Although it’s still a month off, it’s never too early to plan for Valentine’s Day. What are you planning on getting your loved one this year? A bouquet of flowers? A heart shaped box of chocolates? A candlelit dinner at the fanciest steakhouse in town? How about getting them a gift them a gift they’ll NEVER forget: Raven’s 50th anniversary EP, Can’t Take Away the Fire! Hitting record store shelves on February 14th, the brothers Gallagher and their trusty drummer Mike Heller continue their reign as metal’s supreme speed metal psychos with five brand new songs of sheer lunacy. We sat down with main-man John Gallagher to discuss this new EP, making the leap to a major label in the ’80s, and the punks vs. longhairs rivalry of the ’70s (Spoiler alert: Things got nasty!).
Greetings John and welcome back to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
John Gallagher: I’m doing good, Joe! It’s good to be here. Thank you man.
Thank you for coming back! It’s always a treat talking to you. I’d like to start by wishing you and Raven a very happy 50th anniversary! The band celebrated the occasion by touring the globe last year. How did the road treat you in 2024 and what were some of your favorite gigs?
JG: Oh man, it was cool. We started off in the UK, which was awesome, with our old pals Girlschool, our new pals Alcatrazz, and our new pals Airforce, all good guys and girls. We had a great time. We did the States, which was wonderful. We did a run in Europe with a few festivals, a couple of the big ones. We did Wacken and Alcatraz. Both were incredible. South America, that was the brutal one. That was 10 days of get up at 6 o’clock, go to the airport, fly, get off, do the gig, sleep 3 hours, do it again *laughs*. Then, we did Singapore for the first time, which was interesting, and Australia and Japan to finish off. We did about 80 shows all in and it was fantastic, really, really cool.
There’s a lot of bands who embark on so called “world tours”, when it’s really just all American dates with a one off in Europe or South America. It’s incredible that Raven are still truly doing world tours!
JG: Yeah, it’s fun! These days, with the internet and what have you, the audiences get a bit more similar. They got more similarities than they used to back in the bad old days. One thing our fans have got in common is they’re all crackers, they’re all nuts, so it’s good. It’s real good. They’re just so appreciative. It’s wonderful. Now with the phones, it’s great. In Japan, they’ll type something out and go, “We know how hard it is for you guys to come over here.” They’re really, really heartfelt messages. It’s very cool. They really get it.
A good friend of ours put together a meet and greet 50th anniversary setup and had all these old photographs and posters and t-shirts all over the walls. Had a bunch of people in asking questions of us. I did a little bass bit, a little noodle thing. It was a real fans meeting. It was really cool. We’d never done anything like that before, so that was interesting.
Of course, the 50th anniversary celebration doesn’t just end there. It continues with the release of a brand new Raven EP, the aptly titled Can’t Take Away the Fire. I love how it’s coming out on Valentine’s Day.
JG: A Valentine’s Day massacre *laughs*!
Were the songs on here specifically recorded for this EP, or did some have origins from the All Hell’s Breaking Loose sessions?
JG: A couple of the songs were in embryo form at that point, but they were all done for the EP. We knew Mike was moving. He’d have to rebuild his studio. We didn’t want to be in a situation where it was gonna take 9 years ’til the next album, which it’s not anyway. We didn’t want to drop the ball. We wanted to keep things rolling. It’s like a gift to the fans, to be honest, but it also points the direction because this thing, I’m still blown away by it. I put “Black and Blue” on and I go, “Woah!” *laughs* It’s pretty intense. It’s limited edition, great artwork. The lyric video comes out tomorrow for “Can’t Take Away the Fire”. That’s cool. We’ve got the bonus three live tracks, two old ones and one new one. It just rounds it off nicely.
I can’t remember which interview we did, but I know at one point it was mentioned how some bands will do EPs as something to hold the fans over or put out a couple of “throwaways”. Raven is a band who, going back to the ’80s with Crash Bang Wallop (1982) and Mad (1986). Those were top shelf EPs, and this one is no exception. I was listening to it again last night. I’m with you. “Black and Blue” comes in and the floodgates open. I love that.
JG: We mix it up because that was always the fun thing on the EPs. You could always, for some reason, just be a little more experimental maybe. You’ve got something like “Can’t Take Away the Fire”. The idea of that was let’s have another song we can open with. You want something that’s not too fast and intense because it’s impossible to mix. Something where the instruments come in 1, 2, 3, there’s a regular pace. Then, it’s set. You can go nuts from there. I’m lost…what was I talking about? *laughs*
Mixing it up on the EPs.
JG: There you go! Mixing it up, you’ve got that, and then you got the crazy stuff like “Black and Blue”. Then you’ve got something that’s like doomy blues, “The Wreckage”, out of leftfield, something we haven’t done before. It came off great. What the hell, let’s give it a shot, you know?
This EP features the two types of songs I believe Raven does best: breakneck ragers (i.e. “Black and Blues”, “Power Hungry) and fist-pumping anthems (i.e. “Can’t Take Away the Fire). At what point in the writing process do you know if a song is gonna be a fast one or mid-tempo. Has there ever been a case in Raven’s career where a fast song was initially slower or vice versa?
JG: Good question! Usually you know, but sometimes we’ve taken stuff that’s had a relatively mid paced riff. Recently, it’s been Mike. Mike will be like, “I love that, but can you play it about 300 BPM faster and let’s see what happens with that?” Often, it means the riff changes because you can’t do downstrokes. You can only go so fast with that. You may actually change the riff slightly. I think something like “Top of the Mountain” was more like that, where it was a little slower. You kick it up and…the song, you try different paces and it’ll fit in a certain area and you go, “That’s where it belongs. That’s where it works.”
“Top of the Mountain” which has since gone on to become a staple of the live set.
JG: And that was a funny song because I had that song forever. My brother (Mark) hated it for no reason. Over the years, it got a better verse, and then at the end, I changed the chorus and then everyone was like, boom! The lightbulb went off. Yes, we’re in! I’m like, “Yeah, I’ve been telling you this forever!” *laughs* That happens the other way around too. Mark’s had stuff were I went, “I don’t get it. I don’t get it. I don’t get it.” Then, when it’s fully realized, it’s like, duh! It’s great!
The older you get with that, you just kind of have to go with the flow a little bit and see how it comes out, as opposed to just shooting something down instantly like, “Ah, that’s shit!” I don’t like that, you know. If there’s anything we ever argue about, it’s usually stuff like that. The process of bouncing it off between the three of us always elevates it. It always ends up getting better than what you started with. It’s a process. It’s the way it works, but it’s something that we’ve put more time into recently, ever since ExtermiNation, where we really put a lot of time into pre-production and really questioning what was in the song.
Is this the best melody we could have? Is that too many words? Is that not enough words? Does this part suck, or is this part the greatest thing you’ve ever heard? If it isn’t the greatest thing you’ve ever heard, it’s gone. That type of thing. That extra work made all the difference. That’s the process we’ve got now. We’ll come up with something and then we’ll put it through the ringer and try to get the best out of it.
For a band known for pushing the speed limit to overload, the last original song on this EP is a crushing, doomy ballad entitled “The Wreckage”. How did this one come about and could you see Raven pursuing the doom metal vein further in the future?
JG: Well we’ve done…there was a pretty doomy, heavy song called “When Worlds Collide” on Metal City. We’ve done, back in the day, “Into the Jaws of Death”, stuff like that. It’s something that…we’ve all prayed at the church of Black Sabbath at some point. There’s always a bit of that in there. This actually came out of something I was fooling around with on a guitar, where it went *plays initial guitar melody*. I thought, “What if I split that out, so it’s like…” *plays guitar part on final song* “…and the bass does the other part?” It’s kind of simplifying it, but it makes it bigger and do it loud.
That little almost medieval guitar part turned into a real song. Sometimes that happens. There’s something in that, but what is it? Is it the way it is there, or can we do something different with it? I’ll often to do that. That’s cool because there’s counterpoints. The bass goes down, the guitar goes up. It makes it all sound bigger. I’m forever playing and recording. You go back and listen and there’s a nugget in there somewhere. It’s like, “We gotta work on this. There’s something here.” That was something I was screwing around with for a few months and then finally said, “What if we do this?” They were like, “Yeah! I’m in. Cool. Let’s go for it.”
It’s a crushing closer to the original portion of the EP. Like you said, there’s three live bonus tracks, with the EP appropriately closing with a rendition of the song that introduced the world to Raven, “Don’t Need Your Money”. This live version in particular comes from 1984. Do you recall when you and Mark wrote that song? The lead riff always reminded me of Status Quo.
JG: We love the Quo. We definitely pray to the church of Quo, very much so! If you remember the cover of the Rock Until You Drop album, that was our rehearsal hall, Spectral Arts, in the middle of Newcastle. We were in there and that song, that’s one of the songs that started slow. Every original demo, which is almost unlistenable, it’s like *plays lead riff*. It’s that speed. Then you hear the other versions. It gets faster and faster and faster until the version that’s on the Rock Until You Drop boxset, you hear the two track demo and it’s about the right speed. It has extra parts, but it’s the right speed. That was just that process that was going on from ’78 to ’80 where we’d be playing stuff and it’d be leaning faster. The bones of that was actually more mid-paced, very strange.
When you recorded that song, and the songs that would make up Rock Until You Drop, did you do so with the intention of “Don’t Need Your Money” being the band’s debut single?
JG: Absolutely. We went in. I think we did live to two track as an audition tape for Neat Records. We did “Don’t Need Your Money”, “Wiped Out”, and I think we did “Let it Rip”. They ended up being the first three songs we recorded properly. “Let it Rip” was on a compilation album called Brute Force and “Wiped Out” was the B-side. Actually, it was marketed as a double A side, so there you go *laughs*. When we decided to do the album, that was done piecemeal over about a year. We’d be in for 3, maybe 4 days, and then nothing for like 3 or 4 weeks, then come back in.
Talking to Steve Thompson, who was the producer, who’s a good friend of mine now, he’d say, “Yeah, you guys were doing my head in. I couldn’t do a full week with you guys. It’d just be too much.” *laughs* He’d be like, “We’re booked! We’re busy!” In reality, it was like, “I can’t deal with that.” *laughs* Too intense for him! That was good in a sense, because it’d give you a little bit of distance. You’d come back and listen and go, “Oh, we can do this. We can do that.”
The funny thing is, to me, I can listen to the songs that were done first, like “Don’t Need Your Money”, “Hell Patrol”, “Nobody’s Hero”, and then hear how the playing progresses when it gets to the last songs, which were “For the Future” and the Sweet medley of “Hellraiser” and “Action”. Rob’s (Hunter) drum style was changing, even within those few months. Less dig-dig-dig and more shh-shh-shh *laughs*, more beating it out.
Now I’m gonna have to re-listen to that album and check for those nuances. That’s why I love listening to albums. Every listen, you get something new out of it.
JG: Yeah man, it really is a snapshot of where you are in that time. The cool things about songs like that as well, it’s like a photograph. It’s cast in stone there, but the people in the photograph, they don’t just exist there; they exist afterwards. The song grows and changes when you play it live. Even now, when we play the old songs, there’s little nooks and crannies where you can play it differently and change stuff slightly, even without sitting saying, “Let’s rearrange the song.”, just within the pattern that it’s in, the fills you put in and you change it. Being a three piece, you can do that. It just keeps it fresh and it keeps it alive. It’s got its own mind *laughs*.
I had read that back in the ’70s, Raven opened for punk acts like The Stranglers and The Motors. What was it like being a metal band in the punk era, prior to the advent of the NWOBHM, and how did you feel about punk as a whole?
JG: Oh we hated it. We laughed at some of it. I had a sneaking admiration for the Sex Pistols because they were heavy and they had an incredible swagger. They had more swagger than Aerosmith. When anyone ever copied the Sex Pistols, it was always frenetic and frantic. When you listen back, it was more *hums riff*. It had this swing to it, very unusual. They were cool. A lot of the other bands were very bombastic and fun to watch and had zero talent whatsoever. Some bands you could tell were just bandwagon jumpers, like The Stranglers, who could play, and The Police, who could play. They were great. They were awesome.
As far as a band in Newcastle trying to play when all they wanted to hear was punk rock, it was tough. We just had to fight or we throw it. We were rehearsing in that rehearsal hall when 12 punks walked in and just stood there watching us. We’re like, “Well, we’re going to the pub now. We’re breaking up. It’s the end of the night.” “Oh yeah, good idea!” One of them picked up one of my basses and ran out with it, so I ran out after him, took it off him, and hit him with it, just as the other 11 came around the corner and saw me hitting him with the bass, so they all jumped on me. Then, my guys came and it was a big fracas. I ended up breaking my arm from that nonsense.
That was one of our first press photos. In the studio, it was me with a broken arm *laughs*. The punks and the longhairs didn’t really get on really well. There was an open space in the middle of town, Eldon Green. There’s a monument and there’s grass. There’d always be pitched battles and fights and stupid stuff. It was an odd time. I think, not that anybody was particularly influenced by the punks, other than the DIY ethos that they proposed, but it certainly inspired the NWOBHM, because there were a lot of kids, like us, who didn’t like punk and were pissed off about it and said, “Well screw it. I wanna play the music I like.”
That’s where it just miraculously appeared. There were all these bands that no one had noticed before. It was all these young kids like ourselves and the Maidens and the Diamond Heads and the Venoms and whoever else that were just like, “I want to play my music.” They were listening to AC/DC and Judas Priest and Pat Travers and Sammy Hagar and Montrose and Rory Gallagher, all of it. That’s what we did: Listened to all that and it all soaked in, but we soaked in all the fast stuff. When we’d play the clubs, the club band would play, *sings* “Smoke on the water…”, and we’d be playing a hyped up version of “Highway Star”. Or we’d do “Space Station #5” from Montrose, where they’d be playing “Rock Candy”. All great stuff, but we’d always play the more intense, faster stuff. It just developed from that.
In hindsight, all of those ’70s bands would have a song or two that pushed the speed envelope. Even Sweet had “Set Me Free”.
JG: And “Sweet F.A.”, that was kicked up too. Great, great band. Very underrated, I think. But back in the day, Purple did “Fireball”, which was one of the first double kick things you heard back in ’71. And then, of course, Priest when they came out with “Exciter” and all that. That all turned into that. Then Motörhead, of course, about a year later with “Overkill”. That started the speed wars, I think. We were certainly in there. A lot of people were kind of doing the same thing.
I think the cool thing about the NWOBHM is all the bands were really different. The only thing they had in common was the attitude and the passion. None of those bands sounded the same. We didn’t sound like Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden didn’t sound like Def Leppard. Def Leppard didn’t sound like Diamond Head, or whatever. We were all different, and they were all cool. A lot of it I didn’t even listen to it. Once we got to about 1981, I just went, “I’m listening to my music and concentrating on that.”, or stuff far removed from heavy metal like progressive or fusion or singer-songwriter, whatever. I didn’t wanna be incorporating the most recent Iron Maiden riff into one we were doing unconsciously or what have you. Now I can listen back to that stuff and enjoy it all, which is cool, man.
This year also happens to mark the 40th anniversary of Raven’s fourth studio album, Stay Hard. It marked a major shift for the band as it was their first on a major label, Atlantic. Being of the no frills NWOBHM scene, what was this change like for the band and what did the band set out to achieve coming off the heels of All for One?
JG: Basically, there was two things going on. One of them was the album, to my mind, when it came out, it’s pretty much the next progression from All for One. A lot of the songs could’ve been on All for One, or vice versa. You’ve got commercial rockers like “Stay Hard”, which could’ve certainly been on All for One. It’s the same type of thing. You’ve got faster ones like “Extract the Action”. A stupid dopey one that should’ve never have been on, “Restless Child”, which was like a drunken Status Quo song. The reason for that is because in the middle of all this, we were trying to get away from Neat Records.
The option had come up basically to give them what was termed a throwaway album. We had a whole bunch of songs. In the middle of this, we ended up playing the Roseland show in New York. We headlined with Metallica and Anthrax opening, which was a big deal. It was a 3,000 capacity hall in Manhattan with three unsigned bands. There was a bit of a feeding frenzy. All three bands got signed. At least we had the approach. It took about three months to ratify the deal. It was like, “Oh, now we’ve got a deal with Atlantic? Shouldn’t all this junk go away? Let’s go back to the good songs.”
All of a sudden, “On and On” comes in because we knew it was a great song, stuff like that. Then, we worked through it. It was very much, like I say, a progression or follow-on from that. There was no pressure from the record company. The only thing that they wanted was they wanted the redo of “Hard Ride”, which we did. It’s kind of a waste of time because it’s not as good as the original, but they wanted that on there. We thought, “If this is the worst thing they’ll ask for, no big deal. We’ll do that.”
We were experimental with “The Bottom Line”, the instrumental with the horns, which was brilliant, hilarious. We did the music and we were going *mimics horns*, joking around. Alex Perialas, it was his studio, Pyramid, up in Ithica, he goes, “I know a horn section. Do you want me to bring them in?” We’re like, “Yes! Let’s do it!” It worked! It really worked. It was fun. So yeah, no real bad feelings about that at all.
We started recording it with our sound engineer, our road engineer, and it sounded a little flat. We weren’t too happy about that, so we brought Michael Wagener in and he rerecorded a couple of songs and did the mix. We weren’t as happy overall with the sound as it was on All for One, but it still sounded good and we liked the songs. The album we had the problem with and there was a lot of pressure to be commercial was the next one, The Pack is Back.
With big labels comes big things, like big music videos. What was it like for the band to finally have a music video in “On and On”?
JG: That was crazy. It was fun. We came up with the concept, which is basically just a quick story of the band. They had us in rags, then they had us wearing our ridiculous stage clothes at the time at the end. It was done tongue in cheek, very funny. That’s why it holds up. There’s a lot of videos back then where the guys in the band were very serious. You’re laughing at it for the wrong reasons. You’re laughing with us in this one, so that made it funny.
It took…we were there from 10 in the morning ’til about 6 or 7 the next morning. It took forever. It took forever! Geez, there was just so many reshoots and “Do it from this angle” and “Do it from that angle”. All that staging we’d bought from Judas Priest. If you see the Screaming for Vengeance, the old VHS, we just reconfigured all of that. It’s the same pentagram light thing that’s behind and the banks of lights. We just repurposed everything. We did take it out on the road, but it crucified us on the road. It was so expensive. Half the time, you could barely get it in some of the halls *laughs*. It was that big, but it looked good on the video, so there you go.
What’s perhaps most impressive about Raven is that you’ve been going strong for over 50 years now, without any hiatuses or splits. There are very few bands in the history of rock, let alone metal, who can stake this claim. Was there ever a point in Raven’s history where the band even considered putting on the brakes, or has the “Rock Until You Drop” philosophy always been that strong?
JG: It’s always been that strong. There’s always been ups and downs. When Rob left the band, we were stranded in the States with no drummer, no record company, and no money for the best part of 6, 7 months. That was kind of tough until we found Joe Hasselvander and got him in, got a deal, and started working on Nothing Exceeds Like Excess. We built it all back from there. The other time would’ve been 2001, when Mark had his accident where he nearly died. It took him maybe two and a half years before we did any gigs and he was in a wheelchair. We did 3 or 4 gigs in the northeast.
Then, in 2005, he was able to get around with a leg brace and we did the first European festival. We probably hadn’t done one in forever, Keep It True. We did Bloodstock in England and gradually, he was getting better from there on out. We just used that time. He was recuperating and just wrote a bunch of songs. That’s how Walk Through Fire came out. It was a great return to form and a great very welcome to us to be, “We’re back. We’re doing it.” It was great.
What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned in Raven’s 50 year history?
JG: Things could always be worse and things could always get better. It’s perseverance, hard work. Keep your head down and keep your motives true. Go for it. Make your own luck. We’ve done an awful lot of that. We’ve had a lot of difficult times, situations, and somehow came out OK on the other side. That makes us, right now, in the amazing position of being a band that’s got all this history and legacy, but on the other side, we’re vibrant. We’ve got lots of new music and lots of music to come We play a lot of live gigs. We’ve got a great, exciting live show, better than ever, and are enjoying it more than ever. It’s the best possible place to be.
Ever since Mike Heller came into the band in 2017, he’s been a catalyst in every sense of the word. We’ve just, like a river, we’ve increased in every way you can look at it. We’re very happy. We’re playing more gigs than we ever have back in the day. When Mike joined, that was 2017. He joined in May or June. In that year, we did 150 gigs in 6 months, which is outrageous. That’s crazy. We did 80 last year, so we’re hitting it. We’re doing it good.
In closing, what does the rest of 2025 have in store for Raven?
JG: Well, first off, tomorrow is the lyric video for “Can’t Take Away the Fire”. That’s coming out. Also, check out the press release. It’ll be on our Facebook page and stuff. Follow the links. You can get the EP, which comes out February 14th, as we said, the massacre on St. Valentine’s. We will be playing Hell’s Heroes in Houston on March 20th, which we’re really looking forward to. Then, we’re gonna be taking some time out for writing and what have you. We’re booking some dates for Europe for September. The States are either gonna be before that or right after it. That’s what we’re looking at, so good stuff.
At some point, in between all of that, either in between or following, we’ll be actively doing the new album. Mike’s halfway through building his studio. Once he’s got all the bugs worked out, we’ll get in there and start putting some songs together, which I’m very excited about. We’ve got lots of great ideas. This EP points to where we’re going. We shall follow the news, as they say! More metal than metal! *laughs*
The new Raven EP, Can’t Take Away the Fire, comes out Friday, February 14th on Silver Lining Music. For more information on Raven, visit www.ravenlunatics.com.
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