold of it now, but yeah, those 3 tracks are definitely on there, on that album.
Your older brother, Sam, who at one point sang for Airforce, got his start in the late ’60s singing for cult blues rockers Sam Apple Pie. Growing up, what was it like having a brother in a band that was signed to a major label? Did this, or any other family members for that matter, influence you in your own musical journey?
DS: Yeah, it was a big influence to me, really. There’s 8 years difference, so basically, while he was playing in bands, I was still a kid, but I’d always have people coming around. As I got a bit older, our house was like an open house *laughs*. It was full of hairies and that. It was really brilliant to grow up in that environment. It was a big influence on me because I wanted to play drums. We couldn’t afford them. My parents couldn’t afford things like that. Sam had a word with his drummer, and he said, “Yeah, I got some old stuff he could have.” He brought some old kit around for me and that’s how it all started! I was about 14 at the time. It was quite a good childhood, really *laughs*.
What bands were you listening to back then? Was there any one drummer in particular you looked up to as your main influence?
DS: Well, I don’t play like him, and I never have done, but I was a great admirer of Keith Moon of The Who. He was just so flamboyant. I just liked him on and off the stage. I found him incredible. The other drummers I liked were Ted McKenna of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. Obviously, you go ahead to the John Bonhams and all that, but I wasn’t really taken by one particular person. I would just watch different people and try and take onboard things that I liked. Not everyone does stuff that would suit me.
The older I get and the more I listen to those Who records, I couldn’t imagine anyone else drumming those songs.
DS: Yeah, he was quite amazing *laughs*. I never actually got to see him. One of my biggest regrets was not seeing him with them, but there’s plenty of footage now on YouTube. You can see it all the time if you want to, which is good. It keeps his name alive, keeps him alive.
Acts of Madness closes with a chilling cover of the Maiden classic, “Strange World”, which was recorded for 1979’s The Soundhouse Tapes, but excluded because it couldn’t be properly produced. How did it feel to revisit that song now and what does it mean for you, who played on the original, to now have it properly, recorded, produced, and released with yourself on it?
DS: It was a bit strange. The difference is it doesn’t really…it’s not a carbon copy of the original. It’s quite different, so it didn’t feel like I was doing the original. It’s not like a tribute. It was quite weird, really, to record it again. It was quite an experience. I really enjoyed doing it.
To this day, I use “Strange World” to convey this idea of when metal bands put out albums, or in this case Maiden, you’d have your heavy ones like say “Prowler” or “Running Free”, but you could also have a song like that which stands separate, on its own. When that song was first brought to the table, did it strike you that the band was doing something different?
DS: Yeah, when I joined Maiden, obviously the band had been going for some time. They used to play “Strange World”, so when I joined the band and we went into the studio to put it down, I can still remember to this day, it really was a haunting experience. We just went in there and more or less played it live. You could feel an atmosphere created in the studio. It was so unreal. When we’d come out and we listened to it, it felt like it did when we recorded it. It felt just right. It really was perfect. I think we’d only done it twice. We went through it and the producer said, “Yeah, yeah. That’s good. This time we’ll take it.” I think we just recorded it on the second go. I’m thinking there was a few overdubs in that, but basically, that was it.
Speaking of The Soundhouse Tapes, last year, I interviewed Paul (Di’Anno) a couple months before his passing. He recounted a story after the recording, in which he befriended some nurses at a pub who were, let’s say “kind enough” to let the band crash in their quarters for the evening. What is your recollection of this incident?
DS: *laughs* Yes, it’s true! We wanted to go back the next day to the studio to mix it. We recorded it one day and were gonna go back the next day to do the mixing, but it didn’t strike any of us that we had nowhere to stay. It was thick snow. It was pouring down with snow, so it looked like we were gonna have to stay. I went in Dave Murray’s car. I’m not sure how Steve (Harris) got down. We might’ve had the Green Goddess (Maiden’s first touring van) at that time, but I don’t know if it was decked out. As I said, I went down with Dave. It was me, Paul, Dave, and a geezer called Kent.
*laughs* It turned out that we had nowhere to stay. It was too late at the time to go back to the studio. We went down the pub and figured, that’ just gonna be that. We’re gonna get drunk and sleep in the car. Paul, being Paul, he got chatting to a couple of nurses. Anyway, he told them our predicament. It was about 5 or 6 of us. I can’t remember. There was a couple of roadies. (Guitarist) Paul Cairns was with us. All I can remember is she said, “You can come around my place and kip on the floor.” Yeah, that’s what we did.
And the rest is history.
DS: *laughs* Yeah!
Of all the shows you played with Maiden, which one was the most memorable and why?
DS: I think the one that people still talk about, or certain people of a certain age, but there’s even a couple youngsters that mention it, is the one we did with Samson, with Thunderstick. When I say Thunderstick, we often talk about it, down at the Music Machine. That was something. I don’t know why, but that seemed to give us the kick we needed to get the career of the band going. We had Sounds come down. They were doing a writeup on us.
I think the other one was after that gig, Lemmy came up and asked us if we’d back him in a few months time when he was playing down there. It was with Motörhead, but they weren’t called that. I can’t remember what they were called at the time, so they wouldn’t get loads of thousands of people, which they did. They went under an assumed name because it was the first gig before a tour, I think. They asked us to open for them, so that was a good one as well. There were so many of them, the Marquee…there’s so many of them.
Were you guys supporting Samson?
DS: Yes, they were quite well known. They had a few records out. I’d not been with them that long. Paul had just come in, so we were the newbies in the band. Then, there was Dave and Steve. So yeah, we supported Samson.
I guess that would make sense considering their first album was ’79, and I know they did a couple singles before that.
DS: Yeah.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you replace Thunderstick in Maiden?
DS: Yes! I was down the Bridge House. I went down to see them. This was obviously before I joined. They had Thunderstick. Dennis Wilcox was singing. I saw the gig and I realized it wasn’t as good as what I was used to from Maiden. It wasn’t up to their standard as normal. I found out afterwards that was the last gig Dennis was gonna do with them. He was leaving. It wasn’t gelling, so I was in the audience. Steve came up to me and said, “You’ve seen the show. What I’m gonna do is I’m gonna collapse the band. Dennis is going anyway. I’m gonna collapse the band as it stands and reform it again. Are you interested in joining?” I said, “Yeah, sure!” I knew most of the songs anyway because I’d seen ’em so many times. I didn’t even have an audition. I just joined ’em. We started rehearsing the very next week.
Do you remember what songs you did at that rehearsal?
DS: Yeah, it would’ve been their standard, which would become more or less the first album: “Prowler”, “Iron Maiden”, “Transylvania”, “Invasion”. All the first album, basically, with “Wrathchild” and “The Ides of March”, which came off the second album (Killers). We worked on all them.
Backtracking to that Samson show, I assume there was no bad blood between Thunderstick and the rest of the camp? Was he cool with you?
DS: Oh yeah! I couldn’t remember, but as Steve put it, they rehearsed for quite a long time, but he wasn’t playing really what they’d rehearsed. He was playing a different sort of stuff in there *laughs*. I don’t really know the personal politics of it, but as I said, I know Thunderstick quite well. We’re quite good mates, really. He went off and did his thing with Thunderstick, which he’s still doing now! We often do gigs together. Great band!
If somebody had told you nearly 50 years ago, in the thick of the NWOBHM, that you’d still be playing heavy metal all these years later, would you have believed it?
DS: No! *laughs* Never in a million years. I expected to maybe do a few things. I kept my hand in. I was playing with different people. When I came out of Maiden, I was working with Tony Parsons, who was the guitarist in Maiden for a while, and his brother in the band Press Gang. I was just knocking about and doing some work. I was doing a couple bits with Chop, but nothing stable until we decided to get Airforce back together again all these years later. It’s been really good!
In closing, what does the rest of 2025 have in store for Airforce?
DS: We’ve now got new management. We’ve got Paul Di’Anno’s manager. We’re off to Croatia on the 8th of March for a festival. He’s working on a lot of European stuff, and maybe further a bit abroad, so we’ll probably be kicking about the middle of the year, I’d think. We haven’t got an itinerary written out yet, but it won’t take long. Probably in a few months, we’ll have it all worked out for the rest of the year. It’s gonna be a good year.
The new Airforce album, Acts of Madness, is available now on RPM ROAR. For more information on Airforce, visit www.facebook.com/airforcebanduk.
Leave a Reply