Since forming Tygers of Pan Tang in 1978, Robb Weir has experienced some “Crazy Nights” and even crazier days. Whether it be headlining such hallowed ground as Wacken, getting airplay on MTV, or being part of a dynamic duo with John Sykes, there’s very little this NWOBHM legend hasn’t done. His latest album (the phenomenal Bloodlines) charting globally and resting comfortably alongside Top 40 radio darling Taylor Swift *gasp*? Just another day in the life! We sat down with Weir to discuss Tygers’ storied past, thrilling present, and spellbinding future.
Greetings Robb and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Robb Weir: I’m doing very good, thank you! How are you?
I am great! Thank you for taking the time to do this interview, especially off the heels of yet another awesome Tygers album, Bloodlines. I know it’s only May, almost June. Album of the year? Perhaps we shall see in another 6 months.
RW: Thank you very much!
When did work get started on Bloodlines and what did the band set out to achieve musically?
RW: I look at the Tygers career, and indeed every band I’m guessing looks at their career, as stepping stones, as a staircase. With each new product, whether it’s a video or an album or a book, whatever it is, you need to take it up to the next step as it were. That is your career plot, but of course the staircase, you can never reach the top, or should never reach the top, because once you’ve reached the top, you’ve got nowhere else to go. You’re kind of saying to everybody, “We’ve got nowhere else to go.” You just need to go steadily up the staircase throughout your career.
After Ritual in 2019, which was a bit unfortunate because COVID happened and we couldn’t really tour it…it’s kind of a lost album, really. We were proud of it at the time, obviously, but as COVID was happening, we had a guitar player change. I had written a batch of song ideas. Certainly not songs, but song ideas. When Francesco Marras joined the band, I said to him, “Can I send you these ideas to see what you think?”, which I did. I fed them to him one by one. He kind of disassembled them, reassembled them, recorded his guitar parts along with mine, did some writing. When he sent me back what I sent him, it blew me away. I said, “Crikey! Absolutely amazing!” It just took the songs to the next level. It really, really did.
It got to about song 5 and I said, “Listen, I’ve sent you 5 songs now. Is there anything that you want to send me?” He said, “Oh yeah! I’ve got something I can send you.” He sent me this song and it saddened me. It depressed me and I had a moment, only because, I thought to myself, “God, I wish I had written that riff! Absolutely tremendous!” *laughs* That’s the song “Fire on the Horizon”. When I heard that riff, when he sent me his demo, I said to him, “I can’t add anything to that. It’s absolute 100% Tygers.” It could’ve been recorded for Spellbound. It’s just amazing.
I rang him up and said, “You know that song you just sent me, “Fire on the Horizon”?” He said, “Yeah?” I went, “Hmm.” “You don’t think it’s Tygers? You don’t like it?” “Francesco, you’re an absolute genius. God, I wanted to write that riff before you!” We had a bit of a laugh about it. Honestly, that’s an 11 out of 10. When we recorded it, it had a great, great reaction. It’s in the live set now as well. It’s such a good song. So we carried on.
Craig (Ellis), our drummer, threw in the closing song, “Making All the Rules”, which a lot of journalists have jumped on and said how fantastic it was to have a song like that as a playout. A lot of journalists have really liked the ballads, but the album just rocks. It really does. Again, a lot of people mention “Kiss the Sky”, saying it’s quite old fashioned Tygers. I wrote most of Wild Cat. I wrote half of Spellbound. I wrote half of Crazy Nights, so I kind of know what the Tygers are about and which road we’re going down and how it should all sound. That’s always been with me, for 45 years now. I write how I write. I write songs that excite me and songs that I want to play.
I think we’ve moved up 2 stairs with this album. I really do. The press has been phenomenal. It’s charted in Scandinavia: Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, in their national charts. Not a rock chart or an Amazon chart, but in their national charts. I think in Denmark 2 days ago, we went in the charts at #14 with Taylor Swift at #13. In Sweden, I think we went in the charts at #18. It might’ve been higher than that. Depeche Mode is below us! We’re doing alright *laughs*!
That sounds like something from the NWOBHM days, when you’d have a Tygers record on the charts between say Sheena Easton and Duran Duran!
RW: Absolutely! That really did happen. It’s crikey. We’re with such a great record company who has a great press officer named Fernando (Reis). He works so hard for us and these are the results. You and I are talking. The world press is liking it, so we’re all good *laughs*.
This has to be the third or fourth Tygers album in a row that absolutely kills it from top to bottom. It’s gotten to a point now where not only do I look forward to a new Tygers release, but so do my friends, who maybe weren’t aware of the band beforehand. The energy and power is still there, and it’s old school, but without sounding rehashed.
RW: I think that’s really helped with the production. This new guy that we got, Tue Madsen, he came to a show in Denmark last weekend. It was actually the first time that we met. I invited him to the hotel where we were staying in the afternoon. We had a good hour’s crack, talking about…I think we spent about 10 minutes on music and about 50 minutes on cooking recipes and mowing the lawn *laughs* non-musical stuff! It was absolutely great. He’s such a great guy, but he really got us.
When we sent him all the stems that we’d recorded…we sent him the demos, so he knew what the songs kind of sounded like, but he still had to put all the pieces in the jigsaw puzzle: Get the backing vocals in the right place or get the reverse snare on the cowbell at the right place and the right volume. I was the go-between. All the boys said, “I’d like this changed.” or “Can we do this?”, so I was kind of the voice, which works better with one voice rather than 5 of course. He actioned everything really quickly, but we didn’t really need to tell him an awful lot.
He had done his homework. He had listened to our previous albums and he just really got us. He’s given us a new old sound. He’s used technology to give us a huge drum sound and a great guitar sound and that kind of stuff, but it still sounds like Tygers.
Many of the songs on here aren’t just musically uplifting, but boast those positive, life-affirming lyrics that have been a part of your music from the beginning. How important is it for you that these themes remain prevalent in Tygers to this day?
RW: Well very important because that’s our identity, which is kind of what I was saying before. With being in the band for 45 years, I kind of know how it should sound and which motorway we should be on to wherever we’re going. I think I’ve steered the ship in the right direction so far. Nobody wants to produce exactly the same album as you did 45 years ago. It’s a variation on a theme. You have to do something a little bit different, but not too far away from what you’re known for, otherwise people think, “Oh, they’ve turned into a dance band.” or “They’re jazz fusion. That’s not what we bought the album for.” You know when you buy a Tygers album, you’re gonna get a tiger on the cover, some tremendous hard rock n’ roll, and at the end of it, hopefully you’re gonna put the needle back on the groove and play it again.
I want to talk about the album’s opening cut, “Edge of the World”; a song which captures all the facets of the classic Tygers sound: aggression, melody, power, and so forth. What was the inspiration behind this song and what led to it being the debut single off this record?
RW: That is quite a difficult question in as much as…when I come up to my recording studio, just a little modest recording studio, nothing elaborate, because really, if you’ve got a mobile phone these days, you’ve got a recording studio. Mine’s got a small desk with buttons that actually do something because I’m old fashioned, rather than being digitalized. When I do come to my studio, I never walk in with the premise of, “Today I’m going to write a song.” I know I couldn’t do that. My brain isn’t wired like that. If I sat down and said, “I’ve got to write a song.”, I would just stare into space. One of my dogs could probably come up with something better than me.
So I plug into the studio and I’m having a play. I’m just exercising my fingers. Something always jumps out of my fingers. I don’t know why or how, but as I’m playing, something will jump out. I’ll press play and record, I’ll record it, and I’ll leave it. I’ll walk away until the next day. I’ll come back and I’ll have a listen to it again. If I like it, then I’ll develop it further. I’ll record maybe 2 guitar parts or 3 guitar parts. I’ll put the bass down. I’ll put the drums on. If it need a little bit of keyboards…I’m not a keyboard player, but I can learn what I need to learn to put that down as a guide of what’s in my head.
Then, I’ll send it out to the boys and say, “What do you think? Do you like it? Should we take it further? Is there a number in it?” I’ve got a pretty good success rate where everybody’s saying, “Yeah, let’s develop it further. It’s good. Let’s do it.” Craig and Jack (Meille) are the lyricists and melody makers. Both do an amazing job. “Edge of the World”, that’s just one of those sessions where I said to my wife, “I’m going upstairs to plug in the studio and have a little play.” That’s exactly what it is. Out that riff came. I captured it, went back to it the next day, and thought, “Yeah, I quite like that.”, and took it to the next stage.
When I sent it to Francesco though, he wrote and came up with the middle section of the flamenco guitar, that weird, eerie section; weird in a great way, not weird in a weird way. It sets the song up for the guitar solos perfectly because you’re in this kind of dystopian landscape, like you are in the video. Then it stops and the next second, you’re kicked in the face with a wah wah guitar solo. The first solo is actually mine. The second solo is Francesco’s. The whole thing just works tremendously.
We always discuss about opening tracks. An opening track on an album has to be pretty cool. It has to have pretty much everything going on. If you don’t capture peoples attention within about 15 seconds, they’re either gonna skip to track 2 or they’re gonna make an instant decision and say, “This album’s not for me.” You’ve gotta draw people in. It’s like when you read the first 10 lines in a book. If you’re not drawn in by it, you close the book, put it down, and play Space Invaders on your phone or something. You’ve gotta capture people. If it sounds great as well, that’s a bonus. Going back to Tue’s wonderful work, putting this disc on and hearing that, it does draw people in.
You were talking earlier about the impact the band’s new guitarist, Francesco Marras, has had on this album. How dis his style compare or contrast to past Tygers guitarists like John Sykes of Fred Purser?
RW: He’s very comparable. John Sykes set a standard really. He was one of the first guitar heroes, going back 45 years. There weren’t very many John Sykes around at the time. We were lucky to have the one and original. A lot of guitar players have tried to emulate John. Not Tygers guitar players, but guitar players in general, because he’s very good. He had a very definitive style.
Francesco compliments my guitar playing. He’s 100 times better than me. I come from a very old school of play 3 notes, but play 3 great notes, rather than 300 notes where you might only hear 3 notes *laughs*. I’m not a fan of widdly guitar playing, I have to say. Francesco will listen to what I’ve played and then play accordingly, which is great. He still plays fast, of course, but it all marries up lovely.
He plays fast with feeling. That’s the key.
RW: Absolutely, you’re dead right.
I’ve always felt that if you take enough time, you can play all those scales frontwards and backwards, the so called “Arpeggios from Hell”, and so forth. Can you do it with the soul of Gary Moore or Sykes? No.
RW: Absolutely not. Anybody can sit in a room in their space and just endlessly play scales to the point where you can play them blindingly fast. Who cares? When I do interviews, I often ask, “Can you hum me “All Right Now” by Free?” They can. Now this is no disrespect to Yngwie Malmsteen, but can you hum me the middle section of one of his songs?
Perhaps some lead melodies!
RW: My point is that less is more, and certainly more memorable I think. Yngwie has a place in rock history along with everybody else. He’s an incredible guitar player and a great showman, but so is Mick Box *laughs*!
Right on! On that note, growing up, who were your favorite guitarists? Was there any one specifically who inspired you to pursue the instrument? I imagine (Paul) Kossoff and Box were big influences.
RW: Oh yes! I never missed Uriah Heep playing the City Hall, right back from the early days. I always loved Mick Box’s wah wah guitar playing. Bernie Marsden, a great blues guitar player from when I went to see him in ’78 when Whitesnake first evolved. He and Micky Moody were the 2 guitar players in the band. He (Moody) was a great slide guitar player, of course. I always thought Glenn Tipton was a great lead guitar player. The solos that he played in those early Judas Priest songs were exactly what the song needed, no more, no less. They were absolutely on point.
I always thought his guitar playing was lovely. It’s so sad to see that he’s got Parkinson’s. It’s absolutely dreadful. Nobody wants to have to go through that. When Eddie Van Halen came along with the tapping and that kind of stuff, that was pretty new and innovative. He played everything from Michael Jackson, to the pop covers that they did on Diver Down, to the heavier stuff. He certainly knew his way around a fretboard. Did he not start off as a drummer?
He did! Funny enough, he was supposed to be the drummer and Alex was supposed to be the guitarist.
RW: That’s right, and they swapped! How amazing is that?
It’s mind-blowing to even consider what could’ve been.
RW: Absolutely! The two of them, not long into their careers, very quickly achieved the top of their game. Anyway, those are my influences. I remember going to see, I think it was ’73 or ’74, Nazareth at our City Hall, with the Heavy Metal Kids opening up for them. They were great with Gary Holton as the lead singer. I used to like (Nazareth guitarist) Manny Charlton’s guitar playing. He was one of the first few people who used a talk box on “Hair of the Dog”. I’ve used a talk box since 1976. I think it’s on every Tygers album. I use it in the live shows. It’s just something a little different. You don’t see it that often these days.
Speaking of important figures, it was just last week that we lost a giant of the NWOBHM scene, Algy Ward of Tank. I was wondering if you ever crossed paths with Algy over the years and if any memories come to mind?
RW: Yes! We were attending our own launch of Crazy Nights. It was November 5, 1981, which was Bonfire Night, when we played the Marquee and the MCA press officer set up a press event for us after the show with some Page 3 Sun girls. Now in page 3 of the Sun, they were topless. Everyday it was a different page 3 girl, who was well renowned for being topless. They weren’t topless at this occasion, but they didn’t have much on.
Somehow, Tank appeared from I don’t know where and gatecrashed the party. There’s quite a famous photograph, still in circulation, taken by one of the Sun newspaper photographers, of us and Tank and several scantily clad Page 3 girls, all drinking champagne. We never played with them, but we hung out with them. Algy was one of the lads. He was just a lovely fellow.
Now that I think of it, not only was that great publicity for Tygers, but it was great publicity for Tank as well because their first full length wouldn’t be out for another 6 months. Coming to your event was a great way to spread the word!
RW: Yeah! That was the original band with the Brabbs brothers, Mark and Peter, the drummer and guitar player. They were nice lads.
Back in the earliest days of Tygers, specifically during the Wild Cat era, the band seemed to have a strong following among bikers, thanks to your rough and tumble sound and freewheeling lyrics. Was this approach intentional and do you think it gave you an edge over other NWOBHM bands of the day?
RW: I don’t think it was intentional. I had a motorbike, hence the song “Wild Catz”, which I wrote the lyrics for: “Riding down the freeway on my 750/4.”, which was a Suzuki. I think a lot of bikers took us on, if you like, and wore us on their sleeves. We became quite popular with bikers and that kind of genre of people, thankfully, because they’re great. I think it was a happy accident *laughs*.
A happy accident that was built on from there!
RW: Yeah, absolutely. Again, I think with a new movement, as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal…of course the “Old Wave” of British Heavy Metal was your established bands: Deep Purple, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep, Led Zeppelin. They were, I suppose, the old wave, the original wave. The “New Wave” was this influx of new bands like Tygers, Iron Maiden, Saxon, Def Leppard. We were kind of the big 4 who were written about and discovered first. Of course, the floodgates opened and a lot of other bands came in and joined the movement as it were. With anything new, you want to be noticed, so you always have to try and think of something clever. Iron Maiden had Eddie. We always had the tiger. That was our way of getting noticed.
I’m glad you mentioned Def Leppard because that’s a great segue into the next question. In the mid 80s, when metal bands started to get more commercial, many blamed Pyromania. Yet I’ve heard some theorize that Pyromania took a cue from The Cage with its melodic and polished approach. What are your thoughts on this? Did Tygers have any history with Leppard in those early days?
RW: We toured with them! We toured with Leppard in ’80. We opened up for them on the On Through the Night Tour. We did all the big halls in the UK and got on with them great. That was the original lineup with the 2 original guitar players (Steve Clark and Pete Willis). As 2 touring bands, we got on with them great. We were still in the Wild Cat era, so we were a 4 piece and we were still quite hard hitting and rough and ready.
I do know that MCA, their masterplan for the Tygers started with The Cage. They wanted us to go across and crack the States. In order to do that, they said that we had to have a slightly more commercial edge, which meant a slightly more softer edge, which is why they were pushing these songs for us to record by outside songwriters. We didn’t want to record them because we wanted to record the songs we were writing.
We had a proven track record. Wild Cat went into the charts at #13. Spellbound charted at #18, so you’ve got a track record there. We’re saying, “We can do this. We can compete with Gloria Gaynor and David Bowie and Michael Jackson in the national charts. Why do we want to be recording other peoples songs? What’s so special about them? We can write songs!” The record company didn’t see it that way, and that unfortunately led to the split in ’83.
I’m glad you said that. It was a few years ago I interviewed your old bandmate, Jon Deverill, and we talked about The Cage. The one song off that album he said “should’ve never been recorded” was “Danger in Paradise”.
RW: *laughs* Oh right, yes! Great song written by John Parr. I met John about 5 years ago on a train ride. We sat and chatted. I don’t know why we ended up recording it. I have no idea. Maybe Tom, our manager, I’m sure he would have the answer to that. I just didn’t think it made much sense. It wasn’t a Tygers song. When I say it wasn’t a Tygers song, could we have made it a Tygers song? I think we probably did our best, but sometimes, whatever you do to a song, it’s never gonna sound like you.
And yet “Paris by Air” on the same album is perhaps the definitive Tygers song. It’s interesting how those things happen.
RW: It is, and on the same theme really. “Love Potion No. 9”, when that was brought to the band, John Sykes and I laughed. “An old Elvis Presley song? Why would we wanna go anywhere near that?” It was suggested quite forcefully that we were gonna be doing it from the powers that be. John and I locked ourselves in a little room. I came up with the front bit. He came up with the rock n’ roll middle bit and off we went. What the hell did we know? It was a big hit *laughs*! We did manage to Tygerize that.
As we all know, the 90s were a rough time for traditional metal. Yet not only did you reform Tygers in ’99, but you’ve kept the band going ever since. What was the impetus to reform Tygers and what has kept the ball rolling nearly 25 years later?
RW: The impetus was we were asked to play a 20th anniversary reunion show at Wacken in ’99. I had been out of the music scene for about 11 years. I was very disillusioned. I had done a couple of projects, recorded a couple of albums that never saw the light of day. I just thought, “I don’t need this in my life anymore.” I sold everything, sold all my guitars. I still went to shows though and I still collected records, so I didn’t completely wash my hands of it. There was obviously something still there, some infection in my blood, which I couldn’t quite shake off.
When I got this phone call asking if I wanted to be a part of this, it took me half a nanosecond to say, “Yes! I’m in!” Then I had to go to the local guitar store and buy a couple guitars and amps. Oh dear me. I hated every minute of that…not! I think we did 4 rehearsals and we went out and played in Germany. As we were going across on the British Airways plane, flying from London to Hamburg, I was told that we were headlining.
I said, “Why are we headlining?! We’ve got Saxon on before us. There’s Dokken on before us. There’s HammerFall on before us. Should we not be opening up in a side tent somewhere?” They said, “No, you’re on the main stage and you’re headlining.” I thought to myself, “Well I’m gonna have to go and buy myself some bike clips because I’m gonna filly my trousers here. I haven’t played for 11 years. It’s not even gonna be a happy accident!”
About 20 seconds into walking onstage, we were programmed to play at 1 in the morning. Not only did I not have to have a drink until we played, which was an event, there were still 22,500 people standing before us in a field, thank God. I thought to myself, “They’re all gonna go to bed. When Saxon finishes, they’re gonna get a hamburger or a pizza and they’re all gonna go off to their tents. We’re gonna be playing to the caretaker brushing up all the chip cartons and his dog.” No, it was 22,500 people, and what a sight that was.
The biggest crowd I’d ever played to was 70,000 at Reading in ’82, when we co-headlined with Iron Maiden. They headlined the A Stage and we headlined the B Stage. 70,000 people, when you look out, you can’t see the back. It’s mind blowing, really. 22,000 people is pretty respectable. It was recorded. It came out on Spitfire Records, an American label. The infection in the bloodstream got really bad and I just thought, “I’m gonna have to do something here. I need to be playing my guitar again.”
Just a few months into 2000, I set about putting a version of the Tygers back together again. Craig, the drummer, has been in the band ever since. He’s 5 minutes behind me, so he’s 23 years into it. Jack, he’s been in the band 19 years. We were talking about this when we were in Denmark last weekend. He said, “I can’t wait for next year.” I said, “Why’s that?” He said, “Because it’s 20 years. We’re gonna light a cake.” I said, “Oh yeah? We’ll get some candles and a cake and have a party.”
Francesco’s been in over 2 years now and Huw’s been in over a year. It’s a really, really happy band and a great character balance. That’s important when you’re on the road and spend time in each other’s pockets. Yes, you gotta be a good musician, but it’s also about being a nice person, give and take, getting on. Obviously we take the mick and pee out of each other, but there’s not a cross word. There’s no bad blood. It’s all in complete fun.
In recent years, we’ve seen classic metal bands like Helloween and Michael Schenker Group reform with all star lineups, featuring both past and present members. If the opportunity every presented itself for Tygers to do a show of this nature as a one-off, with Jess Cox, Jon Deverill, John Sykes, and so forth, would you do it? Why or why not?
RW: As long as the current band is there, I can’t really see a problem with doing one show and having everybody come in. Jon Deverill has certainly said that if we’re ever playing in London and he could come to the show, he would maybe get up and do “Love Potion No. 9” with Jack. We would certainly do it with Jess if he was ever around. Any of the other members? Yeah, I can’t see a problem with that. The old lineup would never get together again, that’s an absolute done deal. The old lineup though…the Tygers went from ’78 to ’83. We’ve now gone from 2000 to 2023, and we’ve released more albums. We’ve got a bit more legwork.
What does the rest of 2023 have in store for Tygers?
RW: With the album coming out 2 weeks ago and doing so well, 2 weeks ago we were in Ibiza playing the Hard Rock Hell Road Trip. Last week, we did Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, of which has done us good because the album has charted in all their national charts. In 2 days time, we headline a festival in the UK called Breaking Bands. Next weekend, we’re out headlining Iron Fest in Germany. Then we fly out to Murcia and do Rock Imperium with KISS and Deep Purple and Helloween, which will be quite nice.
We’re playing a festival in Sweden called Time to Rock with Michael Schenker and Saxon, which will be pretty good. We play Made of Stone festival in the UK with Glenn Hughes and Airbourne. There’ll be British shows in November with a lovely festival called WinterStorm on the west coast of Scotland. Then I think 2 days later, we fly out to Mexico City and we’re playing a festival out there.
Sounds like a lot of touring!
RW: Absolutely. The passport is gonna get well and truly stamped *laughs*.
Right on! I’ll leave you with this story, and I probably should’ve opened the interview with it. I’m calling from Chicago, which is of course where Tygers headlined the Ragnarokkr Metal Apocalypse festival in 2016. I was in high school at the time and had a ticket for that weekend. Unfortunately, I came down with the worst flu ever and ended up having to give it to a friend. He was sending me videos all night and I was crushed, so needless to say, this interview was an absolute pleasure for me.
RW: Thank you so much! It’s been great. Crikey, Chicago is certainly on our list to come back and play, because what a wonderful city that is.
You’re welcome back here anytime. You know you’ll get a full house at Reggies.
RW: Absolutely! What a great venue. The Mirror Jelly Bean is still a marvel in my mind. I’m sure everybody in Chicago knows, but for those from the rest of the world, there’s this incredible structure called the Mirror Jelly Bean. It’s a huge jelly bean. You can’t even believe how big this thing is. It’s all mirror. You can walk underneath and around it. It’s a tourist attraction right down on the lakeside. There’s a huge open air venue there too, isn’t there?
Yeah, that is the Pritzker Pavilion! They’re a billionaire family, so their name is on a lot of things here.
RW: Yeah, that’s it. I couldn’t get over how big the 3 lakes are, and they’re all freshwater! Of course, come nighttime, the skyline is just iconic. We actually went down to the Mirror Jelly Bean and decided to walk down, I’m not sure what the street is, but down to Reggies, not realizing that it was about a 14 hour walk.
That mut’ve been State Street. From the Bean to Reggies, yeah, that’s at least a couple hours.
RW: Yeah, we did stop at a few bars along the way *laughs*!
The new Tygers of Pan Tang album, Bloodlines, is available now on Mighty Music. For more information on Tygers of Pan Tang, visit www.tygersofpantang.com.