Over the course of FM’s four decade run, Jem Davis has provided keys, synths, and soundscapes for the better part of those 40+ years, joining the fold in 1993 and sticking with ever since. Prior to this, he’d hold down the fort for English hard and heavy legends, UFO, and even spearhead his own cult AOR act, the beloved Tobruk. While those early years with UFO and Tobruk are still near and dear to his heart (as you’ll soon read), it’s with FM that the connection transcends beyond that of a band; this is a brotherhood. Appropriately, Brotherhood is also the name of FM’s latest studio album. We sat down with Davis to discuss the current state of FM, his cancer battle, and the naked bliss (literally) of the Tobruk days.
Greetings Jem and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Jem Davis: I’m good, sir! How are you?
I am fantastic, thank you. We are a little over a week away from the release of a brand new FM album, Brotherhood. Where does that title come from and what does the word “brotherhood” mean to you?
JD: I have no idea where the title comes from *laughs*. Brotherhood, to us, really means…we celebrated 40 years, last year, as a band. I’ve been with the guys 35 years, I think. Ironically, I see you’re wearing a UFO t-shirt. I was playing with UFO in Paris and I knew (bassist) Merv (Goldsworthy) for a long time. FM was supporting UFO. At the time, FM didn’t have a permanent keyboard player. Didge (Digital) had left and they were using the guy from Romeo’s Daughter (Tony Mitman). We’d just done Japan with UFO and I knew Phil (Mogg) wanted to get the original band together. That’s what happened. He got (Michael) Schenker in and he got Paul Raymond back in. I was always a fan of UFO. It was brilliant to play with the boys, but I was always a fan, so I was quite happy for that to happen. At the same time, Merv said, “If you want a gig, it’s yours.” It was perfect timing.
Going back to your brotherhood question, what you get with FM, and it’s funny because I’ve played with a lot of bands, as we all do, but there’s a certain chemistry when you play with a band. Every time we get on stage, it’s not forced. We generally have a good time. We have a good laugh. That’s what music’s gotta be about, especially in this day and age. I went to see David Lee Roth a long while ago. His mantra was, “For two hours, forget the world. Let’s just have a good time. Enjoy yourselves.” I think that’s how it’s gotta be. Music, we all escape to, don’t we? There’s a lot going on out there in the big world.
Back to your question, brotherhood, for us…it is like being with a lot of brothers. It’s sort of like being married. We have our fallouts and whatever, but generally, we get on great. That’s the secret. With this album, we’re extremely proud of this album. It’s come out great. That’s what we wanted, the message we want to get across. People are going for a lot of crap in this world. If they can escape, just for a couple of hours when they come and see us, then great. *laughs* Forgive me, I will diverge!
No apologies needed! We live for the longform answer here. How soon after Old Habits Die Hard did songs start coming together for Brotherhood? Were there any the band had been working on beforehand, but saved until this album?
JD: Ever since…you’re in my studio. This is Electric Pepperland, where we are right now, which is basically in the bottom of our garden. During COVID, I moved up to the middle of England, a place called Lodsworth. It came with a readymade studio. I always wanted a studio, but you never know. “Am I gonna use it?” COVID was perfect for me because I was indulged and wrote and wrote and wrote. The boys were going, “Woah!” We all write. That’s the joy of FM. We all write songs. I was just writing like crazy.
With Old Habits, I’ve still got songs that I wrote back then, still hanging around. What we do is we just pick the best songs, but we’re constantly writing, so we’re already writing for the next album right now, in our downtime. We’re out touring this next week, actually, but there are songs in the pipeline for the next one. I can’t think of any off hand that were lined up for Old Habits on this one, off the top of my head. For instance, I wrote “The Enemy Within”, which is the last track on the album. I’ve had that for about three or four years, hovering about. We never waste songs with FM. They’ll always get used. We just pick the best ones for each album. We just want the best product for the people out there. It constantly evolves.
When I interviewed Pete (Jupp) last year in regards to Old Habits, he said it wasn’t often you were in the studio together during the development of the album, and that he hoped the next album would see more in-person collaboration Did this come to fruition, or did Brotherhood follow the same pattern as Old Habits?
JD: Generally, how we all write, we’re all constantly writing. (Singer) Steve (Overland) will have an idea of what he wants, and he’ll maybe sit in a room with Pete. They can whack down some rough keyboard ideas. That gives me an idea. They chuck that at me and then I will literally throw the kitchen sink at it, give ’em, “You can do this. You can do that.” Then they go, “We like that. That’s shit.” *laughs* And we hone down the song. The whole point, again with FM, is none of us play for ourselves, like, “I want this keyboard part to be in there.” We play for the song. Steve’s brilliant. Again, what a voice, but the guy’s got no ego whatsoever, and he hones down the song.
What we did on the last three albums was, once we’ve written all the songs and we got them all recorded, me and Steve will sit in with Jeff (Knowler) and we go through the mixing process. We start, obviously, as you always do…back in the old days, because we’re old school, we make sure the drums are sounding right. Everything’s working in the mix. The more you add in, can you still hear the drums? That’s the thing. You gotta make sure everything’s got its place. We’re very proud of how we create these albums because every time we do, people say, sonically, in the end, they’re great.
It is hard because, like I said, I’ll write a billion keyboard parts. The boys, Jesus Christ! Back in the old days, you only had 24 tracks. Now, in this day and age, there’ll be about 80 or 90, and I’m not exaggerating, 80 or 90 tracks of guitars *laughs*. Poor Jeff’s gotta wade his way through all of these, and then we do. We sit there thinking, “Does that work? Is that relevant?”, and we hone it all down. I’ve completely forgotten what your question was *laughs*. We all write together, and certain songs like the last single, “Don’t Call it Love”, it was Merv’s song. Then, we all got together and put our bits in.
We still wouldn’t rule it out to go into a studio. It would be nice to go into a studio and write live. We’ve done that before. We’ll do it any which way, whatever gets the song there. I like the idea as well of doing it as a band, the old school way of doing it, like The Beatles used to do back in the day when they all played in the same room. We haven’t ruled that out. Obviously, COVID limited what we could do. With this day and age, it’s a lot of remote stuff anyway, so you’re firing files down, and you can talk to people and do it on the fly. We do it various ways, is the answer to that. I don’t know whether we will in the future. Maybe we might decide to go off for 3 or 4 weeks and write. We’re not ruling that out. Let’s see!
While FM have always stayed true to their signature sound, each album boast its own unique character. Some albums rock harder than others. Some can be a bit poppier than others. In the case of Brotherhood, this album comes off as very smooth and soulful, at times evoking shades of, dare I say, soft rock. Would you agree with this statement? If so, is there any one member responsible for this direction?
JD: Ironically *laughs*, I write the heavy stuff! I’ll show you. This is my keytar, right? *shows Eddie Van Halen styled keytar* I’m a big Van Halen fan. Actually, I’m really proud of this because Rick Wakeman, who’s my hero, he signed it on the back there, but all my keyboards are all Van Halened up. I love the heavy stuff. I can’t help that. I guess that’s the UFO connection. The soulful stuff, I would definitely say, is coming from Steve, vocally. That’s what makes it.
We do look at the album like the old days and try and construct it from start to finish. I appreciate it. A lot of people don’t listen to our albums like that, but we do. We’re old school, so we think of it, structure it like a walkthrough from one track to the other. It’s not necessarily a conscious effort to go back to the ’80s, but when I first joined, I did want to honor Didge. The sounds he got were great. Even live, I try to get that ’80s sound. Personally, what I try to do as a keyboard player is get the ’80s element in there, but bring it into 2025. I’m always experimenting with sounds.
Like I said, we’re really proud. It’s just the way this has turned out. It is quite a smooth album. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve got songs that I’ve given to the boys and I know in my heart, we’ll just listen to it and it ain’t working. “This is a good song, but it’s not an FM song.” We all do that. You have to think with an FM head and what the fans would like to hear. It wasn’t a conscious effort. We just want good songs on the album. Again, we don’t wanna turn out the same old stuff. We don’t think like that.
We all listen to…I’m currently listening to whatever the latest stuff is going on to keep on top of things. I think every album, so far, has been fresh. We’re not following the trend. A lot of people may regurgitate their first album over and over again. What’s the point in that? If you want to maintain your credibility and stay in the game, you gotta up it. I feel we have on this album, and the last one! And the one before that *laughs*!
What songs on here did you write and did you approach this album any differently than past FM releases?
JD: Like I said, I tend to write the heavier ones. “Living on the Run” is our first release from there. That’s mine. Then, the last song on the album, which is very heavy. Again, that was one where I wasn’t sure whether that would make it through the FM filter, but I could hear Steve singing it. I’ve had that in the bag for a long time. I like it, and sonically, it goes somewhere else. I know it’s not a classic FM song, but I kind of like that and so do the boys. We just want something different to listen to. I do tend to write the heavier side of things, like “Shaking the Tree” on Thirteen. That’s just the way I write. Funny enough, (guitarist) Jim (Kirkpatrick), who you’d think would write all the heavy stuff, he wrote “Love Comes to All”, which I remember thinking was a bit like The Doobies or whatever. Like I said, we listen to a lot of stuff. We can all get elements that are flying around and that, but as soon as you get Steve singing on it, it becomes FM.
A few years ago, you had quite a health scare and battled cancer. How have you been feeling since, and in what ways, if any, did that battle impact your songwriting and FM’s music onwards?
JD: It was throat cancer, actually, believe it or not. Chatting away *laughs*! We were on tour at the time and I did what most blokes never do: I had a sore throat and I went to the doctor. They actually said, “It’s your tonsils. We’re gonna have to take your tonsils out.” So we finished the tour. I think we were on tour with The Dead Daisies at the time. Anyway, I finished the tour and literally went to the hospital the next day to take my tonsils out, but then they realized on the left tonsil, it was cancerous. I was literally in having cancer treatment as of February.
That was 6 weeks of chemo and radiotherapy. I was lucky because they didn’t have to cut me or anything like that. It was just wearing a mask and zapping me every single day with this therapy. It’s a bit of a bugger. What it’s done is I can’t taste things. The radiotherapy’s ruined my taste, but it’s a small price to pay. Maybe I’m a bit weird, but if I said to you now, “You’ve got cancer.”, you don’t feel any different to what you were a minute ago. That’s how I dealt with it. They said to me, “You got cancer, but we’re confident with 6 weeks of this, you’ll be alright.” That’s all I needed to hear. I just plowed through it.
The boys were thinking. They were already lining up. They were not getting rid of me, but covering me. I wanted to work, because I also play in Jim’s band as well. Jim’s got his own solo project. We did an album in March, near the end of my treatment. Then, I’d see the pictures back of that and there’s no weight on me. I couldn’t eat. I had a tube in my stomach and all that. I got over that in September and I’ve just been going back to the gym and trying to build myself up again. None of us are getting any younger.
What was nice about it was, the amount of people who come up to me now…it’s 1 in 2 people who get cancer, so if you haven’t got it, you know somebody else who has. There was a song on Old Habits that I insisted, the last song on the album. It’s all about dealing with cancer, just being the positivity of your mind. If you think positive about things, your mind is an amazing thing and you can get over these things. It was a wakeup call and I’m lucky enough I got through it, so I bought a few keyboards *laughs*. I thought, “Life’s too short. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow!”
The boys are a bit surprised. I didn’t handle it like other people, the “Oh, woe is me.” I just wanted to keep busy. We all go down into that dark place. I think everybody does whenever occasionally, but then, listening to a bit of music takes you right out of that and away. I think music is a massive thing that can really help people through these things. If I can help anybody to get through what they’re going through, because it is tough, the c-word. I have to say, they’re coming up with some good stuff now. It’s like something out of James Bond, the stuff that they did for me. I’m still here *laughs*!
In an age where bands take their sweet time in between releases, Brotherhood is FM’s fourth album of the ’20s. What do you attribute this prolificity to, and are FM busier now than ever?
JD: I’d say we are. We’re very conscious of our age. None of us are getting any younger. We’re very, very lucky that Steve is singing fantastically. A lot of people, his peers, if you like, are struggling. That’s just natural because it’s a muscle. You gotta exercise and all that. Steve is just incredible. I’ve known him in the bus with the flu, can’t flipping talk, but he sings properly. He comes from his diaphragm and all that. We’ll go into the gig and he’ll sing the gig absolutely perfect. Then, he can’t talk after it *laughs*. We’re lucky. We’re very conscious though. We want to do as much as we possibly can while we can do it. We love doing this. We were in South America last year. We’re hoping to go again next year as well. We’re working on that. That’s another new market for us. Like I said, we’re constantly writing and enjoying ourselves.
Prior to joining FM, you played keyboards in Tobruk, whose debut album, Wild on the Run, turns 40 this year. Looking back, what memories stand out to you from that era and what are your favorite songs off the album?
JD: Oh man, we spent three months in Philly at, I think it’s gone now, a studio called The Warehouse, run by Bon Jovi’s cousin (Tony Bongiovi). We had a blast. We had a real blast doing it. *laughs* There’s a lot of things that I probably can’t repeat. I remember our singer at the time, Snake…Tony Bongiovi owned a roller skating rink in New Jersey. Basically, we went over there at 2 in the morning and he took us over there. I just remember Snake decided, God knows why, to strip off naked and skate around naked. Then, we drove home and got pulled over by the cops *laughs*! The cops were asking him for ID and he had nothing *laughs*! “Where’s it gonna be man?!” We had a blast.
When we landed in Philly, it was July the 4th, so it was amazing. We were at a place called Buttonwood Square, which is right opposite, the other end of the mall where the Rocky stairs are. We had a blast doing that. I’m still in touch with most of the guys. Obviously, Snake passed away, bless him, and so did the bass player (Mike Brown). Funny enough, I saw the guitarist, Mick (Newman) a couple of weeks ago and I’m still in touch with (guitarist) Nigel (Evans). He was my best mate in school.
It’s a shame with that. I think we were too late. We came in at the end of the ’80s and things were starting to change. I think that’s the same for FM. It’s luck at the end of the day. It doesn’t matter how talented you are. If you get to the right place, some bands just take off. With Tobruk, EMI pulled the plug and that was it because it was coming to the end of the ’80s, but we had a blast doing that and I’m proud of it. What did I do on that album? “Going Down for the Third Time” is on that album, isn’t it?
Yep.
JD: Yeah, that’s definitely mine. “Wild on the Run”, I didn’t write that, but funny enough, I’m doing a tribute to a friend of mine that passed away in October. I’m getting the original bass player (Steve Woodward). He didn’t make the album. He chickened out at the last minute *laughs*, but we’re gonna do “Wild on the Run” and “Falling”. “Falling” is one of mine. EMI thought it was brilliant to run a competition and have us all jump out of a plane with the winners of the competition *laughs*. We sat and went for the training, but the next week, we were on tour with Uriah Heep. We couldn’t do the jump because it was too windy, so we never actually got to do the jump, which is probably a good thing *laughs*! Eddie (Fincher), the drummer at the time, was chicken. He really didn’t want to do it at all, bless him. That was a good track. I enjoyed doing that. There you go. I’m glad you got that (Tobruk album)! Bless ya!
UFO, that was another joy because Tobruk supported the UFO boys and that’s how I knew Phil. To actually be with them and be with Pete Way, another fantastic guy. I also played with Laurence Archer because they did an album called High Stakes and Dangerous Men. In ’92, that was the tour where FM supported us. Laurence has got a band called Grand Slam now with a good friend of mine, Mike Dyer. They supported us in Spain. When I could, I jumped in on the keyboards. I love Laurence to bits and it’s good fun to do. I’m still in contact with al those guys. I saw Phil at…there’s a journalist over here called Dave Ling, and Phil was at his wedding, so I caught up with Phil there. I just love the guy to bits. What a voice, that guy. He’s just mad as a box of frogs *laughs*!
Despite the band’s more melodic sound, some consider Tobruk a NWOBHM band thanks to the original “Wild on the Run” single releasing in ’83. Did the band feel associated with or apart of the scene?
JD: Ironically, I went out in the ’90s and did some gigs with Praying Mantis, who were definitely part of the NWOBHM. No, we just did what we did, I think. We did succumb a little bit. That’s what can happen to bands. EMI said, “Can you do us a song like Def Leppard?” We’re thinking, “Well no, that’s Def Leppard.” A lot of record companies will do this. They’ll think, “These guys have had a hit so can you do…” I think you gotta do you, otherwise what’s the point? You might as well be a Def Leppard tribute band. We never really felt part of that scene. We were just a rock band, really.
We were managed by Light & Sound Design: A massive company who made their money on AC/DC. Funny enough, when we were over in the States, we went to see Aerosmith and Scorpions, all that sort of crowd. The lighting company used to do all of those guys. They were who we looked up to. That’s who we wanted to evolve around. So yeah, we never really associated with that scene, not consciously, anyway, but it doesn’t bother me. If people want to put a label on it, fine. It’s quite funny because people will pop up with a Tobruk album, even in South America, and it’s like, “Oh wow!” It’s nice, and I’m proud of it.
Looking forward to the future, what does the rest of 2025 have in store for you and FM?
JD: Well, we’re on tour all around the UK in September. We’re working on the next album as we speak, and then we got a lot planned. Hopefully South America. We want to play in the States. It’s tough to get it all together with the logistics and all that, but we’re not ruling it out. We have a good fanbase over in America, so fingers crossed we can do it. There will be new stuff. There will be a new album next year, I hope. We’ll just keep plowing away, doing what we do and doing what we love. I hope people love it. We’re dead proud of this album. We released another single, the ballad, which again, the ballad is one of Steve’s songs, but then he just gave it to me and I literally threw the kitchen sink at it, and most of the sink stayed there *laughs*! I’m really proud of that because it’s lush and it’s a beautiful song. That’s our next video which is out in the next couple of days over here. You’ll see that on YouTube.
I’m speaking on behalf of all the American fans when I see we’re keeping our fingers and toes crossed! I told Pete last year, I could hit myself, because I live roughly 30 minutes away from Arlington Heights, where you played the Melodic Rock Fest in 2018. I was 19 at the time and it was a 21+ fest. I remember thinking to myself, “Am I gonna get a fake ID just to catch FM?” And I’m slapping myself that I didn’t!
JD: *laughs* Ah, bless ya! That was great, as well. I love Chicago. That was fantastic. We had a blast doing that. It was really good. Fingers crossed we get over. There’s the M3 Festival. There’s a load of things that we want to get in there. Gotta keep positive!
The new FM album, Brotherhood, is available now on Frontiers Records. For more information on FM, click here.