Martin Pugh (Armageddon, Steamhammer) Interview

When Armageddon formed in 1974, it was as if the heavy rockin’ stars had aligned, figuratively and literally speaking. Featuring members of Captain Beyond, Steamhammer, and The Yardbirds, they were a genuine ’70s metal supergroup, boasting both the star power and musical prowess to go toe to toe with the titans of the day. This collective thunder-burst of musical force culminated in a sole eponymous album in 1975, one that is spoken of by heshers today with the same reverence as Captain Beyond’s self-titled and Pentagram’s First Daze Here compilation. And yet against all odds, when it seemed Armageddon could do no wrong, the band imploded just a year later in ’76. How on earth could this happen? What went wrong? More importantly, what went right which resulted in these four firebrands pooling their talents together to create one of the most unsung albums of their era? With their sole opus being reissued by Deko Entertainment in honor of its 50th anniversary, we sat down with guitarist Martin Pugh to discuss the rise, fall, and lasting impact of Armageddon.

Greetings Martin and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?

Martin Pugh: I’m doing very well. Thanks Joe.

I want to say I was about 16 when I first picked up Armageddon. It’s an album that I’ve always wanted pick someone’s brain about, if only because of what high esteem it’s held in amongst fans of ’70s metal, so I think you for being the one to let me do so. Of course, the reason for this conversation in the first place is that Armageddon has just been reissued by Deko Entertainment in commemoration of its 50th anniversary. When were you approached about this project and what was your initial reaction to it?

MP: It was funny because being 2025, I was cognizant of the fact that it was our 50th anniversary all through the year. I kept saying to my wife, “It’s a pity we can’t get something happening on the anniversary.”, because so many other bands are doing their 50th anniversary. Then, about 3 months ago, it suddenly came up that Deko had already jumped in there. It came as an amazing surprise. I was so happy that it happened. To be honest, I think we’ve been swept under the carpet a bit as far as general populace, probably due to the fact that we never actually toured with the band. We were due at one point to open up for Eric Clapton when he was doing 461 Ocean Boulevard Tour. At the last minute, we were pulled out of it for unknown reasons.

I know that “Silver Tightrope” was doing really well in the Midwest. It was hitting the charts. It was all set for us to get out there and back it up, but we never actually did. Unfortunately, (singer) Keith (Relf) passed away quite soon after all that. We never really got to go out there and show the people what the band could do. When we first went to A&M, they gave us the Charlie Chaplin soundstage. We set up there and we had some amazing jams with Keith and (drummer) Bobby Caldwell. Of course, (bassist) Louie (Cennamo) and I had been together in Steamhammer, so we were very familiar with each other. That band would’ve really done amazingly well had we toured with it.

We can’t talk about the beginning of Armageddon without mentioning the ending of your previous band, Steamhammer. For it was none other than former Yardbirds and future Armageddon vocalist, Keith Relf, who co-produced the band’s then final album, Speech. How did Keith end up co-producing the album and what was that process like?

MP: It was Louie, obviously, who was playing with Keith in Renaissance, so they knew each other very well. At some point, I think we’d started, (singer) Kieran White left the band and decided he wanted to pursue other songs. He was a songwriter at one of the labels, writing songs for people and he was pretty happy about that, so we suddenly became a three piece. Louie, myself, and (drummer) Mick (Bradley), we’d been getting into heavier areas than Steamhammer. Steamhammer was a really good band live, but a lot of the albums were blues based and somewhat folky. In Switzerland, we opened up for The Tony Williams Lifetime with John McLaughlin and Larry Young. They were really jazz guys, but they were playing through 100 watt Marshalls, so they were very heavy.

We gradually started to get more involved in a little more intricate and out there kind of music, which is I think what Speech speaks to. It’s not your average, at the time, when you were getting heavily produced albums with very easy listening chords and things like that to try and get hits. We were going in the opposite direction. We were just playing for our own selves at that time. I think there’s some really good stuff on the Speech album actually, but anyways, Keith came in after we started to record that, at Louie’s suggestion. I’d always been a huge Keith Relf fan, since I was younger. I loved The Yardbirds. I always thought Keith was the standout member, even though a lot of the guitar players got a lot of the accolades.

Keith was such a gentlemen, such a loving soul, that it started to work immediately. He brought his sister in, Jane Relf, for some backup vocals. Unfortunately, during the recording of that, my great friend and cohort, Mick Bradley, who I believe was one of the best drummers in England at the time, he passed away from leukemia as we were recording that album. I was in the control room mixing his drums when his brother called me, which was a huge blow to the band. I remember the recording studio was close to Hyde Park. It was a bitter cold day and I just walked out of the studio and walked around Hyde Park for about 3 hours, just numb to the cold. I didn’t know what to do. Like I said, he was like a brother to me.

We ended up being able to finish the album. I think that was the start of Louie, Keith, and myself, that relationship that we had. Later on, after we had finished, which was really hard to do without Mick, we had John Lingwood come in, who was also a great drummer. He came in and filled in. After those commitments were taken care of, Louie, Keith, and I were having breakfast one morning. The seed of the idea about flying to America and putting a band together here, that’s where it germinated and started.

The three of us auditioned an American drummer who didn’t turn out to be the drummer in Armageddon. We flew with him to America and went to A&M Records. It didn’t work out with that drummer. I called Aynsley Dunbar, who was a great friend of mine. I called him because I had his number. He was in San Francisco. He said, “Oh, Martin, I’m really sorry. I’ve just joined a band called Journey.” He gave me Bobby Caldwell’s number in Los Angeles. Bobby came down. We were at Studio Instrumental Rentals and ran a few songs. That was it. It was obvious that Bobby fit in. That was the sound we were looking for.

Were any of you aware of Captain Beyond and what Bobby had done with that band, or was he brand new to you?

MP: No, it was all brand new to us. I know that, when we went to SIR, I didn’t have an amplifier, so he broke out an SVT head that was Rick Derringer’s. That’s what I was playing through for the audition with Bobby. Gradually, I got filled in that he was with Johnny Winter playing drums, and we started to hear some of Captain Beyond.

You also mention this relocation to America, with Keith heading west first, and you and Louie following soon after. Did you have any hesitations about relocating to America for a brand new venture, and had you ever been to America before?

MP: Not really. Steamhammer were due to come to America in ’69, when a lot of English bands were coming over here. You had to realize that Steamhammer, when we played the Lyceum in London, Black Sabbath opened up for us. Steamhammer were quite a big band at the time. We were due to come over here and I went down with a really terrible case of peritonitis. I ended up in hospital for 10 days. The tour was cancelled and we never (made it up) because a lot of commitments in Germany started to come to fruition. We never actually toured the States. I believe America would’ve loved Steamhammer, especially live.

After Woodstock, Germany decided they would have a Woodstock almost every weekend. We were playing these huge festivals, 3 or 4 a month, and we were going down amazingly well. Within a short period of time, Steamhammer became a really big name in Germany, even more so than England and anywhere else in Europe. The song “Junior’s Wailing”, which I wrote with Kieran White, that became a big hit in Germany as well.

To answer your question, I realized that I had moved from Torquay, a little town in the west country, to London to Europe, so we had done pretty much everything. The next frontier for me was the States, especially where all my idols were from. It was like jump and the net will appear, so we just went for it. Luckily, the A&R guy at A&M Records was Bob Garcia, and he was a great fan of Keith Relf’s, so when we turned up there, he was so accommodating. Like I said, he gave us the soundstage to rehearse on. Within a short time, Jerry Moss came in and we had a deal on A&M Records. The net did appear as it were *laughs*.

You mention Sabbath opening for Steamhammer. Do you have any recollection of their set that night or the first time you heard them?

MP: Not really. You gotta realize, Steamhammer were playing around London in the late ’60s. On any given night, you could go and see Jeff Beck, Rory Gallagher, the Soft Machine. The talent was amazing out there. I personally didn’t find them to be what they ended up being. Obviously, they morphed into a very heavy band that, once they came to the States, I think they worked into those big shoes as it were. At the time, I obviously didn’t take a lot of…they were opening up for us and we were probably in the dressing room, all worried about doing our thing because we had a mobile studio there. Half the set was recorded and that’s half of the Mountains album.

The bulk of the writing on Armageddon was handled by yourself, Keith, and Bobby. How did the three of you go about composing the music that makes up the album. Was it a collaborative process, or a matter of the three of you bringing your own ideas to the table?

MP: We’d pretty much all bring ideas. A lot of the germ of the record, or the song, would start out with me coming up with a riff and some chord changes. Keith had a book of lyrics that he could refer to if I played something to him and it reminded him of a lyric he’d already written, or he’d write a new lyric for it. He was pretty prolific about putting lyrics together to match things that I’d come up with. Bobby would infuse certain ideas to me. If I was playing a riff, he would accentuate an accent here and things like that. It was quite collaborative. Louie also, being a bass player, had a lot of really good ideas for riffs and things like that. It worked really well, especially when we went to England and we went to Clearwell Castle, before we went to Olympic Studios, just to finetune everything. It was a good working relationship with all of us.

I interviewed Jim McCarty of The Yardbirds last year. He mentioned how towards the end of their run, when their music was getting more psychedelic and trippy, Keith developed a fascination with the esoteric and various philosophies. Did you get the same impression of Keith while he was in Armageddon?

MP: Yeah, I think so. Some of the lyrics on that album are pretty trippy, like “Silver Tightrope”. He was definitely…he wasn’t doing the formula writing. It was coming from the heart and from experience, all that experience. It was fantastic working with him. I had a similar experience with Kieran in Steamhammer. He was a prolific lyricist, always writing in his book. Often times, something he’d already written would coincide with something I’d come up with. Those guys are far and few between, I feel. I’ve worked with other great singers and have tried this process with them. They have huge, amazing voices, but when it comes to crafting lyrics that go with certain riffs and chord progressions, they were lacking in that. I found myself several times missing working with Keith in that respect.

Another interesting aspect about Keith being part of the fold is here’s a guy who was an integral part of the British Invasion a decade earlier, fully embracing the developing heavy and progressive sounds of the mid ’70s. Not only that, but it feels natural. It doesn’t feel like a bandwagon attempt. Obviously, The Yardbirds pioneered many of these sounds, so I guess it’d make sense he’d embrace them come the mid ’70s. And I imagine for you, growing up as a fan of The Yardbirds, it must’ve been a trip just to be working with Keith, let alone be bandmates.

MP: Oh yeah. A couple times on the soundstage, we did “Train Kept A-Rollin'” and it was phenomenal, but Keith was like, “No, we’re not doing that! We’re not going back there.” *laughs* He was definitely moving on. I knew what he meant when people would always insist on us playing “Junior’s Wailing”. You’ve played it so many times and you’ve moved over here, but the audience still wants you to be here. Keith wasn’t having any of that Yardbirds stuff, which obviously was very commercial. I think if we had done “Train Kept-A Rollin'”, it would’ve been a massive hit, especially the way we were playing it. You gotta respect the guy that’s been around that long.

What memories stand out to you from the recording of the album itself? I know you mentioned the sessions taking place at the legendary Olympic Studios in London. Had you ever recorded there before?

MP: Not Olympic, no, but many other studios. One thing that…we were in there, probably halfway through the album, we turned up one more. Of course, Keith knew Jimmy Page quite well. Jimmy was in there and he said, “I’ve been working all night putting this thing together. Do you wanna hear it?” We went in the control room and he puts on “Kashmir” with the speakers. That riff starts up and we were like, “Wow!” He’d put the strings on that night, so no one had ever heard that before. It was really trippy. That was one of the big things.

There’s lots of moments in there that, I think, as far as my performance, when we were doing “Last Stand Before”, at the end when I was doing that interchange with Keith playing harmonica and I on guitar, they were all in the control room and I was overdubbing that last solo. I’ve always been a huge fan of gypsy violin, so I tried to get that with a Strat and an AC30. I tried to get that violin thing going in. I saw everybody going like this in the control room *waves hands frantically*. I thought they were trying to tell me to stop, but I was on a roll, so I go, “I’m not stopping now.” Actually, they were freaking out because it was sounding so good. There’s moments like that which just stick with you forever. I go in the control room and Bobby’s hugging me, going, “Oh my God! What happened?! You got into it so much!” I still find that interchange between me and Keith to be quite a special moment on that track.

Besides the pedigree of the members, something that makes Armageddon’s debut a ’70s metal classic is your guitar playing. Your tone is razor-sharp, and at times the riffs bear a closer resemblance to what would come in metal of the early ’80s than what many would associate with the ’70s, especially on songs like “Buzzard” and “Basking in the White of the Midnight Sun”. In what ways, if any, did you approach your guitar playing differently on this album than you had in the past with Steamhammer?

MP: I don’t think I really approached it any different. I always, on a daily basis, I’m always coming up with things and riffs, mostly riffs. I love songs that have really strong riffs in them. It was just a transition onwards. In fact, “Buzzard”, we used to play in Steamhammer a version of “Buzzard”. A few things came over from Steamhammer. Just like the new Steamhammer that came out 2 years ago, Wailing Once Again, a lot of the stuff comes over and I find it to be just what I do. I don’t think I purposely tried to approach it in any way.

In the end, we ended up producing it ourselves, which I think it’s always a little difficult for an artists because you have to make all these decisions about your own solos, your own work, your own things. Whereas if you have a really good producer that knows his stuff, he can say, “No, no, no. You can’t do that.” You wouldn’t say that necessarily to yourself. I think it would’ve been nice to have had a big-time producer in the studio with us, but at the time, we were pretty bullheaded about doing it all ourselves. In hindsight, looking back, I wish we’d had a strong producer in there, but we didn’t. It turned out alright *laughs*.

It turned out more than alright! By the time we get to the mid ’70s, there’s definitely albums coming out from hard rock and metal acts where you start to say to yourself, “Yeah, this could’ve been trimmed down.” I can’t say that for Armageddon. The ebb and the flow of the songs make sense. So the band cuts the album and ends up signing to A&M. How did that happen, and were there any other labels courting the band prior to you ultimately signing with A&M?

MP: No. Like I said, we were given the soundstage at A&M Records, which is basically what used to be Charlie Chaplin’s soundstage. I think John Mayer and a couple of people are involved in taking it over now and putting it back into the music after Hanson had it for a while. It’s a great soundstage. We were there for a week or so, honing songs together. Bob Garcia came in one day, at the back of the hall. Jerry Moss walked in, listened to us for about 2 minutes, and walked out. We thought, “Well, obviously he didn’t like that much!” *laughs*

Then, Bob Garcia came in and said, “Jerry wants to see you in his office.” We walked in there and he said, “We would like you to join A&M Records.” We were happy to go there because, again, through Louie, I knew Peter Frampton reasonably well. In fact, when my Les Paul was stolen in London, we had a gig to play at the Marquee Club. Peter lent me his black beauty Les Paul to play that night. Of course, Frampton was on A&M Records, so he gave us the thumbs up to join them. He had a good experience with Jerry Moss and Herb Alpert. It was pretty simple, really. They walked in, listened to a short burst of us, and then walked out.

I think, obviously, all of us had done a lot collectively. Of course, at the top of that was Keith Relf with The Yardbirds which at the time was a very sellable item. Led Zeppelin cashed in on that pretty much. They came over as The New Yardbirds first before they were Zeppelin. It was good. We were very happy to join that label. They treated us very well. Jerry Moss was very, very accommodating and took us into the fold. We felt looked after.

I always found your signing to that label interesting because at the time, aside from yourselves and Nazareth, A&M were not a label known for “heavy” or “out there” acts like say Vertigo.

MP: Yeah. I guess later they had The Police and got into that more, but it was Captain and Tenelle *laughs*. And here comes Armageddon *laughs*!

Sadly, as quickly as Armageddon came together, the band fell apart. What circumstances led to the split. Furthermore, was the band working on any music for a potential follow-up at the time of their split?

MP: Yeah, we actually had gone to London and were writing for a new album. Keith had been suffering from a respiratory situation where he was taking steroids. I was in Los Angeles when he passed. Obviously, the report is he electrocuted himself. His sons came out and found him in the morning with an electric guitar. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know the details, but I know he was having respiratory issues during the whole making of Armageddon. He was taking steroids. It could’ve been that as well.

After that, Jerry Moss was very kind to me and I started to put other bands together in Los Angeles, but I found it very hard to find the personnel. Back in England, we had the Melody Maker, which was one magazine that, if you wanted a drummer, you’d put an ad in there, and you’d end up with about 25 people calling you saying, “I wanna do it!” In fact, that’s how we found Mick Bradley. In Los Angeles, I didn’t have that. I had people coming in that looked like they were gonna be good, but it turned out they were on a steady diet of cocaine and white wine. That had to go. I’d never really been fond of people turning up one day different than they do the day before. For some reason or another, I never found the personnel to work with.

I ended up staying in Los Angeles. I don’t know if you’d spoken to Bobby at all, but in the early ’80s, Bobby, myself, and a Polish bass player called Chris Bodson, we started to put the second Armageddon together. We spent 4 years in the early ’80s rehearsing. We did quite well with that, but eventually that fell apart. It probably would’ve been strange, another Armageddon without Keith at the helm, but it was another great sounding band. I’ve always been a guitar player that locks into the drummer live. I’ve had Mick Bradley and Micky Waller, at one point, was with Steamhammer. Micky was an amazing drummer who was in the Jeff Beck Band at one time, and was on a lot of Rod Stewart stuff, which I was. I was on Rod Stewart’s first solo album. I always locked into the drummer and had great drummers. Bobby was no exception. Once we get going, we’re like this *holds hands together*. I’ve been fortunate to play with those great drummers.

Would you be open to making music with Bobby in a new outfit today?

MP: Maybe. I did a bit through this Deko situation. We signed 100 albums. When Bobby sent me the albums for me to sign, he’d already signed them, he wrote me a nice little note saying we need to recontact with each other. We had a good conversation about 3 weeks ago and promised that we need to keep in touch and keep up to date with everything. Since Steamhammer was supposed to play the Glastonbury Festival in 2020, because Steamhammer played on the very first Glastonbury in 1970, it was 50 years. We had a contract to play there, but then, of course, COVID happenned.

Because I’d assembled these great guys to go and play with me at Glastonbury, we decided to put an album together. That’s what Steamhammer’s Wailing Again album was. We did it all remotely, which is completely alien to me because I’ve always been in amazing studios, but we managed to send files around. (Bassist) Pete Sears did a great job of putting it all together in the end, but I’m not a great fan of doing it remotely with files and things, especially since the seed of the song comes from me. I have to play to a click track.

To me, it means that you have to wait several months before everybody puts their stuff on before you can tell whether you have something or not. Whereas if you’re in a studio with a band, it’s like, “OK, that’s not happening today.”, or, “That is!” You know right there you’ve got something, when you play a song and it happens in the studio. I find that a little bit frustrating, waiting to see how it turns out. I’m a hands-on guy: Play it now with the band and see what happens.

When it comes to ’70s metal, it feels like the bands largely fall into two categories. You’ve got your giants like Sabbath, Purple, Priest, and so forth, and you’ve got your cult heroes, who headbangers would gain an appreciation for later on. Armageddon certainly falls into the latter category. As the years passed by, when did it occur to you that the band and album developed the cult following that it did, and are you surprised that we’re here, half a century later, talking about Armageddon?

MP: I’m very flattered about it. It’s just been great. I’ve always had this huge love in my heart for that band and that album. As far as how time is seeing it, if there are people out there listening to it going, “Damn, that’s great!”, then I’m happy, even though it didn’t hit the mainstream like those other bands you were talking about. To me, I think it’s a case of coverage and how many times you tour and how many times your song is played on the radio. People will get used to that song. I think there’s some songs on there that could’ve been equally as received had people had heard it and it been put into the main playlist, as I call it. There’s radio stations that, when all the radio stations got morphed into one, as it were, you lost a little bit of that.

The deregulation of radio stations was horrible in my mind. Whereas you used to have various places around the States, especially where you’d have DJs playing their favorite stuff and being excited about it. Now, it’s just a radio station, probably no DJ, churning out the same stuff all the time. If you happen to be on that list, you become one of those big bands. If you’re not on there, nobody knows about you, or just the people who go out of their way to find you. I love the fact that people are going out of their way to find it, listen to it, and find it worthwhile! I’ve been aching to get out there and play. Hopefully that’ll happen at some point, regardless of what the personnel is. As far as songs, from Steamhammer, Armageddon, and some of the newer stuff that I’ve written, I think I have a damn good hour and a half, 2 hour set that we could play. That would make me happy *laughs*.

The 50th anniversary edition of Armageddon is available now on Deko Entertainment. For more information on Martin Pugh and Steamhammer, click here.