Steve Zodiac knows a thing or two about rock n’ roll. His love of blues and boogie has fueled English metal heroes Vardis for close to 50 years on and off, making them one of the premiere live acts not just of the NWOBHM heyday, but of recent years as well. The band’s high energy, hard rocking music is captured on their upcoming live album, 100 M.P.H. @ 100 Club. We sat down with Zodiac to discuss this release, as well as his influences, the future of the band, and Vardis’ place in the scope of the NWOBHM.
Greetings Steve and welcome to Defenders of the Faith!
Steve Zodiac: Thanks!
Despite being associated with the NWOBHM, the roots of Vardis go as far back as 1973. Could you give us some background on how the band formed and what those early years were like?
SZ: As a kid, I had no intention of having a music career, but there were two moments in 1970 that set me on the path at twelve or thirteen years old. The first was the death of my father. That’s when I started putting down my thoughts on paper, but they were just words, poems – nothing musical. The second was later that summer when a group of us bunked off school to see the Woodstock movie at the cinema. Seeing Hendrix play “The Star-Spangled Banner”, I realized that I had found my vocation. I had no idea how to go about it, or even play guitar, but from that moment I was wired to make it happen. From then on I was messing around with instruments in my mum’s front room with various school friends, but it wasn’t until ’73 that we had the name and a lineup with the ability to start gigging. At that point, we were a rock ’n’ roll covers band touring the working men’s clubs of northern England, but it wasn’t until around ’76 that I had the confidence to put the words and music together and start playing all original material.
Unlike most NWOBHM bands, Vardis stood out from the pack with a distinct boogie rock infused sound. While it’s an influence I hear in the likes of Chevy and early Raven as well, it’s far and few in between. Why don’t you think more NWOBHM bands were inspired by this scene? Furthermore, do you think this uniqueness gave Vardis an edge over other bands at the time?
SZ: I think that comes from NWOBHM being a retrospective term even when it was coined – there were no overriding principles but a bunch of bands from all over the country with different influences generally moving towards a harder, faster, heavier sound. I still think it describes a movement rather than a genre. I never really thought about boogie by design, but I was brought up listening to my parents’ old 78s, so Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard were all deeply ingrained in me, as well as Hank Williams and Muddy Waters. American country, blues, and rock ’n’ roll all come to the surface in Vardis at times. I don’t think it gave us a particular edge, but we did seem to have more traction with the punks than a lot of other bands on the scene. I put that down to us not really touching the themes and iconography that have come to define heavy metal – wizards, devils, the arcane and all that, which really started with Sabbath. We were more about having a good time while saying “fuck you” to the grown ups. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Black Sabbath in the early 70s, but I’d go to friend’s houses and listen to their records while spending my own money on T Rex, The Faces and The Stones to listen to at home.
Leading up to the NWOBHM was the UK punk scene. I know there was an early rift between punk and metal, but I feel more metal bands embraced the scene and sound than they’d like to admit. What were your thoughts on punk and was it at all an influence on you?
SZ: I really enjoyed punk and saw bands like The Stranglers and the Sex Pistols as part of the same continuity as the old rock ’n’ rollers, young people full of energy enjoying themselves with an anti-establishment attitude. I think that sense of mischief and rebellion was the same for my parents listening to rock ’n’ roll in the 50s as listening to punk in the 70’s was for me. I agree that a lot more bands embraced punk than they’d like to admit, even if not the scene and sound, but the DIY attitude. Punk really showed anyone could have a go and gave a lot of young musicians with very different musical ideas the confidence to go out and play. I’ll always be grateful to the UK Punk scene in the 1970s. They created an open field for everyone which saw the rise of dozens of small independent record labels, broadened the horizons of radio, and broke down barriers of genre. John Peel would play Vardis alongside punk tracks on his BBC Radio 1 show and that brought us to a wider audience. Without the mentality and drive of punk I don’t think half the NWOBHM or in fact a whole generation of major bands would have been heard at all.
This year sees the release of a brand new live album, 100 M.P.H. @ 100 Club, which celebrates 40 years of the original 100 M.P.H. album. What was it like to revisit that setlist and what are your memories of the original 100 M.P.H. show that took place in 1980?
SZ: 100 M.P.H. was compiled from two performances at Slough Polytechnic and Lowestoft Pier Pavilion, recorded using Mickie Most’s RAK Mobile studio. It was a complete control room in the back of a truck with an API 2488 recording desk, two 3M multitrack machines, limiters, compressors, an echo plate, the works. Often used for outside broadcasts of sport as much as music, it was perfect for capturing the intensity of our live following as well as the songs at album quality. We were confident the shows and album would be electric,. That set had been road tested and honed over four years of gigs. All we had to do was capture the energy between the band and audience on tape. I always had it in the back of my mind to do another live album, but in many ways this one was more ambitious. We didn’t just play 100 M.P.H. straight through, but a two hour set with songs from all four studio albums as well. Added to that was the pressure of it being a one take album recording. Myself, Joe (Clancy), and Roly (Bailey) knew we had one shot to deliver something special. The daunting thing for me personally was playing the title track from 100 M.P.H. live for the first time since 1986. It’s a demanding piece of music to perform and it was important to me to make sure the interpretive parts brought something new to it, rather than just replicating the original. Coming offstage felt like we’d nailed it and I think this album more than stands up next to the first album. No one who enjoyed 100 M.P.H. will come away disappointed after listening to 100 M.P.H. @100 Club.
Expanding upon the last question, Vardis was and still is legendary for their high energy live shows. What is the craziest or most unusual thing that happened at one of your shows?
SZ: I remember at an open air festival in Scandinavia, we let off two huge confetti cannons at the end of “100 M.P.H.”, which blew holes in the canvas roof over the stage, which wouldn’t have been too bad if it hadn’t been pissing it down with rain the night before. Gallons of water fell on our heads in a second and flooded the stage, blowing all the fuses. The crowd loved it, but everything had to be dried out and made safe before Ian Gillan could come on. He was pretty pissed off.
Another legendary show Vardis partook in was the Heavy Metal Holocaust festival alongside Motörhead, Ozzy Osbourne, Triumph, and more. Was that the biggest show you had played up until that point? What memories stand out to you from that day?
SZ: It was one of the biggest rock events yet staged in Britain at the time, with one of the loudest sound systems in the world. I still get people coming up to me saying it was the loudest gig they’ve ever been to! It was a very hot day and Vale Park was packed out. It was too full to be honest. The official attendance was 20,000, but it was closer to double that as thousands managed to get in without tickets. The crowd was absolutely magnificent, a wall of noise with a real party atmosphere. I remember someone parachuting into the stadium from a plane! The stage seemed massive and we couldn’t hear a thing through the monitors, but we played on instinct and got a fantastic reception. Backstage was very chilled and had the feel of a family BBQ. We’d played with Motörhead a few times before and Lemmy had come to the Lowestoft recording of 100 M.P.H., while I’d got to know Ozzy at the Shepperton Studios bar. We were rehearsing there for 100 M.P.H. at the same time he was putting together Blizzard of Ozz. He was nothing like his reputation at that time after breaking with Sabbath, always game for a pint and a chat about football. I wish I could remember more as I get asked about it a lot, but it was one of those special days that was all over very quickly.
There are many Vardis songs that stand out to me, one in particular being “Where There’s Mods There’s Rockers” off of 1982’s Quo Vardis. Us Americans are mostly aware of this English phenomenon thanks to The Who’s Quadrophenia. Growing up, were you ever associated with either group?
SZ: When I was at school in the late 60s, most boys either had a British motorbike or an Italian Scooter. It was Triumph and Norton vs. Vespa and Lambretta. The bikes were more powerful and flashy, so the scooter boys added a lot of mirrors and chrome accessories to compete. The Bikers were always in black leathers with white socks and listened almost exclusively to rock, while the Mods wore fashion clothes and professed a broader taste in music. I was massively into cars from a young age and never had any interest in belonging to one group or the other, but the culture and counter culture dynamic fascinated me. Looking back, I think I sympathized with the Rockers more, not just because they seemed like the working class bad boys against the urban sophisticates, but because I associated the Triumph bikes with Marlon Brando in The Wild One. Writing that song, I was using my memories of the 60s youth culture split to reflect on how we often see the diverse nature of human beings through a series of stereotypes, and yet act surprised when a counter rebellion occurs kicking against that. Society tries to categorize people as a means of control, but it’s human nature to rebel against that and defy consensus around labels.
Geoff Barton gave us a kicking for the lyric “Where there are men there are wars, where there’s women there are whores” reviewing the Quo Vardis reissue in 2017, missing the point of the song entirely. Fighting and prostitution are things people can be forced into, or choose in order to rebel, or go into to create order in the world around them. The song makes no judgement and isn’t pejorative about it. The whole point is that these labels are too simplistic for the complex human stories they attempt to categorize! I get that music journalism is the business of selling your opinion, but if that’s your whole career, have the courage of your convictions and say “I don’t like this album” or “This band is fucking terrible”. Taking a lyric out of context to construct a fake moral high ground from which to take a shit on a band isn’t journalism, it’s pathetic. Ultimately, the music speaks for itself long and loud after any commentary subsides to barely a ripple, so I don’t lose sleep over reviews good or bad, but that one was just dishonest to the point of cowardice. I stand by every word of that song and will continue to play it live.
Another favorite of mine is “Blue Rock (I Miss You)”. The hooks and melodies on that 7 inch are some of the finest laid on tape. How did that song come about and were the lyrics about any woman in particular?
SZ: Thank you, that’s kind of you to say. By the time I came to write “Blue Rock”, about ’81 or ’82, I’d been on the road for five years solid, so it is all about working away from the ones you love or want to be with. I’d met my now wife Irene two years earlier, and we’re still together over 40 years later, so there is a clue!
The current lineup of Vardis features yourself, Joe Clancy on drums, and Roly Bailey on bass. In your opinion, how does this incarnation of the band compare to past lineups?
SZ: 100 M.P.H. @ 100 Club will be the fourth distinct Vardis lineup across five albums, and I don’t like to make direct comparisons as each has something unique to recommend them. Improvisation and interpretation are integral to our music, but when the chemistry is right, that leaves a lot of space for each of the trio to express themselves. I love the punchy attack of Alan Selway’s precision bass. He brings real power and bounce to the first three albums. When Terry Horbury took over, he brought his EB-3 and love of Cream which pulled us in a bluesier direction. I must say that that Joe Clancy and Roly Bailey are both fantastic musicians, two of the greatest I have played with. Joe is a master in total command all over the kit. His power and quality have pushed me to new levels. Roly isn’t just a super bass player, but a multitalented musician and songwriter in his own right, with the ability to draw something new out of the music with every performance. Band chemistry is such an important factor in live music and this lineup has it in spades. The feel and understanding between us when we lock in together is magic and it’s great to have captured that on this record.
Now that COVID regulations are finally starting to let up, does Vardis have any future plans for touring and recording?
SZ: I can’t say too much right now, but we will be recording new material next year. Pandemic permitting, we are hoping to be back onstage next spring and in the studio next autumn. The last time we played together was the recording at 100 Club, as we all live so far apart and travel has been impossible! We can only hope that we don’t see further lockdowns, but COVID is by no means over. A good friend of mine recently died from it. Until the vast majority get vaccinated, the virus will always be a major threat to public events. Hopefully we can get to a place where the vaccines are as routine as seasonal flu or pre travel malaria jabs. Rock ’n’ roll is best enjoyed live and loud and we can’t wait to get back to it in 2022!
100 M.P.H. @ 100 Club comes out Friday, November 26 on Steamhammer. For more information on Vardis, visit www.vardisrocks.com.
Excellent interview. Very informative.