“Solid as a rock with swords in the air!”: This has been the Raven ethos for the last 40 years. 2020 sees the Gallagher brothers soldiering on with a new drummer and new album. The speed metal torch that was lit from the first notes of “Don’t Need Your Money” burns brighter than ever, casting away those who pose. We had the honor to sit down the singer, bassist, and co-founder of Raven, John Gallagher, to discuss all things old and new in the Raven universe.
Hi John! Welcome to Defenders of the Faith. How are you doing this afternoon?
John Gallagher: I am doing great sir, absolutely.
Well I must say I’m doing great myself because I’m three listens into Metal City and what an album!
JG: *laughs* Yeah we’re pretty happy with it.
When did the songs or basic ideas for this album first come together?
JG: Well, we’re the kind of guys that are writing constantly. We were doing a lot of touring for ExtermiNation and we were letting that ride. About a year after the release, in 2016, I started knuckling down and doing a lot of writing. I was just in a really good place with that. I came up with like 30 or 35 songs, which is insane. A lot of it was new. A lot of it was older ideas that were just a riff or a chorus floating around. Basically, we were able to put a lot of stuff together. We learned a lot writing for ExtermiNation. We really knuckled down hard on the writing and arranging. This time, we went in on the ground floor without a lot of stuff to edit out. In a way, we just let ourselves go.
We’d write stuff and say, “Okay, this part I don’t like. This part’s worthless. This part’s great, but doesn’t fit in this song.” All that kind of stuff. We dodged that this time and just cut to the quick. Mark came up with a lot of stuff as well. We had just played three gigs with Mike when he joined the band. We had nearly everything together, but we had three days off in Brussels and were stuck in a hotel, so we fleshed out a couple of extra songs. We knew we had to raise the bar from the last one. The last one was a good record. We knew we could do better. We really took our bone and chucked it over the wall. *laughs*
This is your first record with new drummer, Mike Heller. How would you compare him to previous drummers Joe Hasselvander and Rob “Wacko” Hunter?
JG: Well he’s a different animal. As far as creativity, I think he takes more on the Rob side of things. Rob was very into doing intricate fills and changing times up. Joe was this strange combination of…in his old days, he was playing slow doom stuff, but he’s incredibly precise and powerful and locked in. Mike checks those boxes, but brings something else to the table in that he’s a younger guy and he’s played a lot of this stuff we’d never listen to in a thousand years, the extreme metal. Black, death, whatever you want to call it. Corpse without a melody, yeah that’s it. *laughs*
Technically, it’s a different ballgame again. There’s common ground there, but he’s 28 years younger than us. That’s good in a way that it brings new stuff to the table. He approached these songs very differently, in many cases, than we would’ve. Because of the recording process, he did his drums first. We said, “You want to record your drums by yourself?” “Yeah that’s what I do. Send me a couple tracks and I’ll show you what I can do.” So we sent him a couple of tracks, they came back, and we were gobsmacked. Our jaws hit the ground. “I don’t care what you’re doing here mate, if you’re wearing your mother’s panties on your head or whatever it is, just keep doing it.” So we sent him more stuff and he had a different take on certain things. I said, “Try anything. Go for it. We won’t shoot you down.” 99.999% of what he did was brilliant.
That inspired us to change one or two things in the arrangements, here and there. We had an aborted session, doing some recording at a studio that just didn’t work out. We had to scrap all that and start over. And we ended up with Michael Wagener engineering in his studio in Nashville which was incredible. Putting the pieces together and really hearing it was really exciting.
That brings me straight into the next question. Metal City sees you reunited with Michael Wagener. When did you first meet Michael and what was his impact on the band’s sound?
JG: First? That would be back when we did All for One. We were fed up with the situation recording at Neat. At the time, it was a very small project studio. We had the opportunity to do a Radio 1 session for the BBC down in London. It was a real studio and we were blown away. “We have to do Wiped Out at Neat? Ugh, that’s it. Never again.” So we did it and then we laid down an ultimatum and just said, “Next record, real studio, real producer.” After a bit of fighting, they said, “Okay, who do you want?” “Well we really like this album Breaker by Accept from Germany.” We did some research and it turned out the guy that really did the hard work and got the sound together was the engineer, Michael Wagener.
So we got in touch with Michael. He was working at the time as a partnership with Udo, the singer from Accept, doing production. We were like, “Absolutely, bring them on board. Let’s do it.” And it just went from there. He’s a brilliant guy for guitar based music. We learned a lot from arranging the songs. We were all thinking in the same direction for that record.We wanted it to be big, powerful, very riffy. Maybe not as clever as the record before, but we let it breathe a little. He nailed it. We worked with him again on Stay Hard. We did the album with a live sound man and it just wasn’t coming together right, so we brought Michael in to rescue it. We rerecorded a couple of songs and he did the mix. Then we worked with him again years later in ’99 or 2000, in his first Nashville studio. We went down and did the One for All album, named of course because we were working with him again. He’s always great fun. He’s nuts, but he’s a mad genius.
So we had this aborted session thinking what are we going to do? Mike was moving from New York to L.A. and says “I’m building a studio. Let’s do it there when I get it done.” “Okay, great.” We do the Monsters of Rock Cruise and Michael is on the ship. We didn’t know, but it was great hanging out with him. “Michael, how would you like to mix the next record?” “I’d love to!” Brilliant. We got that in the bag, ready to go. Then he gets in touch and says, “When are you gonna have this recorded?” “We’re waiting for Mike to finish his studio. Why?” “Well I’ve got to go into hospital for a pretty major procedure. I’d love to get this all wrapped up within the next month.” Mike Heller said, “My studio’s not gonna be ready for three months at this rate.” Michael Wagener said, “Come down to Nashville! Let’s do it.” So we went to his studio and did it there. It was two weeks of excellent fun. It was a breeze.
I could imagine! The songs really have that old school sound. Some of it reminds me of All for One, while other songs have a thrashy feel, similar to Architect of Fear.
JG: We are who we are. The longer we go on, you’re gonna hear elements pulled from here, there, and everywhere. It’s what we do. It’s that old saying, “If you steal from someone else, it’s theft. But if you steal from yourself, it’s style.” *laughs* The way the songs were coming out, it was definitely heart and arrangement wise to the early albums. There was a lot of twists and turns and it was very up. There was a lot of fast stuff. Mike loves the fast stuff. We love playing the fast stuff. It was a nice change to go out and do a lot of balls out stuff.
When we finished with Michael, we did a mix with him and it wasn’t 100%. It wasn’t quite where we wanted it. So we auditioned a whole bunch of guys and got this guy Zeuss who’s worked with a lot of modern people. Rob Zombie, I think Korn, maybe a Queensrÿche album. But whatever he had done, he had the right mindset where he kept the old school part and just put a modern punch in on it. It’s the perfect blend where it’s a modern production, but it’s not overblown and “loudness wars” and frequencies and all that nonsense. It just sounds like us, exactly the way we wanted.
I really like the comic book style artwork on this album. Growing up, were you and Mark into comic books at all?
JG: Oh yeah! All three of us were into comic books. When we were kids, it was the golden era in the 60s and 70s. It was the X-Men and Spiderman and Superman, all the favorites. Nick Fury and all that stuff. Mike came up with the idea of let’s do it as a comic book, so everyone chipped in ideas. The front looks like a comic book with all the little do-dads and insignias and little pieces of stuff all over it. We did a piece of art for each song which was a lot of fun. For the thank you list, we took the ad page and I actually did some art for a change. I sat down and drew the little X-Ray Spex man and there was a drum and a headset and a broken guitar and all this crazy stuff in between the thank yous. We’re really proud with the way it came together. It was a lot of work. It was a real pain in the ass, but it was certainly worth it.
It really rounded it out for me. That, coupled with the music, made me think, “Here’s Raven! Heavy metal comic book heroes come to life!”
JG: Yeah it’s a total package. It’s different in a number of ways. It’s different color wise because it pops out. Everyone’s album covers are either black or red. It’s usually black, dark, skull, guy on a horse, blood, blah, blah, blah. You look at these power metal album covers and they’re interchangeable. Might as well just put out the same album every year. It’s stupid. So it’s different and it’s also fun. And it’s also a concept. That’s one of the things that differentiates us from other bands. There is a fun element in what we do. It’s positive. It’s up. It’s not just dark, doom, despair, kill your mother. So like you said, combined with the music, it’s a full package.
It’s been 5 years since the last Raven album and I believe another 5 years since the one before that. I know you mentioned earlier in the writing process for this you had 30-35 songs. Is it going to be some time before a follow up to Metal City or is this lineup going to strike while the iron is hot?
JG: I think I’ll lose my mind if it takes that long. It wasn’t supposed to take that long this time. If everything had went as planned, this record would’ve probably been out at the tail end of 2018, but it didn’t. There was multiple problems. The initial recording session was a big problem. We had issues, like I said, with the mix. That took a while. Then it was a long, drawn out process doing the artwork. We thought we’d have it all out and all together by May of this year.
Then you put a record out, you want to tour. One’s gotta link with the other. We wanted to tour Europe and it was all ready to go, but we couldn’t lock in the opening bands and we really wanted a good package. It’s pointless just going out for the sake of it. You want to do the right thing. Make an event out of it. Unfortunately, these guys couldn’t commit. They had other stuff going on. We just said, “You know what? We’ve waited this damn long, let’s postpone and wait. Stick it at the tail end of the year in September and see how it goes.” A week later, boom. Lockdown, virus, nightmare, horror. We really lucked out. When you tour, all your coasts are front loaded. If your tour gets cancelled two or three dates in, you’re still liable for all those expenses like the rentals and the flights. That wouldn’t have been a lot of fun.
Maybe it worked out for us because we’ve had this lockdown. There’s no live music, so people are hungry for whatever they can get. Here we come with what I think it the best thing we’ve ever done. And it seems to be getting that reaction which is awesome for a band that’s been around as long as we have. This is our 46th year as a band, which is staggering to contemplate. I can’t get my head around it, but it’s true. For us to come out with something this good doesn’t happen. You get all these legacy bands, you know. Name a band you like and people say, “Their last record was okay. It was pretty good.” You’re not going to compare them to the classics. It doesn’t work that way. They’re just not as good. This is. That’s the difference. This is that good. We’re very happy about that. It points to a lot of possibilities for us.
I agree 100%. I dug ExtermiNation when it came out and when it came to reviewing this, I thought, “Here’s another great Raven album.” What I didn’t expect was a record on par with the classics.
JG: Yeah it’s very easy for people to look at a band and say…let’s say Judas Priest. “Oh this isn’t Stained Class.” Or The Rolling Stones. “This isn’t Goats Head Soup.” You never consciously want to sit down and say, “Okay, we’re going to write an album like this.” That’s disastrous. That never works. You can’t do that. It has to be natural. It has to be organic. The way this worked out, it was a lot of factors where we wrote really good songs and then Mike came into the mix. Then Michael Wagener to to the engineering, even though he’ll tell us all we need’s a monkey that knows how to push the record and stop button. And then getting Zeuss in to do the mix. It didn’t come together easily, but the stars were definitely aligned. It’s like we’ve been on a very long cycle to get where we are with this one. With hands on hearts, we say if this isn’t the best, it’s one of the three or four best we’ve ever done. It’s a good place to be.
I’ve always loved a band who has their own, unmistakeable sound. For example, when I hear Sabbath, I know it’s Sabbath. When I hear Motörhead, I know it’s Motörhead. And when I hear Raven, I know it’s Raven. Pardon me for being vague, but how did the Raven sound come to be?
JG: Well it came because…there’s not a lot of originality today and I think it’s because a lot of kids that start bands…say they’re huge Metallica fans. That’s all they listen to. Metallica didn’t just listen to Black Sabbath or name a band. You’ve got to broaden your horizon and pull stuff from here, there, and everywhere. We were very lucky. We grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne in the northeast of England. There was only two relatively small halls, a 2,000 seat concert hall and a 2,000 capacity nightclub that we got to when we were older. We went to see everybody and we were up close and personal. It wasn’t like in the states where there’s an arena and it’s 10,000 seats and you need a telescope to see the ants on stage. We were up there, fifth, fourth, first row, watching. That was our education.
The first band we ever saw was Slade and the opening band was The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. It was life changing because Slade were our idols and we never heard of Alex Harvey. Alex Harvey comes on to this audience of teeny boppers who don’t care and over the course of the show wins them over, has everyone in the palm of his hand. He was such a master and a dangerous character. You didn’t know what he was gonna do next. They were just an excellent band. Then Slade came on and took it somewhere else. We saw both sides of the coin there: the masterful main act and the masterful opening act. We’d watch bands and take this stuff in. Why was this band good? Why was this band bad? Musically, we’d always gravitate towards the exciting, fast stuff. We weren’t into playing ten minute dirges. It was short sharp shock. Montrose, Status Quo, Budgie, Rory Gallagher, Rainbow. We saw all the bands that came around and took that all in.
Our first show was half covers, half originals. This stuff just distilled into our DNA. By the time we turned into a three piece, when Rob joined us, everything changed. Mark’s guitar playing changed right then because we were a three piece. He had to fill these holes. He had to do more. I had to do more. By definition, Rob had to do more. We all played in four piece bands before. Raven was a four piece until ’79, so it was a huge jump for us. The three piece thing is a huge part of the sound. My voice, Mark’s guitar, they’re the major figures in it. Mike is carving out a space for himself with this album, very much so. It’s a team effort to make this. But you hear Mark playing guitar and nobody plays guitar like him. I’ve had grief over the years about my singing and God knows why, but hey. This is me, like it or lump it. We sound different and we sound original. More than a lot of other bands, we push the envelope. People took some of that and changed it or watered it down. We just did what felt right…even when it was wrong!
There’s an old video of Raven performing “Chainsaw” on the BBC in 1982, but I could never find what it was from. Was that for Top of the Pops or was that your own TV special?
JG: They’d have these occasional music shows on ITV or the BBC. I think it was four programs. It was “the red program” and “the blue program” and “the yellow program” and “the green program”. God knows why they did that. On each one they had two bands. When we did this it was at Newcastle University. It was a great setup, great stage. We played four songs and this punk band from Sunderland called The Toy Dolls, who were absolutely brilliant, played four songs as well. I think they put two on one episode and two on another episode. It was totally live. Some of the shots they recorded it and just played it monitors to main so they could get shots from the back, but it was just the four songs.
I always loved that video. I just could never place where it was from.
JG: Yeah, if everyone had the foresight. Just last year, a minute and a half of footage came out that we did for the local ITV news, doing “Hard Ride” in the studio in either late 1980 or early 1981. We were just miming, but jumping around the studio “playing” it. There are things lot that which were done. We actually played before that on the end of the news segment and did a full version of “Hard Ride” in the ITV studios in Newcastle, but no one’s got a copy of that. The original stuff has long been wiped and thrown away. But we live in hope! These things do creep out from time to time. *laughs*
Famously, Metallica’s first tour was as your opening act on the Kill ‘Em All for One tour. How did Metallica react when they first met you? I know they were big fans.
JG: They were very friendly. We all got on great. Lars is Lars: Up everyone’s ass and wants to know how everything works and what the deal is, always looking for an angle. James was drunk *laughs* all the time, just a big smile. Kirk the same, but less so. And the guy who was an old soul on young shoulders was Cliff. It was all about the music. They were lovely guys. Like us, they were a gang. The tour was just improbable how it even got off the ground. With crew, it was 17 people. We had two trucks and a winnebago. We kind of imagined everyone was gonna be able to sleep in this…until three days of no sleep. I had the tour manager against the wall screaming, “Get us in a hotel or we’re going home!” *laughs* Things got constantly better from then on out.
It would have to, I assume.
JG: It was ridiculous. It was literally no sleep. You know how the winnebagos have the convertible bunk/dining table? Well that got destroyed day one with them jumping around, slam dancing in the winnebago. Somebody dived and landed on it, so two people can’t sleep no more from that. About a week or two in, Cliff did the unmentionable in the toilet which you’re never supposed to do on a tour bus or anything like that. And then he ripped the door off, so we had the stench from the toilet in there. Somehow we got a hold of a couple of mattresses and we actually spent a lot of the time in the back of one of the trucks.
Oh wow!
JG: Yeah driving from say Chicago down to Arkansas, we were in the back of a truck. You’d put on a flashlight and see 10 billion mosquitoes in the truck. “Oh no!” *laughs* It was not for the faint of heart. It was definitely guerrilla warfare. And it was great playing the big cities. Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, upstate New York in Buffalo, which we did with Motörhead. We jumped on their tour for one date. Then we played these places like Arkansas which we haven’t been to since. Bald Knob Amphitheater in Arkansas. We just sat around laughing for 20 minutes at the name. It was a natural ball, a stage with huge totem poles, insects like helicopters, and then trucks selling catfish!
Me and Lars did a couple of radio interviews. The guy is talking about heavy metal and he had no clue what he was talking about. He was hiding the Heavy Metal album cover under his desk and reading it, picking out names like Don Felder. We’re looking at each other like, “Uhhh…no.” *laughs* “You’ve got it wrong. Haven’t you heard of Motörhead or Ozzy Osbourne?” It was pretty funny. Then we got to California and it was great.
Was there any one show on that tour that stood out from the others?
JG: There was a few. There was a great show in Chicago at the Metro which was filmed. You’ve seen a lot of it on Cliff ‘Em All, Metallica’s show. Our’s disappeared for many, many years. We got it back about 5 or 6 years ago. There’s a couple of songs on our DVD, Rock Until You Drop, from there. That was a killer show. All the California shows were awesome. The Country Club in L.A. and then the three Stone clubs in the San Francisco bay area: Palo Alto, Berkley, and then San Francisco itself.
Then there were other ones for ridiculous reasons. We played a show in Oklahoma which was literally like The Blues Brothers when they played the club with the chicken wire. This was that club, but without the chicken wire. They were all throwing stuff. Metallica goes on and these people are throwing beer mats and glasses. They just crumbled. They were hiding behind the drums, trying to get through the set. We played the clubs in the northeast of England, so this was no big deal. We went on and jumped on their tables and kicked their beer over, yelling “Come on you redneck assholes!” They loved it, but they kept throwing stuff anyway. *laughs*
We played some place. It must’ve been Little Rock. I think it was the Tarrant County Convention Center. It was a 10,000 seat arena. We turn up going, “What the hell is this?” The guy says, “I heard you boys just sold out Madison Square Garden!” “Uhhhh…no.” We get there and we have club equipment. We have this little truss of lights and they got a couple of forklifts to lift the truss up. There’s maybe 2 or 300 people in a 10,000 seat arena and it sounded like a fart in an oil drum. It was just ridiculous. “Please please get us out of here!” It was occasionally a little hit or miss for sure.
Over the past 40+ years, you’ve played all over the world. In your opinion, what is thee most metal city?
JG: I’m biased on that. It’s our hometown. I’ve seen audiences everywhere. There was no audience that was harder to play for or more rewarding because if they loved you, they loved you fiercely forever. The world’s a lot smaller these days, so those differences kind of got ironed out. There’s fanatical fans in Brazil, Chile, all over South America. It used to be the north of England and Scotland was great. The further south you got, the people were a little more reserved and didn’t want to enjoy themselves as much. That went by the wayside. Metal fans are metal fans these days, which is good.
The first time we ever played London was with Ozzy Osbourne and the audience couldn’t give a shit. It was unbelievable. We were back there maybe three or four months later and it was great. It was just that particular crowd which was very strange. We played the Hammersmith with Girlschool a year or two later and it was excellent. I think that short period of time changed things. There was the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. The tide was coming in of people actually having fun and enjoying themselves.
Check out the new Raven album, Metal City, out now on Steamhammer!